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I always say that Hoonah, X'una Kaawu

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is the richest place in the world

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because we have the most
beautiful children in this world.

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One day, one of you will stand in my place

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because this culture, our values, what we hold dear,

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what we hold deep in our hearts,

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it must continue.

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It must continue.

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Respect, respect, respect everything.

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Respect other people.

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Respect what you are learning.

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When you are respectful,

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you are honoring your soul,

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you are honoring yourself.

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Keep that respect always.

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Let's line up here.

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Grandparents, our beautiful grandchildren

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are coming this way, group.

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All of our songs, every single one is a love song

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and we express our love for each other.

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When we dance, we don't just do anything we want.

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We're holding the people in our hearts.

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We're holding them because we
know that they are precious.

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We're grasping them, we're embracing them

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because our love for each other is strong.

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We also believe strongly

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that there is a Creator stronger than ourselves,

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which is why we're here on earth.

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We're here on earth not to see what we can gain,

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but we are here to take care of each other.

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And so, Kah-shu-goon-yah, our Father In Heaven,

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we talk about the Raven and the Eagle,

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we are actually talking about our history,

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where we came from, who we are, how we are a family,

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and how we are connected.

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I teach it to our children.

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I want them to know the importance of who they are.

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I want them to know that
they have something to offer.

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I want them to know the importance

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of them being born and a part of us,

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that there is going to be acceptance.

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And we want them to be an
enthusiastic part of things,

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that children, absolutely,
it overwhelms me every time

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when I see a small child singing and dancing,

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mimicking what he has been taught.

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It's born in him, it's born into the child.

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And not every Tlingit is going to grasp this.

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It's our lifestyle, it's our way of life.

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And when it's born in them, feel very strongly,

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there he is the next leader.

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In 10,000 years, this culture will still be strong

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because we have something to offer.

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is how our people,

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all kind and gentle listeners,

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I'm going to be speaking

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in my grandfather's words.

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My Tlingit name is

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and.

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means, "You'll be short of change."

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means, "She's priceless."

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I am a grandchild of the
Kaagwaantaan, the Gaanax. adi,

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the L'uknax. adi, the Kiks. adi,
the Aak'w Kwaan people

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and I come from the Ravens Nest house.

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My father, David William Sr.,

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his Tlingit name,,

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when he became clan leader for the Chookaneidi.

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When he was a child born,

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he was given the name Kaash de yaaw dakaa.

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My mother, Mamie Williams,

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her Tlingit name,.

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Let me tell you a little bit

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about how I was born into the culture.

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I was just a little girl and my friend Shuni said

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that she's an Eagle and Linda said she's an Eagle.

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So my friend Winona said,
"Okay, I'm an Eagle."

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And I decided, all right, I'm an Eagle too.

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I went home for lunch, I announced to my mother,

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"Mom, I'm an Eagle."

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And she said, "You can't be
an Eagle, you're a Raven."

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I wanted to be like my friends.

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So I said, "But I wanna be it."

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"No, no, you don't choose, you're born into it."

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You are born into a beautiful culture, Carol.

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You are born into something that is sustainable,

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"and don't deny who you are."

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That moment was the beginning of my education.

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I was raised Tlingit
surrounded by Tlingit artists

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and the main language spoken was Tlingit.

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The word Tlingit means I am a person

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and distinguishing ourselves from the animals.

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We are people, we are a person.

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So lovingly, kindly, patiently,

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my mom taught me the joy of being Tlingit.

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I don't often told the story.

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My father, when he was in the third grade,

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ran up to his teacher,

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she's a nun and he said,

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and because he spoke Tlingit,

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she beat him, she beat my father.

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She picked him up and ran with him

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and threw him against the wall,

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dropped him again and threw him.

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He was bloodied and bruised, torn, hurt, traumatized.

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He was never beaten before.

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What did my father say to that nun?

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,
"It's good to see you."

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Where is the threat?

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I don't get bitter about it.

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No, that's the wrong way.

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Let me teach you a little bit about who I am

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so that you can have an understanding

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and I would like to learn something of your culture.

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Let us come together.

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"It's good to see you."

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I was looking this morning

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at the regalia the children were wearing

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and one boy has a missing button.

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So I have to look and give him a button

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so that the blanket can be complete.

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It makes you feel so good that the children

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have learned the beauty of the Tlingit culture,

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the beauty of who they are.

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Before Western contact,

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Alaska Native people

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have had entire indigenous knowledge systems,

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our way of educating our own people

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for thousands and thousands of years.

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And then when Western contact happened

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and colonization started happening in Alaska

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between the 1740s and going
into the mid and early 1800s,

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we started seeing boarding
schools pop up all around Alaska.

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What you're gonna see here are objects

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that were taken from that time period,

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and these objects are coming back home

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to the Alaska Native community.

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All of their objects that they had with them

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were being taken from, you know,

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whether if they were taken
from the children themselves

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or if the parents sent them with the child,

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there is this perception
that everything was burned

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once children, you know, started going to schools.

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Next to the model canoe is a photograph

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of native children and this came,

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so what you're gonna see here is, you know,

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kids as young as you know,

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four or five years old being sent away.

