Alaska Native Arts & Culture

Hundreds of hours of Southeast Native Radio broadcasts are now archived on the internet and available for anyone to listen to.

Southeast Native Radio was broadcast over KTOO in Juneau for 16 years, from 1985 to 2001. The volunteer-produced show played as current affairs at the time, but twenty-one years later it’s become a window into the lives of the people and events that shaped Native culture in the region over the last century.

The catalog of recordings is lengthy and populated with names that make it a who’s who of Southeast Native culture at the turn of the 21st century.

Nora Marks Dauenhauer, for example, was a leading Lingít language scholar and historian, as well as Alaska’s Poet Laureate. She died in 2017, but her words are now just a click away.

The Southeast Native Radio Recordings collection is available through the Sealaska Heritage Institute, which received the donated DAT tapes, reel-to-reels, and CDs from KTOO in 2010. In all, there are 400 recordings.

Even the most seemingly mundane shows are abuzz with history because the people represent a generational bridge to an even deeper past.

In one of the archived recordings, Roy Peratrovich, husband of Elizabeth Peratrovich, talks about the first of five times he was elected Grand President of the Alaska Native Brotherhood, when he lobbied to bring the Grand Camp to Klawock:

Peratrovich: When you’re young, you do a lot of foolish things…

Host: Was this 1929?

Peratrovich: No, 1939.

Host – 1939, okay.

Peratrovich: So I told the group that if we are going to build up this group, this ANB, we’re going to have to do it big. Pride is going to help us. Not knowing some screwball was going to nominate me for Grand President. So I got elected.

Peratrovich died in 1989, a year after that appearance on Southeast Native Radio.

And there’s basketball, which is a large thread in the cultural fabric of Southeast Alaska. One of the stars of the annual Gold Medal Tournament was Sitkan Herb Didrickson.

He told Southeast Native Radio that the Sitka team had to catch a ride on a seine boat each March for the trip to Juneau.

“As I started to put my gear up in the top bunk, I found this old man was laying up there already,” Didrickson says. “He kind of got on board a little early, and no one knew that he was there. So he was trying to stowaway, you know. So we figured, well, the old fellow wants to go and see some games, and we all couldn’t sleep at the same time.”

Didrickson to this day is considered one of the greatest players produced in Southeast Alaska, whose chances at a pro career were thwarted by WWII. Didrickson died in 2017.

Sealaska Heritage Institute refers to the archive as a “treasure trove,” and that’s not far off. The recordings include a 13-part series produced in 1986 on the history of the ANB. There are also a number of Lingít language segments with fluent speakers like Dauenhauer and Walter Soboleff conversing on a range of subjects.

Note: The Southeast Native Radio Recordings project was supported by a Digitizing Hidden Collections or Recordings at Risk grant from the Council on Library and Information Resources. The grant program is made possible by funding from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Early Tuesday morning, a group of teenagers from Anchorage, Bethel and Mat-Su gathered in a large room at the Alaska Native Heritage Center. In front of them was a delicate, intricately woven Lingít robe, believed to be around 150 years old.

The robe was recently given to the center but is in such fragile condition that extreme care must be taken anytime it’s handled. Pieces of the fringe, which swooshes when the robe is used in a dance, have already fallen off and are kept in plastic bags with the robe.

Most robes in this condition are laid flat and displayed under glass, but for Lingít weaver Shelly S’eiskaa Laws, that would mean its secrets would remain hidden. “If you’re a weaver, you always want to see the back of whatever you’re looking at, because what it looks like on the front doesn’t necessarily show you everything,” she said. “So for understanding the piece and for educational purposes, you really want to see the back, and that’s hard to do behind the glass.”

Representatives from Trimble, an industrial technology company, were on hand to scan the robe with a 3D laser scanning system. Data from the scan will be used to create an interactive 3D model that will be displayed next to the robe.

After the scan was complete, the Heritage Center’s curator, Angie Demma, invited the students to examine the robe more closely. They quickly surrounded the table where the scan had taken place to get a closer look.

The high school students are participants in the Naaxein Teaching Partnership, a collaboration between the Alaska Native Heritage Center, the Alaska Native Science & Engineering Program and the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium. After the scan, the kids broke into smaller groups to learn more about 3D scanning, modeling and using drones to survey land and buildings.

In one room, four kids tried out different apps on an iPad, scanning Iñupiat objects from the Heritage Center’s collection. The 3D models created from the scans will be used in a sequel to the video game Never Alone, which is set in Iñupiat territory.

“Combining culture with technology is exciting for the kids,” said David Beveridge, senior director of environmental health and engineering at the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, which works on building clean water and sanitation projects in rural Alaska.

Later in the week, the students would work with ANTHC to use modeling software to create a 3D computer-aided design model for a water treatment plant.

