Sealaska Heritage Institute Press Release

SEALASKA HERITAGE TO SPONSOR LECTURE ON RAVEN AS A LITERARY SYMBOL

Free event to be offered virtually, in-person on Nov. 22

Nov. 18, 2021

Sealaska Heritage Institute (SHI) will sponsor a lecture on Monday on Raven as a literary symbol as part of a series on Southeast Alaska Native history in honor of Native American Heritage Month.

The talk, Retelling American Literature through Raven’s Song, will be given by Dr. Sarah Rivett, a professor of English and American studies at Princeton University.

In the European tradition, the raven became known for disobedience in Genesis 8.7. Eighteenth-century theologian Jonathan Edwards called the raven a “type of devil.” Edgar Allan Poe refers to the raven in his titular poem as a “thing of evil,” Rivett wrote.

In her talk, Rivett will unsettle European labels for the raven with a case study of a Tlingit box from the 1880s Yakutat, Alaska, now housed in the Princeton University Art Museum.  For more than one hundred years the box has been displaced, but it demands reconsideration of the complexity of the Raven as literary symbol, she wrote.

Rivett interprets the box in the context of oral Raven literature told by Kuchíin Frank Italio, the oldest recorded Tlingit storyteller. Kuchíin was born in Yakutat in the 1860s into the same L’uknaX̱.adí clan that created the box, and his stories and the box itself offer new ways of thinking about the raven in The Book of Genesis, as well as in subsequent literary history.

Kuchíin’s Raven story reveals a connection between the European dismissal of the raven as devil and the fabrication of the origins story on which United States power depends. The Tlingit Raven cycle highlights what has been ignored in the Genesis story: godless authority and a contra-teleological presence. The Raven repudiates the myth of origins upon which US settler colonialism depends, she wrote.

The lecture is scheduled at noon Alaska time, Monday, Nov. 22. All lectures will be streamed at 12 pm to the Sealaska Heritage YouTube channel. This talk will also be presented in person in SHI’s clan house to attendees who show proof of vaccination cards. A Q&A session will follow.

About the Lecturer

Dr. Sarah Rivett is the author of The Science of the Soul in Colonial New England (2011) and Unscripted America: Indigenous Languages and the Origins of a Literary Nation (2017). She is currently writing a book on ravens in American literary history.    

This program is provided under the Preparing Indigenous Teachers and Administrators for Alaska Schools (PITAAS) program and funded by the Alaska Native Education Program.

Sealaska Heritage Institute is a private nonprofit founded in 1980 to perpetuate and enhance Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian cultures of Southeast Alaska. Its goal is to promote cultural diversity and 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 and a Southeast Regional Language Committee.

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

Sealaska Heritage Institute Press Release

SEALASKA HERITAGE TO SPONSOR LECTURE ON CIVIL RIGHTS ICON ELIZABETH PERATROVICH

Free event to be offered virtually, in-person on Nov. 19

Nov. 16, 2021

Sealaska Heritage Institute (SHI) will sponsor a lecture on Friday on the civil rights icon Elizabeth Peratrovich as part of a series on Southeast Alaska Native history in honor of Native American Heritage Month.

The talk, Fighter in Velvet Gloves: Alaska Civil Rights Hero Elizabeth Peratrovich, will be given by Ann Boochever, who grew up in Juneau when Alaska was still a territory, and racism, although subtler than before passage of the anti-discrimination bill, was still pervasive.

In her talk, Boochever will offer personal insights into life in Juneau during the 1950s and discuss how she came to write Fighter in Velvet Gloves with the help of Elizabeth’s only living child, now 87-year-old Roy Peratrovich, Jr.

Historical slides from the Alaska State Archives and the Peratrovich family will accompany the presentation and provide a rare glimpse into the personal life of Elizabeth and how she grew to lead Alaska and all of America in the battle for civil rights.

The lecture is scheduled at noon Alaska time, Friday, Nov. 19. All lectures will be streamed at 12 pm to the Sealaska Heritage YouTube channel. This talk will also be presented in person in SHI’s clan house to attendees who show proof of vaccination cards. Space is limited to half capacity of SHI’s clan house because of COVID-19 concerns. A Q&A session will follow.  

