Arts & Culture

Addressing an audience in the clan house inside the Walter Soboleff building in Juneau, Shgendootaan George laid out the history of three killer whale totem poles that have stood next to her clan house in Angoon. The latest was raised in August.

The lecture was part of a Sealaska Heritage Institute series celebrating Native American Heritage Month. 

For George, the history of the Killer Whale Tooth clan house and its kootéeyaa — or totem poles — are intertwined with her own personal history. She was nine years old when they raised a second pole commemorating the 100th anniversary of when the U.S. Navy attacked the village of Angoon. 

“This picture is going to make me cry. This is my dad on top of the forklift helping place the killer whale as it goes on to the post,” George said, referencing a slideshow she presented during the lecture. “And this is me and my mom looking out the window.”

The 1882 bombardment destroyed the village, its clan houses, canoes and food supplies – just before winter set in. Six children died. 

The memorial kootéeyaa depicted a black and white killer whale sitting on a tall stand. Master Carver Wayne Price carved it at Angoon High School. It replaced a similar pole that stood next to the house and was laid down before George was born. 

“Then that’s where I spent the rest of my life after that,” she said. “Growing up with this totem pole next to our house.”

It aged too. She showed a photo of the same pole, with all of its paint worn away. 

“And this is where, you know, it kind of ended up weathered and worn and moss growing on it,” George said.

When kootéeyaa begin to disintegrate, that is considered part of their life cycle, and they are taken down and laid to rest.

That also happened to the second pole in 2010. George led that process. The pole was laid to rest like a clan member: it was cremated. 

Over the last decade, George also reconstructed the clan house that she grew up in and continues to live in each summer with her family. 

And earlier this year, the newest killer whale kootéeyaa, carved by Joe Zuboff, was raised with the help of the people — and their descendants — who participated in the raising and lowering of its predecessor.

“One of the things that is really important to me in the raising of this most recent poll is to really be really thoughtful in thinking about continuity and really connecting with the past and bringing that forward into the future,” she said.

And now that the kootéeyaa is standing, and the house is restored, George has time to reflect on her experience. 

“That was probably the biggest thing that I will ever be directly a part of in my life,” she said.

SHI President Rosita Worl attended the lecture, and applauded George and her community for the legacy they have carried forward. 

“Look at the knowledge that you have, look at the practices that you can do,” Worl said. “It just warms my heart to see that Angoon has been the center and the stronghold of our culture.” 

Last fall, the U.S. Navy issued a formal apology for the bombardment of Angoon, after clan leaders and Worl herself spent decades asking for one.

A beloved maintenance employee at the University of Alaska Southeast starred in a low-budget sci-fi comedy a decade ago. This week, some UAS students screened “Space Trucker Bruce” to honor their friendly campus handyman, and to satisfy their own curiosity.

It’s about a space trucker hauling hog fat through the galaxy who picks up a hitchhiker whose ship has broken down. Hijinks ensue.

The low budget sci-fi comedy just so happens to star UAS handyman Karl Sears. It was made by local filmmaker Anton Doiron. He and Sears are old high school friends who reconnected in adulthood. 

Years ago, they wanted to make a short film for the JUMP Society festival in Juneau. On a drive one day, they came up with the idea of making a comedy about a space trucker. 

But the ideas kept coming, and it spiraled into something bigger, said Doiron.

“It grew from making a short to making, like, a full-length movie,” he said. 

Six years later, “Space Trucker Bruce,” starring the two of them, debuted at Juneau’s Gold Town Theater. 

Sears said it’s neat that the kids wanted to show it and invited them, but he finds their interest a bit odd. 

“It’s a little strange, and like, ‘what are you guys doing with your lives?’” he said.

The film has been out for 11 years now, and it’s available for free on YouTube, so sometimes people stumble upon it. 

“People talk about it,” Sears said. “And occasionally a student will come up to me and say, ‘I just watched it. It was so funny,’ or ‘it was good,’ you know, or, ‘I watched it,’ and they don’t elaborate.”

Sears said the film has been shown before, but this is the first screening he decided to come to. 

