Arts & Culture

The Alaska Federation of Natives convention, which is scheduled for this week, always focuses on issues most pertinent to local Indigenous communities. This year, a catastrophic storm that battered predominantly Alaska Native villages in Western Alaska is already the center of the conversations.

The remnants of Typhoon Halong over the weekend left at least one woman dead in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. Two people are still missing.

“As we gather for this sharing and this collective convening, let us keep in mind those that are in harm’s way and those who are out there to be with them and to help them,” Sen. Lisa Murkowski said at the beginning of the Elders & Youth conference, the traditional prologue to the main AFN event.

The storm has displaced more than a thousand people, who are sheltering at their local schools. Meanwhile, AFN and other local Indigenous organizations were looking for ways to help.

AFN was one of twelve mostly Indigenous organizations that formed the Western Alaska Disaster Relief Fund to provide assistance to villages. On Thursday, AFN planned to hold a blanket dance fundraiser for the disaster. And on Friday, the group said they will host a donation drive to accept water, food, hygiene products and other necessities.

Roy Agloinga is president of the First Alaskans Institute, which hosts the Elders & Youth conference. He opened the conference with a speech about the destruction from the storm. He told the gathering that the whole state must come together to help.

“It’s easy to feel distant, but I ask you to lean in, because while the storm may be hundreds of miles away, the people affected are our neighbors, our friends and our family.”

Marilyn Attla, a healer from the Interior who participated in the Elders & Youth conference, encouraged people to pray and acknowledge the stress of the situation. She also invited attendees – especially young people– to talk about what they feel and consider visiting a healing station.

“The youth could learn a lot and get a lot of healing from these people here,” she said. “You have to make up your own mind to be resilient. Any type of loss that you’re going to go through in your life, any type of happening problem, you have to make up your own mind to overcome it.”

The Elders & Youth conference is running at the Dena’ina Center in Anchorage through Wednesday. AFN is scheduled there from Thursday to Saturday.

Rhonda McBride contributed to this report.

At a ceremony on Monday, Lingít language Professor X̱’unei Lance Twitchell said that bringing traditional ways of being into the present isn’t a contradiction. 

“It’s not a ‘living in two worlds’ situation,” Twitchell said. “It’s living as an Indigenous person with multiple languages and multiple identities, and being just fine with it. You don’t have to be just one thing.” 

The new Sealaska Heritage Institute Indigenous Science Building carries that sentiment in all the services it offers. 

The building on Heritage Way hosts a digital media lab with a podcast booth and video production software, an Indigenous science research lab that studies cultural resources like seaweed and clams and a makerspace with a digital woodcarving machine. That last one made nametags instructors wore as they led tours of the new building on Monday. 

In the Traditional Foods and Medicine Kitchen, instructor S’eiltin Jamiann Hasselquist said she and others are bringing old ways to process and preserve food into the present.

“Whatever people can dream up that they would like to do in this kitchen,” Hasselquist said. “I think that we could try to make their dreams happen”

With freeze dryers, pressure cookers, dehydrators and space to build traditional drying racks, Hasselquist said they are making and preserving traditional foods that elders would make when she was a kid, like cheese kaháakw  — a rich and smoky paste made of fermented salmon eggs. 

She scooped some out of a glass jar, and spread it on a cracker for anyone who wanted to try it. 

“Someone tasted that cheese kaháakw, and they took one bite, and they said, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m getting emotional. I haven’t tasted this for 30 years.’ It’s been three decades, and they thought that they would never try it again,” she said. 

Elders have been approaching Hasselquist with foods they remember from childhood, but don’t know how to make. 

“So if we could have workshops and share that knowledge,” she said. “And we’re rebirthing, you know, this, this Indigenous way of living and being.”

Next, she wants to find out how to make cold-pressed seal grease. 

Inside the clan house in the Walter Soboleff building, Sukteeneidí clan members stood in front of a large poster depicting a totem pole that represents their clan story. They offered thanks to other clans, carvers, and  SHI leadership. 

In a ceremony held on Indigenous People’s Day, the latest pole in Sealaska Heritage Institute’s Kootéeyaa Deiyí — totem pole trail — was dedicated. 