About the Lecturer

Following a career teaching music and library skills, Ann Boochever earned an MFA in creative writing for children and young adults. Boochever’s books, Bristol Bay Summer (Alaska Northwest Books, 2014) and Fighter in Velvet Gloves: Alaska Civil Rights Hero Elizabeth Peratrovich (University of Alaska Press, 2019) have won numerous awards and were selected as Notable Social Studies Trade Books and Alaska State Battle of the Books. Fighter in Velvet Gloves was included in the 2019 American Indians in Children’s Literature list of best non-fiction books for young adults and selected to represent Alaska in the 2019 National Library of Congress Parade of States.

This program is provided under the Preparing Indigenous Teachers and Administrators for Alaska Schools (PITAAS) program and funded by the Alaska Native Education Program.

Sealaska Heritage Institute is a private nonprofit founded in 1980 to perpetuate and enhance Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian cultures of Southeast Alaska. Its goal is to promote cultural diversity and 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 and a Southeast Regional Language Committee.

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

Sealaska Heritage Institute Press Release

SEALASKA HERITAGE TO SPONSOR LECTURE ON THE LITERARY HISTORY OF THE ANB, ANS

Free event to be offered virtually on Nov. 10

Nov. 5, 2021

Sealaska Heritage Institute (SHI) will sponsor a lecture on the literary history of the Alaska Native Brotherhood (ANB) and Sisterhood (ANS) as part of a series on Southeast Alaska Native history in honor of Native American Heritage Month.

The talk, A Traditional Literary History of the Alaska Native Brotherhood and Sisterhood: Writing Alaska Native Solidarity into American Modernity, will be given by Michael P. Taylor, Ph.D., assistant professor of English and associate director of American Indian Studies, Brigham Young University.

On November 5, 1912, eleven Alaska Native men and one Alaska Native woman came together to form the ANB. Two years later, eight Alaska Native women organized the ANS. Early on, the brotherhood and sisterhood collaborated to promote Alaska Native solidarity, fight for U.S. citizenship, desegregate public education, ensure economic equality, and protect traditional rights to Alaska Native lands and waters, Taylor wrote.

This presentation turns to the ANB’s monthly newspaper, The Alaska Fisherman (1923-1932), to demonstrate how the ANB/ANS navigated the challenging sociopolitical realities brought on by increased U.S.-settler expansion by adapting longstanding Alaska Native literary traditions. Such literary adaptations were not an abandonment of traditional practices and protocols; rather, The Alaska Fisherman offers a continuation of traditional literary commitments that served to protect and sustain Alaska Native lands and waters into American modernity.

The lecture is scheduled at noon Alaska time, Wednesday, Nov. 10. All lectures will be streamed at 12 pm to the Sealaska Heritage YouTube channel. A live Q&A session will follow the lecture.

About the Lecturer

Michael P. Taylor is an Assistant Professor of English and Associate Director of American Indian Studies at Brigham Young University. He is the current Butler Young Scholar with the Charles Redd Center for Western Studies. His scholarship on Indigenous activism, poetry, and boarding schools has appeared in such journals as American Quarterly, Native American and Indigenous Studies, and Modernism/Modernity. He is the coauthor of Returning Home: Diné Creative Works from the Intermountain Indian School published with University of Arizona Press. His research engages Indigenous archives to expand the literary histories and ongoing resurgent acts of Indigenous communities.

This program is provided under the Preparing Indigenous Teachers and Administrators for Alaska Schools (PITAAS) program and funded by the Alaska Native Education Program.

Sealaska Heritage Institute is a private nonprofit founded in 1980 to perpetuate and enhance Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian cultures of Southeast Alaska. Its goal is to promote cultural diversity and 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 and a Southeast Regional Language Committee.

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

Sealaska Heritage Institute Press Release

SEALASKA HERITAGE TO SPONSOR LECTURE ON TLINGIT, RUSSIAN BATTLES

Free event to be offered virtually on Nov. 8

Nov. 2, 2021

Sealaska Heritage Institute (SHI) will sponsor a lecture on the historical Tlingit battles with Russians as part of a series on Southeast Alaska Native history in honor of Native American Heritage Month.

The talk, The Russian-Tlingit Conflict of 1802-1804: Origins, Course, Results, will be given by Alexander Vasilyevich Zorin, Ph.D., chief curator of collections at the Kursk State Regional Museum of Archaeology.

Dr. Zorin will give his speech from Russia in his native tongue, and the talk will be translated by Valiantsina Gouk of Juneau.

The 1802-1804 events had crucial importance for the history of the Russian colonies in North America. The Russian pioneers had to face the resolute resistance of the warlike and well-armed Tlingit Indians, who stubbornly defended their trade and commercial interests, Zorin wrote.

