Sealaska Heritage Institute to host two lectures next week

Sealaska Heritage Institute (SHI) will host two lectures next week on a Tlingit Chookaneidí story about a giant octopus and a talk about traditional foods.

Tlingit beader Tl’aagunk Renee Culp will share the story of Kahtushtu, and anthropologist Arnauld Chandivert will present a lecture on the living heritage of traditional foods.

Culp was first exposed to beading when she was a young girl. Her grandmother tried to teach her when Culp was just seven years old.

“I was too young to be sitting and doing something so patient,” Culp said with a laugh. “It wasn’t a good fit for me at the time. The lessons she taught me about beading and being an artist came after she was with the ancestors.”  

Culp said one piece takes her anywhere from three to nine months to create and uses tens of thousands of beads. The time she spends beading is sacred: It allows her to connect with the ancestors who went before her and the generations who will come after. The robe she’s working on now will document the story of an ancestor named Kahtushtu. Stark against the red felt, white and silver beads form the outline of a giant octopus that once terrorized the Chookaneidí people. Kahtushtu, determined to protect his village, strapped daggers to his wrists and went to battle with the creature, never to be seen again.

The robe will eventually become at.óow, Tlingit for “that which was paid for,” usually with the life of a clan ancestor.

“Our pieces aren’t just works of art — they’re historical documents,” Culp said, carefully beading the outline of a tentacle. “Our art becomes part of the family. At.óow has a soul, and it’s connected to our people in that way. So to say that it’s art…it definitely is, but it’s so much more than that.”

Arnauld Chandivert is an anthropologist at the Paul-Valéry University in Montpellier, France. During his visits to Southeast Alaska from his village in the Pyrenees mountains, he developed an interest in traditional food issues in Hoonah and Juneau.

Chandivert believes food is a living heritage connecting the past to the present; the spiritual to the everyday; people to the places they live; and islands to the mainland. His lecture “An ‘Archipelago of Connections’ and a Living Heritage,” will draw on a concept first proposed by the French philosopher Edouard Glissant. Born in the Caribbean islands, Glissant’s theory of archipelagos favors asymmetrical networks and exchanges between isolated parts of a whole. His school of thought works in direct opposition to continental thinking, which favors order and coherence.

“Continents weigh us down. They are thick and sumptuous. Archipelagos are able to diffract, they create diversity and expansiveness,” Glissant once told a Swiss historian. “Being in harmony with the world through archipelagos means inhabiting this diffraction.”

Culp’s lecture will be held from noon-1 pm, Tuesday, June 30, and Chandivert’s talk is scheduled from noon-1 pm, Wednesday, July 1 in the Clan House on the first level of Sealaska Heritage Institute, which is located at 105 Heritage Way in downtown Juneau. Both lectures will be live streamed and available to watch on SHI’s YouTube channel.

Sealaska Heritage Institute is a tribal nonprofit founded in 1980 to perpetuate and enhance Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian cultures of Southeast Alaska. Its goal is to promote cross-cultural understanding through public services and events. SHI also conducts social 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 an Education Committee.

CONTACT: Kathy Dye, SHI Communications and Publications Deputy Director, 907.321.4636, kathy.dye@sealaskaheritage.com.

Caption: Artist Tl’aagunk Renee Culp and anthropologist Arnauld Chandivert will present lectures next week. Note: Media outlets are welcome to use these photos for coverage of this story. For higher resolution images, contact kathy.dye@sealaskaheritage.com.