Alita’s Curse is a fictional story based on a 1904 sea otter hunt and the lives of my great grandparents, Alita Kochutin-Berikoff and Emilian Z. Berikoff. Through strength and keen inventiveness, the Unangan have lived and thrived on the Aleutian Archipelago, a chain of islands that separate the Bering Sea from the Pacific Ocean, for nine thousand years. In the 18th century the Russian fur traders who claimed to have discovered these islands left disparaging documents about the Unangan islanders. But even as their writings disparaged the people, they created beautiful engravings and drawings depicting the Unangan and their daily activities. The Unangan people also endowed beauty into everything they created, notably, the stunning images they painted onto men’s hunting hats. These images were created to recognize and honor the spirits, that a hunter might be granted good luck in the coming hunt. This book was originally published as a fine press book in an edition of forty, the result of a collaboration between me and master printer and illustrator, Charles D. Jones.