In the epicenter of this fight were the forts of the Russian-American Company (RAC) in the very heart of Tlingit country – on Sitka Island (currently Baranov Island). Besides the Indians and the RAC employees, the English and American sea-traders were involved in the fight, as well as the participants in the first Russian circumnavigation: the ship Neva’s sailors, under the command of Yuri F. Lysianskyi.

In the summer of 1802, the Tlingit combined forces to destroy the Russian fortress of St. Archangel Mikhail, exterminate the Sitka hunting party and block the way of the further advance of Russian colonization. In 1804, the RAC forces under the leadership of A.A. Baranov struck back and restored control over Sitka and the adjacent waters of the straits of the Alexander Archipelago. Later, thanks to skillful diplomacy, the parties managed to smooth-out the mutual contradictions and develop the rules of peaceful co-existence. Consulting the Russian and English-speaking written sources for the research, in combination with the oral Indian legends, allows us to clear up the causes of the conflict, restore in detail the course of the military operations and track the destinies of certain participants in these events, he wrote.

The lecture is scheduled at noon Alaska time, Monday, Nov. 8. All lectures will be streamed at 12 pm to the Sealaska Heritage YouTube channel.

About the Lecturer

Dr. Zorin was born in Kursk, Russia (1967), and graduated from the historical and pedagogical faculty of the Kursk State Pedagogical Institute (1991). In 1999, he defended a dissertation for a degree as a candidate in the historical sciences on the subject The Indian War in Russian America (Voronezh State University). Since 1981, he has participated in the archaeological research in the territory of the Kursk and Belgorod regions and is the author of 120 publications on the history of Russian America, history of North American Indians, archaeology and the study of local lore. He is the coauthor of many collective works, including The Borderland: Kursk region in the 17th century (2001), Kursk Region in the Civil War (2013) and Kursk Region through the Centuries (2014). He has been awarded the Certificate of Honor of the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation and is the winner of the I.K. Zabelin Award (2011).

This program is provided under the Preparing Indigenous Teachers and Administrators for Alaska Schools (PITAAS) program and funded by the Alaska Native Education Program.

Sealaska Heritage Institute is a private nonprofit founded in 1980 to perpetuate and enhance Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian cultures of Southeast Alaska. Its goal is to promote cultural diversity and 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 and a Southeast Regional Language Committee.

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

Sealaska Heritage Institute Press Release

SEALASKA HERITAGE TO SPONSOR LECTURE ON THE HISTORY OF ALASKA NATIVE EDUCATION

Free event to be offered in-person, virtually

Nov. 2, 2021

Sealaska Heritage Institute (SHI) will sponsor a lecture on the history of Alaska Native education as part of a series on Southeast Alaska Native history in honor of Native American Heritage Month.

The talk, Southeast Alaska Native Education History, will be given by Mischa Jackson (Chookangee Tláa), an assistant professor of secondary education at the University of Alaska Southeast.

Chookangee Tláa, a Tlingit, will explore Alaska Native history, starting at contact, to provide a backdrop and contextual understanding of different events that have shaped the educational systems in place for Alaska Natives. 

These events and policies have had a lasting impact on Southeast Alaska Native families and communities historically and in the present day. In her talk, she will highlight the active role that Alaska Natives have taken in attempts to push for educational reform and opportunities for future generations. 

The lecture is scheduled at noon Alaska time, Thursday, Nov. 4. All lectures will be livestreamed at 12 pm AKST to the Sealaska Heritage YouTube channel. This talk will also be presented in person in SHI’s clan house to attendees who show proof of vaccination cards. Space is limited to half capacity of SHI’s clan house because of COVID-19 concerns. A Q&A session will follow each lecture. 

About the Lecturer

Prior to her work at UAS, Chookangee Tl├ía was a social studies teacher at Juneau-Douglas High School, and she previously worked with the Tlingit and Haida Johnson O’Malley Program and Sealaska Heritage Institute. Chookangee Tl├ía has roots throughout Southeast Alaska; she is Shangukeid├¡ (Thunderbird clan) from the House Lowered from the Sun in Klukwan, and her family was born and raised in Juneau. She is connected to many villages and families through her husband, Josh Jackson, Kalch├íni, (T’aḴdíintaan) and they are raising three little Thunderbird girls in Juneau.

This program is provided under the Preparing Indigenous Teachers and Administrators for Alaska Schools (PITAAS) program and funded by the Alaska Native Education Program.

