Alaska Native Arts & Culture

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski is introducing legislation to protect Native languages.

Murkowski and Sen. Tim Johnson, D-South Dakota, introduced the Native American Languages Reauthorization Act of 2014 this week. The act was first signed into law in 1992. Reauthorization would provide grants to indigenous language programs nationwide through 2019.

Murkowski could not be reached for comment Friday.

According to a news release from her office, some activities funded through the act include immersion programs, language schools and restoration programs.

“Native languages are at risk, and if they are not passed to the next generation the richness of our native cultures are at risk,” Murkowski said in the release.

She also thanked the Alaska Legislature for passing House Bill 216, which makes 20 Alaska Native languages official state languages. Gov. Sean Parnell is expected to sign the bill, making Alaska the second state after Hawaii to officially recognize indigenous languages.

Alaska Sen. Mark Begich is a co-sponsor of the Native American Languages Reauthorization Act.

A record number of University of Alaska Southeast graduates were honored this weekend during commencement ceremonies in Juneau, Ketchikan, and Sitka. Six hundred and eighty-five students received awards including bachelor’s and graduate degrees, occupational endorsements, and certificates.

The Juneau campus held its 43rd annual commencement ceremony Sunday at the UAS Rec Center.

Emily Rose King gave the student commencement speech to a packed audience. She spoke about not being afraid to fail.

“A college degree doesn’t ensure success. But I’m pretty sure that it means you know how to fail. It means that when presented with difficult readings, math problems, lovers, crazy people, you can figure out how to proceed. After we take off these really, really interesting hats, we’re going to have every opportunity to potentially succeed and fail and we should probably take them,” King said.

Juneau playwright and screenwriter Dave Hunsaker received an Honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters for his contribution to literary and dramatic arts in Alaska.

He’s known for the play “Yup’ik Antigone” which toured in Alaska, New York, France and Greece. Hunsaker was adopted by Tlingit elder Austin Hammond, Sr., of Haines into the Luxaax.ádi Clan.

As the commencement speaker, Hunsaker described his connection to the Native community which began as a school music teacher in Tyonek, an Athabascan community on Cook Inlet.

“Since that beginning it has been my extraordinary privilege to be associated in my work and life with the Native people of Alaska and their ancient cultures that are so inextricably tied to this land,” Hunsaker said.

Hunsaker gave this advice to the graduating class of 2014:

“Keep and cherish your identity as an Alaskan always, however you define it, however it has shaped you. It is a proud legacy that we all share. Let it give you stature in the wide world and pride. Congratulations everyone and good luck. Gunalchéesh. Thank you.”

About 90 percent of UAS graduates are from Alaska. Nearly 12 percent are Alaska Native or American Indian. This is first time UAS has had graduates with a Bachelor of Liberal Arts in Alaska Native Languages and Studies.

The U.S. Department of Interior has proposed a rule change that would allow Alaska tribes to ask the federal government to hold their lands in trust.

The decision isn’t always granted, but yesterday’s announcement is a legal turn that could vastly expand tribal sovereignty in Alaska.

Tribal advocates are celebrating the Department’s announcement. Native American Rights Fund Attorney Heather Kendall-Miller says it corrects a wrong-headed policy that excluded Alaska tribes from an important tool of self-governance.

“This is huge. It is a major shift in federal policy that treats Alaska tribes similarly to tribes in the Lower 48,” Kendall-Miller says.

If the federal government agrees to take a tribe’s land in trust, it in effect creates a patch of Indian Country, where state jurisdiction is limited and tribes can have law enforcement powers. The Interior Department cites the rule as a way to improve public safety in Alaska villages.

The rule would apply only to lands owned by tribes, not the millions of acres owned by Alaska Native corporations. Kendall-Miller says most Native villages sit on a patchwork of different types of land, so the rule change is limited in creating village-wide tribal law enforcement.

“Clearly it’s not going to wind up being the panacea to fix all problems in rural Alaska, but it very well may be a potential model that would work for some communities,” Kendall-Miller says.

Kendall-Miller won a federal district court case last year arguing the secretary is allowed to take Alaska tribal lands in trust. Anchorage attorney Don Mitchell, an ardent opponent of Alaskan tribal sovereignty, says creating trust status for tribally owned land conflicts with the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.

“It certainly is rolling back ANCSA, and that’s exactly why the proponents of this change have persuaded their friends within the Department of Interior to do this,” Mitchell says.

Mitchell says the implications could be enormous, because any land owner, including Native corporations, could transfer lands to an Alaska tribe, and those lands could become in effect, an Indian reservation.

With ANCSA, Congress agreed to transfer millions of acres and nearly one billion dollars to newly created Native corporations. The state of Alaska, like Mitchell, contends the settlement was Congress’s rejection of creating Indian reservations across Alaska. The state is appealing the court decision that paved the way for the proposed policy change. Kip Knudson, who runs Gov. Sean Parnell’s Washington, D.C. office, says it’s important to defend the integrity of the 1971 settlement act.

