Alaska Native Arts & Culture

The next season of the PBS KIDS show “Molly of Denali” will be the last for the foreseeable future. 

The team behind the award-winning children’s TV show will stop working on new content. Molly of Denali is widely celebrated in Alaska because it features an Alaska Native lead character and showcases Indigenous culture.

This comes as the Trump Administration is cracking down on federal funding for NPR and PBS. But Alaska State Writer Laureate Vera Starbard, who is a writer and story editor for the show, said that’s not the full story.

While she and other writers knew the decision was in the works before the presidential election last year, she said they didn’t get the official announcement until last week. And she said she doesn’t think there’s just one reason for the decision.

“What I don’t want is for a show this great and this exceptional to be put into this very polarized political lens of ‘it’s x person that did it. It’s this x action that did it,’” she said. “It’s actually a lot of sort of typical television reasons combined with, ‘yes, I do think [the] funding atmosphere that has been tough for a while, political atmospheres, those all for sure contribute to the much bigger reasons.”

This isn’t the end for the show though. GBH produces “Molly of Denali.” In an email, a spokesperson wrote that there’s still another season that will air, but that PBS KIDS is not commissioning another season of the show.

“Molly of Denali” premiered in 2019 and was the first nationally distributed children’s program to feature Indigenous main characters. The show won its first Emmy Award earlier this year for an episode written by Juneau resident X̱’unei Lance Twitchell. He and Starbard are among several Alaska Native writers who contributed to the show during its run. 

Starbard said the news is bittersweet.

“It was just sort of a mix of emotions, hearing about it, being proud that we accomplished this thing all together, at the same time knowing it’s potentially over,” she said.

PBS confirmed new “Molly of Denali” episodes will continue to air through the next year and beyond. The show’s library of episodes, podcasts and games will still be available to people in the coming years.

The federal government may soon return a traditional subsistence site connected to Douglas Island to its original tribal owners. 

Mayflower Island is a small, 3-acre island adjacent to Douglas Harbor and Sandy Beach. It’s connected to Douglas via a short road and sits near the site of the former Douglas Indian Village, which Douglas’ city government burned in 1962. The City and Borough of Juneau formally apologized for the burning last fall.

At a Juneau Assembly lands, housing and economic development committee meeting earlier this week, members gave initial approval for a plan that would acquire the island from the federal government and then give it to the Douglas Indian Association. DIA officials did not respond to a request for comment. 

Dan Bleidorn, the city’s lands and resources manager, said this is a plan that has been years in the making. 

“This is on the list of 2025 Assembly goals for community wellness and public safety. The goal states to ‘support Douglas Indian Association’s efforts to acquire Mayflower Island,” he said. 

The island once served as a traditional subsistence site and yielded a herring run and spawn used by the Douglas Indian Village. The DIA is currently in the process of building a cultural learning center at the former site of the village.

According to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, the property has been under the federal government’s stewardship since 1890. The island was originally reserved for the U.S. Navy to use as a naval station. But, in 1948, it was transferred to the Federal Bureau of Mines, which built a mineral laboratory on the site to process ore samples for research. 

The BLM took over the property in 1996 when Congress closed the Bureau of Mines. The U.S. Coast Guard also used the site under an agreement with the BLM, but that ended in 2023. 

Bleidorn said the actual property transfer is likely still a few years out. But the Assembly’s approval is the next step in moving that process along. The resolution will still need to come before the Assembly for final approval.

The Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska announced on Tuesday that it is rejoining the Alaska Federation of Natives.

The move comes almost exactly two years after the tribe withdrew its membership from the statewide Alaska Native organization over concerns that tribal voices were not being equitably represented.

In a written statement, tribal officials say the reversal is in response to the current political climate, which “demands greater unity among Alaska Native peoples.”

The decision was made by the tribe’s executive council. It comes a few months after the Fairbanks-based Tanana Chiefs Conference also rejoined AFN after withdrawing around the same time as Tlingit and Haida. 