Sealaska Heritage Institute is a private nonprofit founded in 1980 to perpetuate and enhance Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian cultures of Southeast Alaska. Its goal is to promote cultural diversity and 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 and a Southeast Regional Language Committee.

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

Sealaska Heritage Institute Press Release

SHI TO SPONSOR 2023 LECTURE SERIES FOR NATIVE AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH

Free event to be offered in-person, virtually

Oct. 25, 2021

Sealaska Heritage Institute (SHI) will sponsor a lecture series on Southeast Alaska Native history in November in honor of Native American Heritage Month.

All lectures will be live streamed on SHI’s YouTube channel at noon Alaska time. Some of the talks will also be available in-person to attendees who show proof of vaccination cards. Space is limited to half capacity of SHI’s clan house because of COVID-19 concerns.

Tuesday, Nov. 2

•   Lecture: Tlingit Society and the Crucible of Contact, 1741-1867 by Stephen Langdon, Ph.D., professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Alaska Anchorage where he taught for 38 years. Langdon will examine a time in the 18th century, when Tlingit people began interactions with Europeans and Americans from distant lands with whom they had no previous contact or knowledge.  These contacts brought new materials and technologies, deadly diseases and threats to the hegemony of Tlingit control of the region. (In-person and online)

Thursday, Nov. 4

•   Lecture: Southeast Alaska Native Education History by Mischa Plunkett Jackson (Chookangee Tláa), an assistant professor of secondary education at the University of Alaska Southeast. This presentation will take participants through history, starting at contact, to provide a backdrop and contextual understanding of different events that have shaped the educational systems in place for Alaska Natives. These events and policies have had a lasting impact on Southeast Alaska Native families and communities throughout history and today. Events from Southeast Alaska will highlight the active role that Alaska Natives have taken in attempts to push for educational reform and opportunities for future generations. (In-person and online)

Monday, Nov. 8

•   Lecture: The Russian-Tlingit Conflict of 1802-1804: Origins, Course, Results by Alexander Zorin, chief curator of collections at the Kursk State Regional Museum of Archaeology. Zorin, who was born in Russian and has done scholarly work on the Tlingit-Russian battles of 1902 and 1804 in Sitka, will argue that those events had crucial importance for the history of the Russian colonies in North America. The Russian pioneers had to face the resolute resistance of the fierce and well-armed Tlingit Indians, who defended their trade and commercial interests. Note: This lecture will be given in Russian and translated live by Valiantsina Gouk. (Online only)

Wednesday, Nov. 10

•   Lecture: A Traditional Literary History of the Alaska Native Brotherhood and Sisterhood: Writing Alaska Native Solidarity into American Modernity by Michael P. Taylor, Ph.D., assistant professor of English and associate director of American Indian Studies, Brigham Young University. Taylor, who has studied the formation of the Alaska Native Brotherhood (ANB) and Sisterhood (ANS), will turn to the ANB’s monthly newspaper, The Alaska Fisherman (1923–1932), to demonstrate how the ANB/ANS navigated the challenging sociopolitical realities brought on by increased U.S.-settler expansion by adapting longstanding Alaska Native literary traditions. (Online only)

Tuesday, Nov. 16

•   Lecture: In His Own Words, a biography of William Lewis Paul by Benjamin Starr Paul (Ku-nuX-nuhsti), who is Tlingit, Teeyhíttaan, of the Raven clan and grandson of William Lewis Paul (Shquindy), also known as the father of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. Paul will trace the life of William Lewis Paul Sr. from his early childhood with his mother, Tillie Paul, at Sheldon Jackson school, to his death in Seattle on March 4, 1977. Using the speech William Lewis Paul Sr. gave at his honorary doctorate ceremony at Whitworth University, 1972, (audio will be played) as a guide, Ben will give special attention to spiritual and religious life of his grandfather. (In-person and online)

Friday, Nov.19

•   Lecture: Fighter in Velvet Gloves: Alaska Civil Rights Hero Elizabeth Peratrovich by Ann Boochever. Born and raised in Juneau, Boochever will offer personal insights into life in Juneau during the 1950s and discuss how she came to write Fighter in Velvet Gloves with the help of Elizabeth’s only living child, now 87-year-old Roy Peratrovich Jr. Historical slides from the Alaska State Archives and the Peratrovich family will accompany the presentation providing a rare glimpse into the personal life of Elizabeth and how she grew to lead Alaska and all of America in the battle for civil rights. (In-person and online)

