Alaska Native Arts & Culture

This is Tongass Voices, a series from KTOO sharing weekly perspectives from the homelands of the Áak’w Kwáan and beyond. 

Last week was Nick Alan Foote’s first time at Celebration in almost two decades. In the time he’s been away, he’s made a home in Seattle, left a job in corporate graphic design, and become a full-time Lingít artist alongside his sister, Kelsey Mata Foote. His formline piece, “Sacred Embrace,” was chosen to represent this year’s Celebration. The theme was “Together We Live in Balance.”

He performed at Celebration with the Sheet’ka Ḵwáan dancers, who honored the 50 year anniversary of the Sitka Native Education Program, during their performance at Centennial Hall.

Listen:

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

My name is Nick Foote, Nick Alan Foote. My Lingít name is G̱at X̱wéech. I’m kind of from all over Southeast Alaska. I’ve lived in Juneau, Ketchikan, Sitka and Klawock in the summer. And I currently live in Seattle, but I’m up here for Celebration this year. 

My mom is in Arizona, and my sister’s in Texas, and my grandma is in Ketchikan. So everybody’s spread out, and it’s hard to get everybody together. And we are joining a dance group that we used to dance with in Sitka — the Sheet’ka Ḵwáan dancers. 

Yeah, so the piece I created for Sealaska Heritage Institute’s celebration this year is “Sacred Embrace.” On the outside, there’s a spirit embracing a human, and within that is a raven and an eagle. This represents tradition and culture and our connection to it. And then within it, in the very center, at the heart of it, is a salmon, which represents the connection that Alaska Native people have to the environment and the land. 

My parents always kept a lot of Alaska Native artwork around the house. My Aunt Kathy is an artist, and she would give us a lot of artwork. It was always on our walls. So I would just try to mimic and trace the shapes. And just, that was definitely, you know, the starter, the kicking off point into formline. 

But I also was just being exposed to it through the Johnson O’Malley program. I was also part of the Sitka Native Education Program, so I had a lot of exposure to the artwork because we would make our own regalia. So we would sew on, you know, clan crests to our robes. And by the time I got to college, I was learning Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, and so I kind of took what I knew about formline design and started bringing it over into the digital aspect.  

I think I really started to take formline design seriously as like a career when I moved to Seattle because I kind of got homesick a little bit for, you know, Alaska. And so I started drawing a lot, creating my own designs to kind of cure my homesickness.

It’s something that I feel like I’ve always been pulled to, but it just had to slowly evolve into making that leap from graphic design corporate world to making my own art. 

I would say, just keep drawing. That’s really…if you love it, do it every day, draw what you love. There’s a place for you in the creative world, and your art.

Every year, one dance group is chosen to lead the procession of dancers that begins and ends Celebration — the biennial gathering of Lingít, Haida and Tsimshian people in Juneau. 

About 1,600 people in regalia paraded up Willoughby Avenue to the entrance of Centennial Hall last week. Some of the 36 groups danced to the beat of a leader’s drum and calls. Babies in button blankets sat on their parents’ shoulders. The dancers came to Celebration from across Southeast Alaska and beyond.  

The Dakhká Khwáan dance group led that procession into the hall — and back out on Saturday. The group’s name means “people of the inland,” and many of them came all the way from Canada for this year’s festival.

Yadułtin Marilyn Jensen leads the group. She said Celebration was a chance for inland Alaska Native people to reconnect with their coastal relatives. 

“Another big theme for us is the unity between the coast and the interior, because there is an artificial, you know — like a boundary between us,” Jensen said. “And so, so much of our journey has been about reconnecting with our relatives here.”

The group formed in Carcross in 2007, but its roughly 40 members are from across Lingít Aaní. Jensen said she remembers how she felt at the first Celebration the group performed at, 16 years ago. 

“We were just a brand new group,” she said. “And you know, we came to Celebration just so unsure of ourselves, so scared, but you know, our people just lifted us up, encouraged us, supported us, loved us, and made us feel welcome.”

Jensen said leading the procession this year was a huge honor. 

“Never in our wildest dreams, ever thought that we’d be invited to be the lead group,” she said.

On the second night of Celebration at Centennial Hall, Jensen introduced a song the group wrote. 

“I don’t know about you guys, but we like to pick berries like nobody’s business,” Jensen said on stage. “So this song is in honor of our aunties, all our aunties, that take us out picking berries. So this is our song, and it’s also in honor of our relationship with the animals. So this is a song that honors our berries and our bears and our aunties.” 

Dancers — tiny and full grown — emerged from backstage and mimed berry-picking. Others, wearing bear pelts and masks, joined them and started picking their own berries. The people and the bears startled each other on stage, and Raven took the opportunity to swoop in for his own berries.

That was one of several songs the group performed over the course of the week. You can watch videos of the group’s performances — and the rest of Celebration — on the SHI youtube channel.

Disclaimer: KTOO 360TV is contracted to produce television and online video coverage of Celebration.

Southeast Alaska’s cutest models hit the stage at Centennial Hall on Thursday for Celebration’s Toddler Regalia Review. Celebration is the biennial festival of Lingít, Haida and Tsimshian culture in Juneau. 

For many, it takes a lot of courage to get in front of hundreds of people and strut your stuff. But 4-year-old Bonnie Lewis said it was fun. 

