St. Paul Island artists retell Kipling's 'White Seal' from Unangan perspective

Garrett Iĝayuxˆ Pletnikoff and Hannah Atsaq Zimmerman, two St. Paul Island residents and co-founders of Tukuuludaa Creations, are leading a multimedia retelling of Rudyard Kipling's 1894 story "The White Seal" — set on the Pribilof Islands where Pletnikoff and Zimmerman live — from a modern Unangan perspective. The project, Sirgiiyax̂ kayux Laaqudam quhmaa (Sergie and the White Seal), premieres at the 2026 Arctic Arts Summit in Umeå, Sweden.

The substantive significance: Kipling's original is set in the Pribilof Islands during the height of the international fur seal harvest, told from the perspective of a young white seal trying to save his people from human hunters. The actual humans hunting fur seals in the Pribilof in the late 19th century — through methods Kipling describes — were Unangan people, who had been forcibly relocated to the Pribilof by Russian fur traders in the 1700s and continued to be coerced into the seal harvest by the U.S. government after the 1867 Alaska purchase. The 1988 Aleutian and Pribilof Islands Restitution Act later acknowledged decades of federal mistreatment.

Pletnikoff and Zimmerman's retelling reverses the framing: the seal and the Unangan hunter are allies protecting a shared homeland from destructive fishing practices, with the Unangan language, art, and local materials at the center.

The project includes what The Aleut Corporation describes as one of the world's first middle-grade and young-adult Unangan-themed novels (ages 8+), a majority Unangaxˆ/Aleut cast audiobook, an animated film illustrated by Sámi artist Rebecca Tornberg, and a soft-sculpture installation made from local St. Paul Island materials using traditional methods. The Sámi collaboration sits inside a broader circumpolar Indigenous arts framework — the Arctic Arts Summit is a biennial gathering of Indigenous artists from Arctic Council nations, and Sámi-Alaska Native exchange has historical precedent dating to the late 19th-century introduction of Sámi reindeer herders to Alaska.

The economic dimension is also substantive. Tukuuludaa Creations operates St. Paul Island's first tannery and design studio, founded after Pletnikoff and Zimmerman trained in Norway. For a community of roughly 400 people, a locally-owned heritage-craft enterprise is a meaningful piece of long-term economic development.

The Bunnell Street Arts Center awarded Tukuuludaa a $4,000 Ursa Major Fund grant in February 2026. The Aleut Corporation announced its partnership in its summer 2026 shareholder newsletter ahead of the Umeå premiere.