Alaska Native Storyteller Speaks on Research at SHI

While SHI Special Collections receives many researchers, recently Ishmael Hope, author of the Alaska Native Storyteller Blog, has been spending some time researching archival collections at SHI. He has been writing about his research on land claims, civil rights, Tlingit culture, and the Alaska Native Brotherhood/Sisterhood. Below is a small but important post he made in mid-August 2011 relative to the Alaska Native Brotherhood and Cyril Zuboff. A number of his posts from this period document his research in SHI's collections.

Sealaska Heritage Institute is a regional nonprofit serving the Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian people of Southeast Alaska. Its mission is to perpetuate and enhance Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian cultures.

Editorial by Cyril Zuboff in The Voice of the Brotherhood, 1960

This editorial by Cyril Zuboff was originally published in The Voice of the Brotherhood, a newsletter of the Alaska Native Brotherhood, in October, 1960. According to Cyril Zuboff’s (1892-1968) obituary in the Juneau Empire, he was born in Killisnoo, moved to Sitka as a small boy to attend the Russian Mission, and as an adult lived in Juneau. He was a member of the Alaska Native Brotherhood, Camp No. 7 at Angoon, AK. He was an executive member and Grand President of ANB six times. His Tlingit name was Eech T’éi, and he belonged to the Dakhl’aweidí clan and the Keet Hít, the Killer Whale House, of Angoon (Thanks to Harold Jacobs for this information.).

I find this historical document important because Zuboff articulates very soundly how the Alaska Native Brothorhood was successful in integrating older and younger generations, and, like a great orator as his ancestors were and as he must have been, he powerfully combines a rational appeal and a historical perspective with an emotional appeal of Brotherhood solidarity.

Cyril Zuboff at the Wrangell ANB/ANS Convention in 1946. Photo by William Paul, Jr.

The financial standing of the Brotherhood is lower this year than it ever was in the past.

You may rightly ask, “Why?”

I can tell you the recent poor fishing seasons were not the cause. We’ve had hard times before, but the Brotherhood was always able to have money coming in from the camps. But the ANB was never so poor as it is today.

From our beginning 48 years ago we have always advocated giving our younger generation a chance to run the local camps because our founders realized that the youth of today would be our leaders of tomorrow. However, at the same time the “senior members” — men and women who stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the Brotherhood when the need came to send an ANB attorney to Washington, D.C.

How many of you recall the battles, dark days and victories of former years? Do you recall when we sent legal aid to the nation’s capital on the matter of fish trap abolishment; the Wheeler-Howard Act for Alaska; when some of our people were refused the right to cast a ballot; when our children were barred from public schools; when our widows and destitute children were barred from receiving help by territorial law; and when there were signs in many businesses in Alaska that proclaimed, “White Trade Only”?

And then in 1939 when legislation was introduced in the territorial Senate to “prohibit the sale… or give Indians, Eskimo, Aleut… intoxicating beverages,” and then the discrimination law. Yes, there were these and many more.

These obstacles were met by our “senior members.” Men who, in many cases, could barely read or write the English language, but who were blessed with the brains of our ancestral Indians. These soldiers in our battles were sincere, powerful, honest, and yet humble.

They were always seeking the betterment of our race and to educate our children. Yes, they never lost sight of the virtues and teachings of the past but they realized the importance of providing education for the newer generations. They said, “They must be educated because they will take our place as leaders.. they will be like ‘channel lights’ in a storm… we will depend upon them, for we are all Christian soldiers united in harmony.”

The “senior members” dug deep into their savings in camps from Yakutat to Saxman to finance the Brotherhood and its programs.

We are urgings, dear sisters and brothers, please don’t sidetrack the “senior members” — the ANB-ANS needs them. Some must come as delegates to the convention, others should have positions of responsibility in our local camps. Younger generation and elder statesmen alike have a common meeting place in the Brotherhood.

Together in Brotherhood we can accomplish the goals laid out by our founders and recapture glories of past years.

Thanks very much to Ben Paul for use of the Cyril Zuboff photo, and to the Sealaska Heritage Institute and archivist Zachary Jones for archiving these important documents.

Former Kake family heirloom ordnance de-armed, deactivated

By Klas Stolpe

JUNEAU EMPIRE

The Organized Village of Kake (OVK) with the assistance of the Sealaska Heritage Institute (SHI) diffused the historic Civil War Parrott Shell ordnance that a Kake family had passed among family members for decades.

“It has been in our family over 100 years,” Kake elder Michael Jackson said when State Troopers and Elmendorf Air Force explosives experts had first traveled to Kake to investigate the shell on June 23, 2011.

The Air Force x-rayed the contents at that time and had the ordnance placed in a safe building in Kake until it could be diffused.

On July 14, SHI Archivist Zachary Jones secured private consultants who specialize in Historic wartime ordnance. The consultants removed nine ounces of gunpowder and broken fuse particles to make the ordnance inert.

The ordnance could have created a crater about four or five feet in diameter if it exploded.

The diffusion of the ordnance coincided with the OVK 23rd Annual Culture Camp for the Kake youth, and information was shared with the older overnight campers, ages 13-18, and community members the evening of July 14.

“This is the first time we’re bringing it out in public,” Jackson told the youth. “We know you guys are interested in history because you’re learning how to be Kake people, Keex’ Kwaan. You’re part of the ancestry that the U.S. Territorial Army came across. And that they had an encounter with us, a violent one. But it’s part of our history, it’s part of our healing.”

