Inua the Spirit of Alaska — Attraction in Homer

Based on multiple reviews and my own experience, this store has a clear problem with rude and condescending staff. When my 12- and 13-year-old kids calmly entered, a woman snapped at them with an unnecessary warning about “This is a calm zone! We have expensive and sharp things and your parents will be very sad if you break anything!” She even made a comment about how they would need lots of bandaids. My children are not toddlers and were not being unruly at all. Even if they were younger, that wouldn’t have been the way to speak to them. They had barely even walked in the door, let alone done anything wrong.

This kind of behavior seems to be a pattern at this store. We left immediately and will not be returning. I won’t spend my money in a shop that has staff who treat people that way. I cannot recommend this store to anyone who expects...

My wife and I visited home last week for a few days at the end of a 1200 mile road trip through Alaska. We did not actively shop our way through the state but did look here and there for something special. There were very few items that interested us until we got to the Homer Spit shops which offer a lot of quality items for tourists to pick from. In particular, Inua was outstanding. The shop has an enormous selection of high quality items to choose from and the young saleswoman was outstandingly personable, helpful, and knowledgeable. The most significant item that we bought was a carved whale , and the shop owner made a point of coming in to the shop to wrap it for travel. It was carefully wrapped and made it home where it is now...

While the shop was beautiful and had lovely items I was unimpressed with the rude staff. Our family was looking after dinner. We stepped in because others were in the shop. Evidently they were closing up. But instead of a polite "we are closing up but are open at X time tomorrow" we got "Oh I just cleaned that!" when my daughter was pointing to an item in a glass case (which she didn't touch, and I was in the process of correcting the behavior to keep her from marking the glass). My friend who was visiting from out of town was really put off by the behavior that she requested we find similar Native jewelry but from any other shop but this...