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It was completely legal to take our kids away,

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and in many cases, you know, take away our cultures,

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take away our languages.

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As the leader of the Alaska Native Heritage Center,

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we have a responsibility to ensure

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that the shared history is taught,

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ensure that this never happens again.

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So what we're gonna go to now

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is we're gonna go see the only
healing pole in the country

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that's dedicated to boarding school survivors.

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So let's take a walk outside.

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So this is the beginning

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of the Alaska Native Community Healing Garden.

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So well, come on in.

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I always get chills whenever I'm around this pole.

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The idea behind this pole,

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we had the granddaughter of
a boarding school survivor

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who reached out to the Alaska
Native Heritage Center.

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Her name was Norma Jean Dunn.

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And she said, "We need to have a pole

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that is raised, dedicated

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to every single Alaska native
boarding school survivor

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and descendant and for
those who never came home."

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When you look at a pole, it's very much, you know,

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a lot of people that see this pole,

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it's represented or they might perceive it as art,

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which it is,

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but it's also the first healing pole in the nation.

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And so when you look at the pole,

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what you're gonna see down here on the bottom

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is a bear with her two cubs,

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and in the human mask form,
represents what the term title

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were Indian agents at the time,
the taking of our children.

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But then you're gonna see a mass in Raven form

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embracing two kids at the top,

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it signifies our children
coming back to their community.

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It's just so beautiful that we were able

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to raise the healing pole here

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at the Alaska Native Heritage Center.

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And when we raised it,

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we had over a thousand people who showed up.

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And so for me, you know,

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that really does signify we are in an era of healing.

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This is a moment in time that
just really signifies that,

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you know, our community is
hungry for this type of work.

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I introduced myself in Yup'ik.

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My English name is Emily Eedenshaw,

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my Yup'ik name Keneggnarkayaaggaq,

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and I am Yup'ik and Inupiaq.

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My family comes from Emmonak, Alaska,

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which is a small Yup'ik village

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on the mouth of the Yukon River.

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But I live and work on the Dena'ina lands

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and I currently serve as the president

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and CEO of the Alaska Native Heritage Center.

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Last year, I was also adopted

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into the Raven St'langng Laanas Clan

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in Old Masset at Haida Gwaii.

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So I'm Raven Thunderbird.

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I have the best job in the world

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because I'm surrounded by the beauty

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of our cultures every single day.

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We welcome thousands of tourists

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that come to the Heritage Center every year.

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Anyone would've said this growing up,

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I wouldn't have believed them,

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and the reason why is because
of my own personal story.

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I was not raised in my community.

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My mom was adopted out at birth,

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which unfortunately wasn't uncommon,

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especially during the territorial days in Alaska.

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And so my mother was raised
outside of our community

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and culture and in turn, so was I.

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I spent many years in Texas,

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but I moved back to Alaska when I was 18 and I'm now 40.

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But I moved back to Alaska when I was 18 and I'm now 40.

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And I've spent my entire
adult life trying to reconnect

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to who I am as an Alaska Native woman.

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And for me it's been a healing
journey on so many levels.

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I have found that in my connection
to culture and community

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has been a source of strength for me,

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you know, but also understanding

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that I have a responsibility to pay it forward.

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And so everything I do really ensures

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that every single Alaska Native person,

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no matter where you live,

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deserves to have access to your culture.

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You know, here at the Heritage Center,

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we often say we're more than a museum.

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This is where our cultures come alive.

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This is where you get to see us living

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and breathing our ways of life.

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But also you get to see our knowledge passed down

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from generation to generation every day.

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Or even speak our native languages,

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or even speak our native ranges,

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you know, my grandfather, when
I met him for the first time,

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I asked him to speak Lingit
back to me and he refused to

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because of what happened in boarding schools.

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And so I think there is a real hunger

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and a resurgence happening all across Alaska

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and even, you know, extending beyond Alaska,

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almost like a cultural renaissance, if you will,

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where you know, indigenous peoples,

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our cultures are thriving,

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our languages are being spoken in schools.

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And like I shared earlier,
there is a point in our history

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where we weren't allowed to do that.

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And so there is a real hunger within our community,

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but also from our visitors.

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The untold stories from Alaska's First Peoples.

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00:17:27,325 --> 00:17:32,325
The untold stories from Alaska's First Peoples,

261
00:17:49,530 --> 00:17:50,500
My name's Aaron Leggett.

262
00:17:50,580 --> 00:17:52,420
I have the honor of serving as the president

263
00:17:52,500 --> 00:17:53,253
of the Native Village of Eklutna,

264
00:17:53,333 --> 00:17:56,710
it was the only federally and
now state recognized tribe.

265
00:17:56,790 --> 00:17:58,990
And right now we're down at Chanshtnu,

266
00:17:59,070 --> 00:18:00,490
or Westchester Lagoon.

267
00:18:00,570 --> 00:18:04,930
Behind me is one of the
indigenous place name markers

268
00:18:05,010 --> 00:18:09,430
and many of partners, we identify
important Dena'ina sites.

