Alaska Native Arts & Culture

The Sealaska Heritage Institute announced today that it will name the archives facility at the Walter Soboleff Center after a Tlingit Native rights figure.

William L. Paul Sr. was the state’s first Alaska Native attorney and first Alaska Native legislator. He was active in fighting against school segregation, and for the citizenship rights of Natives and their right to vote. Paul was also instrumental in getting the federal government to extend rights granted under the Indian Reorganization Act to Alaska Natives. The act is credited with fundamentally changing the government’s relationship with Native Americans and Alaska Natives.

The Walter Soboleff building is expected to be completed by the end of this year.

Sealaska Heritage Institute is incorporating a traditional Native carving method into the building of the Walter Soboleff Center in Juneau.

Wayne Price is a Tlingit carver from Haines. He’s utilizing a tool his ancestors used thousands of years ago, and he’s keeping the tradition alive — one chip at a time.

Like most construction projects, the building site of the Walter Soboleff Center in downtown Juneau is filled with modern power tools.

But if you walk to one corner of the building, Tlingit carver Wayne Price has been texturing hundreds of board feet of red cedar using just one tool – an adze. To be more precise, it’s an elbow adze that Price made himself.

“The blade is made from a leaf spring out of a truck and the handle is made from the branch of an alder tree and it’s held together by string and a chunk of leather,” Price says.

The handle is about two feet long and he grips it with both hands as he chips the wood.

“It’s quite heavy. It’s — I don’t know — three pounds, maybe a little more, so it’s pretty heavy to be swinging all day,” he says.

That’s what Price has been doing. Since the beginning of September, Price has been adzing red cedar board after red cedar board, all day long.

“I’m in pretty good shape right now,” he laughs.

The work he’s doing on the board requires Price to read the wood “and spot the knots and see the grain changes and be able to hit it and turn around and go the other way and keep all the adze rows in a straight line,” Price says.

With each swing, he chips off a little piece of cedar, leaving behind a textured finish, the same seen on traditional Tlingit structures and pieces of art.

“When my ancestors, oh so long ago, were able to make the first adze, that was the foundation that gave them the ability to make all the clan houses, all the totems, all the dugout canoes, all the masks, all the art work,” Price says.

Price says the use of an adze is one of the foundations of Tlingit culture and something he’s trying to keep alive. He started using one as a young man. Taught by master carver Nathan Jackson, Price adzed a clan house floor in Ketchikan.

Since then, he’s used the tool on a lot of his work, including 36 totem poles and eight dugout canoes.

“It roughs and shapes and chops and digs and chews all that material out of the way until we get to the hull of the ship,” Price says.

The 680 board feet of red cedar that Price is adzing for the Walter Soboleff Center will be used as columns surrounding the staircases of the four floor building. The heritage, culture and arts center is scheduled to open in May.

“I think if Walter’s looking down, he would be smiling,” Price says. “He would be very supportive of an adventure like this – something that’s old and something that’s new being able to merge together to the benefit of the all the people that are going to come for generations here. They’ll be able to walk up the stairs and be able to see that each one of these marks was made one at a time.”

As he chips away all day long, Price says he’s brought back to the past. He sings Native songs to the beat of the adze, as his ancestors watch over his shoulder making sure he keeps his standards high.

Close to 500 community members gathered between Elizabeth Peratrovich Hall and Gajaa Hit on Monday to celebrate the raising of a new Eagle and Raven totem poles.

Brothers Joe and T.J. Young began carving the 40 foot, red cedar poles last September to replace the two poles originally carved in 1977. Between their apprentices and others, T.J. Young says it was a collaboration.

“We got to talk to Nathan Jackson who is a Tlingit artist down in Ketchikan. He came in and visited us for a while and gave us some pointers, and a handful of other artists came by and wished us good luck,” T.J. Young says.

“All the artists, we all know each other—it’s like a community of artists and we all feed off of each others’ energy. It’s always good to see them, pick each others’ brains and have a fun time creating.”

Joe Young says the most fulfilling part of the project had to do with the all the people at Monday’s pole raising.

“Probably that all the people came out and all the young kids get to see this. We didn’t get to see too much when we grew up. Hopefully they realize they’re seeing something that’s not done every day and hopefully they learn to appreciate it.”