“This gives them an opportunity to practice skills and see the technology used in a cultural setting that will make it much more exciting,” said Beveridge. “These are the tools that they’ll be using in their careers as well.”

“Alaska is in a really good position to receive funding for sanitation through the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act,” he said. “The current students that are in this program right now will be the ones that will be designing and constructing the infrastructure that comes along with this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

This story was originally published by the Anchorage Daily News and is republished here with permission.

Alaska Native singer-songwriter Byron Nicholai has a new album out. “Ayagnera” was released on March 25. Two days later, it ranked among the top 10 new albums in the worldwide genre on iTunes.

Back in 2016, Nicholai was dubbed “the Justin Bieber of Alaska” a year after he released his first album, “I am Yup’ik.”

Nicholai has since moved to Anchorage from his home in Toksook Bay, a Bering Sea coastal village on Nelson Island. He works with a producer remotely.

“One of the main reasons I moved from Toksook [Bay] to Anchorage is so I could get faster internet,” he said. “I feel like it would mess with my momentum a little bit, ’cause sometimes I’d be excited to work on a track, but then having internet problems would just kind of wash that away.”

It took Nicholai more than two years to lay down the 13 new tracks for “Ayagnera.” He recorded it entirely in his Anchorage bedroom. The album has garnered international attention from Rolling Stone India’s website, which recently featured the album alongside four others by young global artists.

The songs are almost entirely in Yugtun, the Indigenous language Nicholai grew up speaking. He also uses traditional Yup’ik music for inspiration.

“I’ve always grown up drumming and dancing,” Nicholai said. “And just the song behind the drum, where it’s just that one singular beat, you can transfer that into a whole different song just as long as you keep that rhythm. And having that one single rhythm while we are yuraqing and dancing helps in creating these songs.”

Music is Nicholai’s way of keeping his Alaska Native language alive, and he said it’s also an experiment in modernizing traditional Yup’ik music and dance. He said that much of the album involves a mix of emotions. He sings about his own struggles, the struggles of others, and about his family. The genres he uses to express his feelings in the songs are just as mixed as his emotions.

“Throughout the time that I was making it, I would record a song depending on how I was feeling at that moment,” Nicholai said. “I’ve got a few rap songs in there, I’ve got a couple R&B songs. I’ve got songs in there that sound like pop, and I’ve got a song in there that sounds like electronic dance music.”

Nicholai will perform for fans in Bethel this weekend.

Juneau’s Riverbend Elementary School may soon be getting a new Lingít name.

Kax̱dig̱oowu Héen translates to “going back to clear water.” It’s used to refer to a part of the Mendenhall River. And could soon be used to refer to the elementary school that sits on its banks in Juneau’s Mendenhall Valley.

Juneau’s board of education discussed the proposed name change at its Tuesday night meeting. A’akw Kwáan elder, Bob Sam spoke at the meeting. He said the name honors the strength and resilience of the Lingít people who were able to set fish traps in unforgiving currents.

“It requires great strength to hold the fish trap and the fish net in the river and we’re going to use it as an allegory for the school,” Sam said. “The fish net will be seen as a safety net to wrap around the students and make them feel safe when they come into the school.”

Sam and Fran Houston worked together to come up with the name. Houston is the tribal spokesperson for the A’akw Kwáan. Her Lingít name is Seikoonie and she’s from the Yaxté Hit. Houston said when she talked to other members, they were thrilled that the school wanted a Lingít name.

“It is so beautiful that these children have that opportunity and what’s being taught to them now,” she said. “Even back in my day, it wasn’t even thought of and I know it makes all of us stand tall and be proud.”

The school also put a video together about the new name, featuring its students.

Houston said when she saw the video, she was “tickled pink.”

“It’s a gift for these students, and they can say the Lingít name better than I can,” she said. “It is so wonderful that these schools want the Lingít names and I don’t think we’re done yet.”

Other schools in Juneau have added Lingít names to their existing titles, but Riverbend Principal Elizabeth Pisel-Davis said they want to replace their name completely.

“It’s very important to bring these names back to life,” Pisel-Davis said. “So we see it as not eliminating a name, but reclaiming the name that was always here.”

The hope is also that by having only a Lingít name and no English option, the students will get in the habit of using it. The board is expected to vote on the name change at its next regular meeting on May 10.

Sealaska Heritage Institute’s new arts campus isn’t quite open yet. But on a sunny Tuesday afternoon, about 50 people gathered there to celebrate the completion of a totem pole.

It’s called the Sealaska Cultural Values Totem Pole, and it’s been in the works for over half a year. It’s a 360-degree totem pole, which means it’s carved all the way around the pole instead of on one side.

The lead carver is Haida artist TJ Young, but he didn’t do it alone. He had help from his brother Joe Young and from apprentices Andrea Cook and Greg Frisby.

