People carry a yaakw from shore in downtown Juneau on June, 4, 2024. (Clarise Larson/KTOO)
This is Lingít Word of the Week. Each week, we feature a Lingít word voiced by master speakers. Lingít has been spoken throughout present-day Southeast Alaska and parts of Canada for over 10,000 years.
Gunalchéesh to X̱’unei Lance Twitchell, Goldbelt Heritage Foundation and the University of Alaska Southeast for sharing the recorded audio for this series.
This week’s word is yaakw, or canoe. Listen to the audio below to learn how to say yaakw.
The following transcript is meant to help illustrate the words and sentences.
Kooshdáakʼu Bill Fawcett: Yaakw.
That means canoe.
Here are some sentences:
Kooshdáakʼu Bill Fawcett: Goodé sáwé yaa naḵúx̱ wé yaakw?
Sea lions sunning on a buoy near Juneau on August 29, 2019. (Photo by David Purdy/KTOO)
This is Lingít Word of the Week. Each week, we feature a Lingít word voiced by master speakers. Lingít has been spoken throughout present-day Southeast Alaska and parts of Canada for over 10,000 years.
Gunalchéesh to X̱’unei Lance Twitchell, Goldbelt Heritage Foundation and the University of Alaska Southeast for sharing the recorded audio for this series.
This week’s word is taan, or sea lion. Listen to the audio below to learn how to say taan.
The following transcript is meant to help illustrate the words and sentences.
Kaxwaan Éesh George Davis: Taan.
That means sea lion.
Here are some sentences:
Kaxwaan Éesh George Davis: Taan eech kut.áa.
The sea lion sits on the submerged boulder.
Keihéenák’w John Martin: Haa tuwaaxʼ kalitéesʼshán taan.
We think sea lions are interesting to look at.
Keiyishí Bessie Cooley: Taan dax̱dligéixʼ.
Sea lions are big.
Kooshdáakʼu Bill Fawcett: Taan xʼáatʼi áyá.
This is a sea lion island.
Ḵaakal.áat Florence Marks Sheakley: Yá taan yá has du x̱ʼadaadzaayí áyú yá shakee.át daa yéi too.úx̱xʼun.
We always used to put sea lion whiskers on our shakee.át.
You can hear each installment of Lingít Word of the Week on the radio throughout the week.
Mayflower Island on Saturday, March 23, 2024. (Clarise Larson/KTOO)
In Juneau, a traditional subsistence site owned by the federal government is now one step closer to returning to its original tribal owners.
On Monday, the Juneau Assembly unanimously approved a resolution to accept Mayflower Island from the U.S. Bureau of Land Management with the intent to give it to the Douglas Indian Association.
Mayflower Island is a small, 3-acre island adjacent to Douglas Harbor and Sandy Beach, and connected to Douglas Island. Its Lingít name is X’áat’ T’áak, which means “beside the island.”
DIA Council member Barbara Cadiente-Nelson spoke to the Assembly on behalf of the tribe’s president.
“This is a significant moment for the tribe, and one that, if we could, have all 800 members would be present to witness this,” she said. “It belongs to the tribe, and we thank you for all the due diligence and the work you’ve put forth since 2012 to this moment.”
Cadiente-Nelson referenced the year when construction workers accidentally unearthed three burial sites at Douglas Island’s Sayéik: Gastineau Community School. Since then, the city and association have collaborated on projects to acknowledge the historical trauma the tribe experienced.
Tribal member Dionne Cadiente-Laiti said the resolution was more than six decades in the making.
“Sixty-three years later, here we are today looking at this resolution,” she said. “Thank you for writing this resolution to affirm a promise made 63 years ago that this land will be restored to the tribe.”
The property has been under the federal government’s stewardship since 1890 under various departments, according to a spokesperson for the BLM. The island was originally reserved for the U.S. Navy to use as a naval station before it was transferred to the Federal Bureau of Mines, which built a mineral laboratory there. The BLM then took over the property in 1996 and the U.S. Coast Guard used the site under an agreement with the BLM until 2023.
Alyssa Cadiente-Laiti-Blattner thanked the Assembly and city staff for working with the Douglas Indian Association to make the transfer possible.
“Its return represents the restoration of a sacred connection and a step forward in healing historic harm following the city’s apology for the 1962 burning of our village,” she said. “This transfer shows what is possible when we work together with respect, truth and shared purpose.”
Dan Bleidorn, the city’s lands and resources manager, called the approval on Monday a critical step in the process. He said the property transfer will still likely take a few years to complete.
A woman in a fur coat looks at the photographer, while a boy smiles at her. From the Cyril George Photo Collection.
In the basement of Sealaska Heritage Institute in Juneau sit thousands and thousands of photographs. They were taken by a Lingít elder who has since passed on, but for decades, he documented important events and everyday life. Now, the organization wants help identifying people and places in the photos.
