Alaska Native Arts & Culture

Traditional canoes  — or yaakw —  landed in Juneau Tuesday to mark the start of the biennial Celebration festival, a gathering of Indigenous people in Southeast that attracts thousands. The canoes came from across the region and parts of Canada, journeying for days to get here. 

Eight yaakw made circles in front of a crowd waiting at Juneau’s Auke Recreation Area. Some carried over a dozen people, holding formline paddles and wearing life vests over their regalia. 

Leaders on each boat asked permission to come ashore, and Seikoonie Fran Houston, an Áak’w Ḵwáan elder, asked their reason for coming. One paddler who came from Haines answered.

“We’re here for Haa Shagoon, for those before us, and for those yet to come,” he said. “For our kids and our grandchildren on the beaches, so this way of life lives on forever. Aatlein gunalchéesh.” 

Master Carver Wayne Price made several of the yaakw landing in Juneau today. He came in on one from Haines. 

“Five dugouts on one journey, all on one journey, at one time is history in the making,” he said. “How long has it been since we’ve had that kind of gathering?”

Thirteen-year-old Mallory Willard Flanery and her twin brother live in Ketchikan, but they paddled here from Kake.

“Each day would be about a couple hours, we would paddle,” she said.

But she said she wasn’t tired, and she would do it all over again.

Another group of yaakw, including members of the One People Canoe Society, finished their journey to Juneau Tuesday by landing downtown. 

Roberta Jack was on the first yaakw that landed there. It was paddled by Alaska Native veterans and their families. Jack traveled from Wrangell. Three generations of her family waited for her onshore.

“I got teary-eyed,” Jack said. “I got teary-eyed to see them here, watching their grandma paddle in.”

She said she was excited to celebrate her culture, surrounded by family and friends.

Her granddaughter, Summer Woodbury, stood next to her as they watched more yaakw come in.

“They’re beautiful and they’re really big and long and I like the paddles and the flags on them,” she said. 

Over the coming days, events across downtown will honor and uplift the culture of Lingít, Haida and Tsimshian people through dances, cultural demonstrations and art markets and exhibits. It’s hosted by Sealaska Heritage Institute. 

More information and the full schedule of official Celebration events can be found on Sealaska Heritage Institute’s website.

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

Last week, an Alaska Coach Tours bus backed into a totem pole at the Juneau-Douglas City Museum. 

The pole, one of the oldest in downtown Juneau, has a small dent now. City engineers have made sure that it’s still stable. But for the son of the man who carved the pole 57 years ago, the accident was a reminder of what the piece means to him — and to his father’s legacy. 

The next day, Brian Wallace stood on the sidewalk near the museum. He pointed at skid marks where the bus jumped the curb while turning around on the narrow, two-way street. 

“Well, I was assuming the worst,” he said. 

His father, Amos Wallace, carved the pole when Brian was a kid. 

The pole, also known as a kootéeyaa, has stood outside the museum for over 50 years. Wallace said he remembers helping his dad with it, pulling large patches of bark off the felled tree. 

Amos died twenty years ago. 

Wallace said he rushed to the museum the moment he had a break from work after hearing about the accident. He’s glad the damage was minimal, but he said the pole is irreplaceable.

“The dent is not that big, but, well, if you dent a little Volkswagen Bug, no big deal,” he said. “You can get it fixed. This is one of a kind. If something terrible happens to it, it’s gone. A part of my dad’s legacy would be gone.” 

This wasn’t the first time Wallace has seen someone damage the pole. 

“Twenty years ago, I was driving by and I saw a couple of clowns who had climbed up on this — they were getting their family photo taken. I slammed the brakes right there and got on my truck and came and got them off,” he said

He pointed to another dent on the pole.  

“And that was knocked off by one of the boys that was on top of it,” Wallace said.