Monday, Nov.22

•   Lecture: Infectious Diseases, Settler Colonialism, and Race on Sheet’ka Ḵwáan by Adam Kersch, M.A. doctoral candidate, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Davis. Kersch, a white Jewish settler whose family formerly lived in Romania, Serbia, and Britain, will examine transformations in the relationship between race, health, and colonialism in Sheet’ká (Sitka, Alaska), focusing on infectious disease outbreaks over the past 200 years. (Online only)

Tuesday, Nov.23

•   Lecture: “What’s in a Name?” — The “Indian Girl” from Ft. Wrangell Who Met Harriet Tubman by Phillip Hesser, Ph.D., who has taught in the United States and Africa and served with the UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and the Academy for Educational Development. Hesser will tell about his quest to find Ft. Wrangell Alaska Native Shik-Sha-Ni, who toured the country and met Harriet Tubman in the late 1880s in New York. (In-person and online)

Wednesday, Nov.24

•   Lecture: Retelling American Literature through Raven’s Song by Sarah Rivett, Ph.D., professor of English and American Studies at Princeton University and author of The Science of the Soul in Colonial New England (2011) and Unscripted America: Indigenous Languages and the Origins of a Literary Nation (2017). Rivett will talk about Ravens in American literary history, and unsettle European labels for the Raven with a case study of a Tlingit box from the 1880s from Yakutat, Alaska, now housed in the Princeton University Art Museum. (In-person and online)

Tuesday, Nov.30

•   Lecture: ANCSA Corporations as “Indian tribes” Under Federal Indian Law and the Constitution by Chris McNeil (Shaakakóoni), the owner of Native Strategy Group and former president and CEO of Sealaska. McNeil, who is Eagle of the Daḵl’aweidí (Killerwhale) House, will talk about a case brought by the Chehalis and other tribes that challenged the status of Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) corporations as an “Indian tribe” under the CARES Act. (In-person and online) 

This program is provided under the Preparing Indigenous Teachers and Administrators for Alaska Schools (PITAAS) program and funded by the Alaska Native Education Program.

Sealaska Heritage Institute is a private nonprofit founded in 1980 to perpetuate and enhance Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian cultures of Southeast Alaska. Its goal is to promote cultural diversity and 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 and a Southeast Regional Language Committee.

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

Sealaska Heritage Institute Press Release

SEALASKA HERITAGE TO SPONSOR LECTURE SERIES FOR NATIVE AMERICAN HERITAGE MONTH

Free event to be offered in-person, virtually

Oct. 25, 2021

Sealaska Heritage Institute (SHI) will sponsor a lecture series on Southeast Alaska Native history in November in honor of Native American Heritage Month.

All lectures will be live streamed on SHI’s YouTube channel at noon Alaska time. Some of the talks will also be available in-person to attendees who show proof of vaccination cards. Space is limited to half capacity of SHI’s clan house because of COVID-19 concerns.

Tuesday, Nov. 2

Lecture: Tlingit Society and the Crucible of Contact, 1741-1867 by Stephen Langdon, Ph.D., professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Alaska Anchorage where he taught for 38 years. Langdon will examine a time in the 18th century, when Tlingit people began interactions with Europeans and Americans from distant lands with whom they had no previous contact or knowledge.  These contacts brought new materials and technologies, deadly diseases and threats to the hegemony of Tlingit control of the region. (In-person and online)

Thursday, Nov. 4

Lecture: Southeast Alaska Native Education History by Mischa Plunkett Jackson (Chookangee Tláa), an assistant professor of secondary education at the University of Alaska Southeast. This presentation will take participants through history, starting at contact, to provide a backdrop and contextual understanding of different events that have shaped the educational systems in place for Alaska Natives. These events and policies have had a lasting impact on Southeast Alaska Native families and communities throughout history and today. Events from Southeast Alaska will highlight the active role that Alaska Natives have taken in attempts to push for educational reform and opportunities for future generations. (In-person and online)

Monday, Nov. 8

Lecture: The Russian-Tlingit Conflict of 1802-1804: Origins, Course, Results by Alexander Zorin, chief curator of collections at the Kursk State Regional Museum of Archaeology. Zorin, who was born in Russian and has done scholarly work on the Tlingit-Russian battles of 1902 and 1804 in Sitka, will argue that those events had crucial importance for the history of the Russian colonies in North America. The Russian pioneers had to face the resolute resistance of the warlike and well-armed Tlingit Indians, who stubbornly defended their trade and commercial interests. Note: This lecture will be given in Russian and translated by Valiantsina Gouk. (Online only)

