Alutiq Healer's Amulet Fossil Ivory With Opal

"A soul is partly given, and partly wrought."

The Alutiq are the Alaska Native peoples indigenous to the Kodiak Island Archipelago, the southern coast of the Alaska Peninsula, Prince William Sound, and the lower tip of the Kenai Peninsula. the Alutiiq culture area have continuously inhabited this area for over 7,000 years, practicing a primarily maritime hunting culture. The Alutiqs believed that humans have many souls and that the cause of sickness is the loss of one of a person’s souls to a spirit or wicked shaman and that it takes a shaman healer to flr through the air to retrieve the stolen soul. Shaman’s wore and used used many different amulets to help them cure their people.

Our Alutiq Healer’s Amulet, designed after a carved and painted wooden and abalone amulet which was unearthed near the village of old Harbor on the south end of Kodiak Island. Our Alutiq healer’s Amulet is made from a naturally-colorfully-banded piece of fossil walrus ivory with a bright white crystalline center. (The colors are from different minerals that leeched into the ivory over the centuries.) It is shaped like a flying object to help the Shaman in his quest, and it is adorned with a large sterling silver bail and bright blue opal. It comes complete with a smooth sterling silver chain. It is a close modern embodiment of the ancient Alutiq Amulet. 1 3/8 inch high (with bail), 1 3/8 inch wide.