Last summer, Sealaska Heritage Institute got reports that cruise tourists were climbing on some of the new poles along the Seawalk. They put up signs about the importance and sacredness of kootéeyaa to Southeast Alaska Native people. 

For Wallace, this pole matters on a deeply personal level, too. 

 “This thing is real near and dear to me. I remember dad carving it when I was six years old in 1967,” he said. “And it’s a great sense of pride for me every time I come by and have a look at that. Yeah, my dad did that.”

 City Museum Director Beth Weigel said Alaska Coach Tours representatives came to the museum and told her the driver was trying to get to the Alaska State Museum and got confused, then tried to turn around when they realized the error.

“We’re really grateful to the community for alerting us immediately to what they witnessed, and that we’re grateful to the tour company for being so responsive and helpful in resolving any issues that have resulted from the accident,” she said.

A representative from Alaska Coach Tours said in an email that the driver reported the accident to management.

The beloved festival known as Celebration returns to Juneau this week. 

Since its inception in 1982, the biennial gathering has brought Lingít, Haida and Tsimshian people together in the capital city to celebrate their cultural survival and share it with the general public. 

It’s hosted by the Sealaska Heritage Institute. This year, it will happen from Wednesday, June 5 through Saturday, June 8. But the unofficial kickoff happens Tuesday, when traditional canoes — or yaakw — will land at 11:30 a.m. both downtown across from the Ramada and at Auke Recreation Area. 

The heart of the four day event is dancing. Performances will basically be going on all day, every day.

This year’s event promises almost 1,600 dancers from 36 dance groups, including the lead dance group Dakhká Khwáan Dancers or “People of the Inland,” a Lingít group from Whitehorse, Canada.

They’ll head up Wednesday evening’s grand entrance parade with drumming and singing

In addition to dance, the festival features a Native food contest, a daily Native art market, an Indigenous fashion show, a regalia review and brand-new Chilkat robes on display. 

There will also be an art exhibit at the Walter Soboleff Building and evening film screenings at Gold Town Theater. 

Events are happening across town at Centennial Hall, Elizabeth Peratrovich Hall, the Sealaska Heritage Institute Arts Campus and the Alaska State Library.

Áak’w Rock will also host Indigenous music events on Friday and Saturday and a multi-generational art show opens Wednesday at Alaska Robotics Gallery. 

The full schedule of official Celebration events can be found on Sealaska Heritage Institute’s website. 

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

Correction: A previous version of this story mistakenly said canoes will be landing at Douglas Boat Harbor. They will land downtown across from the Ramada instead. 

Inside Kasaan’s carving shed in early May, Eric Hamar is hard at work.

Hamar is a Haida artist and carver, and he spends his days carving in the workshop in Kasaan, a small village of about 30 people on Prince of Wales Island. The thick smell of cedar in the air, Hamar’s surrounded by canoes, paddles, a half-carved totem pole, and tools.

On this particular day, he was busy getting ready for Celebration, the huge every-other-year gathering of Indigenous people in Southeast Alaska. The event lasts four days and is the largest gathering of Lingít, Haida, and Tsimshian peoples in the world.

Hamar’s preparation for the festival is a little more involved than packing socks and a toothbrush. His task at hand was planing wooden paddles.

“Planes are kind of interesting because they’ll chirp,” he said, as he ran a hand-planer tool down the length of the paddle, laughing at its dullness. “But when they’re really sharp, and you run down a piece of wood it goes ‘chirp’ like a bird, which this one is not doing.”

Hamar is part of a group that’s making a 10-day, 250 mile journey from Kasaan to Juneau, where Celebration is held, in canoes they carved themselves.

According to Hamar, paddles aren’t his favorite thing to work on.

“I like three dimensional stuff a lot more,” Hamar said.

There’s also a large totem pole sitting on saw horses in the corner. He’s been working on that for about a year. It has three watchmen on the top and below that, the beak of a raven juts out.