The pole is called a kooteeyaa in Lingít and was funded by the National Parks Service. It was raised near Juneau’s Overstreet Park, but organizers held the dedication inside due to weather. 

Edward Thomas is Sukteeneidí and he said he’s excited to see his clan join the handful of others already represented by the Kootéeyaa Deiyí.

“As I look at the walk of the totem pole along the waterfront here, I’m proud to see that all of our clans are being represented,” he said. 

Thomas went on to thank the carver, Lee Wallace, and his apprentices for the thought and work they put into the pole. 

Wallace is a Haida master carver and lives in Saxman, but he said this kootéeyaa is a part of his family’s legacy, too. 

“My great grandfather has a totem pole in the state building, Dwight Wallace. My grandfather, John Wallace, has a totem pole that was outside the city museum,” he said. “So now, with this particular kootéeyaa pole, there’s three generations of Wallace totem poles standing here in Juneau.” 

Wallace was helped by apprentices, including his son Charles Peele. 

And Peele held the youngest member of the carving team — his five-year-old daughter Jáadsangaa Elizabeth — as he described the design of the pole.

“And at the top, we have the current clan leaders. We want to acknowledge that this is representation of a living people,” he said. “That this isn’t just something that’s from the past, this is something that’s tying history together. We often look at totem poles as things that are coming back from the past. And we wanted to add a piece that represents the present.”

Below the current clan leaders, the pole features a spirit man, Raven, and a box that represents the abundance of knowledge and history held in the Sukteeneidí clan, whose homelands are near Kake.

At the base is the clan crest — dog salmon swimming in tall grasses. 

SHI plans to raise a total of 30 poles along Juneau’s waterfront. So far, 13 poles have been installed. 

This is Tongass Voices, a series from KTOO sharing weekly perspectives from the homelands of the Áak’w Kwáan and beyond.

Lingít elder Ldaan.aat Laurie Cropley and elder-in-training Yuxgitsiy George Holly are leading dawn  prayers at the annual Elders and Youth conference in Anchorage next week. 

The prayers are from 8 a.m. to 9 a.m. Monday through Wednesday, and they involve singing, dancing, sharing thoughts. This year, they plan to lead a talking circle about tribal values across Alaska Native nations afterwards.

Listen: 

The following transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Yuxgitsiy George Holly:  These are the words of Seigeige’i Emma Marks, when   she shared about an old way of greeting the morning, greeting each other in the morning. And she expressed that she said, though all those old peoples would say that “Again upon us, a day has broken.”

Maybe I can share with you the Dena’ina word for dawn prayers: Yetałqun duch’idatqeni. 

Dawn is for everybody. The whole earth turns itself towards the sun each morning, and you can hear the animals waking singing, and it is a time for everyone to enjoy. So dawn prayers is for everybody. It’s time for singing, it’s time for language. It’s time for making connections and really centering ourselves in a healing story.

Ldaan.aat Laurie Cropley: We all live by some values. We all have values that we live by. And in this particular case, we’re going to follow dawn prayers with tribal values circle, and we’re going to talk about how much we love holding each other up, how important it is to show reverence and respect for elders and others, and we’re going to spend some time just remembering and renewing our commitment to that way of life.

Yuxgitsiy George Holly: I don’t at all feel like an elder. I’m learning, you know, I’m learning. We all are learning. I mean, that, of course, is the truth. Lori is one of our elders.

Ldaan.aat Laurie Cropley: How old are you? 

Yuxgitsiy George Holly: 55. 

Ldaan.aat Laurie Cropley: He’s a cusp. I’m 80. So I’m claiming, I’m just recently claiming it. Really, it’s hard to be an elder. There’s pressure, there’s expectations, sometimes unrealistic. You maybe haven’t been able to practice your language or your lifestyle — like he mentioned — early in your childhood, and now here we are, you know, just trying to encourage and hold up others who are really focusing now on language and tribal values. And so, yeah, I’m an elder.

But that’s why this elders and youth conference is so important, working together with the young people who are really coming up in the language and the culture and elders who have some history and stories to share. 

What I found so interesting is that our values are such a way of life that when you ask a group of adults or youth, what are the values that they live by, they can’t mention them. They can’t verbalize them.