Wednesday, Nov. 10

Lecture: A Traditional Literary History of the Alaska Native Brotherhood and Sisterhood: Writing Alaska Native Solidarity into American Modernity by Michael P. Taylor, Ph.D., assistant professor of English and associate director of American Indian Studies, Brigham Young University. Taylor, who has studied the formation of the Alaska Native Brotherhood (ANB) and Sisterhood (ANS), will turn to the ANB’s monthly newspaper, The Alaska Fisherman (1923ΓÇô1932), to demonstrate how the ANB/ANS navigated the challenging sociopolitical realities brought on by increased U.S.-settler expansion by adapting longstanding Alaska Native literary traditions. (Online only)

Tuesday, Nov. 16

Lecture: In His Own Words, a biography of William Lewis Paul by Benjamin Starr Paul (Ku-nuX-nuhsti), who is Tlingit, Teeyhíttaan, of the Raven clan and grandson of William Lewis Paul (Shquindy), also known as the father of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. Paul will trace the life of William Lewis Paul Sr. from his early childhood with his mother, Tillie Paul, at Sheldon Jackson school, to his death in Seattle on March 4, 1977. Using the speech William Lewis Paul Sr. gave at his honorary doctorate ceremony at Whitworth University, 1972, (audio will be played) as a guide, Ben will give special attention to spiritual and religious life of his grandfather. (In-person and online)

Friday, Nov. 19

Lecture: Fighter in Velvet Gloves: Alaska Civil Rights Hero Elizabeth Peratrovich by Ann Boochever. Born and raised in Juneau, Boochever will offer personal insights into life in Juneau during the 1950s and discuss how she came to write Fighter in Velvet Gloves with the help of Elizabeth’s only living child, now 87-year-old Roy Peratrovich Jr. Historical slides from the Alaska State Archives and the Peratrovich family will accompany the presentation providing a rare glimpse into the personal life of Elizabeth and how she grew to lead Alaska and all of America in the battle for civil rights. (In-person and online)

Monday, Nov. 22

Lecture: Retelling American Literature through Raven’s Song by Sarah Rivett, Ph.D., professor of English and American Studies at Princeton University and author of The Science of the Soul in Colonial New England (2011) and Unscripted America: Indigenous Languages and the Origins of a Literary Nation (2017). Rivett will talk about Ravens in American literary history, and unsettle European labels for the Raven with a case study of a Tlingit box from the 1880s from Yakutat, Alaska, now housed in the Princeton University Art Museum. (In-person and online)

Tuesday, Nov. 23

Lecture: “What’s in a Name?” ‘ The “Indian Girl” from Ft. Wrangell Who Met Harriet Tubman by Phillip Hesser, Ph.D., who has taught in the United States and Africa and served with the UNHCR, the UN Refugee Agency, and the Academy for Educational Development. Hesser will tell about his quest to find Ft. Wrangell Alaska Native Shik-Sha-Ni, who toured the country and met Harriet Tubman in the late 1880s in New York. (In-person and online)

Wednesday, Nov. 24

Lecture: Infectious Diseases, Settler Colonialism, and Race on Sheet’ka Ḵwáan by Adam Kersch, M.A. doctoral candidate, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Davis. Kersch, a white Jewish settler whose family formerly lived in Romania, Serbia, and Britain, will examine transformations in the relationship between race, health, and colonialism in Sheet’ká (Sitka, Alaska), focusing on infectious disease outbreaks over the past 200 years. (Online only)

Tuesday, Nov. 30

Lecture: ANCSA Corporations as “Indian tribes” Under Federal Indian Law and the Constitution by Chris McNeil (Shaakak├│oni), the owner of Native Strategy Group and former president and CEO of Sealaska. McNeil, who is Eagle of the DaḴl’aweidí (Killerwhale) House, will talk about a case brought by the Chehalis and other tribes that challenged the status of Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) corporations as an “Indian tribe” under the CARES Act. (Online only)
This program is provided under the Preparing Indigenous Teachers and Administrators for Alaska Schools (PITAAS) program and funded by the Alaska Native Education Program.

Sealaska Heritage Institute is a private nonprofit founded in 1980 to perpetuate and enhance Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian cultures of Southeast Alaska. Its goal is to promote cultural diversity and 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 and a Southeast Regional Language Committee.