“[It’s] more exciting for me as an artist,” Hamar said of the totem. “But you know, there’s something beautiful about the simplistic nature of something like a paddle as well.”

Across the room, there is a stack of rough pieces of wood carved into a paddle shape, waiting to be sanded.

“It’s pretty exciting to be going on this journey for the first time in our own canoes from our own community and meeting up with a lot of other communities on the way,” Hamar said as he worked. “I think, hopefully, it’ll bring a lot of inspiration to the people and hopefully get some folks excited about maintaining the traditions.”

Twenty-six paddlers were set to depart Kasaan in three canoes. The group is all ages.

“Well, the youngest has to be six months, because that’s my baby,” Hamar laughed.

The carver’s whole family is with him on the voyage — his mom and dad, sister and brother-in-law, and his wife and two daughters. One of the girls is six months old and the other is almost six years old.

To get to the village of Kasaan, you turn off the main route that spans Prince of Wales Island and then follow a dirt and gravel logging road for nearly an hour through dense forest and timber operations and then, suddenly, there it is.

To bolster the group, some paddlers will be coming to join them from other communities all over Southeast Alaska, and according to Hamar, a couple as far away as Seattle.

They plan to make stops in Thorne Bay, Coffman Cove, Wrangell, Petersburg and then camp the rest of the way up the coast to Juneau.

There is an 18-foot canoe hanging in the shop. Hamar said that wasn’t one of the ones headed to Celebration. It wasn’t ready yet. The wood of the canoe fanned out but then curled back in on itself like a flower that hasn’t bloomed. Hamar said it needed to be steamed.

“Basically, you just take it down to the beach and you start a big fire and you put a bunch of rocks in the fire. And then you fill [the canoe] up with saltwater. And then you put the hot rocks in there until it starts boiling and cover it with a tarp. And then it just kind of naturally falls open as the wood heats up,” Hamar explained.

Once it’s steamed, the carvers will prop the hull open with sticks so it holds its shape as the wood cools. Eventually, the seats and crossbars — called thwarts — are what will keep the wooden canoe in shape.

Finally, strips of wood are steamed in and riveted to the sides to act as ribs.

“That’s kind of the last step before finishing it with oil and paint or whatever you’re doing,” Hamar said.

Since the canoes are one large piece of wood, they’re prone to becoming overly dried out and splitting. Hamar paints the bottoms with tar to lock in the moisture.

Hamar said making a canoe is a long and difficult process. In his 20 years carving with his dad, he had built just the three hanging in the shed. He said that’s because it’s hard to find the perfect piece of wood. Plus, they aren’t something you can easily sell.

“So then the person who might be using it isn’t actually going to be able to afford it, unless it’s being sold as an art piece, which kind of isn’t the point, right?” Hamar explained, adding that the canoes require a lot of maintenance. But back in the day, people depended on them to get around.

“You [probably] would have had the time to take care of it. It was important,” Hamara said. “It’s now important in a different way, I think. It’s important for the culture and ceremonial use more than anything.”

That’s not to say that the vessels are strictly ceremonial though.

“This one is covered in pine tar, and seal oil, and blood and guts, and it’s pretty beat up and that’s why I like it,” Hamar said, pointing to a canoe he and a friend had used the previous weekend to catch a 250-pound seal. “It looks good that way! Looks like it gets used, because it does.”

Hamar’s work was interrupted by a group of students from Klawock filing into the shed. They were there to learn about sustainable harvesting and the important sacrifices that trees and animals make to provide for them.

“When we’re talking about something like a totem pole, we have to make sure that we’re not only looking after the ones that we cut down and doing a good job to make sure that — that’s why we make them look really pretty,” Hamar told the kids, gesturing at the totem pole next to him. “And you don’t want to kill something and have it just go to waste.”

Hamar isn’t just a carver. He said he loves the carving shed and his work teaching people the traditional ways. But he said that culture and artists should evolve, as well. In his free time, he is working on an art piece commissioned by the Anchorage Museum.

