Alaska Native Arts & Culture

Southeast Alaska’s largest tribal organization is getting $500,000 from the federal government to make energy efficiency upgrades to its Juneau headquarters.

The Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska hopes to reduce energy use by 30 percent and save about $15,000 a year with the improvements to the Andrew Hope Building.

The tribe will match the federal government’s half-million dollar investment in the project, according to the U.S. Department of Energy. The agency this week announced $6 million will go to 11 organizations nationwide through its Tribal Energy Program.

The Andrew Hope Building is about 41,000 square feet and was built in 1983.

The Central Council is the tribal government for more than 29,000 Tlingit and Haida Indians worldwide.

Tribal officials could not be reached for comment.

Ravens are ubiquitous in Southeast Alaska, and Tlingit stories about Raven the creator are often told as folklore. But at the University of Alaska Southeast, Raven got his story told in an academic setting.

Native leaders and writers shared and discussed the Tlingit creation story on Friday to a full audience at UAS’s Egan Lecture Hall during the university’s spring honors symposium.

Tlingit teacher and mentor Paul Marks explains how Raven created daylight. He switches between English and Tlingit.

“From the beginning, you couldn’t see him. He was invisible,” Marks says.

I’m not going to retell the story, because Marks says a person shouldn’t share the Raven story without studying it. His telling takes about 35 minutes and toward the end, Raven opens a box of daylight.

“Some of our people got scared of the daylight, ran into the forest. Some of our people hid behind the trees. Some of our people went into the water,” Marks says.

That’s where the bear, wolf, beaver, fish, whale and other animals came from. He says details of the origin story help us understand who we are as human beings.

Marks is from the Raven House of the Lukáax.adi clan. He says he learned the Raven story from clan leader Austin Hammond Sr., but he’s heard other versions as well.

Marks says it’s important to tell the story properly because Tlingit people steer their lives with words and stories.

“Learn the story very well before you tell it to somebody else. The reason is because if you change it, it’s like turning your compass to another direction and you’re going to end up somewhere where you don’t want to be,” Marks says.

But he admits the story has likely changed over time. Someone in the audience asks about similarities with stories in the Bible and Marks says there are parallels.

“I believe they are ancient stories. I look at it as we all come from the same place and each story being passed on verbally from generation-to-generation changes. It’s like a lot of the stories we tell are going to change 30 years from now. But that’s the way life is,” Marks says.

UAS Assistant English Professor Ernestine Hayes is from the Wolf House of the Kaagwaantaan clan. Growing up in the Juneau Indian Village, Hayes says she learned about Raven stories and the world from her grandmother.

She reads from her forthcoming book of prose, “The Tao of Raven.”

“Remember that all things begin and end in water just as rivers flow into and begin in the sea. When forces oppose, victory will be kind to the one who crafts herself like water, to the one whose powers allow her to yield.”

She reads on.

“Take Raven. When he wanted the box of daylight, he didn’t invade a village, he didn’t storm a house. He found the easy way. He used water. He made himself small so he could get close to daylight with the least effort. This is what Raven did to achieve his goal,” Hayes says.

Hayes plans to continue working on “The Tao of Raven” this summer at an artist residency program in California through a Rasmuson Foundation grant.

Lance Twitchell encourages the UAS campus to continue exploring Raven stories. Twitchell is an assistant professor of Alaska Native Languages at UAS. He challenges the university to begin each academic year with a Raven story.

“It’s a great statement to say the university didn’t start with Plato and Socrates, not that they’re not great, but because we’re on Tlingit country, we can start with Tlingit thinking and just see what happens. See how we can open the doors for people – not just Tlingit people but all kinds of people – to say, ‘There’s all these different things here. Let’s share something that comes from long ago, right from this place,'” Twitchell says.

The UAS event was dedicated to Yup’ik elder and cultural leader Paul John, who was supposed to take part in the symposium, but passed away March 6.

Editor’s Note: The story has been updated to correct Paul Marks’ clan. A previous version of this story stated Marks is from the Raven House of the Chookaneidí clan while he is actually from the Raven House of the Lukáax.adi clan.

The Juneau Public Library system embarks on an oral history project this spring collecting Alaska Native stories on educational experiences. The capital city’s library is one of ten picked from more than 300 national applicants to bring StoryCorps to the community.

Freda Westman is a product of Juneau’s public school system, a 1974 graduate of Juneau-Douglas High School. Westman is Grand President of the Alaska Native Sisterhood.

One of her strongest childhood memories is from when she was in middle school.

