Alaska Native Arts & Culture

Today was the first annual Dr. Walter Soboleff Day in Alaska, and dozens of the late Tlingit elder’s friends and relatives marked the occasion with a parade through downtown Juneau.

Soboleff’s oldest son, Sasha, says humility and inclusiveness are his dad’s lasting legacy. The Presbyterian minister opened his church to people of all races at a time when Juneau was segregated.

“This man worked well over a hundred years to do things for not only the people of Alaska, but for those who strove to better themselves to do what they need to do,” Sasha Soboleff says. “And what was key to his heart and key to his spirit was the service to his God and Jesus Christ.”

Former state Rep. Bill Thomas remembers hearing Soboleff’s sermons on the radio as a kid growing up in Haines.

“If we didn’t go to Sunday school and we missed church, we had to sit in front of the radio and listen to Rev. Soboleff on the radio,” he says.

Soboleff would’ve been 106 years old today. He died in 2011 at the age of 102.

He was involved with the Alaska Native Brotherhood throughout his life, including during the Native civil rights movement of the 1940s. Later in life he helped launch efforts to revitalize Native languages, as well as traditional art and spiritual practices.

Earlier this year, the Alaska Legislature made 20 indigenous languages official state languages. Soboleff’s daughter, Janet Burke, says that would have made her father proud.

“When we were children we never got to do things like this,” Burke says. “It wasn’t that we weren’t taught how to do this. But we didn’t do things publicly like we’re able to do now.”

Today’s informal parade included about 70 people making their way from Marine Park, through Juneau’s Willoughby District, and to the Salvation Army church.

Ed Thomas is the former president of the Tlingit & Haida Central Council. He says he got to know Soboleff through the Alaska Native Brotherhood.

“He is one of those that started off by writing down Tlingit values,” Thomas says. “So that people can have a starting point on what it meant, what our values meant.”

Thomas says those values include honoring your elders and having a sense of humor.

State lawmakers unanimously approved the bill making Nov. 14 Dr. Walter Soboleff Day. He joins other notable Alaskans like Elizabeth Peratrovich, Jay Hammond and Ted Stevens in having a day named for him.

More than 100 people attended a Southeast Alaska Native Veterans ceremony Tuesday, honoring Tlingit code talkers who served during World War II.

The families of five men received medals and Congressional certificates recognizing their service at a packed Veterans Day event at Elizabeth Peratrovich Hall.

Tony Jacobs’ dad and uncle were among the soldiers who used the Tlingit language to relay important information during the war.

“The Tlingit Indians had their own Tlingit names for various places around Southeast,” Jacobs said. “And that’s what they were used for is to let the ship’s captain or quartermasters know where they were located secretly actually, where enemy forces would not be able to ID their location.”

Jacobs said he was overcome with emotion at the recognition for his father and uncle. He said he served in the Navy himself during 1970s, and would recommend military service to anyone.

“You get benefits – health benefits, education benefits – and you get to see the country and/or the world,” Jacobs said.

Tlingit code talkers Mark Jacobs Sr., Harvey Jacobs, Jeff David, Richard Bean Sr. and George Lewis were all posthumously honored by Congress last year.

Gov. Sean Parnell and first lady Sandy Parnell were among those attending a separate Veterans Day ceremony.

The governor sat in the audience, but did not speak during the event, organized by the Veterans of Foreign Wars Taku Post 5559.

Coast Guard Commander Matt Fay was the featured speaker. He acknowledged the many sacrifices veterans have already made for their country, while urging them to give a little more by inspiring others to serve.

“As you spend time with your families today, over the holidays, I ask that you share some things about your service,” Fay said. “I also ask that you consider other means of preserving your story.”

Fay is staff judge advocate with the Coast Guard’s District 17 headquarters in Juneau. He encouraged veterans to participate in the Library of Congress’ Veterans History Project.

The VFW event was held at Centennial Hall at the traditional time when Veterans Day ceremonies take place – the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month. That’s the date and time an armistice went into effect between the Allies and Germany in 1918, ending World War I.

As election day nears, Alaska Native organizations in Juneau are making one last big push to encourage voters through a Get Out the Native Vote information rally on Saturday.

The rally will feature a simulated voting booth for first time voters, information on candidates and ballot measures, and entertainment.

