SHI SIGNS WILLIAM G. DEMMERT MOA WITH JUNEAU SCHOOL DISTRICT, UNIVERSITY OF ALASKA SOUTHEAST

Sealaska Heritage Institute (SHI) has signed a memorandum of agreement (MOA) with the Juneau School District and University of Alaska Southeast, Juneau Campus, in an effort to increase the communication and collaboration among the organizations.

The organizations will work together through the William G. Demmert Memorandum of Agreement to provide enhanced cultural, instructional, academic, and career placement opportunity for Juneau’s students, said SHI President Rosita Worl, noting the MOA will be used to support, design, implement, and sustain existing and new projects and programs.

“It builds on the years of experience where we’ve worked together,” Worl said. “It’s formalizing our relationship and what we see for the future.”

The MOA was signed this week by Worl, UAS Chancellor John Pugh and Juneau School District Assistant Superintendent Laury Scandling at a meeting also attended by Joe Nelson, SHI Trustee and UAS Dean of Enrollment Management, Admissions; Richard Caulfield, UAS Provost and Executive Dean, School of Career Education; and Patty Newman, the district’s Director of Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment.

“This MOA confirms some of the things we are doing now, but it also marks an era where we’re seeing a real shift in thinking,” Pugh said. “We’re going to commit to moving forward even further.”

“We’re very happy to formalize this,” Scandling said. “Sometimes I hear people say ‘Oh it’s just a piece of paper.’ And as a former teacher of history, I want to say ‘Well, so was the Constitution!’”

The first joint project under the agreement is scheduled in August in Juneau. Under the project, new- and first-year teachers at the district and the university will participate in Wooch Yax, a two-day orientation that will include an overview on Native cultures and history with an emphasis on integrating culturally-based curriculum and knowledge into the classroom. The term Wooch Yax is a Native value based on balance, respect and reciprocity and refers to working together.

Future projects may incorporate SHI’s resources, which include curriculum, books and a large digital archive of historical photos, documents and recordings. A number of the activities cited in the agreement will take place after construction of SHI’s Walter Soboleff Center, which will be built across from Sealaska Plaza on the lot formerly known as “the pit.”

The MOA is named for the late William G. Demmert, a Native teacher and administrator in Southeast Alaska schools who played a major role in shaping educational programs for Native Americans and Alaska Natives at the local, regional and national levels. He also served as a professor and dean at UAS, as a commissioner for the Alaska Department of Education, and as a trustee to SHI.

“He symbolizes for us the partnership that can be forged among educational institutions that have a direct impact on our children’s future,” Worl said.

Sealaska Heritage Institute is a private, nonprofit founded in 1980 to promote cultural diversity and cross-cultural understanding. The institute is governed by a Board of Trustees and guided by a Council of Traditional Scholars. Its mission is to perpetuate and enhance Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian cultures of Southeast Alaska.

CONTACT: Rosita Worl, SHI President, 907.463.4844; John Pugh, Chancellor, UAS, 796-6272; Laury Scandling, Assistant Superintendent, Juneau School District, 523-1703.

Photograph caption: Caption: MOA signing in Juneau, April 10, 2012. From left: Richard Caulfield, UAS Provost and Executive Dean, School of Career Education; Patty Newman, the district’s Director of Curriculum, Instruction and Assessment; Laury Scandling, Juneau School District Assistant Superintendent; ; John Pugh, UAS Chancellor; Rosita Worl, President, Sealaska Heritage Institute; Lee Kadinger, Chief Operating Officer, Sealaska Heritage Institute; and Joe Nelson, SHI Trustee and UAS Dean of Enrollment Management, Admissions.

SHI PUBLISHES LANDMARK ATLAS DOCUMENTING TLINGIT, HAIDA PLACE NAMES

Book called the new benchmark against which all future work will be measured

Sealaska Heritage Institute (SHI) has published a landmark book documenting more than 3,000 Native place names and their locations in Southeast Alaska.

Nearly twenty years in the making, Haa Léelk’w Hás Aaní Saax’ú: Our Grandparents’ Names on the Land, is the most comprehensive study of its kind. It was compiled by Dr. Thomas Thornton in collaboration with hundreds of people, including area Tribes and Elders, under several grants administered by Harold Martin through the Southeast Native Subsistence Commission and Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska.

Many of the people who contributed to the book have since Walked Into The Forest, and if not for this research, the place names would have died with them, said SHI President Rosita Worl.

“If they had not begun this work twenty years ago we would not have the benefit of this vast knowledge,” Worl said.

The vast majority of place names in the book are of Tlingit origin. But there are also Haida place names, and some Tsimshian, Eyak, Chugach and Athabaskan names. The chapters are organized by kwáan, traditional community territories which roughly correspond to modern community areas. Each chapter includes a narrative and concludes with a map showing place name locations along with a table listing the Native names, translations and locations.