“I asked a teacher at the end of the year why my grade was a C and could we go and look at the grade book, and we did and averaged it out and my grade was really a B, and so it was changed. That took a lot of courage for me to do that,” Westman says.

At the time, she learned that teachers, who she greatly respected, could make mistakes and those mistakes could be fixed. She learned the value of standing up for herself.

Now, Westman looks back on that situation and realizes those types of errors were likely made on a regular basis.

“Expectations for Alaska Native students were low, so maybe that was the motivation,” she says.

Westman’s mother stopped going to school in the 8th grade to care for sick family members.

“She was not allowed to speak Tlingit in school and was not only not allowed to do that but was punished for doing that. She told us that that is why she didn’t want to teach us Tlingit. She didn’t want us to experience that,” Westman says.

These are just a couple of memories that exist in Juneau’s Alaska Native community, stories that the public library hopes to capture through StoryCorps interviews.

StoryCorps is a national oral history project based in Brooklyn, New York. You’ve likely heard snippets of StoryCorps interviews on National Public Radio.

Juneau librarian Andrea Hirsh says the interviews aren’t formal. It’s a conversation between two people.

“A lot of people pick a family member, a grandparent, a child, a sibling, a neighbor and they tell their story,” Hirsh says.

The theme of Alaska Native educational experiences sprang from an issue that took place last year concerning the Juneau School District’s elementary language arts curriculum.

Community members raised concerns about school texts depicting Alaska Native and Native American tragedies, including the boarding school experience in Alaska. From the late 1800s to the mid-1900s, the federal government split families and forced Native children into boarding schools to assimilate. The texts were called distorted, inaccurate and insensitive.

The district eventually decided to remove the controversial texts and replace them with locally developed materials. The superintendent invited Alaska Native community members into the classroom to tell their stories.

Library program coordinator Beth Weigel hopes the StoryCorps project can help fulfill this need and others.

“Oral history is a big part of the Alaska Native tradition so if we have it available then those are available to teachers if they want to use those as part of the resource materials in their classroom,” Weigel says. “And they’ll stories by Alaska Natives, their stories that they tell in their own words.”

Before applying for the project grant, Weigel and Hirsh sought advice and support from members of the Alaska Native community in Juneau, like Sorrel Goodwin.

Goodwin is a librarian at the Alaska State Library. He says the project is an opportunity to get Alaska Native perspectives on the American educational system. In the mid-1990s, Goodwin interviewed Alaska Natives on that topic for a teaching course at the University of Alaska Southeast.

“Most of their perspectives were largely negative, dealing with such issues as racism and assimilation, and the degradation of Alaska Native cultures, languages, histories, going right on into flat out physical, mental and sexual abuse in many of the boarding school contexts,” Goodwin says.

He hopes the library’s project will include interviews of the younger generation, Alaska Natives who are currently going through the educational system.

“A lot of our parents’ and grandparents’ negative experiences in the American education system have been carried forward. It created a sort of intergenerational post-traumatic stress in the ways that many of our people are either able to engage or not engage with the dominant society’s system of educating people,” Goodwin says.

Sorrel says the more stories that are told, the more understanding will take place. He thinks the StoryCorps project can help the community work through issues that still remain.

One of the library’s goals is to capture a range of voices.

“We would love to talk to people who are still in school and this could be grade school, middle school, high school, college, technical school. It could be young adults, it could be older adults. We want to hear everyone’s story,” Hirsh says.

With permission of the participants, all of the StoryCorps interviews will be archived at the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress and locally at the Juneau Public Library and Sealaska Heritage Institute.

Southeast Alaska’s largest tribal organization has authorized its courts to perform same-sex marriages. The Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska announced its new policy Monday.

Tlingit-Haida’s seven-member governing board voted unanimously Friday to define legal marriage without a gender requirement.

Council President Richard Peterson says the council is exercising its governing authority to include all tribal members.

“It’s something we can do to extend our sovereignty for all of our tribal citizens. It’s not just about the same-sex marriage and helping just one segment of our tribal citizens, but all of our tribal citizens,” he says.

Peterson says that, as far as he knows, Tlingit-Haida’s courts have not conducted marriages in the past. He wants the new policy to encourage same- and opposite-sex marriages.

The tribal government will issue marriage licenses. But it’s unclear whether they’ll be recognized by the state.

Court rulings last fall forced Alaska to allow same-sex marriages, but many top officials remain opposed.

“It’s certainly not to do it to spite them or anything like that. I’m very hopeful that they’re going to recognize these marriages because the folks that we’re going to be marrying are Alaskans,” Peterson says.

