Tripp J Crouse, KTOO

A Southeast Alaska cultural center will study a Tlingit bentwood drum that’s more than 100 years old. By scanning the box drum in infrared, century-old details are returning to the surface.

The bentwood box drum is downstairs at Sealaska Heritage Institute in the cultural center’s collections room.

Chuck Smythe is the director for the cultural and history department at Sealaska Heritage Institute.

“We have the drum pulled out. You can see what it looked like what we were starting with,” Smythe said.

The slender drum is about 3 feet tall when standing, and it’s about as deep. But today it’s laying on one side on a cart in the back of the room. It’s weathered and aged. The wood is a dark chocolate color, while the grain is almost black.

“It looks like it was smoked,” Smythe said, laughing. “It’s very dark all over.”

Sealaska Heritage is studying the carvings and paintings on the wooden Tlingit drum, which is on loan from the Hoonah-based T’a̱kdeintaan clan.

“It’s a bentwood box with the backside is open and the front side has a carved piece attached to it that looks to be a bear and some other designs that are carved into it,” Smythe explained.

Many details have been lost to age. So Sealaska Heritage enlisted infrared scanning to help bring back some of them.

“The idea of infrared photography is to bring out what’s not visible on the surface and what’s not visible here through the dark surface of this drum and see what the painting might be,” Smythe explained.

Smythe knows the drum is at least 130 years old because that’s when a German geographer made a sketch of it and published it in a book. In 1924, a Tlingit art collector visited Hoonah and took the drum to a Philadelphia museum where it was kept.

The drum was eventually repatriated in 2011, back to Hoonah and the T’a̱kdeintaan clan.

Sealaska Heritage hired local photographer Brian Wallace to take infrared images of the drum. He taught himself about infrared photography.

“Without getting too technical, it really increases the contrast, so I had a camera that I converted to an infrared camera,” Wallace said. “It is what police use for forensic examination. So it can see blood splotches that aren’t visible to the human eye under normal light conditions.”

Wallace pointed out all the different parts you couldn’t see without the help of the infrared images.

“You can see all formline here that are not visible or barely visible and once you get to the image, it just totally pops.”

The red paint that outlines formline salmon is very faded, hardly visible in places. But Wallace’s images really accentuate the fish and even faces painted on the box.

Smythe said a full-size box drum this far north in Southeast is unusual. They’re more common further south. Still, it’s an outstanding example of northern Tlingit craft.

“The paintings … they’re not standard formline. We could see some salmon on one side and on the other side, we could see there were some figures there but we couldn’t really tell what they were before that photography. … It’s kind of a voice from the past,” Smythe said.

Smythe said he hopes drum designs inspire present-day artists to create new formline designs.

Sealaska Heritage hopes to display the drum for First Friday in September. It also will be on display at the Sealaska Heritage Institute this winter.

Police do not suspect foul play after a man suffered a fatal gunshot wound Saturday at a Juneau gun range.

According to a Juneau Police Department news release, Bruce Owens, 63,  and a friend went to Juneau Mercantile & Armory in Mendenhall Valley on Saturday to do some recreational shooting.

A 911 caller reported at about 2 p.m. that someone — later identified as Owens – was shot in the head.

Juneau Police Lt. Krag Campbell confirmed that upon arrival, emergency personnel found Owens inside the building with a handgun next to him.

Police reviewed surveillance video and do not suspect foul play, but did not specifically say whether the injury was self-inflicted. A post on the armory’s Facebook page said an individual used a “firearm to harm himself.”

Self-harm and suicide are complex. Most people who consider suicide do not ultimately kill themselves.

If you or someone you know is thinking about suicide or just needs someone to talk to, you can call the Alaska Careline at 1-877-266-4357 (HELP) or text 4help to 839863 Tuesday-Saturday 3-11 p.m. Outside of Alaska call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255.

Owens was pronounced dead Bartlett Regional Hospital.

The body was taken to the Alaska Medical Examiner’s Office for an autopsy.

A double-wide mobile home is a total loss after a fire Saturday morning in Switzer Village.

In a news release, the Fire Marshal’s Office said the fire likely started near the front door but did not know the cause.

Capital City Fire/Rescue personnel arrived on scene to find heavy fire and smoke.

The occupants were not home, but investigators rescued two cats and found a dog that had died.

Fire officials did not know whether the trailer was insured.

Hot metal slag likely ignited combustible materials and caused a fire early Thursday at the Juneau landfill.

Capital City Fire/Rescue responded at about 5:30 a.m. Thursday to a reported structure fire at 5600 Tonsgard Court.

Assistant Fire Chief Tod Chambers said damage was contained to the former recycling center.

“One of the workers that arrived and found the fire attempted to extinguish it with an extinguisher before we got there, realized it was more than the extinguisher could handle, backed out and called us,” he said.

The building is currently being torn down.

“The side that hadn’t been demolished yet is the side that’s closest to the office building, kind of where you drive over the scale,” Chambers said. “That side hadn’t been demolished yet, there’s actually office space in there, there’s a below-grade incinerator in there, so there was working space in there and there was wooden structure that was inside.”

According to the fire marshal’s office, the likely culprit of the fire was metal torch cutting. Hot slag material dropped down and caused combustible materials to smolder, which in turn flared up and ignited the wooden structure.

Chambers says fire crews managed to get the fire out in about 30 minutes.

“A lot of water got flowed in a hurry so it worked and nobody got hurt, so that’s the best part.”

Firefighters left the scene by about 7:15 a.m.

A Juneau woman convicted of unemployment fraud will have to pay restitution of $15,000.

According to an Alaska Department of Labor news release, Naomi Weitzel, 42, pleaded guilty in July to felony theft of the unemployment benefits.

Patsy Westcott works for the Department of Labor with the unemployment insurance program.

“We strive every day first of all to protect the integrity of the trust fund, to identify mispayements, not all of which are the result of fraud,” Westcott said. “But when we do find fraud certainly we vigorously detect and recover overpayments.”

Westcott said the benefits amounted to about $10,000 over-paid to Weitzel in 2017. The Department of Labor assessed a 50 percent penalty due to the fraud.

A Superior Court judge handed down a 12-month suspended sentence, 65 hours of community service, and Weitzel will be on probation for three years.

Her attorney declined to comment.

A woman faces drunken driving charges after her red 2006 Jeep crashed into Dzantik’i Heeni Middle School.

Juneau Police Lt. Krag Campbell said she was dropping a 10-year-old girl off at the school about 6 p.m. Tuesday.

“It sounds like the vehicle was attempting to park at the time,” Campbell said. “And the driver’s foot got stuck on the gas pedal instead of the brake and that’s what caused it to accelerate and the crash into the school.”

According to Juneau police, the driver, Billie Kanouse, 41, later provided a breath-alcohol sample 0.384 percent, or more than four times the legal driving limit.

The crash caused an estimated $50,000 in damage and a portion of the school was boarded up Friday.

Campbell said the woman suffered a bloody nose, but no other injuries were reported.

Kanouse also faces a charge of endangering the welfare of a child, who was later picked up by a guardian.