And so I found that talking circles about tribal values, it’s just like these lights go on, like, “Ah! we hold each other up, we’re reverent, we’re respectful.” It’s just our way of life. We’re all just relatives, we’re all family. We’re all beginning to realize that we have the same needs and wants. Want to be seen and heard and respected and held up and loved so all that kind of disappears in a talking circle because you’re sitting shoulder to shoulder. 

Yuxgitsiy George Holly: That’s so beautiful, Laurie. Gosh, yeah, it’s true. It’s all true. 

SATURDAY, October 25 – Celebrate Halloween Early with KXLL – Excellent Radio for Zombie Walk, Juneau’s annual flesh eating flash mob! BACK FROM THE DEAD AFTER EIGHT YEARS! 

Zombies will begin gathering at 7:00 p.m. at Overstreet Park, near the Whale Statue in Downtown Juneau. At this time, all zombies will assemble in front of the Whale Statue for a group photo and quick route briefing, then head out on the Zombie Walk to the Alaskan Hotel & Bar for the Haunted Hoedown – featuring Jessica Meuse and Maridon & The Primecuts.

The walk is an all-ages event beginning at Overstreet Park and ending outside The Alaskan Hotel & Bar. Attendees 21+ are encouraged to stay for the concert, costume contest, and prize distribution to follow inside the venue. Check out the route, here.

The Haunted Hoedown concert will take place inside the historic Alaskan Hotel & Bar – legendary to locals, and now nationally recognized  – recently ranked #5 in America’s Best Haunted Hotels by USA Today. The lineup features Jessica Meuse, fourth-place finisher on the thirteenth season of American Idol, followed by local favorites Maridon & The Primecuts beginning at 8 p.m. The costume contest will be announced at the show break.

Throwback special edition Zombie Walk T-shirts will be available for purchase thanks to Aurora Projekt.

Come support public media, local artists, and live music!

For more information, email Kelly at kelly.aicardi@ktoo.org.

Tuesday was Orange Shirt Day, a day of remembrance for Indigenous children who were separated from their language, families and culture and sent to residential schools across North America from the late 1800s well into the 20th Century.

At the Zach Gordon Youth Center, people wore orange shirts and came together to educate young people about the history of residential schools and to celebrate Native languages and cultures that thrive in spite of that history. 

There was drumming, singing and dancing, and tables with crafts like beading or tea-making. 

Ha’naxgm Ggoadm ‘Tsoal Naomi Leask stands at a table with a bowl of medicine — Labrador tea, which is called s’ikshaldéen in Lingít. 

Leask is with Haa Tóoch Lichéesh Coalition, a local nonprofit focused on healing.  She said 26 members of her family were taken to the first, and one of the most notorious, residential schools in the United States: Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania. It’s a part of her family’s history. 

“That’s where my grandma’s uncle escaped,” she said. “That’s over 3000 miles away. He ran and he ran and he ran and he ran, and when he made it back to British Columbia, they hid him away at grease camp.”

Áak’w Ḵwáan elder Seikoonie Fran Houston said her mother went to the Wrangell Institute as a child. It was a boarding school in Wrangell intended to assimilate Alaska Native children into white culture. Years later, her family learned more about her time there.

“We looked at my mother’s report card,” she said. “You know what was on there? It had nothing to do with reading, writing, arithmetic, science, history, none of that. It was sewing, cleaning, cooking, washing clothes, being a housemaid, and if she didn’t do that, she got punished. Speaking her language, she got punished.”

Houston said she asked her mother for years why she didn’t teach her the Lingít language. Her mother told her she didn’t want Houston to experience the violence she did at school. 

As Xeetli.éesh Lyle James prepared to lead a song, with his drum in his hand, he said not every child made it back home. Many died at these schools, from abuse and neglect, and the government lied to their families. 

“We know that there were many families who were told that their kids ran away,” he said. “We don’t know what happened to them. They disappeared, but in reality, they had passed away, and they didn’t tell the truth.”

James said Indigenous families are left with the loss of loved ones, and that can’t be fixed. But gatherings like this, he said, help with building a path toward healing. 

“We’re not forgetting where they’re at,” he said. “That their memory doesn’t leave when they disappear, it’s going to multiply like sand every time we sing, every time we talk about our history.”

And as Leask said, those efforts to erase language and culture didn’t work. There is still singing.