Tlingit-Haida will require least one person in a couple to be a tribal member. The council lists nearly 30,000 Tlingit and Haida Indians in and outside Alaska within its rolls.

Peterson cites high suicide rates among Alaska Natives, as well as gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender youths, as another reason for the policy.

“If showing that we care about all of our tribal citizens equally can send a message where they feel included and belong and loved, and if that helps them to not want to turn toward suicide and other (harmful) things because the feel forsaken, then that’s what we should do,” he says.

Peterson says the council knows of about 20 other tribes amending or adopting rules to recognize marriage equality. Some others determined no changes were needed to allow same-sex unions.

Peterson says that’s a small percentage of the 562 federally recognized tribes in the United States

“We just recently had Elizabeth Peratrovich Day. And she so eloquently spoke at a time when we were still referred to ‘savages’ and we didn’t have the right to vote. So, now, here we are, and we have tribal citizens who don’t have rights. And we need to provide for that and advocate for that,” he says.

“What the tribal authorities are doing here is moving in the very same direction that the country is moving,” says Evan Wolfson, founder and president of Freedom to Marry, a New York City-based, nationwide advocacy organization.

The group lists tribal governments in the Pacific Northwest, the upper Midwest and Oklahoma where same-sex marriages were approved during the past half-dozen years.

They include Washington state’s Puyallup Tribe of Indians, Oregon’s Coquille Indian Tribe and the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes in Oklahoma.

“Members of the tribes know what it’s like to experience discrimination. They know what it’s like to be shoved outside, to be looked down on. And I think what tribal authorities are saying is that, out of that history, we know it’s important that we not commit the same kinds of discrimination, that we not isolate people, that we not harm them,” Wolfson says.

Tlingit-Haida Central Council’s new marriage directive also covers tribal divorces.

*Editor’s Note: This post has been updated with additional information and comments from Tlingit-Haida Central Council President Richard Peterson.

A recent episode of the popular PBS show “Antiques Roadshow” caught the attention of some Southeast residents when a couple of 200-year-old Tlingit masks from Haines appeared on screen.

It sparked the interests of regional Natives and historians and raised questions about how the items left the area.

Fans of Antiques Roadshow wait for those moments when an item on the program is valued at tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. The TV cameras catch the owner’s stunned reaction when they hear their family heirloom is worth more than they imagined. That’s what happened recently during an episode of the show that was filmed in Bismarck, North Dakota.

“[It] would sell in the neighborhood of $175,000,” The appraiser, Tim Trotta said about one mask. The other he valued at $75,000. “This is really, really remarkable material. These are among the most rare objects in North America.”

But for some Alaska viewers the value wasn’t the surprise – it was the two items being appraised. They were wooden carved masks, in the Tlingit style, clearly old and according to the owner, originally from Haines.

PBS does not identify guests on the show. Calls to the public broadcaster were not returned so KHNS was not able to find the man’s name. But he did give one clue to his identity when he explained where the masks came from.

“They date back into the 1890s where my great-grandfather was a missionary to what is now called Haines, Alaska.”

Trotta, the appraiser, described the masks as a wolf and a face mask. He said there is a carving of a raven in the wolf’s ears and abalone was used for the wolf’s eyes. He said the face mask may depict an ancestor. He pointed out the faint pigments still visible. He estimated they were from the 1700s.

But local Natives and art experts say Trotta got a few details wrong. Those aren’t raven figures in the wolf’s ears, they’re eagles. The masks are likely from Klukwan, a native village about 20 miles north of Haines.

“When I look at them I see they are Tlingit sacred clan objects,” said Rosita Worl, director of Sealaska Heritage Institute in Juneau. “This belongs to Kaagwaataan of Haines. You’ve got a wolf and an eagle in the ear, so it’s got to belong to the Kaagwaataan there.”

Worl does agree the pieces are likely shamanic or tied to spiritual practices.

Helen Alten, who is the director of the Sheldon Museum in Haines, watched the online video of the show and said if they are that old, they would have had to been kept inside, perhaps in a covered grave. But she says they also appear worn and used.

“My thought was is that these were used in a cultural context,” Alten said. “That’s the kind of wear that I see in stuff that has been used in a cultural context over a long period of time.”

That brings up another point – how did the masks make their way into private hands, and to North Dakota? Using the clue from the guest about his great-grandfather having been a missionary here, the museum did a little research.

“From our research and our records, if his great-grandfather was here as a missionary in the 1890s for a decade the only person that could be is Pastor William Walter Warne and his wife Viola Bigford,” Alten said.

It’s difficult to say if the pieces were given as gifts or were collected. Alten says there are instances of pieces of spiritual value being gifted to missionaries if someone converted to Christianity.