Ella Kelly is a residential advisor at UAS. She organized this screening and, like many students, she considers Sears a friend.

“He’s the only maintenance guy for housing,” she said. “So everybody’s had an encounter with Karl, and they’re all like good interactions, because he’s so nice and friendly.”

Kelly said she didn’t know about the film until she saw the poster for it outside of Sears’ office

“It’s always made me very curious,” she said. “Because I’m a big fan of a low budget film.”

About a dozen students came to the screening, and they filled the room with laughter.

Doiron said he has a new project coming soon that Kelly may like. It’s called “Girl, Yeti, and a Spaceship,” and there are some thematic similarities to his first film.

“There’s a bored state worker,” he explained. “He’s in management, and he’s bored, and he takes his dog out hiking one day, and he sees Bigfoot, and he starts following Bigfoot, and he finds this cave with a big spaceship in it, and the spaceship is broken.”

Hijinks ensue. Doiron said the new project comes out next year.

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Normally, this time of year, Juneau’s largest craft store would be full of plastic pumpkins, skeletons, ghosts, and, of course, fabric. But instead, the former Joann store in the Nugget Mall sits dark and empty — a spooky reality, say local costume makers.

Months after the chain closed across the nation, the gap in craft supplies is being put to the test at a crucially creative time of year: Halloween.

Elizabeth Bauer makes her five-year-old daughter’s Halloween costume every year, and usually, she wants to be something a bit unusual.

“Last year, she knew for months she wanted to be a white bat,” Bauer said. “So it’s like, you can’t find a white bat costume anywhere.” 

Bauer found white furry fabric at Joann, and made wings and a headband with bat ears for her daughter. 

But this year, Bauer is scrambling to find the material she needs to make another unusual costume, a hybrid jaguar and parrot from her daughter’s favorite cartoon, “Elena of Avalor.” She needs to make a pink base outfit, leopard spots, wings and a tail. And she has to find all of the materials and finish sewing by Friday. 

“But there’s not one store that you can go to and get all of those items that you’re looking for for a craft project,” she said. “You have to piece it together between all these different places.” 

Meanwhile, in Maggie Hyde’s costume closet, she held up a blue and green dress with scalloped ribbons of different colors. The shade of the fabric she bought online is not quite right. 

“I made it work, but these two shades were supposed to be a lot more different,” Hyde said. “They were not supposed to be the same shade, but on a website, they looked very different to what they look like in person.”

Hyde is a costumer. She participates in Juneau’s annual Wearable Arts show — where creators show off costumes they’ve made themselves — and she designs outfits for renaissance fairs, cosplay photoshoots and, of course, Halloween.

She said it’s a gamble to buy materials online for her creations. And she doesn’t want to support online retailers that don’t treat their employees well and often sell lower quality materials. Shipping costs are often high, if a company even ships to Alaska. 

“Now it’s this whole process of shipping, of looking and that just makes it a lot more difficult,” Hyde said. “You kind of have to adapt.”

Juneau Drag Mother Gigi Monroe said she and her fellow drag performers have been doing just that. 

“For professionals, we know how to get what we need and figure things out,” she said.

But this year, she had to pivot from a costume idea for Juneau Drag’s Halloween show because she couldn’t find more niche materials anywhere. Monroe said Joann usually had that kind of thing. 

And she said the store’s closing also impacts her methods. She would often go to the store with parts of an idea in mind, and figure out the rest based on what fabric she could touch and see in person. 

“So there’s a lot of designing that actually happens in the store, and you don’t really always have to go in knowing exactly what you need,” Monroe said. 

When they first heard the bad news, Monroe and other performers went to Joann’s closing sales and stockpiled on some heavy-hitter supplies — like rhinestone glue.

Monroe said other stores in town — including Juneau’s two quilting shops — help fill some of the gaps. 

And for Juneau’s more casual costumers, there are still options. Kathy Buell is owner of local party store Balloons by Night Moods.

“Halloween is our busiest season for anything that is not balloon-related,” she said.

