Alaska Native Arts & Culture

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 séew, or rain. Listen to the audio below to learn how to say séew.

The following transcript is meant to help illustrate the words and sentences. 

Kooshdáakʼu Bill Fawcett: Séew. 

That means rain.

Here are some sentences:

Kooshdáakʼu Bill Fawcett: Séew ḵúnáx̱ daak wusitán.

It’s really raining.

Keihéenák’w John Martin: Séew daak wusitán.

It’s raining.

Keiyishí Bessie Cooley: Aatlein séew daak wustaaní, yeis yít, ḵaa dzískʼw du sheidí chʼáalʼ x̱oox̱ yaa akla.átch.

When it rains a lot in the fall, the bull moose drag their antlers through the willows.

Ḵaakal.áat Florence Marks Sheakley: Haa x̱ánxʼ yakʼéi wé séew.

This rain is good.

Kaxwaan Éesh George Davis: Séew has du káa daak wusitán. 

It rained on them all.

You can hear each installment of Lingít Word of the Week on the radio throughout the week. 

Find biographies for the master speakers included in this lesson here.

Learn more about why we use Lingít instead of Tlingit here.

Laka David and Shan Green huddled around a laptop and microphone, rehearsing a rap they just wrote called “Heart In This.” The minute-long song talks about joy and independence.

“I was just trying to be nice,” David rapped over a hip-hop beat. “If that’s how it’s gonna be, your future might be bleak.”

He and Green were among about 50 young Alaska Natives from all over the state who were learning about music production at the Elders and Youth Conference in downtown Anchorage on Monday. They collaborated with Indigenous artists to write their own songs, crafting lyrics about their cultural values, families and homes. The artists hoped the hands-on workshop encouraged the participants to think about pursuing music. They said representation in the music industry is liberating, and there needs to be more of it.

“I love working with the youth,” Artist Tyler Apaquutaq Young, known as 2essentialz, said.  “I just love watching them engage and just engage their creativity and creative expression. Like, this is where this starts!”

On Monday, Young mentored David and Green’s newly-formed music group called “Aqpik,” which is Iñupiaq for salmonberries.

He said creating music has allowed him to relate and connect with other Indigenous people, and with his Tsimshian culture.

“Even perhaps with reclaiming our identity as Indigenous people, healing from historical trauma, just having a seat at the table and feeling like that. Just being authentically and unapologetically Native. That’s what I love about music,” he said.

Across the room, Tyler Simunoff and about 10 other kids also worked on a rap, theirs was about subsistence. Simunoff said he struggled to find lyric inspiration at first, but it became easier once he focused on things he enjoyed when he’s home in Kodiak.

“I like to hunt, fish and gather resources to live off the land,” Simunoff said.

He said he’s always liked listening to music, but he’s never created his own so he was eager to attend this session.

“It was the best one on the list that I saw in the first few options,” he said. “I thought it would be a great opportunity.”

A few chairs down, Manu David wrote a list of what she likes to do when she visits her family in Ruby, a village of less than 200 people along the Yukon River.

Parts of her lyrics, she said, drew inspiration from the abundance of blueberries she picks and eats each year.

“I like to go berry picking. I like weaving baskets with cedar, and I like to cut and filet fish,” she said.

Caden Tarkington from Anchorage had the same idea: focusing on what he loves about living in Alaska. He’d already written his verse.

“Getting down, walking up, ready to go hunting, in and out the camp we go,” he said.

Eventually Tarkington’s verse was weaved with the others, with the help of event staff. The group titled their song “Native Life,” and it shares their perspectives on subsisting across Alaska.

Take a listen:

When this year’s Alaska Federation of Natives Convention gets underway in Anchorage this week, you’ll see pictures of children everywhere at the Dena’ina Center. From posters on the wall to signs at the entrance of the main convention hall, to the cover of the program guide, you’ll see lots of round, sweet faces smiling at you

Proud parents from across the state submitted these snapshots to AFN’s annual subsistence photo contest, which showcases the wide variety of wild foods that are gathered year-round.

The contest is not so much a competition as a celebration of the Alaska Native subsistence lifestyle.

This year’s AFN conference coordinator, Nikki Stoops, says every photo is sure to bring a smile.

“We had over a hundred entries,” Stoops said. “They were all phenomenal pictures that captured our convention theme.”

Stoops says the photos are meant to tug at the heart strings, to bring about a serious reflection on the status of Alaska Native children, who struggle at home, at school and in the community for a variety of reasons. Some of those include historical and intergenerational trauma, the lack of health and social services to address the high rates of suicide and mental health problems, as well as inequities in education funding, especially for rural schools.

The theme is inspired in part by the late Dr. Walter Soboleff, a Lingít leader who championed education.