Celebration kicks off June 5, and Hamar had a stack of paddles to finish before his group would head out in late May. They were scheduled to launch on Saturday, May 25.

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

Kanik Corinne James is a Juneau-based formline artist who first started selling her designs under the brand Tlingit Aesthetics when she was 18. She learns from traditional formline styles, but adds her own creative twists to them.

Kanik recently designed a piece called “Auntea” and told KTOO what inspired the design.

Listen:

This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.

Kanik Corinne James:

It’s kind of like a stylized face in the shape of a teapot. So like, the mouth would be the spout. And then on the back of the head would be a claw, almost, or a foot, depending on how you look at it — and that’d be the handle of the teapot.

Something about me is I love tea, in general. And I just became an auntie, so it felt very fitting. And I have so many aunties in my life that just hold me up and support me. And so I felt like it’d be a fun design to dedicate to all my aunties out there. 

Kanik áyá ax̱ saayí. G̱aanax̱.ádi ḵa Gitlaan Ganhada áyá x̱at. Kichx̱áanx’ Metlakatla Ḵwaande. 

My Lingít name is Kanik, and my English name is Corinne. And I’m G̱aanax̱.ádi and Gitlaan Ganhada from Ketchikan and Metlakatla. But I grew up here in Juneau. 

It’s been interesting. I was definitely worried at first I wouldn’t be taken seriously, because sometimes it’s looked down upon wanting to live off of your art, or seen as impossible. But I feel like the community here is so amazing. And everyone’s so accepting, and they’re so encouraging.

But starting a business has been — that has been interesting. There’s lots of growing pains. I think I officially started my business when I was 18, so shortly after I graduated high school. 

I grew up here in Juneau, my whole life. So I’ve always been surrounded by my Lingít culture and heritage. But growing up as a Native in the public school system was kind of hard, to be proud of who I was. So it took me a while to actually get into art. But when the pandemic started, and I felt very disconnected from the world, because everything was online, I couldn’t talk to anyone in person. That’s when I really started connecting to my culture again. And art was what brought me back. 

So for my inspirations, I become such a fangirl when it comes to our women Indigenous artists. And Alison Bremner would be one of the first people I mention. Alison Bremner was the first artist who opened my eyes to the possibilities of what I could do when I grow up. Like when I grow up, I want to be like, Alison, she’s really cool. And growing up, I didn’t really hear about women Indigenous artists, so it never really occurred to me that I could be an artist until I met Alison during middle school Sealaska camp. And ever since then, I’ve just been like a fan girl. 

I feel like lately Juneau has been impressing me with Áak’w Rock and some more traditional classes like weaving and carving. And even like some harvesting classes, which has been pretty cool to see. And Sealaska has also been doing a really good job at offering these classes to the community. And I think UAS is getting there as well. But I feel like, since the Indigenous community is — we’re still learning about our culture as well. And so this is, this is all this has been a learning experience for the community, I think. But it’s been really cool to witness like, I feel so grateful to exist at the same time as all these artists and all these really cool events that are starting.

Several dozen people gathered in the rain last week across the street from a coned-off Ketchikan property. They held signs saying “No Fake Totem Poles” and “Protect Indigenous Artists.” They faced a small construction vehicle sitting atop a pile of rubble spilling onto two carved, wooden poles.

Leaders from a number of Native groups turned out for the May 5 protest, including Rob Sanderson, 3rd Vice President of the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska.

“The bottom line is that our people have come too far, too long to get to where we’re at,” Sanderson said to the crowd, gesturing over to the poles lying on the ground. “When I look at these poles, that’s a slap to the face of our local artists here in Ketchikan and abroad.”

At first glance, the poles resemble the art forms carved by Northwest Coast Indigenous artists for thousands of years. But in an interview with the Ketchikan Daily News, owner Joseph Machini said that he bought the poles from a non-Native Minnesota man named Carl Muggli in 2008.

