SHI lecture to revisit 50-year fight for Redoubt Bay's return
Redoubt Bay’s 2025 conveyance marks a victory for Native land advocacy, cultural preservation
May 27, 2025
Sealaska Heritage Institute (SHI) will sponsor a presentation this week as part of its spring lecture series featuring prominent voices in Native knowledge, art, culture and language.
Attorney Jon K. Tillinghast will present his talk, “Redoubt Lake: The Story of a 50-Year Battle to Preserve a Historic Cultural Treasure.”
Tillinghast will recount the decades-long effort to secure Redoubt Bay (Ḵunáa), a Tlingit summer village and sockeye salmon harvesting place located near Sitka, as a historical site under Alaska Native stewardship. The 10.54-acre parcel was officially conveyed to Sealaska Corporation earlier this year, nearly 50 years after the corporation first filed for the land under Section 14(h)(1) of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA).
The legal process to secure the site involved numerous regulatory and political hurdles, competing claims and persistent advocacy. Tillinghast, who has represented Sealaska on land and natural resource issues for over four decades, will share key legal strategies and historical context surrounding the effort.
Tillinghast graduated from Georgetown University Law Center in 1974. He served for more than 30 years as general counsel to the Tlingit Haida Regional Housing Authority and authored numerous briefs on Native subsistence and historic site issues before the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, the U.S. District Court for Alaska and the U.S. Department of the Interior. He also represented the village of Hoonah in its successful effort to establish a borough encompassing traditional Tlingit territory.
The lecture is scheduled for noon Tuesday, May 27, in Shuká Hít within the Walter Soboleff Building, 105 Heritage Way, in Juneau. The event will be livestreamed and posted on SHI’s YouTube channel.
Sealaska Heritage Institute is a 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, 907.321.4636, kathy.dye@sealaska.com