Alaska Native Arts & Culture

More than two weeks after Neilga Koogéi Taija Revels’s regalia was stolen from her Juneau home, she says it’s been returned anonymously by someone who refused the reward she offered.

“It was just shocking,” Revels said. “When she ripped open the garbage bag, she was like, ‘This is yours, right?’ And I started crying on her.”

Revels said the woman had bought the regalia from someone who was walking around downtown, trying to sell it. Later, she learned it was stolen from social media and news coverage.

Revels said sheʼs still missing over $15,000 worth of stolen possessions, but sheʼs at peace.

“Everything else compared to the regalia is just stuff we can replace or I can move on,” Revels said. “The regalia, having it back home feels like having a family member back home.”

After the regalia was stolen, Revels told KTOO that it represents an important piece of Hoonah’s history and a treasured connection to her late grandmother, who made it.

Police arrested Juneau man Anthony Perry for the burglary earlier this month, but at the time, the items were still missing. Perry was charged with five counts of burglary related to the break-in. The next hearing for the case is scheduled for March.

This story has been updated.

Ellen Bradley is a professional skier, but a trip to Eaglecrest last winter was the first time she’d ever skied in her traditional homelands. Now sheʼs working to help Alaska Native youth in Juneau get the same benefits that she has from the sport.

“Spending time on the land can address so many things in a person’s life,” she said. “But I think mental health is especially one of them — to just move your body with the land.”

Bradley hosted the Native Youth Snow Sports Community Night at Elizabeth Peratrovich Hall in Juneau on Friday. The event offered prizes, like a formline snowboard designed by Lingít artist James Johnson, and featured live music by Southeast Alaska favorite Ya Tseen. It’s part of a broader effort to remove some of the barriers that face Alaska Native youth who want to ski. 

Bradley, who is Lingít, learned to ski from her dad as a young child in Washington State. She says it helped her feel connected to the land, but she didnʼt see many other Indigenous people on the slopes while she was growing up. 

“I had my brother and I had my dad, and everyone else I skied with was white,” she said.

She says the sport can seem off-limits — even to people who are Indigenous to the land a ski mountain sits on. One program she hopes will start changing that offers ski trips for youth to Eaglecrest, hosted by the Douglas Indian Association. 

Benson Bullock with DIA was at the event, helping sign kids up for the trips. He says they started last spring.

“My supervisor said I should figure out a way to take kids up to Eaglecrest in March and April and get them lessons, get them gear, just get kids out on the mountain,” Bullock said.

This year, he wants the program to get even more kids on the mountain. The first trip will be in January, though the dates aren’t set yet. Another is planned for March.

Bradley thinks that efforts to get kids on skis could mean more Indigenous people in the skiing industry as a whole.

“So they can become the professional skiers, so they can become the ski instructors, the lifties. So they can eventually become the people running Eaglecrest and making the decisions about what skiing is, where it happens,” Bradley said.

Ryland Tompkins, one of dozens of kids at the event, could be one of the future pros Bradley is thinking of. He hasnʼt skied or boarded yet, but his uncle Joe Tompkins is a Paralympic ski champion.

Ryland said he wants to learn, too. 

Bradley is hopeful that more and more Indigenous kids will start participating in snow sports.

“I think the future of skiing in Alaska is Indigenous,” she said. 

Neilga Koogéi Taija Revels lost a lot of her things when someone broke into her home last month, but the theft of her grandmotherʼs regalia was the most devastating.

Police arrested Juneau man Anthony Perry for the burglary this week, but the items are still missing. Revels says the regalia represents an important piece of Hoonah’s history — and some of the few things she had left from her grandmother.

Juneau Police Department Public Safety Manager Erann Kalwara said the investigation isnʼt over. 

“I would say there’s always hope,” she said. “They’re still following up on leads and still working through things.”

Revels said she feels hope, too. A lot of that comes from the support she’s received from investigators and the Juneau community as a whole.

“I’m just really humbled at the amount of caring and energy that folks have been putting into this,” Revels said. “And it does help me have hope and keep hope that the regalia will come home.”

Police also arrested Perry for a break-in at a local business in early December. He’s been charged with seven theft and burglary counts related to the break-ins and additional charges related to his arrest.

Perry is currently being held at Lemon Creek Correctional Center. 

A preliminary hearing is scheduled for Jan. 12.

Neilga Koogéi Taija Revels’ grandmother started making regalia in Hoonah in the 60s. Back then, all she had to work with was acrylic paint from school and polyester fabric from the five and dime.

“She just keeps adding more and more and more on, and by the time you see her at the first Celebration in ‘82, you see this beautiful piece of regalia that’s finished,” Revels said. “She danced at the White House in this regalia.”

