We grew up in Chevak, a Cup’ik community of less than 800 people in Western Alaska where community members continue to live a traditional subsistence way of life, fishing, hunting and gathering from the land around us. But living in an area so remote isn’t easy, the cost of living is high, and jobs are hard to come by.

ArXotica hopes to act as an agent of change to improve the quality of life and provide opportunities for our people, so they no longer have to leave their homeland to find work. ArXotica strives to produce products without compromising the integrity of our isolated culture and our remote, resource-rich land.

In our backyard, you find hundreds of thousands of acres of tundra bursting with millions of pounds of uncultivated, potent, micronutrient botanicals. Berries, greens, herbs and flowers bloom with robust sugars and enzymes. The season of harvest is short, but luckily the days are long.

Sourcing our own botanical materials was a hard way to start a company, but we wanted signature ingredients that would stand out and deliver high quality products while retaining an identity as an Indigenous owned and operated business. We hand pick our herb, berry and flower blossoms from a largely undeveloped landscape of roadless terrain the size of Ohio. Our ingredients then go to one of the country’s leading product manufacturing plants, in order to meet rigorous formulating, safety and quality control standards.

ArXotica is owned and operated by Alaska Native triplets Michelle, Amy and Cika Sparck, who are proud members of the Qissunamiut tribe in Western Alaska.

The trio started the line using seed-money from the Alaska Federation of Natives Alaska Marketplace, a contest that encourages the creation of new business in “off-the-grid” areas of Alaska.

The Sparck sisters’ goal is to grow a subsistence-compatible business that will change the face of the economy in Western Alaska, and possibly other Arctic countries.