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

Sealaska Heritage Institute Press Release

BABY RAVEN READS VOLUME TO BE ALASKA’S FEATURED CHILDREN’S BOOK AT NATIONAL EVENT

Shanyáak’utlaaX̱: Salmon Boy to represent state at National Book Festival

Sept. 13, 2021

The Alaska Center for the Book has singled out Sealaska Heritage Institute’s (SHI) Baby Raven Reads book Shanyáak’utlaaX̱: Salmon Boy as the state’s featured children’s book at this year’s National Book Festival.

The festival, which is sponsored by the Library of Congress, is an annual literary event in Washington, DC, that brings together best-selling authors and thousands of book fans for author talks, panel discussions, book signings and other activities. Every year the National Book Festival also hosts the Parade of States where each state is represented by a state library, a state center for the book or humanities organization which showcases a local book or author. Because of COVID, this year’s event will be virtual.

The board of directors chose Shanyáak’utlaaX̱: Salmon Boy in part because it particularly fits this year’s theme, “Open a Book, Open the World,” said board member Sue Sherif.

“We feel like Shanyáak’utlaaX̱ will open some new doors for kids and parents in the rest of the country,” Sherif said.

Shanyáak’utlaax: Salmon Boy is a bilingual children’s story that teaches about respect for nature, animals and culture. It comes from an ancient Tlingit story that was edited by Johnny Marks, Hans Chester, David Katzeek and Nora and Richard Dauenhauer. This book is part of the award-winning Baby Raven Reads, a Sealaska Heritage program for Alaska Native families with children up to age 5 that promotes early language development and school readiness. Twenty-nine books have been published through the program since 2016.

SHI President Rosita Worl called it an honor to represent Alaska on a national stage.

“We developed our Baby Raven Reads series so Native children would see themselves accurately mirrored in literature, but we also know non-Native students read them. This recognition underscores our parallel goal to promote cross-cultural understanding on a national level,” Worl said.

The book was illustrated by Tlingit artist Michaela Goade, and in 2018, it won the American Indian Youth Literature Best Picture Book Award from the American Indian Library Association. An expanded version of the story featuring audio in Tlingit and Goade’s illustrations is available on SHI’s YouTube channel. Goade in 2021 won the Caldecott Medal for her illustrations in another children’s book.

The 2021 National Book Festival is scheduled Sept. 17-26.

The Alaska Center for the Book, a 501c3 nonprofit corporation, was founded in 1991 to stimulate public interest in literacy throughout Alaska through the spoken and written word. The center is affiliated with the national Center for the Book, which has a presence in all 50 states, as well as the District of Columbia and the U.S. Virgin Islands. These Center for the Book affiliates carry out the national Center’s mission in their local areas, sponsor programs that highlight their area’s literary heritage and call attention to the importance of books, reading, literacy and libraries. The center also honors people and institutions through its annual Contributions to Literacy in Alaska (CLIA) Awards.

Sealaska Heritage Institute is a private nonprofit founded in 1980 to perpetuate and enhance Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian cultures of Southeast Alaska. Its goal is to promote cultural diversity and 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 and a Southeast Regional Language Committee.

CONTACT: Amy Fletcher, SHI Media and Publications Director, 907.586.9116, amy.fletcher@sealaska.com.

Caption: Cover of “Salmon Boy: Shanyáak’utlaax” courtesy of Sealaska Heritage Institute.

Note: News outlets are welcome and encouraged to use these photos for coverage of this story. For higher-resolution images, contact kathy.dye@sealaska.com

Sealaska Heritage Institute Press Release

SEALASKA HERITAGE TO SPONSOR LECTURE ON OLD TRAVEL ROUTES BETWEEN ALASKA, CANADA

Free event to be offered virtually, in-person

Aug. 11, 2021

Sealaska Heritage Institute (SHI) will sponsor a free lecture next week on old travel routes between northern Southeast Alaska and Canada.

Through the lecture, Trails from Long Ago: the Deishu-Chilkat Trail to the Yukon, Tim Ackerman of the L’uknax.ádi clan will give an overview of trails in Chilkat/Chilkoot country that lead into the Yukon and served as important trade routes for the Tlingit people.

Ackerman, who grew up in Chilkat/Chilkoot country in the Haines and Skagway area, has devoted many years to conducting research on the trails and documenting the routes through first-hand observation as well as through oral history.