Listen:
Ḵaalḵáawu Cyril George Sr.’s family unearthed the photo collection in the wake of his death 11 years ago. His granddaughter, Lillian Woodbury, says she was astounded at the volume of photos he kept in his small Juneau condo.
“That tiny little room had been harboring all of these memories he captured in photo,” she said. “I mean, every time we thought we’ve got them all, we pulled out another box or another container, and I’m like, ‘oh my god, Mom, it’s another box of photos.’”
To Woodbury, George was “grandpa.” But Ḵaalḵáawu Cyril George Sr. left a mark on thousands of people in Southeast Alaska. He was a Lingít leader from Angoon who lived to be 92 years old. Videos of his speeches are used for Lingít language classes, and a collection at the University of Alaska Southeast library is named after him.
A family friend suggested to his family that they donate George’s photographs to Sealaska Heritage Institute, to preserve and store them. For the last few years, archivists like Emily Galgano have been combing through them.
A boy jumps over a bar as his peers look on. From the Cyril George Photo Collection.
“There’s so much just joy in these photos,” she said. It’s one of my favorite things, looking through them and seeing people just having a good time, people dancing, people talking to each other, cooking out on the beach.”
Photos of everyday life
Some of the photos are now online, and printed in books that are available in Juneau and Angoon for elders to look through.
SHI hopes people will recognize some of the faces.
“The first thing is, we tried to find photos where you could see people’s faces clearly, because the point of the book is really to try to get some identifications,” Galgano said.
There are 20,000 photos in the full collection. A lot of them are pet photos and landscapes. But of the 1,600 SHI has made available, most are of people: dancers in full regalia, fishing trips with strung up halibut, graduations and meetings.
Two men and a boy look on from a boat. From the Cyril George Photo Collection.
The photos are full of life — basketball games and Fourth of July parades. They show Lingít people living, working, teaching and making art. They show elders, and babies, and elders with babies. And those babies may be elders now themselves.
Lingít photographer Brian Wallace helped SHI scan the photos. He knew George growing up, and looking through the photos, he was surprised by how many there are of everyday life.
“They seem mundane at the time,” he said. “But looking back into the whole scope of things, it’s just an amazing body of work.”
Wallace said the photos of ku.eex and early Celebrations stand out to him — that they show how Southeast Alaska Native cultures have endured.
“They’re thriving when he took the photos, and still thriving,” he said.
Cyril George Sr.’s legacy
Some of the photos were deeply personal for Wallace.
“And then I loved finding the photographs that he had of my parents,” Wallace said. “And to see some of those photos, and then also lots of photos of my aunts. My aunties cooking dinner or singing songs or just in the background of photos. It was always fun to see those.”
Brian Wallace’s parents Amos and Dorothy Wallace at the National Congress of American Indians in 2000. From the Cyril George Photo Collection.
Woodbury, George’s granddaughter, said it was hard to part with the collection. The memory of his loss is still fresh, more than a decade later.
“But we also didn’t want a lifetime of him making sure he carried that camera around to be lost,” she said.
She hopes that others, like Wallace, will look through the collection and find photos of loved ones who have passed on.
“I think if people walk away seeing these photos and they feel like he gave them that one moment in time back, that makes me happy,” Woodbury said. “And that will be a small part, a small part of this legacy.”
Another part of his legacy is Woodbury herself – she’s a photographer, too.
“I think I was 16, the first time he gifted me a camera. And that was all it took,” she said. “That was all it took.”
If you recognize any of the people, places or objects in the photos, you can contact SHI’s Archives and Collections Department at SHIArchives@sealaska.com.
Here are more images from the Cyril George Photo Collection. You can expand by clicking on any slide.
Two men drum for an audience inside a whale-watching boat. From the Cyril George Photo Collection.
A boy in a red bandana and Xtratufs smiles down at the camera as he swings from a rope on a pulley system. From the Cyril George Photo Collection.
Dancers in regalia dance into a room, as a man drums and a boy looks on. From the Cyril George Photo Collection.
A person smiles from under what looks like a formline Raven headpiece and wings. From the Cyril George Photo Collection.
Three old women sit on a beach, having a picnic. From the Cyril George Photo Collection.
A smiling man sits on a partly carved and painted kootéeyaa. From the Cyril George Photo Collection.
A boy shoots a basketball as his teammates look on. From the Cyril George Photo Collection.
Louie Wagner empties a net of hooligan into his boat on the Unuk River. (Jack Darrell/KRBD)
This is Lingít Word of the Week. Each week, we feature a Lingít word voiced by master speakers. Lingít has been spoken throughout present-day Southeast Alaska and parts of Canada for over 10,000 years.
Gunalchéesh to X̱’unei Lance Twitchell, Goldbelt Heritage Foundation and the University of Alaska Southeast for sharing the recorded audio for this series.