In a bizarre twist, Muggli was later charged with murdering his wife with one of the 700-pound poles they crafted as part of their business. He eventually pleaded guilty to second-degree unintentional murder in that case.

Machini acknowledged that unfortunate history to the Daily News, and explained that he had sought poles from out-of-state suppliers because he wanted something done quickly, and “the Indians here were very busy.” Machini plans to have the imitation poles adorn five small kiosk shops where he will sell local arts and crafts.

Back at the protest, Willard Jackson, a Teiḵweidí Brown Bear spiritual leader, shared a story about respect before leading a song.

“This man doesn’t got any respect! Doesn’t have any at all,” Jackson said, referring to Machini. “It’s time we stand up and move forward as Native people! This is our land. It lives in our heart!”

Machini’s property sits directly across from one of Ketchikan’s cruise ship docks, and a number of disembarking tourists stopped to watch the protest. Ketchikan Indian Community President Norm Skan said that demonstration was just the beginning.

“Because really, as I always say, somebody from Iowa getting off one of these cruise ships is not going to know the difference,” Skan said. “But we know.”

Skan said he appreciates the business idea of creating spaces to sell local goods, but the imported poles are a different story.

“We don’t want these fake poles here made by a non-native person in Minnesota brought to our community and put up in Tlingit land,” Skan said. “And I’m surprised that our local politicians would put up with that, it just don’t make sense to me.”

In fact, one local politician did raise the issue at a Ketchikan City Council meeting days before the protest. Vice-Mayor Janalee Gage addressed her fellow council members during the citizen comment section.

“If we allow these poles to be raised, we will be no better than the individual who thought bringing those poles here that were carved by a non-native from Minnesota was okay,” Gage said. “This is appropriation at its finest.”

Gage cited the 1990 Indian Arts and Crafts Act, which prohibits the sale of products that are falsely marketed as being produced by Native artists.

“The owner may not be selling these poles, but he is selling an idea to those unsuspecting visitors, and our locals, that get off the ships,” Gage said. “They will think these are real, Native art.”

Gage requested a future agenda item to discuss what can be done.

City Manager Delilah Walsh has been looking into what potential regulation might look like to share with the Council. In a phone interview, she said the city works closely with Native organizations to promote authentic Alaska Native art.

“And we very much want to not only preserve, but to support not only that historic aspect of our local culture, but to respect what those items reflect,” Walsh said.

Walsh said that was the purpose behind the creation of the Totem Heritage Center, and its Native Art Studies program.

“It’s absolutely not acceptable for culturally appropriated poles to be surrounded with debris and treated as such,” Walsh said.

When it comes to the Indian Arts and Crafts Act though, Walsh said the law is really only aimed at fake items that are displayed for sale, whereas the Minnesotan poles are simply decorative.

Some residents are also concerned that the property owner has been drilling into the hillside to make room for the kiosk buildings. A busy, one-lane tunnel runs through that same hillside, and critics say the excavation endangers both the tunnel and the homes directly above it.

Walsh said Machini’s original building permit did not include permission to excavate, but once he was granted that, he obtained the services of an engineering firm which has been monitoring for seismic activity from the drilling. Walsh said thus far, the operation is structurally sound.

As far as what city management can do to intervene, Walsh said their authority is limited to building codes.

The city actually filed a lawsuit against Machini in 2015 for failing to remove the burned down structure of a building he owned on the same tunnel-adjacent property. But Walsh said that didn’t come into play when approving his current building permit.

“Simply because, building code does not talk about prior performance,” Walsh said. “So code doesn’t say ‘if you had a bad relationship or interaction with the city in the past.’ That’s not something that would be considered.”

The City Council will discuss its regulatory authority over the imitation totem poles at its next meeting on Thursday. Walsh said the Council could try to enact new regulations, but that may be difficult due to the First Amendment rights of private property owners.