For most of my life, I would have had a hard time explaining how all the pieces fit together. I grew up playing basketball. I spent more than three decades working in Southeast Alaska’s forests and salmon streams. I learned to handle explosives for fish habitat projects. Then, in my forties, I taught myself to sew fur. I became a father, a grandfather, a hunter, a teacher and, unexpectedly, someone people watched on television.
Today I run Sea Fur Sewing full-time in Sitka, Alaska. Looking back, those chapters were never as separate as they seemed. Each one taught me something about patience, hard work, family, stewardship and the responsibility to pass knowledge on. This is how I got here.
The people who came before me
My name is Robert K’eináxh Miller. I am Tlingit, Kiks.ádi (Raven/Frog), from Sitka. Through my mother’s family, I carry a history much older than my own lifetime. The more I’ve studied my family, the more important it has become to me that my children and grandchildren understand their connections—not simply a name on a family tree, but the people, places and responsibilities behind it.
I grew up hearing about Elizabeth John, an ancestor who sewed moccasins and sold them in Sitka. That story stayed somewhere in the back of my mind long before I knew how to thread a sewing machine. I didn’t inherit a ready-made business or a set of perfect patterns. I inherited a reason to try.
Part of my childhood was spent in Washington, around Gig Harbor and Lake Quinault. Basketball gave me discipline and a sense of belonging. I played at Grays Harbor Community College and later at Sheldon Jackson College in Sitka. I learned to keep going after mistakes, work with a team and respect the people who take time to teach you. Those lessons proved useful far beyond the basketball court.
Thirty-plus years learning from Alaska’s rivers
In 1994, I went to work on a trail crew with the U.S. Forest Service in the Tongass National Forest. By the following years I was working on the Sitka Ranger District, eventually moving into fish-passage construction and fisheries biology. Good mentors showed me how much meaningful work could be done in a stream that most people would never see.
A fish pass is a way to help salmon move past a barrier and reach spawning or rearing habitat. Building one can mean living in remote camps, hauling equipment by boat, studying water flows, drilling rock, placing concrete and watching a design meet the real world. Across my career, I worked on 51 fish-passage structures by my count. Each project carried an obligation: do the work carefully, because the fish, the watershed and the people who depend on them matter.
At Appleton Cove Creek on Baranof Island, I helped lead work reported in a 2003 Forest Service publication. The project was designed to open about five miles of stream and three acres of ponds to species including coho salmon and steelhead. That meant more than construction. It meant an opportunity for future salmon generations to reach habitat above the falls.
At Kanalku Falls near Angoon, I served as the Forest Service blaster-in-charge on a 2013 effort to deepen a jump pool for sockeye salmon. Alaska Department of Fish and Game documented how the team moved fish, monitored the blast and shaped the rock with precision. Those sockeye are an important traditional food for Angoon. For me, that connection between a technical job and feeding a community was never abstract.
I also had the privilege of teaching young crew members. Some arrived without much confidence; they left knowing how to work safely, solve problems and depend on one another. Their growth became as meaningful to me as the finished structures.
Three sea otters and an unexpected beginning
On December 8, 2013, I went out into Sitka Sound and harvested three sea otters. I knew how to work outdoors, but I did not know how to turn a pelt into a finished garment. I was starting from scratch. I learned to prepare the hides, researched traditional methods, and tried to understand the work that generations before me had done with much simpler tools.
My first product was a pair of leather gloves with fur cuffs. I taught myself a basic stitch and carried the finished pair into a local store. They bought them. I remember what that meant: I had made something with my own hands, and someone saw value in it.
I bought an old Bonis fur-sewing machine and discovered a whole new level of frustration. Needles broke. Lines wandered. Patterns didn’t fit. I practiced on canvas because it was cheaper to make mistakes on fabric than on precious fur. Eventually I could make hats, mittens, pillows and blankets. That small beginning became Sea Fur Sewing.
The irony isn’t lost on me: after spending years drilling and blasting rock, I found myself learning the fine movements of a fur-sewing machine. Both demanded careful preparation, patience and respect for materials. A rushed decision could ruin days of work.
Food first, and respect for the whole harvest
People sometimes look at a sea otter fur hat or blanket and see only a luxury item. I see a much longer journey. I see the water, the weather, the hunter, the preparation, the tannery, the cutting table and the hours of sewing. I also see a Tlingit relationship with marine resources that goes far beyond a retail transaction.
