Alaska Native Arts & Culture

Carlton Smith got into ventriloquism fifty years ago as a ten-year-old boy living in Haines. When Smith was bedridden with hepatitis for four months, his father bought him his first puppet from a Sears-Roebuck catalog – a red-headed figure wearing a green suit named Jerry.

Most Northern Native people have had their traditional spirituality squeezed out of them.

A tribal house in the former home of Southeast Alaska’s Huna Tlingits will go out to bid this winter.

Traditional Tlingit culture is filled with spiritual presence and powers that exist within and beyond direct experience. That’s according to University of Alaska Anchorage Anthropology Professor Steve Langdon.

Scholars and culture-bearers gather in Juneau this week for a clan conference focusing on Tlingit knowledge and traditions. It runs Wednesday night through Sunday morning at the capital city’s Centennial Hall.

Princess Sophia passengers, including first to summit Denali, remembered in Evergreen Cemetary