2025 Innovators Hall of Fame Inductees
The Ingenious Indigenous Technology of the Imarnin (Yup’ik Gut Raincoat)
Ellen Carrlee
An imarnin might appear strange to modern eyes. The thin, translucent material appears brittle and delicate. It might look like a poor alternative to today’s high-tech synthetic rain gear. To some people, a garment from animal innards might even seem grotesque. But a closer examination of this ancient technology gives a glimpse of remarkable indigenous ingenuity.
The processing of gut into a useful material differs from processing leather. Leather is made from external skin, and most leather is tanned to maintain flexibility and prevent it from rotting. Gut is not technically a tanned material. When dry, it is stiff and tears easily. When wet, it becomes soft and rubbery, almost silky to the touch, and is much tougher than dry gut. Unlike a leather coat, a gut raincoat is explicitly intended to be wet and dried repeatedly. An imarnin is dampened before each use, and put on slightly wet. Gut raincoats in museum displays are dry, wrinkled, and crunchy-looking, but in action they are relaxed, translucent, and very flexible. They also stretch when damp. The hem of a raincoat could be stretched and tied around the opening of a kayak to serve as a spray skirt, keeping water out of the boat. They were used for various activities such as berry picking, fishing, or simply playing outside (figure 1). In spite of their thinness, they have been described as warm. What is the nature of this amazing material?
Inside the body, the intestine is a tube that moves food and solid waste through the digestive system. A bolus, the small lump of chewed food, is transported along the length of this tube by rhythmic muscle contractions known as “peristalsis”. At the same time, nutrients and moisture pass through the walls of the tube into the body. The ability of gut to both contain substances but also let others pass through is key to its utility as a raincoat material. Just as gut is permeable to some substances and impermeable to others within an animal body, it also has these dual properties as an imarnin.
Items made from gastrointestinal organs of various large mammals were traditionally used by many circumpolar cultures. Esophagus, stomach, intestine, and bladder could be used to make a variety of useful items, including raincoats, hats, drums, windows, sails, containers, bags, floats, and canteens. These items take advantage of gut’s properties that are similar to today’s synthetic materials such as Gore-Tex, nylon, and polyester. The dual properties of barrier and passage reflect not just physical qualities, but also fundamental concepts in Yup’ik worldview (Fienup-Riordan ).