Fred Fulmer is more than just an artist.

He’s a storyteller.

He’s a cultural historian.

He’s an inspired creator of Tlingit art and curator of tribal history.

Fulmer does it all through magnificent carvings that tell stories memorializing Tlingit antiquity. His passion has been to tell the stories essential to tribal culture. With many of his own ancestors gone, he has become a tribal elder. As an elder, he must tell the tribe’s story and keep its culture thriving.

"I get the benefit of sharing culture,” he said. "To me it’s a language. It’s part of weaving the stories. They all come together as a weave to make up who we are.”

Fulmer, whose father was actually German, identifies with his Native mother’s side. She came from the tiny village of Hoonah and named him Saat-Kaa, which means "Named Great Man.”

Fulmer is from the Chookaneidee Clan and from the Ice House or Glacier House. His mother’s people originated from Glacier Bay. He is called Eagle/ Brown Bear.

As a child, Fulmer’s father was in the Navy, and the family bounced around to several states. Eventually, he moved to Ketchikan and lived there from 1981 to 1987. He now lives in Everett, Washington.

According to a biography listed on the Burke Museum website, Fulmer "was influenced by all the totem poles and Native culture all around us. While attending college I watched Nathan Jackson carve a couple of totem poles for Sealaska at a facility there on campus. This is where my interest in carving began. After I moved to Seattle in 1987, I was inspired by my Chookaneidee Clan Uncle, Ray Nielsen Sr.”

Being Tlingit is a critical part of Fulmer’s identity, and it is in his cultural DNA to tell the story of his people through carvings that tell stories from Tlingit history.

While he also carves totem poles, Fulmer’s favorite piece is of the devilfish, a giant octopus that prowled Glacier Bay and devoured even the warriors sent out to kill it. As he carves, Fulmer said his art evolves. He may set out with a vague sketch of what he wants to create.

"But then once, when I was carving it, I put faces in it, and those are the faces of those who were claimed by the devil fish,” he said. "It took me six months to carve the devilfish. But when somebody asked how long it took to carve it, I said 28 years because it’s a culmination of my experience and of the people who lived in that time.

"I talked to a clan sister, and she said, ‘with your carvings you’re creating representations of our clan. And you’re doing it with the guidance of our ancestors.’”

So, Fulmer does not create his art in a vacuum. The hands of those who have gone before him play as much of a role in creating the carvings as his own, although his wife, Ivy, helped with the devilfish mask. 

"They’re all around us,” he said. "We’ve got a lot of faces on our walls, and these pieces are being carved through their inspirations and dreams and visions.”

Fulmer’s own inspirations come from another place, a place where ancestors dwell and instruct his hands.

"The wood ends up being my palette, my paper,” he said. "A lot of my work comes from dreams, visions, waking moments. I wake up in the morning and I see something. It’s all about the carvings. What am I going to do with the faces? I don’t know. I like that because you have a window of creativity that is wide open. You don’t get if you’re doing a commission.”

Fulmer carved a 16-ft. totem pole that has the ancient ones in a mask on top.

"What it represents is all the spiritual guardians over the last 12,000 years,” he said. "Christianity has been around, what, a couple thousand years? What did they do before that? These ancestors give counsel to those of us on earth.”

His devilfish mask is big enough for Fulmer to lean on, and it is the mask that makes him most proud. Check this video to learn how the Chookaneidi Clan earned the right to use the devilfish as a clan crest.

"It turned into a clan story,” he said. "Once I realized I was telling our history, it made me feel like I’m leaving a legacy.”

Fulmer’s art is available at www.voyij.com

"Read about the exciting collaboration between Voyij.com and Celebrity Cruises, featuring Sr. Master Tlingit Carver Saat Kaa Fred Fulmer's enchanting presentations and carving sessions during three sailings aboard the Celebrity Solstice in May and June 2023. Learn more about this unique onboard cultural experience.