The store’s shelves are stocked with ready-made costumes that fit infants, kids and as many sizes for adults Buell can find. It also has pieces that can be added to home-grown costumes. 

“We have makeup, we have wigs, we have hats,” she said. “Prosthetics that you put on with latex, blood, lots of blood.”

There is still a lot left for holiday procrastinators, she said. 

“We still have a lot of stock, because honestly, I’ve already—and it’s not even Halloween yet—I’m already buying for next year,” Buell said.

Still, the hole left by the Joann closure is a hard one to fill. But Monroe said there’s a letter-writing campaign asking national craft chain Michaels to step in. 

A new online statewide directory has been launched to showcase and connect Alaska Native artists across disciplines.

The Alaska Native Arts Directory is the work of the nonprofit Alaska Native Arts Foundation. Listing is free. The directory went live last week, timing that coincided with the Alaska Federation of Natives annual convention in Anchorage.

As of Monday, about 200 artists were listed, most of them with photos and biographical information. The Alaska Native Arts Foundation said it is seeking to expand that number to more than 1,000 by next year.

The Anchorage-based foundation said it also has a goal of holding a first-ever Alaska Native Arts Economic Summit next year, bringing together artists, policymakers and other partners to work on building the Indigenous creative economy.

There are other artists’ directories in Alaska, some of them with a focus on Indigenous artists. One, the Collective49 Marketplace, enables member artists to promote and sell their work online. And there are numerous local artists directories, such as those in Ketchikan and Homer.

The Alaska Natives Art Directory, however, is intended to be more comprehensive. Along with being statewide, the directory includes writers, musicians and other performing artists along with those who create carvings, paintings and other physical works of art. It includes contemporary art forms as well as traditional Indigenous arts.

“The Alaska Native Arts Directory celebrates the full spectrum of Alaska Native creativity, visual and written arts, performance, design, and traditional practices, reflecting the diversity and vitality of Alaska’s Indigenous cultures,” Gail Schubert, chair of the Alaska Native Arts Foundation, said in a statement.

Launch of the Alaska Native Arts Directory represents a renaissance of sorts for the Alaska Native Arts Foundation.

The foundation was created in 2002 and for several years operated an ecommerce site and a gallery in Anchorage. But it shut down those operatioons in 2016 after losing state funding and encountering other financial problems.

The directory project and other new activities now have a variety of funding sources, according to the foundation’s statement. The effort is backed by grants and other support from organizations that include the Rasmuson Foundation, the U.S. Small Business Administration, the office of U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, the Alaska State Council on the Arts and the Municipality of Anchorage, among others, according to the statement.

The Alaska Federation of Natives convention in Anchorage, while it featured the usual cultural celebrations, socializing and discussions of state and federal policies, had a strong focus this year on a particular subject: the ravages on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta of ex-Typhoon Halong.

Speaker after speaker at the convention, the largest annual convention of any kind in Alaska and one of the largest Indigenous gatherings in the nation, referenced the storm. It has displaced more than 1,500 people, killed at least one person and dislodged houses from their foundations. Residents of stricken villages have been airlifted away, with hundreds getting temporary residency in Anchorage. The state’s largest city is about 490 miles east of the evacuees’ home villages, and vastly different in culture and character from the highly rural Indigenous communities.

“My heart with everyone impacted by the recent coastal storms,” Natasha Singh, the president of the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium and the keynote speaker on the first day of the convention, said at the start of her address.

“While the damage is so vast, the love for our people is even greater. And even as we feel the pain and the loss, I also feel a sense of inspiration to see so many people reach out to help,” she continued.

A special feature of the convention was a second-floor room at the Dena’ina Civic and Convention Center that was set aside to collect donations headed to the storm victims. Over two days, as convention proceedings unfolded in the third-floor ballroom, the collection room became filled with boxes of diapers, toiletries, clothing items, shelf-stable food and other necessities that were sorted by volunteers.

On Saturday, the final day, delegates passed a resolution seeking an immediate national disaster declaration, and investment by the federal government in better infrastructure in rural Alaska to protect against future disasters.