The event is being organized by Tlingit Haida Central Council, Huna Totem Corp., Tlingit-Haida Regional Housing Authority, Haa Aaní and University of Alaska Southeast.

This is the first election season Native groups in Southeast Alaska have officially come together to try and boost the Native vote.

Shawn Blumenshine is with Haa Aaní, a subsidiary of Sealaska, the regional Native corporation for Southeast.

“The biggest thing that we’re trying to focus on is to express our voice, to have a Native voice, to participate in this process. And then voting informed; not just voting, but also know what you’re voting for, know the candidates,” Blumenshine says.

In past years, Native entities worked independently to increase voter turnout. In 2010, Blumenshine says Sealaska organized a voter challenge in Hydaburg, a community of about 400 on Prince of Wales Island.

“We did a yard sign project where on one side, it says, ‘I’m Native. I vote.’ On the other side, it says, ‘I voted. Have you?’ So the idea was that you could go around and put the signs in the yard and once you voted, you could turn them around and then your neighbors get an idea of how many people are voting and it encourages other people to vote,” he says.

That year, 21 people in Hydaburg voted in the primary election. Blumenshine says the yard sign project helped bring out the more than 100 people in the general election.

This year’s collaboration was spurred by the statewide Get Out the Native Vote effort of ANCSA Regional Association, a group of Native corporation CEOs.

Nancy Barnes works for Huna Totem, the village corporation for the City of Hoonah. She says coming together to work toward the same goal makes sense.

“People before us, my parents and grandparents, fought hard to get the right for us to even vote. We just want our people – and when I say ‘our people,’ I mean Alaska Natives – to get out and vote,” Barnes says.

Barnes says the Get Out the Native Vote effort can be seen all over the state. The Alaska Federation of Natives handed out a 28-page voting guide highlighting the U.S. Senate and governor races at its recent convention in Anchorage.

“We actually had people voting across the street. We carried signs and had people following us to vote early. It was awesome,” she says.

Barnes says every vote counts, especially in rural Alaska. She brings up Hoonah’s recent runoff election for mayor, where Kenneth Skaflestad defeated Jacqueline Dick by only two votes.

Juneau’s Get Out the Native Vote group held a voter registration event in September, attended by a couple hundred people. Barnes said she registered a homeless woman who had never voted before.

“I’m telling people, ‘Grab five friends or relatives and get them to vote,’ or call them and urge them to vote,” Barnes says.

On election day, Get Out the Native Vote in Juneau plans to offer rides to the polls.

When American missionaries began arriving in Alaska in the 1880s, it was the beginning of a very dark era for Alaska Natives around the state. As Bureau of Indian Affairs and state-sponsored schools were established, things became even worse for Alaska Native languages and cultural practices. Today, elders’ stories about being beaten for speaking their Native language or for practicing traditional dances or rituals are common.

So, fast forward to Thursday when dozens of elder Native language speakers found themselves in a packed room at the Dena’ina Center in Anchorage. Lawmakers and others clapped and cried as speakers young and old declared in their native tongue that their language was now an official language of the State of Alaska.

Kaséix̱ Selina Everson, originally from Angoon, was given the honor to speak first after Gov. Sean Parnell signed the bill.

“Gunalchéesh, governor, to all the people who are here for our beautiful languages to be recognized after all these years we were forbidden to speak it, and every time we’d remember how we were forbidden,” Everson said. “An elderly gentleman from Angoon, he was 87, every time he spoke about us being forbidden to speak our own language on our own land, he cried like a baby.”

Everson thanked the bill’s prime sponsors Reps. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, Ben Nageak and Charisse Millett.

“For every Native person standing here, in my language I will say gunalchéesh to all of you, all the learners, to the children, gunalchéesh. You’ve made this day an honorable day to honor all the people of Alaska,” Everson said.

Tlingit language teacher Xh’unei Lance Twitchell was also at the bill signing. Twitchell worked with a group of other language learners from around the state to advocate for the bill’s passage, even staging a sit-in protest at the capitol building in the final days of the past legislative session.

After 15 hours of sitting in the capitol hallways and observing lawmakers on the Senate floor go in circles trying to reach consensus on other bills, the protestors were finally rewarded. The legislature passed the Alaska Native languages bill around 2 a.m. on Easter morning.