A national commission named in memory of Soboleff and another Great Plains tribal leader, Alyce Spotted Bear, produced “The Way Forward Report.” Its recommendations which will be taken up at the convention.

Before Soboleff died at the age of 102, he often encouraged young people to “take care of the older person you are going to become.” He told them their own Native culture could help them do that.

The photos are intended to inspire convention-goers to think about this message. The challenge for the judges — after hours of sifting through pictures of kids picking berries and catching fish — was to decide which one best spoke to that progression from childhood to elderhood. They finally settled on four-year-old Austin Redfox, who sat on a tree stump with his hands firmly planted on his knees, as he watched his parents build a smokehouse for their salmon.

“He looked like a little old man, a little grandpa, sitting there watching the smokehouse,” Stoops said. “It just made us all so happy, just emulating probably what he sees in his hometown,” which happens to be Emmonak on the Lower Yukon River.

Austin’s mother, Lila Redfox, says her son constantly asks to help the family put dinner on the table. She listed off some of the foods her son has helped to gather. “Fish, whale, seal, moose, birds,” says Redfox, who appreciates Austin’s help, kneading the dough for her home-baked bread.

Although Yup’ik children are taught to learn through observation, Redfox was surprised that her son, at the age of one, had seen enough and was ready to pitch in.

“I was tanning a sealskin hide,” she said, “and he came up to me and grabbed the tanning tool — and tried to scrape the seal skin hide.”

Redfox says it’s important to teach children early about the sacred role subsistence plays in Native culture. She says she’s discovered that with some support and encouragement from the family, it becomes second nature for children.

“It makes me and my husband proud,” she said. “It makes us feel like we’re raising them right, doing a great job as a parent.”

For her winning photo, Redfox received two roundtrip Alaska Airlines tickets. She says she’ll use one of them to bring her son, Austin,

to the Alaska Federation of Natives convention this week.

She wonders what his reaction will be when he sees his face all over the place.

And there will be many others to see. Each, like Austin’s, tells a story.

The two other top finishers are from the Lower Yukon River. Jacklyn Andrews, also from Emmonak, won second place for her photo of her six-year-old daughter, Halle, cutting fish.

“All summer I was cutting fish to put away for the winter,” Andrews said. “Every time I’d be cutting fish, she’d ask to help. But I didn’t let her.”

Finally, Andrews gave in.

“She was crying her lungs out to cut fish,” she said. “She got so happy when I told her to start cutting. She said, ‘Mom, I’m so busy.’”

Third place went to Tanya Chikigak from Alakanuk. Her photo shows her two-year-old daughter, Christine, squinting her eyes, almost like a little elder, as she proudly presented her berries to her mother.

Chikigak says the picture was taken in July, after a two-hour boat ride to a spot where you can find lots of cloud berries.

“It was her very first, time picking berries, and those were her very first berries,” Chikigak said. “When we were done picking, she kept asking to pick more.”

A celebrated Alaska musician is a contestant in what has become an Arctic version of the international music competition known as Eurovision.

Qacung Blanchett, who with his brother founded the award-winning band Pamyua, is one of nine artists or groups from the circumpolar north who performed Saturday in Pan-Arctic Vision, a musical event that was launched last year. Other competitors are from northern areas of Finland, Sweden and Norway, Canada’s Nunavut Territory, Iceland and the Faroe Islands. There is even a Russian contestant, a singer from Murmansk who is currently living in Norway.

Pan-Arctic Vision is about more than music, according to its organizers. It “is both an art project and a sincere attempt to use the tools of art to change common sense and unite the North,” the organization’s website said.

The performances at a cultural center in Nuuk, Greenland were livestreamed for audiences through the organization’s website. A viewing party was held Saturday morning at the Anchorage Museum, which is one of the collaborating organizations. Viewers are asked to submit votes to select the winners.

Blanchett is Yup’ik and Black and grew up in Bethel and Nunapitchuk. Pamyua’s music blends Indigenous traditions with rhythm-and-blues styles. In addition to being part of Pamyua, Blanchett is the creative director of an Indigenous musical festival, Áak’w Rock, which is held in Juneau. He has also been working on solo projects.

The first edition of Pan-Arctic Vision was held last year in northern Norway in the small community of Vadsø. Alaska’s 2023 contestant was Byron Nicholai, a musician from Toksook Bay in Western Alaska’s Yukon-Kuskokwim region.

It has yet to be determined whether Pan-Arctic Vision will become an annual event, according to the organization’s website.

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 cháatl, or halibut. Listen to the audio below to learn how to say cháatl.

The following transcript is meant to help illustrate the words and sentences. 

Kaxwaan Éesh George Davis: Cháatl. 

