Umiaq
The construction of a large, open, wood-framed boat covered with stitched bearded seal or walrus skin, historically the primary vessel for whaling and large-scale marine mammal hunting and cargo transport among coastal Iñupiat and other Bering Strait and Arctic communities, built entirely with lashed rather than nailed joinery to allow the hull to flex with sea ice and waves.
Risk level: Endangered · Not Applicable — the United States is not a State Party to the UNESCO 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of Intangible Cultural Heritage; no US technique can be formally ICH-inscribed regardless of significance.
PARTIAL RECORD BY DESIGN — An ephemeral healing-ceremony art form in which a hatałii (medicine person) and assistants pour dry pigment freehand onto the ground to create a large ritual image used within a specific healing ceremony and…
Utilitarian coil-built pottery made from mica-flecked clay unique to the Taos and Picuris Pueblo area, prized historically and today for its natural non-stick qualities and even heat conduction as functional cookware, and now also produced…
Kapa is the traditional Native Hawaiian barkcloth, made almost entirely from the inner bark of the wauke (paper mulberry) tree through a labor-intensive process of stripping, soaking, fermenting, and repeated beating that transforms bast…
'Ahu'ula ('red garment') refers to the feathered cloaks and capes that stood as the most sacred and politically significant objects of pre-contact Hawaiian material culture — constructed entirely by hand from plant fiber netting and the…
Black Masking Indian suit-making — commonly known as Mardi Gras Indian craft — is a distinctly New Orleans African American tradition in which members of neighborhood 'tribes' hand-sew and hand-bead elaborate three-piece suits, worked in…
A distinct Hispano weaving tradition developed by Spanish colonial settlers in the Rio Grande watershed of northern New Mexico from the early 1600s, using churro sheep wool descended from flocks brought by the Coronado expedition,…
The building of the chalupa cantábrica — the traditional Cantabrian inshore fishing boat, smaller than the Basque trainera (CRAFT-1061) but using the same clinker planking technique.
The building of the rabelo — the traditional flat-bottomed, square-sailed boat historically used to transport Port wine pipas (the 550-litre oak casks documented in CRAFT-1108) down the Douro river from the terraced vineyards to the aging…
The building of the llaüt — the traditional Ibizan and Formentera fishing and transport boat with a distinctive lateen sail rig.
The making and repair of fishing nets by the redeiras (net-making women) of Nazaré — the Atlantic fishing village famous for its extreme surfing waves and its traditional seven-petticoat costume.
A traditional beach-seine fishing technique practiced along the Algarve and central Portuguese coast in which a large net is set from a boat just offshore and then hauled in by teams working from the beach, historically using oxen and now…
The hand-carving, with axe and hand tools, of single-log dugout canoes by Miskito builders of Honduras's La Mosquitia rainforest region — river-form pipantes and keeled sea-going duris — within a canoe-trade network documented continuously…