“I mean, it’s sort of the underpinning of our land status in the state and it’s an underpinning of a tremendous amount of economic activity in the state, and so if we start unraveling it or amending it, there’s probably a lot of things that have to be taken into consideration,” Knudson says.

Kendall-Miller says Congress never took away the Interior secretary’s power to accept Alaska tribal land in trust. The announcement today seemed to split Alaska’s two U.S. senators.  Mark Begich said it would improve tribal self-determination, while Lisa Murkowski said she had questions about breaking established policy. The Interior Department now kicks off a 60-day comment period on the proposed rule.

Bethel’s Megan Leary is the 2014 first runner up of the Miss Indian World competition, which concluded Saturday night at the Gathering of Nations in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

The contest brings together young, indigenous culture bearers from all over North America. Leary won the competition for best speech and best talent for her skin sewing.

Arriving at the Bethel Airport to cheers from family and friends, Leary, says it was them who made it possible for her to compete.

“Knowing that they were here at home watching me and I was a role model for them, and I was a leader for them When I there I was saying Win or lose, I came here to represent people back home, just thinking of them,” Leary said.

Twenty-three-year-old Leary is Yup’ik and Athabascan. She grew up in Kalskag and Napaimute, and graduated from Bethel Regional High School. She was Miss Cama-i 2013 and went on to become Miss World Eskimo Indian Olympics, or Miss Weio. The Miss Indian World competition involved a personal interview with judges and an impromptu public speaking competition.

“It was a funny question, my question was describe traditional food from your tribe,” Leary said. “So I described akutak, stinkheads, blackfish, stuff like that people were kind of grossed out the things we eat,”

For a traditional talent presentation, Leary showed off traditional skin sewing, which was done with the help of people all along the river. She was also judged on a dance performance in front of 20,000 people. Leary says she was thinking of all those she represents.

“You know, it made you so proud of who you were and what you’re representing,” Leary said. “You’re not going down there as yourself, you’re going down as everybody in your family, everybody in the Kuskokwim, everybody in the state of Alaska, because I was representing my title of Miss World Eskimo Indian Olympics, I’m going as an ambassador of Alaska Natives, I went down there for everybody, and all my ancestors.”

Taylor Thomas, a 21-year-old member of the Shoshone Bannock tribe, was crowned Saturday night as Miss Indian World.

A memorial service for Cyril George Sr. is Wednesday, 6 p.m., at Elizabeth Peratrovich Hall in Juneau. The Tlingit elder died April 15 at the age of 92.

Over his life, he was a fisherman, boat builder, master storyteller, and man of great faith.

George was of the Deisheetan clan (Raven/Beaver) of Angoon and lived in the Admiralty Island community most of his life. He moved to Juneau in 1975.

One of his five sons, Richard George, recalls his father to be a successful seiner, halibut and herring fisherman.

He also served his community. He was elected to the Angoon City Council and was mayor. He was on the first board of directors of Sealaska, the regional Native corporation for Southeast, from 1972 to 1974, and served as a member of the board for Kootsnoowoo Inc., Angoon’s village corporation.

Richard George remembers his father as a strong man.

He made decisions which always seemed to be the proper decision. That’s what I was impressed with when I was young,” he says. 

Cyril George attended Sheldon Jackson high school and college in Sitka in the late 1930s, where he became a machinist and learned to build boats. The Presbyterian school was tasked with helping Tlingit shipwright Andrew Hope build the Princeton Hall, a replacement vessel for the church mission fleet.

“I wasn’t the only one that had this feeling of an enormous undertaking when he started to build this boat,” Cyril George recalled in a 2007 interview with KTOO.

“I could weld, I did everything in the machine shop. I was with him all the way from lining up the motor, the shaft, setting up the electrical,” he said. George also built the shaft.

It took a year to complete the Princeton Hall. Then in 1941, just a few days after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the boat was to be launched.  It had already been conscripted by the U.S. Navy.

George said all the Sheldon Jackson students trooped down to the harbor to watch the launch.

“When the Navy started to tow it away all the kids were crying. I was crying. I don’t think there was anybody that wasn’t crying,” he said.

After the war, the Princeton Hall was returned to the Presbyterians and it traveled Southeast Alaska waters for years, going village to village.

While George helped build it, he had never been on the boat. Many years later, he had a number of cruises on the Princeton Hall after it was purchased by the late Bill Ruddy. Bill and Kathy Ruddy became close friends with Cyril George, the boat builder, the musician, and the Tlingit storyteller.

George gradually began to lose his hearing. For several years, Kathy Ruddy took on the role of stenographer – typing out conversations for him.

“It really helped him to have things written down so he could look over your shoulder and know what people were saying,” she says.

The hearing loss didn’t slow him down. He continued to play his guitar and sing, visit classrooms, churches, and be involved in the community. He was a delegate to the Juneau chapter of Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, which provided a transcriber for George, so he could be actively involved.