That means halibut.

Here are some sentences:

Kaxwaan Éesh George Davis: Cháatl agawdzi.ée has du atx̱aayí sákw.

They cooked halibut for them all to eat.

Keiyishí Bessie Cooley: Shg̱agwéi cháatl toox̱áa neech.

We always eat halibut in Skagway. 

Kooshdáakʼu Bill Fawcett: Haa cháatl kaseik.

They pull up halibut there. 

Ḵaakal.áat Florence Marks Sheakley: Lingít x̱ʼéixʼ yak’éi ya cháatl.

Halibut tastes good to people.

Keihéenák’w John Martin: Cháatl at x̱ʼéeshi ax̱ x̱ʼéi yakʼéi.

Halibut dryfish is delicious to me. 

You can hear each installment of Lingít Word of the Week on the radio throughout the week. 

Find biographies for the master speakers included in this lesson here.

Learn more about why we use Lingít instead of Tlingit here.

Monday is Indigenous Peoples Day, and a great resource for learning about the Indigenous people of Alaska is the Alaska State Museum in Juneau.

Qayak builder-in-residence Lou Logan is in the process of building a skin-on-frame qayak inside the museum, based on a frame that is over a century old and using designs that may go back thousands of years.

Logan is recreating a part of the past which was integral to how the Iñupiaq people of Alaska’s Northwest coastal region lived for millennia. But that area of Alaska is above tree-line, so the material needed for the frame of the skin-on-frame qayak had to be collected.

“I went around Juneau and looked for the right pieces and most of it or a lot of it is made out of driftwood,” Logan explained. “It’s basically a fancy dog walk and I look around and find these pieces and people stare at me when I’m bringing big stumps back to my truck and they’re wondering, what is he doing?

For Logan, building this qayak doesn’t just satisfy his interest in dog walking, driftwood hunting and wood working. It also provides him with a connection to family and heritage which he is still in the process of discovering.

“I’ve always liked kayaking and woodworking. This one has a family connection because this style was a type that was used by my grandmother’s people up in the village of Wales. So it combined all three things,” he said. “I don’t know a whole lot about that side of my family, so this is a way to learn.”

That connection runs deep in the building of this qayak. Each vessel is produced for the individual that is going to use it through body-measurements. Logan used a qayak acquired on King Island nearly 100 years ago that’s now in the museum’s collection as a reference.

“They’re made to fit, so you make one using anthropometric measurements, meaning you use your own arm span or fist width and so on, to come up with a size that fits you specifically,” Logan said. “I did the measurements for mine using my arm span for the gunnels, two and a half arm spans, and then I measured the one in the museum here, and it came down within an inch. So the guy that built his is about the same height as me.”

Exploring the history of the various styles of qayaks of Alaska also speaks to the often tragic history of Alaska Native people as they made contact with the earliest European explorers and traders.

“Especially towards the Aleutians, the Unangan people,” Logan explains. “The speculation is that theirs changed after contact because the Russians forced them to do so much sea otter hunting and so the qayaks got longer and skinnier to get faster so they could harvest faster and harvest more and more, because essentially their families were held hostage in return for these pelts.”

Logan has also built specialized tools for the project, like an adz for precision chopping and a shave horse for shaping wood.

Another connection Logan is making with the original builders of these qayaks is understanding that even with our modern advances, there is no replacing thousands of years of knowledge.

“I did try splitting it lengthwise but I failed miserably so I don’t have the skill that the old masters did, and they passed down this knowledge generation over generation and there’s been a couple generation breaks at least now,” he said. “So a lot of that info might be lost and so I’m here trying to reclaim some of that.”

Logan has a few more months work on this qayak, then he’d like to think about how to pass on what he is learning to the people of the area that these boats came from – his grandmother’s place of origin on the far western tip of the Seward Peninsula.

“Someday I would love to kind of bring this back to the the village or that area because I don’t know a lot of people building this type, but I need to get a few more done before I feel comfortable teaching others,” he said.

The final step of the qayak build will be fitting on the skin, something Logan will adapt using modern materials versus a traditional skin.

“Traditionally it was a walrus hide, split walrus hide for the style with maybe a bearded seal or an ugruk for the front, but it doesn’t last forever, it just lasts maybe two years and then you got to redo it,” he said. “I can’t really afford to do that and it’s hard to find. I want this to be a working example so I’m using nylon or polyester.”

He’s keeping it a working example, in hopes that this piece of Alaska Native history can continue to teach new generations of paddlers, woodworkers and driftwood hunters.

Logan will give a presentation at the Alaska State Museum at noon Monday about his qayak building process. It’s also the last chance to see the museum’s “Protection, Adaptation and Resistance” exhibit.