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.

SCHOLAR DONATES ARCHIVES ON HYDABURG, HAIDA TO SHI

An anthropologist who studied the City of Hydaburg and the Haida history and culture there has donated his field work and doctoral papers to Sealaska Heritage Institute (SHI).

Dan Vaughan, Ph.D., spent a decade working in Hydaburg on Prince of Wales Island as a cultural anthropologist for the University of Washington from 1974 to 1984. During that time, he also did work on his dissertation, which was a study of the Haida people in Hydaburg reaching back two-hundred years.

The collection has important research value because it documents decisions people in Hydaburg have made over the last century, said SHI’s Archivist and Collections Manager Zachary Jones.

“These are administrative, political, and even cultural decisions,” Jones said. “There’s a great deal of genealogical data as well, which may well serve people interested in learning more about their family history from Hydaburg or just the general history and culture of the people from Hydaburg.”

The collection includes written documents, such as correspondence and meeting minutes, from Hydaburg dating to the 1920s plus photographs and field work recordings made by Vaughan as he interviewed people. He also recorded people singing and speaking in Haida.

Vaughan donated the collection to SHI because he wanted it to go to an organization that represents Alaska Natives, Jones said.

“He saw a place where he felt they could be cared for appropriately which could service the people of Hydaburg or those interested in that area,” Jones said.

SHI’s collections facility is open to the public and located at Sealaska Plaza in Juneau. The institute employs a full-time staff to care for collections and assist researchers studying Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian cultures.

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.

CONTACT: Zachary Jones, Archivist and Collections Manager, 586-9261

Photo credit: Photo of Dan Vaughan in Southeast Alaska, circa 1977, from the Dan Vaughan Collection

Human Rights Actions of Alaska Native Brotherhood & Sisterhood Camp 2 in 1940

The detailed history of racial discrimination against Southeast Alaska Natives remains to be written. Fortunately the late Dr. Walter A. Soboleff (1908-2011), an advocate for Tlingit culture and Human Rights, saved his correspondence, meeting minutes, and other records while an active and leading member of the Alaska Native Brotherhood (ANB), which served to document the historic Human Rights actions of ANB and ANB’s counterpart, the Alaska Native Sisterhood (ANS). The materials he saved, amounting to 37 boxes of historic documents stored at Sealaska Heritage Institute, detail this effort on many levels, and are available to the public for educational research.

Recently, I reviewed the 1939-1945 ANB/ANS Camp 2 meeting minutes ledger. Reading over the joint ANB and ANS meeting for February 12, 1940, I encountered documentation speaking to Human Rights actions undertaken in Juneau by ANB and ANS.

Under the direction of ANB Camp 2 President William S. Wanamaker (1889-1944) (Tlingit of the Kiks.ádi Clan), the meeting minutes record Cyril J. Zuboff Sr. (1892-1869) raising the issue of the Juneau Sports Arena refusing to allow Alaska Natives entrance. Minutes then record proposals to address this situation, which included; 1) engaging in efforts that encouraged people from “refraining from patronizing” the arena, 2) the creation of a four member committee (two ANB men and two ANS women) to address the issue, and 3) that this committee “present a written protest at the next [Juneau] Chamber of Commerce meeting.”

These two short pages (provided below), from this old ledger, speak a great deal about the history of Human and Civil Rights and the reasons ANB and ANS fought for the Anti-Discrimination Act of 1945 and additional efforts.

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. SHI maintains a large collection of archival materials that document the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian cultures.