Sealaska Heritage Institute Press Release

SEALASKA HERITAGE TO SPONSOR LECTURE ON TRIBES’ ATTEMPT TO DISQUALIFY NATIVE CORPORATIONS FROM CARES ACT FUNDING

Free event to be offered virtually on Nov. 30

Nov. 24, 2021

Sealaska Heritage Institute (SHI) will sponsor a lecture on Tuesday on an attempt by tribes to disqualify Alaska Native corporations from receiving CARES Act funding as part of a series on Southeast Alaska Native history in honor of Native American Heritage Month.

The talk, ANCSA Corporations as “Indian tribes” Under Federal Indian Law and the Constitution, will be given by Chris E. McNeil, Jr., former president and CEO of Sealaska, a regional Native corporation established under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA).

The Chehalis Tribe and other tribes challenged the status of ANCSA corporations as “Indian tribes” under the CARES Act. ANCSA corporations were specifically included in CARES by reference to a definition of an “Indian tribe” in the Indian Self-Determination and Educational Assistance Act (ISDA). The case was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, wherein the Court agreed with the ANCSA corporations that they were included as “Indian tribes” under ISDA and therefore qualified for CARES funding. This discussion will explore an alternative theory, not raised in the litigation, that ANCSA corporations are also Indian tribes under the Constitution, McNeil wrote.

ANCSA corporations have been recognized as tribes by the federal government for special statutory purposes, such as financial benefits and land benefits, but are not “sovereign” entities with government-to-government relationships with the federal government, which is an authority held only by federally-recognized tribes.

The lecture is scheduled at noon Alaska time, Tuesday, Nov. 30. All lectures will be streamed at 12 pm to the Sealaska Heritage YouTube channel. A Q&A session will follow.

About the Lecturer

Chris E. McNeil, Jr., is the owner of Native Strategy Group, which provides advisory services to Native organizations. He is Eagle of the Dakl’aweidí (Killerwhale) House, and his Tlingit name is Shaakakóoni. He served as the president and CEO of Sealaska from 2001 until 2014. Originally from Juneau, McNeil served Sealaska in varying officer capacities from 1978 through 1993, including executive vice president and general counsel and as a member of the board of directors from 1998 through 2000.

Other positions McNeil has held include special counsel to the Alaska Federation of Natives; chairman of the Native American Rights Fund; the first director of American Indian Program at Stanford University; second vice president of the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska; director of Goldbelt, Incorporated; director of the American Indian National Bank; president of the Juneau Tlingit & Haida Community Council; chairman of Tlingit & Haida Regional Housing Authority; Washington representative and counsel to the Mashantucket Pequot Tribal Nation of Connecticut; and chairman of the Native American Contractor’s Association.

McNeil earned a law degree from Stanford University, a master’s in political science from Yale University, and a BA in political science from Stanford University. He was also an inductee into the Stanford University Multicultural Alumni Hall of Fame and was awarded the Henry Roe Cloud medal from the Association of Native Americans at Yale, and the Alaska Federation of Natives Citizen of the Year. He is a member of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska and a citizen of the Nisga’a Nation. McNeil and his wife Mary, an enrolled member of the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, have two grown children and two grandchildren.

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 SHI TO SPONSOR LECTURE ON 200 YEARS OF INFECTIOUS DISEASES, COLONIALISM IN SITKA

Free event to be offered virtually on Nov. 24

Nov. 22, 2021

Sealaska Heritage Institute (SHI) will sponsor a lecture on on Wednesday on 200 years of infectious diseases and colonialism in Sitka as part of a series on Southeast Alaska Native history in honor of Native American Heritage Month.

The talk, Infectious Diseases, Settler Colonialism, and Race on Sheet’ká Ḵwáan, will be given by Adam Kersch, a self-described white Jewish settler whose family formerly lived in Romania, Serbia and Britain.

In his talk, Kersch 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.

