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CANTWELL — BJ Gore, with two Native elders guiding him, learned a traditional skill last week that otherwise might have been lost to future generations.

Along the way, he participated in a unique high school internship that taught him a bit about his own heritage and earned him recognition from his home community.

Gore, an Alaska Native high school senior at Cantwell School, created a traditional moose-hide skin boat.

Nick Dennis, 80, and his wife Verdrisia, 76, of Nikolai, supervised the project.

The last time Nick Dennis saw a boat constructed this way was more than 60 years ago, in 1945, when he watched his father create a similar craft. He said no one in Nikolai has made one since then.

In early days, villagers would head upriver to hunt, shoot a moose, build the boat right there in one day, then use it to haul meat downstream, towing their hunting canoe behind.

If several moose were killed, one man sewed the skins together in a waterproof seam while another built the frame. The skin was lashed on and the seams were smeared with moose fat to keep it water tight.

The meat was then loaded on top of willows thrown on the bottom of the boat.

The boats were intended for one-time use — practical and functional.

That traditional boat-building technique appeared destined to disappear, as few young people in Nikolai showed any interest in carrying on the tradition, Dennis said.

But once people with the National Park Service and Denali Borough School District put their heads together, they came up with a way to preserve that important skill by urging the Nikolai elders to share their knowledge with a student at Cantwell School.

Amy Craver, cultural resources and subsistence manager for the National Park Service, spearheaded the project and convinced Nick and Verdrisia Dennis to participate.

At first, the Native elder was hesitant, worried that he wouldn’t remember how to build the boat, after all this time.

But in young Gore, he found an eager student.

“BJ is a good kid to work with,” Dennis said. “Right away, he just picked up what I want him to do. He’s good at chopping wood. That’s the kind of kids I look for.”

Gore, 18, is a lifelong Cantwell resident. His family participates in a subsistence lifestyle, so the project held special meaning for him. He, his dad and uncle actually hunted the moose last fall and saved the moose hide in a freezer until this week. He documented that hunt as part of his internship project.

“They showed me what to do the whole way,” Gore said of his two mentors. “I felt comfortable working with them. They were good teachers. They were patient.”

This particular boat is small — the size of one moose hide.

“It’s a miniature version,” Gore said. “Normally, they would be twice or three times that size. It depends how big of a boat you need. They could sew three moose hides together, this was only one moose hide.”

Gore also spent a week in Nikolai, interviewing elders about subsistence and boat design.

Nikolai is located on the south fork of the Kuskokwim River, just east of McGrath.

When it came time to actually build the boat, it took just three days.

Spruce poles were cut and peeled to create the frame and the moose hide became the hull.

“I learned how to flatten those spruce poles so I could bend them around,” Gore said. “I took branches off cottonwood trees for ribs.

“I broke a couple of them,” he added ruefully.

Dennis brought special cross pieces for the boat, from the Kuskokwim region.

The hide was tied and stretched onto the frame, then nailed into the wood.

With an expert’s hand, Verdrisia Dennis sewed the ends together, using special moose sinew she brought for that purpose. From one piece that was about two-inches wide and a foot long, she peeled long, thin strips and threaded her needle.

“It looked like a light brown chunk of stringy jerky,” Craver said.

Throughout those three days, at Cantwell School, a myriad of folks popped in to observe and assist — carpenters from Denali National Park, other students, and community partners like David Tomeo from the Murie Science and Learning Center. Even school district superintendent Kim Langton tried his hand helping flesh the moose hide, under direct supervision of Verdrisia Dennis.

“It really did take on a life of its own,” Craver said. “Everybody involved made it what it is now. It was a really exciting project.”

When the completed boat was unveiled this week, the entire community showed up to celebrate.

Organizations that supported the project include the National Park Service, Denali Borough School District, Murie Science and Learning Center, Alaska Geographic and the Native Village of Cantwell.

The hope is that the traditional moose hide skin boat will eventually go on public display, perhaps at the Murie Science and Learning Center. It will have to air out first, however, before it can find a permanent home in a public building. And a few holes in the hide need to be patched.

Meanwhile, Dennis thinks high schooler Gore might be a good candidate for learning to make traditional snowshoes.

That, he said, would be worth a return trip.