Inuit women in Alaska have been turning straw into gold for more than 30 years. Their "straw," however, is actually hair, musk ox hair, which has created some golden opportunities.

In the 1960s, Arctic natives faced debilitating poverty. Hunting and fishing no longer provided a living for families in remote villages, so the men had to leave their homes for summer jobs. Additional sources of income were desperately needed.

Anthropologist John J. Teal Jr. sympathized with the Inuit and wanted to find a way to use natural Arctic resources as a solution. He decided the musk ox was best suited to the purpose.

One of the Arctic's oldest living species, the musk ox thrives in Alaska's open tundra and well-vegetated terrain. It is not actually an ox, and it does not produce musk. Instead, it's a cousin to sheep and goats and most resembles a bison.

Scientists believe the short-legged, massively built animals wandered across the Bering Straits on a narrow land bridge to North America hundreds of thousands of years ago.

Over a period of 600,000 years, musk oxen developed ways to stay warm during long winter months. For example, ankle-length hairs protect the animals against severe sub-zero temperatures. Beneath that outer coat there's a soft but dense undercoat known as qiviut (pronounced KIV-ee-ute), meaning "down" or "underwool" in the Inuktitut, the Inupiat language.

Adult musk oxen shed from five to seven pounds of hair during spring, allowing harvesters to comb or pull large puffs of the downy wool from the oxen.

Eight times warmer than sheep's wool and very lightweight, qiviut is one of the finest natural fibers known to man, and is often referred to as "the cashmere of the North."

In order to domesticate the musk ox, Dr. Teal needed help. Mekoryuk natives Esther Shavings and her husband, Edward, helped him capture some calves to start a herd for the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.

That accomplished, he began recruiting women for a cooperative, whose members would knit the qiviut into finished garments. Knitting began in 1968 when a textile specialist for the project brought a supply of the musk ox yarn to the women on Nunivak Island.

Workshop instructors taught them to read patterns, and helped them learn the lacelike stitches and handle the fine-spun qiviut.

The older women helped adapt ancient patterns from traditional village life and Inuit culture. Village artisans soon developed their own unique patterns and named them for their villages.

Within a year they had formed the Oomingmak Musk Ox Producers' Co- operative.

The word Oomingmak is an Inuit term meaning "the bearded one." Co-op members say that Oomingmak and the Musk Ox Farm are the only ones of their kind in the world.

After the first year, 27 Mekoryuk knitters turned the qiviut into 291 scarves, stoles, tunics, and nachaqs (which means hat or hood). A nachaq (pronounced NA-chak) is a seamless, tubular garment that can be worn as a hood or pulled down around the neck, similar to a turtleneck.

Their success encouraged other villages to participate. Fran Degnan and her mother, Ada, were instrumental in bringing the co-op to Unalakleet in 1976.

During the time she wasn't busy knitting, Ms. Degnan wrote a book about her parents, "Under the Arctic Sun: The Life and Times of Frank and Ada Degnan," which won the 2002 Award for Alaska Native Literature.

Elsie Hooper, who lives in Tununak with her husband, George, joined the co-op when a workshop came to her village. Ms. Hooper has helped increase the membership in her home village and helps new members in surrounding villages as well as in her own.

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