“The other thing that has happened with Christianization, the missionaries were there to Christianize,” Alten said. “What happens is that with conversion people will give gifts like this of their old beliefs. Sometimes it’s part of the conversion is giving up the old. So, many missionaries acquired things as gifts.”

Worl says if that’s the case, the masks illustrate the ironic and difficult history of missionaries in the Chilkat Valley.

“What I find interesting is the contradictions,” she said. “The great-grandfather was a missionary and a teacher and at that time they were teaching Tlingit people our spiritual beliefs and practices were wrong. But at the same time he’s appropriating Tlingit objects. I like to quote Joe Hotch of Klukwan who said, ‘They collected our sins.’”

During an interview with PBS after the appraisal, the owner said he was shocked at the value, but didn’t plan on selling the items. He said they were important to his family.

Worl says Sealaska will try to contact the man if they can find out his identity.  Since the items are now privately owned, she says they can’t be repatriated. That avenue is only available when items are held by federally funded institutions. But Worl still thinks the items should be returned.

“In this case if we could identify the individual we definitely would write to him and suggest he return them to the Tligint Kaagwaataan in Haines,” she said.

Alten says the Sheldon Museum is also interested in reaching out to the owner. She says the museum would work with the Jilkaat Kwaan Heritage Center in Klukwan to suggest the masks be donated back to the community or perhaps loaned so they could at least be displayed here.

It’s also possible Sealaska could work with other organizations to purchase the masks, if they ever come up for auction. But with the recent appraisal of a quarter-million dollars, that would be difficult.

Today is Elizabeth Peratrovich Day in Alaska, and Juneau school kids have spent recent weeks learning about the Native civil rights leader.

When the territorial legislature passed the Anti-Discrimination Act in 1945, it gave minorities in Alaska legal protections from racial bias two decades before the U.S. Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Elizabeth Peratrovich’s testimony was crucial to overcoming comments like this from Allen Shattuck, a territorial senator from Juneau:

“Who are these people, barely out of savagery, who want to associate with us whites, with 5,000 years of recorded civilization behind us?”

On a recent afternoon at Harborview Elementary School, fourth and fifth graders in the Tlingit Culture Language and Literacy program are rehearsing a shadow puppet play based on Peratrovich’s testimony. Half the kids are actors, reading lines from the territorial senate meeting where lawmakers approved the anti-discrimination bill. The rest are puppeteers, using paper cutouts to cast shadows on a backlit screen.

“I would not have expected that I, who am barely out of savagery, would have to remind gentlemen with 5,000 years of recorded civilization behind them of our Bill of Rights,” says Lyric Ashenfelter, who plays Peratrovich.

The 9-year-old says she was chosen for the part because she’s got a good, strong voice, and because she paid attention in class when they learned about Peratrovich’s testimony.

“She helped stop discrimination, and she was such a wide-hearted lady, and she was speaking for her rights,” Ashenfelter says.

Before the anti-discrimination act became law, segregation and racial prejudice were common in Juneau. Movie theaters, restaurants and shops refused entrance to Alaska Natives. Elizabeth Peratrovich and her husband, Roy, faced discrimination in finding housing because they were Tlingit.

It’s a different story today for Ashenfelter, who’s learning to speak Tlingit in school.

“Lyric yóo xat duwasáakw,” she says. “Which means I am Lyric, or my name is Lyric.”

Orion Dybdahl is Roy Peratrovich in the shadow puppet drama.

“Orion yóo xat duwasáakw,” he says. “I am Raven, yéil, Taakw.aaneidí, which is the sculpin clan.”

He adds that it was sad to learn about what Alaska Natives went through before the anti-discrimination act.

“It’s sad that they treated us differently, because where we were from or how we spoke,” Dybdahl says.

Ruby Hughes is the cultural specialist at Dzantik’i Heeni Middle School, where students are eating cake to celebrate Elizabeth Peratrovich’s life. Hughes says a lot has changed since she grew up in Juneau.

“When I was a kid we didn’t have Tlingit language in the schools,” Hughes says. “Occasionally we’d have an elder come in and they would speak fluent Tlingit. But it wasn’t really taught on the level that it is right now. So I think that’s pretty neat.”

Hughes made a timeline of Tlingit history that’s hanging in the commons at Dzantik’i Heeni. It starts in 1648 – the year Russian explorers first came to Alaska – and includes several entries that show the mistreatment and prejudice Alaska Natives experienced throughout history. The last entry on the timeline shows Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott, who’s Tlingit.

Hughes says Elizabeth Peratrovich helped make that possible.