“It feeled like I was proud that there was people watching me. And I was wearing this purse, and I also was wearing my moccasins. And I was wearing my blanket that my mama made,” she said. 

Bonnie and her 2-year-old brother, Marlin, came to Celebration this week from Kake, with their parents. Her mom, Chelsea, said this Celebration is especially sweet for her. 

“It’s just super special because I’ve come as a single person, but this is the first time I got to come up with my family,” she said. “So it’s really fun.”

And it’s her kids’ first time partaking in the Toddler Regalia Review. It’s one of the most – if not the most – beloved events at Celebration. This year, nearly 30 toddlers participated, all between the ages of around two and five. Some wore Chilkat blankets, cedar hats, or moccasins. Others wore Ravenstail headbands or dance tunics. 

In front of a crowd of hundreds, each toddler walked — or was carried — to the center of the stage at Centennial Hall. There, an emcee described their toddler-sized regalia, who made it, and what it meant. 

The review is a friendly competition – technically there are no winners. But, from the cheers and smiles in the crowd to the giggles and waves on stage, it’s safe to say that everybody won.

Disclaimer: KTOO 360TV is contracted to produce television and online video coverage of Celebration.

A mother-daughter duo — a weaver and an engraver — won Best of Show at this Celebration’s juried arts show. Their winning entry was a spruce root hat called Dancing in the Summer Rain. 

At her table at the Celebration Native artists’ market, Goosh-shu Haa Jennie Wheeler said she was surprised to win. 

“I was totally shocked yesterday when we got the award, because I really was not expecting it,” she said. “They asked me to say something. I just lost it. I was too emotional.”

She wove the spruce root hat. Her daughter Káakaxaawulga Jennifer Younger wove light blue trade beads into the sides and engraved formline flowers on the hat’s copper top. Red beads line the crown and drip down the hat.  

It’s not the first piece they’ve made together, but the copper crown was something Younger said she hadn’t seen in spruce root weaving before. 

“I think we both just get super excited about doing something new that we hope is still honoring tradition,” Younger said. “By doing, hopefully, fine weaving, proper formline engrave design, yeah — so we just kind of just did it.”

The name of the piece — Dancing in the Summer Rain — comes from the way those new design elements come together musically. 

“When I added those strings of beads on the hat, and I put it on my head, and just the sound it made — It wasn’t like a loud rattle, but it just sounded like the rain on a roof or something,” Younger said.

The hat also won the endangered arts category. Wheeler has been bringing new spruce root weavers into the practice for more than a decade now. She said she’s especially happy to teach students who come from the place that was known for the art two hundred years ago.  

“I always wanted to bring spruce root weaving back to Yakutat, because Yakutat was known for the best spruce root weavers in the 1800s, and we lost it for many years,” Wheeler said. “And now I have five students born and raised in Yakutat, young adults, and they are doing really good.”

Dancing in the Summer Rain and the other winning pieces from the juried arts show will be on display in the Nathan Jackson Gallery at the Sealaska Heritage Institute Walter Soboleff building until December. 

Disclaimer: KTOO 360TV is contracted to produce television and online video coverage of Celebration.

More than 1,500 Indigenous dancers from across Southeast Alaska filled Willoughby Avenue and Centennial Hall for the Grand Entrance Procession of Celebration 2024 on Wednesday. 

The procession marks the kick-off of the four-day Celebration festival in Juneau — a biennial gathering that honors and uplifts the culture of Lingít, Haida and Tsimshian people.

Throughout the coming days, there will be dances, cultural demonstrations and art markets and exhibits. 

Here are some images from the grand entrance. Click on any photo for a slideshow view.

Disclaimer: KTOO 360TV is contracted to produce television and online video coverage of Celebration.

The owner of a prominent downtown Ketchikan property has agreed not to raise inauthentic totem poles carved by a convicted murderer next to his new shops. After meeting with leaders of the region’s Indigenous communities, Joseph Machini also agreed not to use the name “potlatch” for his marketplace.

The 420 Water St. property, which sits directly across from the docks where cruise ship tourists disembark, has been the subject of protest for more than a month. Residents voiced concern over the initial hillside excavation, but the leading concern was with the two large, totem-like poles that had been lying on the property until recently.

Vice-Mayor Janalee Gage raised the issue at a Ketchikan City Council meeting on May 2, calling the poles an affront to the Native community because they were carved by a non-Native man in Minnesota.

The controversy was further fueled by reports that the carver had been charged with murdering his wife with another pole that they were working on together, as part of their shared carving business. In interviews with the Ketchikan Daily News, Machini confirmed he bought the poles from the Minnesota carver in question, and that the murder happened some time after his purchase.

But on Monday, Native leaders announced that they had met with Machini, who apologized and promised not to use the contested poles on the property. Norm Skan, president of the Ketchikan Indian Community, said this was the outcome they were hoping for.

“And he really, he felt bad about it. And he understood it,” Skan said. “And he agreed to reach out to the people that he met yesterday, and to start following our protocols on what would be acceptable or not.”

Skan said he appreciated Machini’s willingness to meet with them, and that they accepted his apology.

“I really respected him for coming into what could have been an extremely hostile environment and just sitting there and listening,” Skan said.

Skan said he and other leaders intend to hold Machini to his word, and that they’ll continue seeking out ways to prevent this from happening in the future.

KRBD was not able to reach Joseph Machini for this story.