With help from a boom truck, a lift, and several helpers, both poles were successfully raised.

Plaintiffs in a voting rights lawsuit are reacting to news that a Federal Court Judge has ruled in their favor. Wednesday a judge ruled that the State of Alaska violated the Voting Rights Act by failing to provide translations into Native languages.

Judge Sharon Gleason found the State of Alaska violated the Voting Rights Act by failing to provide translations of voting materials to voters whose primary language is Gwich’in or Yup’ik.

Benjaman Nukusuk is the Tribal Chief for the Native Village of Hooper Bay, a plaintiff in the case.

“I was very pleased because the elders of the Y-K Delta want to know what they’re voting on and who they’re voting for and why and our elders by nature are very articulate and precise in what that want, especially when it comes to things that matter for our people and the things of our Y-K Delta.”

Judge Gleason issued the partial decision after presiding over a two-week trial in June and July. Native American Rights Fund Attorneys argued the state’s voting materials in Yup’ik and Gwich’in were inaccurately translated and poorly distributed. NARF Attorney Natalie Landreth says the law the state was supposed to be following passed in 1975.

“We’re obviously extremely pleased and relieved but the reality is that the case, the decision and the changes that it’s supposed to bring are 40 years overdue.

JudgeGleason gave the state until Friday to indicate what changes they can make before the November 4th general election. Landreth says she hopes the state will deliver comprehensive translations.

“There’s a hundred-page voter information pamphlet that goes out every election in English and the reality is that Yup’ik speaking voters are entitled to all of that information before they go vote and so what we want to see is some plan to make sure that Yup’ik speaking voters will learn about the candidates, the ballot measures, the bond measures, the judges, everything on there.”

The Department of Law has said it will work with the Division of Elections to draft a proposal. Judge Gleason has not yet ruled on whether the state intentionally violated voter’s rights on the basis race or color.

As early as the late 1700s, European visitors and explorers in Alaska wrongly took objects that were sacred and important to the indigenous people. Several of these items were set to be auctioned off in Paris last December, despite protest from tribal groups around the U.S. It was a done deal, until an anonymous buyer stepped in.

Sealaska Heritage Institute president Rosita Worl flips through a printed catalog of items that were up for bid at a Paris auction house last December. She points to several Native items taken from Southeast Alaska a long time ago.

“That one. This is probably from the northern area. This is another Northwest Coast piece, another Northwest Coast piece, something that should be here at home,” says Worl. “This makes me sad when I see them.”

Sealaska Heritage and other tribal communities around the country had written letters to protest that Paris auction and another, which featured sacred Native objects. The U.S. Embassy in Paris got involved but nothing could legally stop the auctions.

“So we thought it was a done deal and then all of a sudden, a couple days later we got a call from the Annenberg Foundation,” says Chuck Smythe, culture and history director at Sealaska Heritage.

A carved wooden panel painted with a Chilkat design would be returning home to Southeast Alaska.

“They had purchased this item unbeknownst to us, so it came as a huge surprise,” Smythe says.

Little is known about the panel, which is 20 inches tall, 18 inches wide with wood nails and detailed carving. It was likely part of a Tlingit bentwood box that could’ve belonged to a shaman or used by a clan to keep ceremonial objects and regalia. Sealaska Heritage officials think the panel could date back to the early 1800s, a time when many outsiders wrongly took Native objects.

The Annenberg Foundation, a philanthropic organization based in Los Angeles, anonymously purchased 27 Native objects from two Paris auction houses last December, the majority of which will be returned to the Hopi and San Carlos Apache tribes in Arizona. Besides the wood panel to Sealaska Heritage, another object was repatriated to the Chugach Alaska Corporation. The two Alaska items were purchased for several thousand dollars each, according to the foundation.

Carol Laumen was one of the foundation’s bidders during the auctions. She says this isn’t normal practice for the foundation, but there was a great interest to repatriate the items.

“These artifacts were in some cases over a hundred years old and it was suspect in some cases how the artifacts actually ended up in private hands, so to return them to the rightful owner was the right thing to do,” Laumen says.

Since the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act took effect in 1990, Worl says Sealaska Heritage has been active in bringing sacred items back to Southeast Alaska.

