Tripp J Crouse, KTOO

Police are investigating the report of gunfire this weekend near a problem property on Harris Street.

Monica Ritter was out of town during the incident. But the volunteer for the Juneau Uptown Neighborhood Association said police are constantly being called to the area.

“Disturbing the neighborhood; lots of noise late at night; many, many people coming and going; shootings; junk building up.”

According to a Juneau police news release, a neighbor who lives nearby on East Street confronted people visiting a house in the 400 block of Harris early Sunday morning.

Police said the 42-year-old man complained about loud noise. During an argument, the man and one of the visitors fired guns.

According to Police Lt. Krag Campbell, witnesses said four to five rounds were fired. But there was no property damage reported. No one was injured and no arrests have been made.

The release said several of the visitors of the house left the area before police arrived about 5 a.m.

Ritter said activity around the neighborhood between midnight and 5 in the morning has increased.

“We’re at our wits’ end we don’t know what we can do other than report to the police what we see and hear. And that’s what we’re doing. I don’t know what the city is going to do about it.”

In May, a 35-year-old man was arrested on multiple felony burglary charges after allegedly breaking into an office building in that area. Later that month, someone stole gasoline from a nonprofit’s van.

Ritter also said Juneau Community Charter School moved out of the neighborhood citing safety and security concerns.

Watch Alaska Native veterans, dancers and participants parade through downtown Juneau on the final day of Celebration 2018.

Editor’s note: 360 North is under contract with Sealaska Heritage Institute to produce television and online video coverage of Celebration.

A collection of photographs from KTOO Public Media staff members during Celebration 2018.

Click on a photo to see a larger version and begin the slideshow.

Editor’s note: 360 North is under contract with Sealaska Heritage Institute to produce television and online video coverage of Celebration.

Zach Boxley and Donna Cole talk about their artwork at the Native Artist Market as part of Celebration 2018 in Juneau.

Editor’s note: 360 North is under contract with Sealaska Heritage Institute to produce television and online video coverage of Celebration.

British Columbia-based artist Andy Everson likes to use dark imagery from “Star Wars” and add traditional Native designs as a way to uplift Native people.

“As a child of the 1970s, I grew up around ‘Star Wars’ and collected all the toys and everything,” Everson said. “Fast forward many years later, I kind of combined my childhood passions with another passion that I grew up with, that’s my Native culture and art forms. So I decided to blend the two as kind of a commentary on colonialism and imperialism, and how as indigenous people we’re able to take those art forms and decorate the signs of imperialism with our own art forms and kind of subvert the meaning behind it.”

Editor’s note: 360 North is under contract with Sealaska Heritage Institute to produce television and online video coverage of Celebration.

Artisans from Southeast Alaska and British Columbia displayed blankets, aprons and other items Wednesday at a weaving presentation.

Weavers and weaving historians were among the about 50 people who attended the event in the Shuka Hit clan house in the Walter Soboleff Building.

One presenter, Della Cheney, stressed the importance of learning those traditions.

“There’s those things that I enjoy about our ways of life that are so rich and so dynamic because it’s life,” said Cheney, who is Haida and Tlingit. “It’s our way of life that creates these things that are with us today.”

This was her second year presenting at Celebration. Cheney hopes communities invest more in cultural education.

“We have to find ways to teach our families and continue our way of life and help our self be economically present in our own communities with the things we make and the way we live so … we can celebrate our way and be who we are, Tlingit, Haidas and Tsimshian people.”

Kwakwaka’wakw and Haida weaver Meghann O’Brien of Alert Bay, British Columbia, first started weaving in 2007, making baskets to collect berries.

“I really consider spending time on the land harvesting food to be the main source of where it came from for me. I think that’s where it came from for our people, too, is just for a really practical purpose.”

She later had several mentors who helped teach her different styles, including her Ravenstail teacher William White.

“When he opened the door for that and began teaching me the techniques, I felt really honored and privileged and that the knowledge was so sacred,” O’Brien said. “My personal thing that I’m more drawn to is much more utilitarian. I just really like the plain work baskets more than anything. I just think being able to use things is really important.”

O’Brien was attending her first Celebration.

“Even just at this gathering with the few presenters who are here, the different teachings we’ve received, the similarities and differences between those, there’s a lot of similarities obviously,” she said. “It feels very close to this place. It just feels very close to that handing of knowledge that occurred with Jennie Thlunaut. And it’s really powerful and really special.”

Thlunaut mentored Clarissa Rizal, a Chilkat and Ravenstail weaver who died in December 2016.

Editor’s note: 360 North is under contract with Sealaska Heritage Institute to produce television and online video coverage of Celebration.