SHI announces winner of Celebration 2026 art contest

A Tlingit artist has won Sealaska Heritage Institute’s (SHI) competition to visually represent this year’s Celebration, a major dance-and-culture festival held biennially in Juneau since 1982.

The artist, Bill Pfeifer, won with his piece “Endurance and Strength: The Power of the Clan House,” which was inspired by the Celebration 2026 theme, Enduring Strength. His design will be used as the logo on all Celebration 2026 media related work, including posters, videos, social media, signage, printed materials and retail items.

The theme speaks to how Southeast Alaska Native cultures and cultural values have carried people through many challenges over thousands of years in their homelands.

“We have survived environmental and climate changes, the loss of our lands, public policies that nearly wiped out our cultures, and epidemics that diminished our populations. Yet we survived. We are still here,” said SHI President Rosita Worl.

Pfeifer, who now lives in Montesano, Washington, was born and raised in Ketchikan. According to his mother, he has been creating art “for as long as he could hold a crayon.” Later in life, he studied computer science at the University of Alaska Fairbanks and Purdue University in Indiana. Although he took a handful of art and graphic design classes in college, he’s primarily self-taught.

Pfeifer said his design “Endurance and Strength: The Power of the Clan House” is a testament to the stewardship Native communities show each other and the land, which in turn empowers both the people and the place they call home.

“The Tlingit peoples’ strength comes from the matrilineal clan structure embedded into our culture,” Pfeifer said. “It has allowed us to endure through numerous different pressures. It’s because we can lean on each other and learn from each other that allowed us to be so strong as a people in that regard.”

His design features a clan house as the island’s foundation. A protruding tongue, which serves as the entrance, symbolizes the passing of wisdom and the importance of going home to a clan. On either side of the clan house, red hands extend to the earth and water, feeling the pulse of both the land and the sea.

“This reflects a two-way relationship of care: We support the trees and the mountains, and in return, they support us,” Pfeifer wrote in his design submission.

An orca swims just below the water’s surface, further embodying core Tlingit values. Orcas, too, belong to family units headed by a matriarch – in Pfeifer’s design, the animal is swimming away from the clan house, representing the Tlingit spirit of exploration.

“While the clan house is our grounding, the ocean is our opportunity,” Pfeifer said. “We depend on our lineage to sustain each of us as individuals, even as we go out and adventure.”

Celebration 2026 will take place in Juneau June 3-6. The lead dance group will be Lepquinm Gumilgit Gagoadim Tsimshian Dancers (Our Own Dance in Our Hearts), a multigenerational group from Anchorage formed in 2005. Because accommodations in Juneau are limited, those interested in attending are encouraged to book hotel rooms early.

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: Kathy Dye, SHI Communications and Publications Deputy Director, kathy.dye@sealaska.com

Caption: SHI has chosen “Endurance and Strength: The Power of the Clan House,” a design by Tlingit artist Bill Pfeifer, to visually represent Celebration 2026. Note: News outlets are welcome to use this graphic for coverage of this story. For a high-res version, contact kathy.dye@sealaska.com.