Native place names differ from English place names, which often are biographical and commemorate people, said Thornton, noting the vast majority of Native place names are descriptive.

“There’s the literal translation and there are all of these associations that people are aware of. They can be historical events, they can be natural resources that are associated with the places, personal memories, clan histories, mythological events, all of those things are tied to place, and that was really the fundamental way that history was recorded,” Thornton said.

“It’s so much more than just a place name,” said Worl, who is Tlingit. “It’s tied to our social fabric, our social identity, our world view, how we see the world, how our ancestors were using different sites.”

For example, the English place name “Juneau” commemorates Joe Juneau, a gold miner. One of the Tlingit names for the Juneau area is Dzantik’i Héeni (Flounder at the Base of the Creek), the name for the area today known as Gold Creek, Thornton said.

“And the name— Dzantik’i Héeni —actually refers to the flounder that were said to be in the vicinity of the creek. And, again it’s a descriptive name and describes probably a subsistence activity that people engaged in,” he said.

Another major theme that arose from the research is the environmental change documented in the names. For example, the Tlingit name for Glacier Bay is Sít’ Eetí Geeyí, which translates as Bay in Place of the Glacier.

“In Tlingit it’s a much more descriptive name and it actually tells you about the geomorphological processes that are unfolding in Glacier Bay where the glacier is retreating and the bay is taking its place. So that to me signifies the capacity of Tlingit to describe geographic phenomena. And that’s evident all throughout the geographic nomenclature,” he said.

One story in the book recounted by Johnny C. Jackson of Kake tells of a great flood that forced people into the Interior. They migrated back several generations later after the water receded and even though many of the travelers had never seen their homeland, they were able to recognize places by the picturesque Tlingit names that had been passed down.

Thornton and local researchers collected the information in two ways: by recording names recalled by Elders in communities throughout Southeast Alaska over many years and by compiling place names documented in the past by scholars such as Frederica de Laguna and others. The names compiled by early chroniclers were often spelled in unorthodox ways, rather than in the common orthographies of today, making them difficult to decipher and re-elicit. That alone was a massive research task.

The book has received accolades from people, including Richard Dauenhauer, a prominent scholar of Tlingit history, language and culture. He called it “the first successful attempt to gather all the indigenous place names of Southeast Alaska.”

“It is the most complete list of all known place names collected and published to date. It is the new benchmark against which all future work will be measured,” said Dauenhauer.

“Restoring Tlingit place names and their meanings will root our people in place and decolonize the landscape, and Thornton has provided us with a fundamental tool to do exactly that. Sh tóogaa xat ditee—I am grateful,” said Lance Twitchell, a Tlingit language teacher at the University of Alaska Southeast.

The book includes a note to the reader by Harold Martin, who was instrumental in guiding the project through all stages and took an active role in the research process, and a foreword by Worl. It was co-published with the University of Washington Press (UWP) and received funding from the National Park Service Heritage Grant program, SHI, and Juneau resident Mike Blackwell. The cover art is by Clarissa Rizal and the book was designed and edited by Michael Travis. The book is available in paperback ($30) and hardcover ($60). Thornton will be in Juneau at noon on Friday, April 13, for a book signing in the lobby of the Sealaska building.

Thornton is Senior Research Fellow and Director of the Environmental Change and Management Program at the Environmental Change Institute, School of Geography and the Environment, University of Oxford. He has conducted numerous studies in Alaska and wrote Being and Place Among the Tlingit, which was published in 2008 by the UWP in association with SHI.

Sealaska Heritage Institute is a private, nonprofit founded in 1980 to promote cultural diversity and cross-cultural understanding. The institute is governed by a Board of Trustees and guided by a Council of Traditional Scholars. Its mission is to perpetuate and enhance Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian cultures of Southeast Alaska.

CONTACT: Rosita Worl, SHI President, 907.463.4844; Thomas Thornton, Editor, 011-44-7503770140 (Note: Thornton lives in England. Because of the time zone difference, the best time to call him is between 6:00am and 10:00am Alaska time. He will be in Southeast Alaska April 10-17, where he can be reached at 808-589-8837.)

SHI AWARDED GRANT FOR ART PROGRAM TO TEACH FORMLINE

SHI AWARDED GRANT FOR ART PROGRAM TO TEACH FORMLINE
Grant includes instruction for K-12 art teachers

Sealaska Heritage Institute (SHI) has received a grant to establish a Native art academy in an effort to ensure younger artists are learning formline—the basis of Northwest Coast art.

The $517,500 grant from the Margaret A. Cargill Foundation will help artists at all levels to learn and enhance their formline, a term that describes the complex designs, such as ovoids and split Us, which are the underlying components of the distinctive Northwest Coast art. It will also increase the number of Native artists and art instructors qualified to teach Northwest Coast art in public schools.