AFN has a membership of more than 200 tribes and corporations and promotes cultural preservation, political advocacy and economic development. Tlingit and Haida is Alaska’s largest federally recognized tribe.

According to the statement, the tribe says rejoining AFN is not a reversal of its concerns, but “a commitment to ensure that tribal governments have a seat at every table where decisions are being made.”

AFN also released a statement saying it is honored to welcome the tribe back. 

Their return strengthens our collective voice and enhances our ability to advocate for the rights and needs of Alaska Natives,” said the organization’s president Benjamin Mallott. “Together, we can continue to make impactful strides toward self-determination and unity across our communities.”  

Tlingit and Haida recently concluded its annual tribal assembly last month. The topic of rejoining AFN was not an agenda item. The tribe’s president was not immediately available for comment. 

This is Lingít Word of the Week. Each week, we feature a Lingít word voiced by master speakers. Lingít has been spoken throughout present-day Southeast Alaska and parts of Canada for over 10,000 years.

Gunalchéesh to X̱’unei Lance Twitchell, Goldbelt Heritage Foundation and the University of Alaska Southeast for sharing the recorded audio for this series.

This week’s word is xíxch’, or frog. Listen to the audio below to learn how to say xíxch’.

The following transcript is meant to help illustrate the words and sentences. 

Kooshdáakʼu Bill Fawcett: Xíxch’. 

That means frog.

Here are some sentences:

Kooshdáakʼu Bill Fawcett: Ḵunax̱ áwé shayadihéin wé xíxch’.

There are very many frogs.

Keiyishí Bessie Cooley: Xíxchʼ yóode yaa nashkʼén.

There is a frog jumping over there.

Ḵaakal.áat Florence Marks Sheakley: Kiks.ádix̱ sitee yá xíxchʼ has du at.óowu áyá.

The frog is the Kiks.ádiʼs at.óow.

You can hear each installment of Lingít Word of the Week on the radio throughout the week. 

Additional language resources:

Find biographies for the master speakers included in this lesson here.

Learn more about why we use Lingít instead of Tlingit here.

Watch a video introducing Lingít sounds here.

Springtime is herring egg season in Southeast Alaska. Usually that means that the region’s largest tribal government would be setting up to deliver tens of thousands of pounds of the traditional food to tribal citizens across the region and beyond. 

But this year, those distributions won’t happen. 

The Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska announced this week that its annual traditional food distributions were canceled this year. In March, the federal government canceled a funding agreement with the tribe. 

For the last three years, the tribe distributed herring eggs, salmon and black cod to tribal citizens in each of its recognized communities — from villages in Southeast to cities like Anchorage and Seattle. 

But the U.S. Department of Agriculture canceled funding that provided the tribe’s food assistance program. A USDA notice to Tlingit and Haida said that the tribe’s community food distributions “no longer effectuates agency priorities and that termination of the award is appropriate.”

Aaron Angerman is Tlingit and Haida’s food security program manager. He said the community distribution program started in 2022 to promote self-sufficiency, and to reduce reliance on food shipped from the Lower 48.

“Our answer to that, and then our heavy reliance on barge systems and things like that, was to turn back the clock a bit about food sovereignty, which is something that our people have relied on since time immemorial,” he said. 

The tribe planned to use more than $500,000 from the USDA for the distribution. The money was allocated to the tribe in January, but USDA sent Tlingit and Haida a notice in March that said the agreement had been canceled. 

The money was part of a program called the Local Food Purchase Assistance Agreement which was intended to encourage local governments to buy from farmers and food producers.

And that aligned with the tribe’s goal to keep more traditional foods that are harvested in Southeast Alaska in the fridges and freezers of tribal members. 

“For us to be able to take a food that was purchased from commercial vendors, to contract those vendors who are tribal citizens, to keep not only that funding within the tribe and the region,” Angerman said. “But also take a food source that was harvested in our area and typically sent overseas to bring that food back to our people and to be shared.”

