With musk oxen numbers increasing across the Arctic, it may not be long before larger commercial harvests for meat, of which qiviuq is a byproduct, are carried out. This year, Chambers will sell 14 to 18 kilograms of fibre and yarn. I get most of mine from Holman Co-op on Victoria Island and some from Sachs Harbor. What I'm getting now is from the subsistence meat harvest. Families comb out hides and sell the qiviuq to the co-op.
Families directly benefit from the harvest.
The specialized mills that do the dehairing need at least 225 kilograms to work with. The crucial thing with the qiviuq is that it has to be dehaired. You have to separate the down from the guard hairs. This is most efficiently done by a machine, which is true of the spinning process as well. Chambers gets the dehairing and the spinning done by a commercial mill.