“The objects that we are trying to get back are what we call at.óow. That means they’re owned or purchased property. They belong to clans. They represent our ties to our ancestors and spirits of our ancestors are associated with our at.óow and we know that our ancestors want to come back home,” Worl says.

Sealaska Heritage has repatriated dozens of objects from museums on behalf of individual clans. But thousands more remain in museums and private collections.

Worl remembers being part of a group visiting the Smithsonian’s Natural History Museum for the first time.

“The curators thought they were doing a wonderful thing in letting us see their collection. There was about 10 of us and when we saw our at.óow, I saw 10 Tlingits just crying over those objects,” Worl says.

A large part of repatriation is educating people on the cultural significance of objects to indigenous people, Worl says. She recognizes that people pay a lot of money for these items and wants to figure out a financial incentive for collectors.

“For example, a tax credit. Could the government provide a tax credit to a collector for donating it back to a tribe?” Worl says.

In some cases where objects are repatriated from museums, Worl says tribes have given back.

“Cape Fox — they repatriated a totem pole from the Harvard Peabody Museum and in return, they carved a totem pole and left a totem pole there,” Worl says.

She’s thankful to the Annenberg Foundation for bringing the wood panel back to Southeast. It arrived at Sealalaska Heritage August 29.

“We couldn’t believe it, couldn’t believe that an organization would do this on our behalf,” Worl says.

Sealaska Heritage doesn’t know the panel’s origins but hopes to find out and return it.

A $1.5 million dollar grant from the National Science Foundation will fund a five-year pilot project to help American Indian and Alaska Native college students achieve advanced degrees in science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM subjects. The goal, ultimately, is to increase the number of Native tenured faculty at colleges and universities.

National Science Foundation program officer Sally O’Connor says the “Lighting the Pathway” project is aimed at full-time college students, undergraduate or graduate, majoring in science, math, computer science, or engineering. She says NSF wants to encourage Native Americans with an aptitude for STEM subjects to reach their full potential.

“There is so much talent in the Native community,” says O’Connor, “and it’s mainly untapped. And hopefully this project will make a little dent into that and bring out the talent so that they can become leaders in our country.”

O’Connor says several factors contribute to the low number of Native Americans with advanced degrees and tenured faculty positions: a lack of role models in STEM, and inadequate academic training, which she says is related to inadequate funding of schools on reservations and in rural areas.

“I mean if we provide them with the same resources we give the best schools in the cities, those students would be well prepared,” said O’Connor. “But the sad fact is, that is not happening.”

Participants will receive a stipend of $2,500 dollars over two years, plus funding to travel to meetings and program events. Each student will be teamed up with a mentor, an expert in the field they’re studying, to set goals and get some training and support to achieve them. The project itself will be evaluated to find out what works and what doesn’t, to help in the design of future programs.

Herb Schroeder is Vice Provost and Founder of the Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program, or ANSEP, at University of Alaska Anchorage. He says the mentoring is important to get students socially and academically prepared for college. But he says ANSEP starts at an earlier age. This year, it’s working with 868 kids in middle school.

“In our mid school, 83% of the kids finish algebra 1 before they graduate from 8th grade. And the national average for that is 26%,” says Schroeder. “So, then they’re on track in their freshman and high school. They can immediately take math and science courses from university professors that count for university credit and high school credit. And that’s how we’re getting the students hyper prepared.”

Schroeder says students can also apply for scholarships through ANSEP.

“The students, once they arrive at the university, are eligible for scholarship funds. It’s merit based scholarships that are five thousand dollars a year. Plus we connect the students with internships with all of our partner organizations so they can make up the difference that they need to go to school.

And for the students who go to graduate school, ANSEP kicks up the financial support.

“Once they’re in graduate school, we offer stipends for students for masters and PhD students of $30,000 total over the course of their graduate studies,” says Schroeder. “Plus we pay their tuition and connect them with research projects so that they can complete their degree programs.”

To provide that level of support, ANSEP has 70 partners who help support the $7.5 million dollar program. Still, Schroeder hopes ANSEP students will be able to take advantage of the national program. “I’ll certainly encourage my students to apply for some of that funding,” says Schroeder. “Every dollar helps.”

For more information, visit the American Indian Science and Engineering Society’s webpage at www.aises.org