The three-year project, called the Jinéit (handmade) Art Academy, was developed at the urging of master artists who served as jurors in SHI’s Juried Art Show and Competition and members of the Native Artist Committee, a panel of master artists founded by SHI to guide the institute’s art programs. Since many students don’t have access to the traditional master-apprentice system of learning formline, a lot of our younger artists aren’t mastering those skills, said SHI President Rosita Worl.

“The master artists felt that it was really important for us to begin teaching this throughout our entire region and to all of our artists irrespective of the media in which they produce their art,” Worl said.

The project aims to incorporate Native art classes into public schools by collaborating with Native artists and K-12 teachers, Worl said.

“Part of the project will be introducing Northwest Coast art to art teachers in the schools and then secondly to be teaching our Native artists how to teach in the schools,” Worl said.

Under the grant, SHI will hold an instructor training workshop to teach accomplished artists how to teach formline design to other artists and K-12 teachers. Selected artists who participate in the workshop will conduct formline classes in 10 communities for artists of all levels, high school students and K-12 teachers. In the last phase, SHI will hold a workshop in Juneau for selected artists and K-12 teachers to develop, field-test and evaluate Northwest Coast art kits to be used as a curriculum for future formline instruction.

The award marks the first time SHI has received a grant from the Margaret A. Cargill Foundation.

“We’re very honored. To be selected is just really an exciting thing for us,” Worl said.

Sealaska Heritage Institute is a private, nonprofit founded in 1980 to promote cultural diversity and cross-cultural understanding. The institute is governed by a Board of Trustees and guided by a Council of Traditional Scholars. Its mission is to perpetuate and enhance Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian cultures of Southeast Alaska.

CONTACT: Rosita Worl, SHI President, 907.463.4844

Frank G. Johnson on Tlingit Education – A Researcher’s Work

The Sealaska Heritage Institute’s research library receives many visitors, each with their own set of research objectives. Sealaska’s library collects rare books, archival documents and recordings, and ethnographic objects that document the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian people. Current intern at and regular researcher of Sealaska’s library, Ishmael Hope, discussed some of his research online, which serves as a type of demonstration and/or example of what type of research individuals using Sealaska’s library are doing.

For a recent presentation Ishmael Hope gave in Seattle on Tlingit culture and history, he researched the late Tlingit elder Frank G. Johnson (1894-1982). From this research effort Ishmael Hope’s blog, Alaska Native Storyteller, featured a post about some rare Tlingit educational materials developed between 1976 and 1980, in part by Frank Johnson, which Hope studied in our library. Click here to read Hope’s writing on Frank Johnson, along with text from Johnson’s Tlingit Family Life (1980).

Photograph Credit: Frank Johnson, photo by Dick Dauenhauer, from SHI's Dauenhauer Photograph Collection.

Sealaska Heritage Institute is a regional nonprofit representing the Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian people of Southeast Alaska. Its mission is to perpetuate and enhance Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian cultures. Sealaska Heritage Institute seeks to promote cross cultural understanding.

Historical Records & Elizabeth Peratrovich Day

Every February 16^th the state holiday of Elizabeth Peratrovich Day is observed because of the Civil Rights actions of Elizabeth W. Peratrovich (1911-1958), Tlingit Indian and civic leader from Southeast Alaska. The day is connected to the February 16, 1945 signing of the Anti-Discrimination Act, an Alaskan territorial bill passed which made it illegal to discriminate against individuals because of race.

While many Alaska Natives engaged in Civil and Human Rights actions prior to the Anti-Discrimination Act of 1945 and the holiday commemorates all Alaska Natives involved in the Civil Rights crusade, for many the holiday’s focus centers on Peratrovich’s impassioned speech before the territorial legislature which swayed legislators to vote in favor of passing the Anti-Discrimination Act.

In honor of Elizabeth Peratrovich Day, a letter from our archival collections written by Elizabeth Peratrovich and her husband Roy Peratrovich is provided below. This 1941 co-authored letter, written while Elizabeth was Grand Vice President of the Alaska Native Sisterhood and her husband Grand President of the Alaska Native Brotherhood, called on the territorial governor, Ernest Gruening, to address discrimination in the Juneau-Douglas community and on a state level. Gruening followed this mandate, and worked alongside Roy and Elizabeth Peratrovich and other Alaska Natives toward the eventual passage of the Anti-Discrimination Act in 1945.

Photo Credit: Elizabeth Peratrovich, circa 1945 (in black coat). Photograph by William Paul Jr., in SHI's Digital Collection, courtesy of Ben Paul.

Document Credit: Letter, from Mss 29: ANB Camp 2 Records, Sealaska Heritage Institute.

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