This week’s word is saak, or hooligan. Listen to the audio below to learn how to say saak.
The following transcript is meant to help illustrate the words and sentences.
Keiyishí Bessie Cooley: Saak.
That means hooligan.
Here are some sentences:
Keiyishí Bessie Cooley: Saak eex̱í aag̱áa yatee át akamdulgaaní.
People light hooligan grease.
Keihéenák’w John Martin: Táakw.eetíxʼ áyá yaa yaga.eich saak.
The hooligan always run in the spring.
Kooshdáakʼu Bill Fawcett: Ḵúnáx̱ áwé yaawa.aa wé saak.
The hooligan were really running.
Ḵaakal.áat Florence Marks Sheakley: Taakw eetíxʼ yéi daaduné saak.
People work on ooligan in the spring.
Kaxwaan Éesh George Davis: Saak eix̱í ax̱ x̱ʼéix̱ aawatée.
They gave me hooligan grease to eat.
You can hear each installment of Lingít Word of the Week on the radio throughout the week.
Flowers bloom outside of the Cooper Landing Community Library on Saturday, Aug. 31, 2024 in Cooper Landing, Alaska. (Photo by Ashlyn O’Hara)
At the Moose Pass Public Library, kids were playing in a room lined with bookshelves. Children’s toys lay scattered across the floor. This is a typical day for the library, which has become a hub for the Kenai Peninsula community of about 80 people.
It’s one of the roughly 70 libraries in Alaska that participate in a lending program, called the 800# Interlibrary Loan & Reference Backup Service, that primarily serves rural communities. The service stopped taking requests on May 7.
“A lot of people are like, well, that’s, you know — it’s a big inconvenience,” said Moose Pass Public Library Director Dani Koschak.
Nearly 100 interlibrary loan requests have been filed at the library since last summer. They included children’s science fiction novels like “The Wild Robot,” vehicle repair manuals and an Alaska climbing guide.
“Not everyone can just buy what they want, either, so that’s why they rely on libraries,” Koschak said.
The program gave rural residents access to books that smaller, far-flung libraries don’t have the budget or space for. If a request couldn’t be satisfied in-state, the title would get pulled from a library in the Lower 48.
But the service could be eliminated entirely if funding for the Institute of Museum and Library Services isn’t approved by the end of June. The institute is an independent federal agency that was targeted for cuts through a Trump administration executive order in March entitled “Continuing the Reduction of the Federal Bureaucracy.”
The Institute of Museum and Library Services could not be reached for comment via email.
The Moose Pass Public Library, on the Kenai Peninsula, is a hub for the community of about 80 people. It’s one of the roughly 70 libraries in Alaska that participate in the state’s 800# Interlibrary Loan & Reference Backup Service. (Photo by Hunter Morrison/KDLL)
Sandy Knipmeyer, who runs the rural interlibrary loan service at the Anchorage Public Library, says losing it will be worst for people who live in villages with few library options.
“There is nothing in the state that will step in to provide that,” Knipmeyer said.
Virginia Morgan is library director of the Cooper Landing Community Library, a Kenai Peninsula library housed in a small log cabin without running water. Her library serves about 200 people.
“I don’t think we’ve even started to comprehend how we’re going to adapt,” Morgan said. “We are still sort of, like, a little bit shell-shocked at what’s happening.”
Janette Cadieux, a patron of the Cooper Landing library, has used the interlibrary loan service several times. She once requested a style manual for a research paper she wrote. She says the title wasn’t available in Cooper Landing.
“If I lived in a large town, I would just go to that big library and get the book, and I would take my laptop in, and day after day, I’d just go in and use that manual and get it done,” Cadieux said. “But that’s not really feasible in a little community like Cooper Landing.”
The Cooper Landing Community Library, on the Kenai Peninsula, is housed in a small log cabin with no running water. The library serves about 200 people. (Photo by Hunter Morrison/KDLL)
Cadieux says her research paper wouldn’t have been published in an academic journal without the style manual being sent to Cooper Landing through the loan program.
Trump’s executive order could also end the Alaska Library Extension, a service that mails books and DVDs to Alaskans who don’t have a library in their community. It also provides virtual reference services.
The program is funded entirely by the Institute of Museum and Library Services. If federal funding isn’t approved, it will end after June, too.
“Right now, in the absence of funding, there is no alternative,” said Catherine Melville, director of the Juneau Public Libraries. That’s where the program operates.
“There are a lot of areas in Alaska that are off the beaten track and isolated, and this program really provided a connection to the outside world,” Melville said.
Last year, nearly 90 communities without libraries used the Alaska Library Extension. Melville says it’s sad to even consider living without the program.
Koschak, the Moose Pass library director, said she hopes the cuts won’t stop people from using rural libraries’ remaining services.
“We do the best that we can,” she said. “But ultimately there will just be more disappointment.”