Revels calls that period “a kind of renaissance” — and she says her grandmother’s work is an important piece of Hoonah’s history. Now she’s searching for it, in pawn shops and online, after someone broke into her Juneau home while she was out of town.

Her family is offering a large reward, with no questions asked.

Revels was named after her grandmother, who died when Revels was a teenager. After she inherited the regalia, she wore it to every graduation and major event in her life. She says it allowed her to be closer to her memory.

“We have so little from her. We lost so many of her possessions when she died because her house got ransacked during her funeral, and the Hoonah fire happened,” Revels said.

Revels’ house got ransacked, too, while she was out of town. When she came home to Juneau on Wednesday, she found her things thrown about and sticky handprints all over the kitchen. The thieves had forced the door with a crowbar. It seemed like someone had been living there for days.

Revels says a friend had to tear her away from her search for the regalia. 

“I was like, crying on my knees going through all the clothing being like, ‘I just have to find the regalia,’” she said. “It was just the garment bag, ripped open.”

The thieves took a lot of other things, too: gold beads, otter pelts and moccasin tops that her great-grandmother beaded in the 1940s. Also expensive things, like her PlayStationS5 and her trademark MAC lipstick. 

She says another irreplaceable thing, besides the regalia, is a cherished bracelet she was given as a baby, signed by the late silver craftsman Scott Douglas. 

She says this latest loss of important family heirlooms reminds her of the trauma her family has endured for generations. She hopes someone will recognize the regalia or come forward to Juneau police or call the Juneau crime line, (907) 523-7700,  if they know anything. 

“I gu.aa yax̱ x’wán: have courage to say something,” she said. “It would mean so much. Our family’s gone through so much.”

Revels says police told her on Thursday night that they have a person of interest in the case. She says they recovered a few of her belongings, but not the regalia.

Wednesday is the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year.

For some in Juneau, it’s an opportunity to work toward healing from the colonial legacy of the Christian holiday season. 

Haa Tóoch Lichéesh Coalition, a violence prevention organization, will celebrate the solstice Wednesday afternoon with a potluck, gift-making, singing and dancing at Generations Southeast. 

“It’s like a way to decolonize the holiday a little bit and get into spirituality, set intention and come together in community to do some traditional-based healing projects,” said organizer Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist.

She said that for Indigenous people, forced conversion to Christianity during the boarding school era has caused continued harm. A holiday that is not linked to Christianity creates space for healing.

Ati Nasiah, also with Haa Tóoch Lichéesh, said the solstice is a time to be intentional about the coming year. 

“We’re asking what those seasonal shifts have to teach us about how to live values-aligned lives, where we’re in reciprocal and healthy relationship with ourselves, with the land, and really working with the seasons in which we find ourselves,” she said.

Attendees can make cottonwood salves, rose rollers and medicinal tea for loved ones.

Juneau will see six hours and 23 minutes of sunlight on the solstice. On Thursday, Juneau will slowly start getting more and more daylight again.

In the gymnasium at Sítʼ Eetí Shaanáx̱ Glacier Valley Elementary School on Friday, dozens of kids sang a song in Lingít at the top of their lungs. The song is about living through all four seasons as a tree, growing and losing leaves. 

The performance was part of a language and music program for kindergartners and first graders. Lorrie Heagy, who helps lead the program, said the violin lessons have been going for over a decade now, but the language part is in its second year.

“It’s not only a pedagogical tool,” Heagy said. “It’s a culturally responsive practice to be singing.”

Heagy said this program gives teachers an opportunity to make their curriculum more place-based and more reflective of Lingít culture. 

The older students play real instruments, but the kindergartners play model violins made of cardboard. For them, it’s a graduation of sorts. 

“That is a rite of passage to say you’re ready to hold the real one,” Heagy said. “Because they will drop it.”

Heagy is with Juneau Alaska Music Matters. She teaches the program as part of a team with musicians and language teachers. Her Lingít language teacher, Koolyéiḵ Roby Littlefield, contributes to the language plans and helps with the lessons over Zoom.

“When a teacher needs help with a phrase or something new or to correct their pronunciation, I’m right there,” Littlefield said. “And they just turn to the screen and say, “Koolyéik, a yax̱ ák.wé?’ is it like that?”

Yuxgitsiy George Holly is a teacher, musician and composer. Heagy asked him to help write the music.

“I didn’t have to think twice about that,” Holly said. “So I became part of that, started to write music to various poems and words of the various elders and (X̱ʼunei) Lance Twitchell. And it’s been a beautiful thing to see these children absorb it in such an easy and respectful and joyful way.”

Holly also conducts part of the performance. On command, the kindergartners raised their paper violins to their chins and bowed the imaginary strings with paper towel tubes. At the end of each song, the kids beamed at the applause. 

Next semester, these paper violinists will be fit for real violins and start learning to play. They already have a head start on the language.