The herring egg distribution is special for this reason: because of overfishing and exporting of herring and herring roe, the fish now only spawn in very limited areas.

Angerman said his team is working to get more secure funding. But there’s a lot of other work they are doing to further the understanding and use of traditional foods in the meantime.

“We need to work with elders and those with traditional ecological knowledge to see why and where and how we harvested previously,” he said. “Then to not only do that, but to teach people how to harvest themselves, how to process that food, how to put up or prepare that food.” 

Because, he said, if a salmon ends up on someone’s doorstep, and they don’t know how to process it, that isn’t food sovereignty.

Angerman said Tlingit and Haida was able to purchase enough herring eggs to bring to some of their tribally-run and federally-funded Head Start preschool classrooms this year, so the youngest tribal citizens can still learn about the importance of traditional food and land stewardship. 

And some distributions in Washington and Oregon will still happen, according to the tribe’s release. The local tribal council in Seattle used different funding sources to set aside money for distributions to reach elders outside of Alaska. 

Reine Pavlik sorted through a large collection of her latest work. She pointed to a pair of jeans with seal skin flare, a women’s suit made of deer skin and seal hide and several more hand-made pieces of clothing. Many of the pieces had ornate beading.

“Sometimes I feel like beading a straight line is really hard,” she said, holding up a pair of hand-sewn moccasins. “This pair of moccasins is made with deer and moose skin.”

Skin sewing, or hide sewing, and bead work are vital art forms in Southeast Alaska’s Lingít culture. Pavlik, who is from Yakutat, is blending those art forms with contemporary style.

She turned over the hand-sewn moccasins, revealing beadwork on the back.

“I feel like I can see my progress in my beadwork,” she said. The beaded letters read “Land Back” in an Old English typeface. “Behind these moccasins is ‘Land Back,’ which is a message for the world we live in today to hopefully give Indigenous peoples their land and sovereignty and right to stewardship.”

Pavlik said she grew up surrounded by artists.

“That was just always part of our lives is just doing art. It was just part of the activities that we did,” she said.

She first learned from her mother how to sew items like pillowcases and, for a while, she said that was all she knew how to sew. Few members of her family practiced skin sewing on animal hides like sea otter and moose.

But eventually, Pavlik learned skin sewing from her aunt, Jennie Wheeler. Wheeler is a Lingít artist who creates skin-sewing pieces, beadwork and spruce root weavings.

Wheeler taught Pavlik to make moccasins.

“Making moccasins really was a way to connect to my family and my ancestors,” she said. “I feel like it’s so ingrained in our family stories.”

Now Pavlik’s community knows her for her beadwork and skin-sewn garments. She said her art weaves together tradition with modernity, and is inspired by her Lingít heritage. That blending of old materials with new designs gives her work meaning and momentum, she said, describing the process as almost spiritual.

“Using the traditional materials and using it in a modern way feels like I’m honoring my ancestors but I’m also modernizing some of the ideas that people have attached to traditional materials,” she said.

Sustainability is another way she connects to the traditional and she tries to only use materials from donations or thrift stores. She said she’s aware of the damage fashion causes to the environment and hopes people think twice before buying for convenience.

“I also kind of felt like it’s something that our ancestors would do is they’d use what is near us and make things out of what is close by,” she said. “So I felt like that was a good way to honor them.”

But keeping culture alive while making room for personal expression isn’t always easy, and Pavlik acknowledged the pressures facing Indigenous artists today. She said there is a push for Indigenous artists to modernize and step away from tradition. But, she said she is committed to exploring her own voice within the context of Lingít art.

“It just feels like something I’m supposed to do,” she said.

Pavlik said her art practice connects her to ancestral knowledge and traditions. It’s something her father noticed when she started skin sewing.

“There was sort of an excitement there for my dad to see that, like something that his mom knew how to do his daughter knows now how to do as well,” she said.

Pavlik said she wants to explore new ways to pass on her skills to the next generation by teaching others her crafts.