Artist panel to explore ancestral knowledge in contemporary Indigenous art

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Sealaska Heritage Institute (SHI) will co-host a public artist panel exploring how ancestral memory, embodied knowledge and intuition shape contemporary Indigenous creative practice.

“Retrieving the Unseen: Knowledge from the Ancestors and the Future” will take place from 12 to 1:30 p.m. on Jan. 22.

The panel is held in conjunction with the opening of “Gestures of Our Rebel Bodies,” a group exhibition featuring leading and emerging Indigenous artists from across the Northwest Coast. The exhibition opens from 5 to 8 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 24, at Aan Hít in Juneau.

Participating artists from the exhibition will gather to discuss how Indigenous art serves as a living system of knowledge that carries teachings through families, communities, land and material practice. Artists will reflect on how making becomes a method for remembering, teaching and imagining futures while remaining accountable to lineage and responsibility.

The conversation will address how artists navigate cross-heritage identity, cultural obligation and the realities of working within today’s economic and institutional landscapes. Topics include ancestral memory and lineage in creative process, intuition and learning through making, art as a tool for belonging and care, cross-heritage identity and cultural responsibility, and holding tradition while imagining future generations.

“Gestures of Our Rebel Bodies” brings together contemporary Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian artists whose work pushes beyond expectations of tradition while remaining deeply rooted in ancestral responsibility. The exhibition explores how embodied practice, movement, material knowledge and creative speculation function as engines of cultural continuity and future-making.

Featured artists include Alison Bremner (Tlingit), Kimberly Fulton Orozco (Haida), Nicholas Galanin (Tlingit/Aleut), Ursala Hudson (Tlingit), Erin Haldane (Tsimshian), Jackson Polys (Tlingit) and Jennifer Younger (Tlingit).

At the center of the exhibition is the archetype of Raven—figure of curiosity, disruption and transformation. Through painting, printmaking and mixed-media work, the artists move toward lineage not as replication, but as revelation. Their practices are grounded in Northwest Coast visual and philosophical frameworks while remaining open to uncertainty, play and failure as vital conditions of becoming.

The panel and exhibition are presented by Tlingit & Haida in collaboration with SHI and the Institute of American Indian Arts. 

Sealaska Heritage Institute is a non-profit tribal organization founded in 1980 to perpetuate and enhance Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian cultures of Southeast Alaska. SHI also conducts scientific and public policy research that promotes Alaska Native arts, cultures, history and education statewide. The institute is governed by a Board of Trustees and guided by a Council of Traditional Scholars, a Native Artist Committee, a Southeast Regional Language Committee and a newly formed Education Committee.

CONTACT: Therese Pokorney, SHI Communications Officer, therese.pokorney@sealaska.com