“You know for a guitarist and a really excellent musician, hearing loss is a really poignant thing,” Ruddy says. “The fact that he maintained this constant sense of gratitude even as hearing was failing is just a tribute to his character.”

As a fluent Tlingit speaker, George liked to teach his language and often went to Tlingit language classes at the University of Alaska Southeast, taught by Lance Twitchell.

“In Tlingit he’d tell us: ‘I just feel wonderful whenever I’m looking upon your faces and you guys are learning your language.’ He said he felt that it (Tlingit language) was drifting away from us but then just seeing us fills him with hope.”

Son Richard George calls his father a Godly man. In the 2007 interview, Cyril George talked about a battle with alcohol, which he said he finally won through prayer and his faith.

He was a member of the Salvation Army and was a local commissioned officer known as a sergeant major. He often wore his uniform and always wore it to church, says Lt. Lance Walters of the Salvation Army in Juneau.

He explained one day that he put it on to remind him of what he came from and that he wasn’t going back,” Walters says.

George will be buried on Killisnoo Island near Angoon.

Supporters of a bill to make 20 Alaska Native languages official state languages organized a 15 hour sit-in protest at the Capitol on Sunday. Their dedication paid off early this morning, when the Alaska Senate passed the measure on an 18-2 vote.

The Alaska House passed the bill last week, 38-0. It now heads to Governor Sean Parnell for his signature.
Dozens of people of all ages and races, many wearing their Easter finest,  gathered in the hall outside Sen. Lesil McGuire’s office. The Anchorage Republican and chair of the Senate Rules Committee had the power to put House Bill 216 on the Senate’s calendar. But with end of the legislative session looming, the bill’s supporters worried it was getting caught up in last-minute, behind-the-scenes politics.

The group started their vigil just after noon, singing, dancing, and playing drums, and talking about why Alaska Native languages are so important.

“Our language is everything. It’s the air we breathe. It’s the blood that flows through our veins,” said Lance Twitchell, a professor of Native Languages at the University of Alaska Southeast.

HB 216 would add the state’s indigenous languages to a statute created by a 1998 voter initiative, which made English the official language of Alaska. While the bill is largely symbolic, Twitchell said it’s important to recognize all languages as equal.

“That’s all we want is equal value,” he said. “And there’s nothing wrong with standing up and saying that. It takes a lot of courage to do that. And it takes a lot of something else to try and go against that.”

Many elders who attended the sit-in recalled being punished as children for speaking their first languages. Irene Cadiente of Juneau said her teachers would hit her with a ruler when they caught her speaking Tlingit.

“Sometimes I wonder when my hand hurts, is it on account of me speaking Tlingit?” Cadiente asked. “My hands were rulered. Is that why it hurts? I never forget that.”

Cadiente said she’s proud that her great grandchildren are now learning to speak the language.

Heather Burge, a student in the Native Languages program at UAS, said she didn’t understand how HB 216 could become controversial.

“We should be at the point where this should be a non-issue,” Burge said. “But it’s still scary to some people, which is a little disheartening. But hopefully we can get past this.”

After the group had been outside McGuire’s office for about 30 minutes, the senator’s Chief of Staff Brett Huber announced the bill would be scheduled for a floor vote. McGuire later made an appearance of her own.

“We just got the bill, so we’re going as fast as we can,” McGuire said. “But it’s nice to see all of you. Thank you for coming, and thank you for your passion. I know you have support.”

It was 3 a.m. by the time the measure finally reached the floor.

Sen. Donny Olson, D-Golovin, who’s Inupiaq, said the bill would not have made it through the legislature without a groundswell of support.

“The elders, the youth, Native and non-Native,” Olson said.

Senate Majority Leader John Coghill, R-North Pole, took responsibility for the delay in getting the bill to the floor. Coghill tried to explain what he hoped to achieve last week when he proposed amending the bill to create a new category in statute for “ceremonial languages.”

“I thought if you had them in that place of honor you would aspire to them and honor them,” Coghill said. “Where if you put them in this place, they’re more likely to be under tension that I think would be harder to get to the honor and easy to get to divisiveness.”

Coghill said he was an apologetic no vote. He added that he would be willing to own up to it if he ends up being proven wrong. Sen. Pete Kelly, R-Fairbanks, was the other Senator to vote against the bill.

After the bill passed, supporters gathered outside Senate chambers to embrace each other and shed tears of joy. Twitchell summed up the feeling with a Tlingit phrase.

“We succeeded. We obtained,” Twitchell said after first saying it in Tlingit.

The bill explicitly says the official language designation does not require the state or local governments to conduct business in languages other than English. But Twitchell said putting them in the same part of the law builds momentum for future generations of Native language speakers.

If Gov. Sean Parnell signs the bill into law, Alaska will become just the second state after Hawaii to officially recognize indigenous languages.

(Editor’s note: Story audio has been added to this post)