Twitchell says not all of the lawmakers were supportive of the bill in the beginning.

“I had a chance to tell them, ‘People are going to remember you for this. Regardless of what side they are on, people are going to remember,'” Twitchell said. “There was a real fear that someday languages were going to be mandated and I don’t see that as a fear. I think a logical step for Alaska is that if you graduate from high school in Bethel you know some Iñupiaq. If you graduate from high school in Juneau you know some Tlingit.”

For the rest of the day at the convention, there was plenty of talk on-stage and amongst delegates about the “historic moment” that they’d all shared.

The 30th annual Elders and Youth Conference began Monday in Anchorage. The gathering is hosted by the First Alaskans Institute each year during the same week as the Alaska Federation of Natives convention.

The conference opened with Dena’ina dancers and a blessing from Eklutna Tribal Council President Lee Stephan. First Alaskans President and CEO Liz Medicine Crow from Kake and board chair Willie Hensley welcomed conference participants. Rep. Don Young and Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Mark Begich each took the stage to give opening remarks. Representing the White House, Associate Director of Intergovernmental Affairs Raina Thiele, originally from Pedro Bay, also addressed the conference.

When it came time for the keynote speeches, 17-year-old Devlin Anderstrom from Yakutat gave one to remember. Anderstrom introduced himself in his Tlingit language and then gave his entire nine minute speech in it, never once slipping into English until he gave the speech a second time.

People in the audience turned to each other and with wowed faces, they nodded and smiled. Anderstrom’s speech was no small feat.

There are only a few hundred Tlingit speakers left and most of them are more than 60 years old. Anderstrom, who is a senior at Yakutat High School, learned some of the language growing up. He left Alaska as a young boy and didn’t return until he was 12.

“I’ve lived in downtown Denver, the suburbs in northern California, even a small rural community in Nebraska. When I left home I knew the entire time that home was where I belonged and it was my place to be,” Anderstrom says.

Growing up, Anderstrom says he spent a lot of time around elders who spoke the language fluently. He began his study of Tlingit in earnest after he moved back home to Yakutat. Just this year, he started taking Lance Twitchell’s Tlingit language class through the University of Alaska Southeast.

Anderstrom says one of the reasons he has been so dedicated to learning Tlingit is because some cultural values and ideas can only be truly expressed in their original language.

“One of them would be haashagoon. So, haashagoon, it’s our ancestors and at the same time it’s the future generations, like, everything that we were and everything that we will be,”Anderstrom says. “It’s just kind of a hard concept to explain.”

And it’s not just the Tlingit language that Anderstrom feels compelled to learn. He’s also Iñupiaq, and Ahtna and Tanacross Athabaskan and he’s trying to learn those languages.

“Right now, Tlingit is the language I know best. It’s the only language I could have made a speech like that in. But I’ve also started to learn other languages as well, Eyak, Ahtna and Inupiaq,” Anderstrom says. “My goal is to learn as much as I can. I want to try to help preserve everybody’s language because I think everybody in the state deserves that, everybody that’s Alaska Native.”

True to the spirit of his role as a youth at the conference, Anderstrom brings optimism to the conversation. He doesn’t think that Alaska Native languages can ever be completely lost.

“I think language is a big part of culture, for me, and it’s really a hard hit for any culture to take to lose their language,” Anderstrom says. “But I don’t think it’s necessarily the end game, I don’t think it’s game over when a language is lost because like Eyak, a lot of language can be brought back at least partially through all the documented resources that we have. We just have to pull together and I think we can avoid language death all together.”

Anderstrom gave the youth keynote address after elder Fred John’s keynote address. The conference room at the Dena’ina center had 1,300 chairs set up and nearly all of them were full within an hour of starting the conference.

The 30th annual Elders and Youth conference begins today in Anchorage. The conference is held each year during the same week as the Alaska Federation of Natives convention.

About 1,100 elders and youth from around the state attended last year’s conference. The gathering is an opportunity for youth to discuss an array of issues relevant to Alaska Natives with support from their elders. Some of the activities during the conference focus on leadership development, learning about voting, how to elect group representatives and consensus building.

The theme for this year’s conference is Get up! Stand up! Participants will focus on creating solutions to issues like subsistence, education and economic development.

Watch it live on 360 North and on 360 North’s website.