Specifically, Kersch will explore the relationship between whiteness and infectious diseases to suggest that the politicized concept of whiteness has shifted dramatically. Over the course of Russian and US rule, whiteness has served as a political matrix through which colonial powers attempted to consolidate control over Tlingit populations. These settler colonial powers have used whiteness as a baseline for measuring “health” and saw any deviation from white cultural norms as justification to violently intervene, Kersch wrote.

Using archival and ethnographic research, his research – conducted with approval from Sitka Tribe of Alaska and Sealaska Heritage Institute and funded by the Wenner-Gren Foundation – seeks to understand how practices of racialization have formed, changed and retained their historical residues in Sheet’ká.

The lecture is scheduled at noon Alaska time, Wednesday, Nov. 24. All lectures will be streamed at 12 pm to the Sealaska Heritage YouTube channel. A Q&A session will follow.

About the Lecturer

Adam Kersch has studied and wrestled with anthropology and its troubled past since 2009, receiving bachelor’s and master’s degrees in cultural and medical anthropology from the University of Central Florida. Through his master’s research, Kersch explored how undocumented immigrants access legal and healthcare services in Sicily while working alongside organizations providing aid. Kersch began his Ph.D. in cultural anthropology at the University of California, Davis, in 2016. He spent a year as an uninvited guest on Lingít Aaní from 2020-2021 for his dissertation research, with funding from the Wenner-Gren Foundation. His research explores the relationship between settler colonialism, infectious diseases, vaccines and race, examining how Russian and U.S. colonial governments have used infectious diseases as justification for exercising their power. His research demonstrates the effect of racism on public health and has powerful implications for the management of the COVID-19 pandemic today. Kersch aims to do research that is both publicly and academically engaged while promoting tribal sovereignty.

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 MYSTERY NATIVE GIRL WHO TOURED NATION, MET HARRIET TUBMAN

Free event to be offered virtually, in-person on Nov. 23

Nov. 19, 2021

Sealaska Heritage Institute (SHI) will sponsor a lecture on Tuesday on a quest to find the name of a Native girl who toured the country and met Harriet Tubman as part of a series on Southeast Alaska Native history in honor of Native American Heritage Month.

The talk, “What’s in a Name?” – The “Indian Girl” from Ft. Wrangell who met Harriet Tubman, will be given by Phillip Hesser, Ph.D., an author who has written extensively about Tubman, a slave who escaped and helped others gain their freedom as a “conductor” of the Underground Railroad.

Who was that nameless “Indian Girl” who toured the United States and met Harriet Tubman in the late 1880s in New York? Hesser posed in an abstract on his lecture.

In his talk, Hesser will tell about his quest to find Ft. Wrangell Alaska Native Shik-Sha-Ni, her “adoption” as Fanny McFarland, her schooling in New Jersey in the name of her benefactor as Frances H. Willard, and her short life upon her return to Alaska at the Sitka Training School.

Shik-Sha-Ni made a name for herself – giving voice to Tlingit language and culture and chronicling her work at Sitka. Hesser will explore the lives of Tubman and Willard and how these remarkable women lost their names and much of their past, yet revealed so much about lives in upheaval.

The lecture is scheduled at noon Alaska time, Tuesday, Nov. 23. 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. Phillip Hesser has taught in the US and Africa and served with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and the Academy for Educational Development. Most recently, he taught at Salisbury University and Wor-Wic Community College. He now spends his time delving into the deep history of Delmarva and the Chesapeake Bay watershed and running the Dorchester marshes with his pint-sized retriever Marshall and hound Bayly. Indulging his interests at the intersection of landscape, life and livelihood, he wrote What a River Says: Exploring the Blackwater River and Refuge (Cambridge, MD: Friends of Blackwater, 2014) and co-wrote (with Charlie Ewers) Harriet Tubman’s Eastern Shore: The Old Home Is Not There (Columbia, SC: History Press, 2021).

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 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