The ravages of the remnants of Typhoon Halong demand more than an emergency response, the resolution said. The disaster “has continued to expose vulnerabilities in infrastructure, housing, and emergency preparedness for rural Alaska/extreme remote America, and highlights the need for stronger tribal-state-federal collaboration,” it said.

The call for a national disaster declaration and the aid that would come with it was among a packet of resolutions passed on Saturday. Many of the resolutions concerned food security and efforts to ensure that Alaska Natives can safely practice their traditional fishing and hunting practices.

One highly anticipated convention speaker was former U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola, D-Alaska, who is considered a possible candidate for governor or U.S. Senate.

But Peltola made no campaign announcement.

“I want to preface everything I’m saying with: This is going to be very anticlimactic for everybody, I think,” she said at the start of her speech. “No big announcements, no big declarations.”

Instead, she discussed subsistence – the traditional harvests of wild foods and arts materials – and the legal and environmental threats to its continued practice.

She spoke about the way subsistence ties Alaska Natives to their home regions.

“Those spots, the places that we hunt and fish, they’re like another personality to us,” Peltola said.

She referred to a close friend who recently died. When she was on her deathbed, her family gathered around, Peltola said. “And at one point, they just talked about places. They just said the names of the places where they pick berries, or get whitefish, gather greens. And it was one of the most beautiful moments I’ve ever experienced, just reciting names.”

In the packed and dark Gold Town Theater, Karen Miceli watched home movies flick across the screen, while a two-man band played along. They were her own family’s videos, filmed in Juneau between the 1930s and 50s. 

Miceli’s grandparents, Harry and Lucille Stonehouse, lived in Juneau in the mid-20th century. Harry worked for the railroad and made enough money to buy a piece of advanced technology — a Kodachrome film camera.

But until now, Miceli had never seen the footage from her mother’s childhood.

“We heard stories about fishing and ice skating and when the lake was frozen, or when Mendenhall Glacier lake was frozen, and my mom would talk about ice skating on it,” she said. 

Two years ago, Miceli’s sister donated the family’s 36 color film reels to the Juneau-Douglas City Museum, and with a grant from the Alaska State Museum, the curators sent the reels to Anchorage to be digitized. 

Miceli came to town from Washington state to see the films. They show a part of her family history that had only lived in stories before now, and it brought her to tears. 

“So that’s why I think I’m so emotional, is just, you know, seeing my mom when she was little,” she said. 

Museum staff organized clips into a presentation according to the season, and many of the shots feature landscapes around Juneau. A much larger Mendenhall Glacier drew gasps from the audience. People ice skate on frozen lakes, and ski down sharp turns. Cows lie down in a pasture in Mendenhall Valley. Men and women fish for salmon together along a rocky shoreline. A toddler plays on the beach at Auke Recreation Area.  

Some footage shows the 1946 Fourth of July parade, with its marching band, intricate floats and the beloved soapbox derby — where young men built mini cars and raced them through the streets of downtown Juneau.

But some shots were just snapshots of everyday life. Museum Director Beth Weigel said it’s exciting to see even the more mundane parts of life from that time, like kneeling in the flower garden and having a picnic at Sandy Beach, as often, that isn’t what people would choose to document in expensive color film.  

“There’s only a limited amount of what we can see into the past,” Weigel said. 

And even though this isn’t her family’s footage, Weigel said it can make anyone sentimental. 

“They’re just sort of, ‘Oh, what a time to have that ability to be with your family so much and picnic and hang out and do fun things,’” she said. 

But, Weigel said, so much of that joy and connectedness is a part of Juneau today. 

“I think Juneau’s like that, though, still in many ways,” she said. 

And Miceli, with the Stonehouse family, said the full theater gave her a sense of Juneau’s community.

“So many people came out,” she said. “I mean, that’s just amazing to us, because we thought it would be the four of us, and then the Museum people. And then to have this whole thing practically full when we got here—I mean, that’s pretty amazing, the community support and all of that.” 

Museum staff say they plan to make some of the digitized films available online in the future.