“We had a lot of support from different people throughout the project,” Young said. “I’ll feel a lot more relieved when the pole’s actually up. We are happy, we are happy to finish it.”

Young enlisted help from Tsimshian artist David R. Boxley and Lingít artist Robert Mills. He wanted a Tsimshian and a Lingít carver to carve a figure on the top of the pole since the three figures together represent the three Native tribes of Southeast Alaska.

“We have Lingít, Haida and Tsimshian represented and initially we thought they were going to be all males,” said Sealaska Heritage Institute President Rosita Worl. “But then our artists thought about it and thought about diversity and equity. And do you know what they did? They put a woman on that totem pole.”

After the pole was finished, Worl asked the Yées Ḵu.oo Dancers to perform a few songs. Leader of the dance group Nancy Barnes says she was excited to be performing again.

“We haven’t been together, we’ve been zooming every Saturday,” Barnes said. “But when Rosita asked us if we’d come out for this, we wanted to honor these awesome artists.”

The pole is still lying down where it was being carved and painted. It will be installed later and unveiled when the Arts Campus opens. Young said it will probably be in June.

Editor’s note: Reporter Lyndsey Brollini previously worked at Sealaska Heritage Institute.

This past weekend Juneau had its first Native Youth Olympics competition open to the public since the pandemic.

This was the fifth year of the Traditional Games, and for many people who went, it felt a lot like the games before COVID-19. The dance group Woosh.ji.een was back for their usual opening performance, there was an audience again and more people came to compete.

Alexandria Toloff coaches a team representing the Qutekcak Native Tribe from Seward.

The team isn’t new, but it hadn’t competed in an event for a few years before COVID. The team struggled to find coaches. But then during the pandemic, Toloff’s cousin got a job as a head coach for the team and Toloff offered to help and got involved in NYO again.

“I think we were all just tired of COVID,” Toloff said. “And we wanted to get together and start doing stuff again.”

When they got the opportunity to compete at the Traditional Games in Juneau, they jumped on it. Toloff had never been to Juneau and some of her athletes had never been on a plane before.

She said Juneau felt a lot like Seward with the mountains, glacier and the water.

As for the games, Toloff competed in most of the events. Her favorite event is the scissor broad jump because it’s less stressful, but she also likes the kicking events too. 

“They really push you. Like you really have to tone in, and it really just takes like a lot of energy and force,” Toloff said. “And it is really really stressful but it takes a lot of passion and everyone gets into it.”

 A lot of athletes look forward to training for NYO and going to competitions. The events are more than just the games, Toloff said. They are also about the culture, the dancing, the food and seeing your community come together.

“Like food for the soul, I would say,” Toloff said. “Sounds a little corny, but I mean it’s like, it, like, makes my heart happy to come here.” 

When the pandemic came to Alaska and NYO events were being canceled, it was hard on the NYO community.

It was during the 2020 Traditional Games that everyone found out that the Arctic Winter Games were canceled. And it was an emotional day for the people who were supposed to go to the competition.

“These are things we look forward to all year, and never thought that it would just be canceled,” said Kyle Worl, a wellness coordinator at Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska. 

Worl is also an NYO coach for athletes in Juneau and played a big role in revitalizing the sport in Southeast Alaska. He did a lot of work to keep NYO going during the pandemic. He did some practices on Zoom, and they made an NYO version of the brush challenge on TikTok. 

The virtual events were needed and it helped people get through the pandemic, but it really doesn’t compare to in-person events, Worl said. 

And a lot of people were excited to be back. Worl said this year he had the most teams ever attending the Traditional Games, and about the same amount of athletes as the event before the pandemic.

Eventually, Worl wants to have an NYO team in every Southeast community. He said he wants to give kids here the same opportunities he had with NYO in high school and share his love of the games. 

It’s rubbed off on a lot of Worl’s athletes, including Ezra Elisoff. 

“I think he is executing his goal very well because I share the same love and passion for the sport now,” Elisoff said.

Elisoff first started NYO at Thunder Mountain High School as a way to stay in shape, but he stayed because the community was so supportive of him.

A lot of the games are based on hunting and survival techniques Indigenous people in northern Alaska had. And Elisoff learned from Worl that the spirit of the games — that support you give the other athletes — is like hunting with fellow hunters in another community. People wouldn’t want other hunters to not bring home food for their families and elders. 

“That spirit is still with us, even though times aren’t that extreme,” Elisoff said. “We still like to see each other succeed and we still like to support one another because that’s what our ancestors did so long ago.”

That’s why athletes give each other advice and share techniques instead of hiding them. 

That spirit is what keeps Elisoff doing NYO.

“I actually plan on doing it until I’m like an old man and complaining about my eight keys,” Elisoff said.

There is no age limit for the World Eskimo Indian Olympics, though Elisoff said he probably doesn’t want to be doing it when he’s 90.