“I have spent the past 15-20 years researching and re-tracing these routes, combined with collecting oral history in the United States and Canada. I have travelled along the trails from both directions and will show photos of the existing trails, including the intersection as the Chilkat Trail approaches Kusawa Lake (Yukon Territory) where it connects with trails that go to Carcross, Champaign, or continues along the Talkini River to Kusawa Lake and finally to Dawson,” he wrote.

The lecture is scheduled at 12 pm, Wednesday, Aug. 17, in the clan house at Sealaska Heritage Institute. A question-and-answer session will follow. SHI will livestream the lecture on its YouTube channel. 

About the Lecturer

Ackerman was born in Skagway and spent his youth in Haines and throughout Southeast Alaska. In his youth, he was a stream surveyor for the Alaska Fish and Game Department mapping all the streams in the Chilkat Valley and along the Chilkoot River. From the early 1980s to 2005 he worked for the Port of Juneau in numerous positions, eventually serving as a maritime security officer and, after 9/11, on the Joint Terrorism Task Force. In 2009, he joined Tlingit artist Wayne Price in hosting a canoe camp on the Yukon River for at-risk youth from Whitehorse, from which the film “Dugout” was made.  During winter months, he hunts seals and sends them to the Alaska Native Hospital in Anchorage which provides seal meat to their patients from around the state. He carries the name “Stranger from the North” and brings that heritage to life in his travels to and from the interior.

Sealaska Heritage Institute is a private nonprofit founded in 1980 to perpetuate and enhance Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian cultures of Southeast Alaska. Its goal is to promote cultural diversity and 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 and a Southeast Regional Language Committee.

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

Caption: Area where the Takhini and the Chilkat River route meet Kusawa Lake. Note: news outlets are welcome to use this image for coverage of this story. Photo courtesy of Tim Ackerman. For a higher-res version, contact kathy.dye@sealaska.com

Sealaska Heritage Institute Press Release

SHI’S “TEACHER OF DISTINCTION” AWARD GOES TO AN ANCHORAGE EDUCATOR

Honor given during SHI’s 2021 education conference

Aug. 9, 2021

Anchorage teacher Seralee Kairaiuak was honored with a 2021 “Teacher of Distinction” award by Sealaska Heritage Institute’s (SHI) Board of Trustees on Saturday during SHI’s virtual education conference.

Originally from the village of Kwigillingok, Kairaiuak has taught children at the Alaska Native Cultural Charter School for the past nine years. Kairaiuak, who was nominated for the award by her peers at the school, is known for sharing her love for the Yup’ik culture and language through her storytelling, traditional cooking, harvesting and dance.

“Ms. Kairaiuak embodies ‘each person is good,’ and it shows in her engagement with families, students, staff and the greater community,” wrote one person who nominated her for the award. “Through love, humor and honesty, she embodies what it means to be a true guiding force in culturally-infused education, and she makes it look effortless. If you see her in action, it is clear that she teaches from her heart and hands… She walks with the wisdom of her elders, the education from her scholarly studies, and her love for children, as our future generation.”

“Seralee is the type of teacher we all hope to have. She is the epitome of the type of educator we hope to foster through teacher programs funded through Sealaska Heritage,” said SHI President Rosita Worl. “We are thrilled and honored to present to her this well-deserved award.”

Kairaiuak, speaking by video, told educators at SHI’s annual Culturally Responsive Education Conference on Saturday that she was humbled and grateful for the recognition.

“We focus on the understanding that each person and their history is valuable,” said Kairaiuak, who also credited her peers for the school’s successes. “We are grounded in the why of what we do, and our why is our students’ their identity and feeling valued. We use our Native values to root our students and set them up for a lifetime of growth in whatever career path they choose.”

The award came through Preparing Indigenous Teachers and Administrators for Alaska Schools (PITAAS), a scholarship program at the University of Alaska Southeast that is funded by SHI. The award comes with a $3,000 prize, which will go to the Alaska Native Cultural Charter School.

Sealaska Heritage Institute is a private nonprofit founded in 1980 to perpetuate and enhance Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian cultures of Southeast Alaska. Its goal is to promote cultural diversity and 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 and a Southeast Regional Language Committee.

CONTACT: Amy Fletcher, SHI Media and Publications Director, 907.586.9116, amy.fletcher@sealaska.com; Seralee Kairaiuak, teacher of distinction,  kairaiuak_seralee@asdk12.org.

Caption: Teacher of Distinction award winner Seralee Kairaiuak. Photo courtesy of Seralee Kairaiuak.  For higher resolution image, contact kathy.dye@sealaska.com