Since the shell was made inert, other Kake community members have shared where other shells are located. Another Parrott shell was donated by a Kake descendant to the Alaska State Museum in Juneau.

The OVK and Kake want to share the shells and their history, working in partnership with SHI, to other communities and the State of Alaska.

SHI’s Visiting Scholar Studies Totem Parks

In August SHI’s newest Visiting Scholar, Emily Moore, Art History PhD candidate at University of California Berkeley, will begin her studies and fieldwork at SHI. Moore is conducting research on the totem parks of Southeast Alaska. These totem parks, located at Saxman, Ketchikan, Wrangell, Kasaan, Klawock, and Hydaburg, were constructed during the 1930s during the Great Depression (excluding Sitka’s pre-existing park, but it also received restorations during this period).The totem parks were created when the federal government, acting through the U.S. Forest Service and an emergency relief program called the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC), hired Tlingit and Haida men to restore or replicate nineteenth-century totem poles from Native villages. The parks represent the first major act of government patronage for Tlingit and Haida art in the United States, and the totem parks continue to be important sites for Tlingit and Haida communities today.

Moore is interested in contacting carvers or their relatives in Tlingit and Haida communities who remember someone who worked on the New Deal totem parks, or details concerning the carving project, as Moore also works to honor the individual carvers who worked on this historic project and the project’s legacy.

If you are interested in being interviewed, or if you have additional information about the carvers, the totem parks, or other factors relative to Moore’s research, please contact emilylmoore@berkeley.edu. Moore will research this topic in SHI’s office from August 29-September 23, 2011.

Photo Credits: Image of Emily Moore, courtesy of Emily Moore.

Top image: Raising of totem at Chief Shakes House, Wrangell, 1939, from SHI L. Forrest Collection.

A rare image and the story of George Schwatka

Collector Richard Wood this week donated a rare image to Sealaska Heritage Institute showing George Schwatka (Ind-A-Yanek) in Haines circa 1900. Ind-A-Yanek (later known as George Schwatka) was often photographed by early photographers of Alaska, though this image is quite rare--in part because it’s the only known image of a Tlingit on a horse during this period. Ind-A-Yanek of Klukwan is sometimes remembered as a guide to non-Natives who traveled inland during the gold rush era and exploration period, slightly before and after the turn of the century. In 1883 the federal government sent 1st Lt. Frederick Gustavus Schwatka (1849-1892) to Alaska to do a survey of routes from Haines to Fort Selkirk, Yukon. Lt. Schwatka hired Ind-A-Yanek to guide his party for the survey. Ind-A-Yanek did so, but Schwatka refused to pay him after his work concluded. Ind-A-Yanek told Schwatka that he would take his last name for the rest of Ind-A-Yanek's life as a ridicule payment, and thereafter Ind-A-Yanek was known as George Schwatka.

Foresters find historic canoe on Price of Wales Island

By Pat Forgey

JUNEAU EMPIRE

Sealaska foresters working on Prince of Wales Island have unearthed a partially complete Haida canoe from the forest floor, and are estimating its age at more than 100 years old.

A Sealaska Timber Corp. surveyor working in the area during the winter discovered the canoe. Later, when snow melted, it was confirmed to be an ancient canoe, the company said.

Several cedar trees in the area appear to have been felled with traditional tools, and the canoe was constructed with traditional tools, said Sealaska Heritage Institute officials.

It was likely created before the modern Organized Village of Kasaan was founded nearby, said Rosita Worl, the institute’s president.

“The Sealaska Board of Directors views this Haida canoe as a tangible tie to Haida ancestors, who made this canoe and who left their footprints on the land,” said Clarence Jackson, a Sealaska board member and chairman of the institute’s Council of Traditional Scholars.

Worl said by the time present-day Kasaan was founded in 1900, its residents had commercial tools available. While the canoe pre-dates the newer Kasaan village, the area was traditional Haida territory and other villages were in the area.

The cedar forest around the nearly 34-foot canoe is around 500 years old, said Sealaska Timber Corp. President and CEO Wade Zammit.

University of Alaska Southeast anthropology professor Daniel Monteith surveyed the site for Sealaska, and found evidence that traditional tools, not modern saws, had been used to cut the trees and hollow the canoe.

The carving of the canoe was nearly complete, but it had not yet been steamed, a process used to give the craft its final shape, they said.

Another cedar log that had split when harvested was also at the site, and some of its wood appears to have been salvaged for other uses, Sealaska said.

Worl said the Organized Village of Kasaan will decide what to do with the canoe, but for now Sealaska is keeping the site private and secure.

Worl said she hopes the canoe can be replicated so modern Haida canoe-makers can study its pre-commercial techniques, and that the site could possibly become an educational forum for future carvers.

“The canoe symbolically unites past, present and future,” she said.

“We are taught to honor our ancestors by ensuring that their knowledge is taught to future generations.”

Sealaska is also using the canoe discovery to advocate for the land legislation that it now has before Congress.

“We believe sites like this one will be better protected and preserved under Alaska Native ownership,” Worl said.

Sealaska Executive Vice President Rick Harris said he was proud Sealaska Timber Corp.’s field personnel, who are trained to recognize potential cultural resources, spotted and saved the canoe.

“They are instructed to immediately secure the area, stop any activities that may negatively affect the cultural resource, and contact Sealaska Heritage Institute, which oversees these matters,” Harris said.