When we harvest seals, food comes first. Meat and fat are shared with Elders and families who value and rely on traditional foods. I want people to understand that I do not go seal hunting simply to obtain fur. Feeding people, using what we harvest responsibly and respecting the animal are the foundation of that work.
Sea otters and shellfish are also part of difficult conversations in Southeast Alaska. Having spent decades in fisheries, I know that an ecosystem cannot be explained with a slogan. Communities have lived experience, and science has an important role. I believe both deserve to be heard. My business operates within the laws governing Alaska Native marine mammal harvesting and handicrafts, and I want the skills and opportunities connected to this work to remain in Native communities.
My goal is bigger than selling a finished product: teach a skill, support a Native hunter, honor a harvest, feed people where appropriate, make something useful and help sustain a small local economy.
A small business that found its way
In the early years, I worked full-time for the Forest Service and sewed at night and on weekends. There were 12- and 15-hour days, and I had to learn that building something worthwhile also meant protecting time with my family. My wife, Alycia, and our children have lived through the long hours, the growing pains and the victories.
By 2015, the Alaska Small Business Development Center reported that Sea Fur Sewing products had reached nine fur galleries, two museums and a boutique in Brooklyn, New York. Iditarod champion Lance Mackey wore my work. Seeing an item leave my shop and reach someone far away was encouraging—but I was still figuring out pricing, planning and what it really costs to run a handmade business.
Writer and photographer Bethany Goodrich later told part of my story in Modern Huntsman’s “Seam of the Sea.” I appeared with my son RJ on Life Below Zero: Next Generation. Television brought attention, but the life behind the cameras was the same life: checking the weather, running boats, harvesting food and making sure family and community came first.
One of my proudest moments came in April 2025, when Tlingit & Haida honored Sea Fur Sewing with the President’s Small Tribal Business Award. Sea Fur Sewing also became a 2025 Spruce Root Path to Prosperity winner. The $20,000 business-development award helped me invest in a long-planned website rebuild. The new site allows me to tell the whole story, not just display products on a page.
From teaching crews to guiding young men
I used to think my job was building fish passes. Over time, I realized that helping people grow was just as important. That idea followed me into cultural sewing classes and into Sealaska Heritage Institute’s Haa Kusteeyí Cultural Warriors work, where I serve as an “uncle” and mentor.
With young men, the lessons happen while doing real things: setting a net, harvesting and processing sockeye, tending a smokehouse, reading tracks at moose camp, learning boating safety or figuring out how to keep going when plans change. The point isn’t to give a lecture. It’s to work beside someone until they discover what they’re capable of.
My former fisheries crews, my sewing students and these young men have taught me something in return: knowledge grows when it is shared. A tradition is more secure when it lives in many hands instead of just one.
Where I am today—and what comes next
I retired from the U.S. Forest Service on September 30, 2025. That ended one career, but it didn’t end my interest in salmon, conservation or difficult projects. It gave me the chance to make Sea Fur Sewing my full-time work and invest more energy in my family, my culture and the next generation.
Today I make handcrafted sea otter and seal fur hats, mittens, slippers, blankets and other pieces in Sitka. Some are practical gear for cold Alaska weather. Others are heirlooms that a family may pass down. Every item still starts with the same questions: Where did the material come from? Was it treated with respect? Is the workmanship worthy of the animal and the customer?
I think about RJ, Ashlyne, Eva and my grandchildren, and about what they will remember long after the stories of individual projects and awards fade. I hope they remember that a skill is worth learning, that the people who teach you deserve gratitude, and that success means more when it helps someone else.
For decades I helped salmon find a way past barriers. Today, whether I’m at a sewing machine or beside a young person on the beach, I’m still trying to open a path. Sea Fur Sewing is where those experiences finally come together: our history, our food, our work and our future—stitched into something that can be passed on.
Explore my work: Sea Fur Sewing · My Story
Further reading and reporting
- My Story — Sea Fur Sewing
- Appleton Cove fish passage — Forest Service Museum
- Blasting Kanalku Falls — Alaska Department of Fish and Game
- Alaska SBDC, 2015 profile
- Alaska SBDC, 2020 profile
- Seam of the Sea — Modern Huntsman
- Cultural Warriors — KCAW
- Tlingit & Haida 2025 President’s Award
- Spruce Root interview