269
00:18:09,510 --> 00:18:14,510
Right now we're at Chanshtnu, or Grass Creek.

270
00:18:14,910 --> 00:18:16,960
This was a Dena'ina fishing camp.

271
00:18:17,040 --> 00:18:18,700
The Dena'ina are the indigenous people

272
00:18:18,780 --> 00:18:20,350
of South Central Alaska.

273
00:18:20,430 --> 00:18:22,870
They've lived here for the past thousand years.

274
00:18:22,950 --> 00:18:25,270
In the early 1920s when Anchorage was selected

275
00:18:25,350 --> 00:18:28,090
as the headquarters for the Alaska Railroad,

276
00:18:28,170 --> 00:18:30,160
the early mapmakers came down here

277
00:18:30,240 --> 00:18:33,363
while the Dena'ina were fishing along the creek.

278
00:18:34,290 --> 00:18:36,160
And they asked 'em,
"What do you call this?"

279
00:18:36,240 --> 00:18:38,620
And they said, "Chanshtnu."

280
00:18:38,700 --> 00:18:40,630
They wrote it down as Chester.

281
00:18:40,710 --> 00:18:42,760
We said, "Well, close enough."

282
00:18:42,840 --> 00:18:45,520
The point being that there was no old man Chester

283
00:18:45,600 --> 00:18:46,720
that had a whiskey still

284
00:18:46,800 --> 00:18:48,670
or a homestead along the creek here.

285
00:18:48,750 --> 00:18:51,731
It's a derivation of the Dena'ina name Chanshtnu,

286
00:18:51,811 --> 00:18:53,680
and Chanshtnu means Grass Creek.

287
00:18:53,760 --> 00:18:56,470
You can see this grass that's starting to turn,

288
00:18:56,550 --> 00:18:59,470
that is the grass that's being referred to.

289
00:18:59,550 --> 00:19:02,200
If you look on the interpretive panel,

290
00:19:02,280 --> 00:19:04,150
you'll see that name Chanshtnu.

291
00:19:04,230 --> 00:19:07,270
And then above, you'll see this piece of artwork.

292
00:19:07,350 --> 00:19:10,240
This is an abstraction of Dena'ina fire bag.

293
00:19:10,320 --> 00:19:13,030
This was something that Dena'ina
men would carry with them

294
00:19:13,110 --> 00:19:15,670
as both an important possession

295
00:19:15,750 --> 00:19:17,890
and also a sign of status and wealth.

296
00:19:17,970 --> 00:19:20,500
Inside the fire bag, he would have the things

297
00:19:20,580 --> 00:19:25,090
that he needed to create a fire,
like flints and dry tinder,

298
00:19:25,170 --> 00:19:27,070
things that he didn't want getting wet.

299
00:19:27,150 --> 00:19:28,390
Later they would also be used

300
00:19:28,470 --> 00:19:31,510
to carry gunpowder and ammunition.

301
00:19:31,590 --> 00:19:32,500
This was created

302
00:19:32,580 --> 00:19:37,000
by Ahtna Athabascan artist Melissa Shaginoff,

303
00:19:37,080 --> 00:19:38,500
working with the committee.

304
00:19:38,580 --> 00:19:42,760
And we ultimately selected the
fire bag as a Dena'ina symbol

305
00:19:43,740 --> 00:19:47,680
to tell the story of perseverance
that the Dena'ina had

306
00:19:47,760 --> 00:19:50,110
before the land got surveyed out from under us

307
00:19:50,190 --> 00:19:53,140
and million dollar homes that you see behind us.

308
00:19:53,220 --> 00:19:56,069
We were essentially forced off of this location

309
00:19:56,149 --> 00:19:59,830
or told we had to vacate.

310
00:19:59,910 --> 00:20:00,790
But these fish camps,

311
00:20:00,870 --> 00:20:03,670
including my great-great grandparents',

312
00:20:03,750 --> 00:20:06,820
were right all up and down this area here.

313
00:20:06,900 --> 00:20:08,650
So we wanted to remind people

314
00:20:08,730 --> 00:20:10,750
of the Dena'ina name Chanshtnu,

315
00:20:10,830 --> 00:20:14,290
that it's not Chester, that it means Grass Creek

316
00:20:14,370 --> 00:20:17,050
and that it's an important
Dena'ina fishing location

317
00:20:17,130 --> 00:20:18,220
here in Anchorage.

318
00:20:18,300 --> 00:20:19,630
So I've been at the Anchorage Museum

319
00:20:19,710 --> 00:20:22,000
for the last 13 and a half years,

320
00:20:22,080 --> 00:20:23,140
but before that I worked

321
00:20:23,220 --> 00:20:25,060
at the Alaska Native Heritage Center

322
00:20:25,140 --> 00:20:26,918
as the Assistant Curator
of Collections and Exhibits

323
00:20:26,998 --> 00:20:29,890
and the Dena'ina Cultural Historian.

324
00:20:29,970 --> 00:20:34,173
So my gloves are a pair of Athabascan beaded gloves.

325
00:20:35,130 --> 00:20:36,873
These floral designs,

326
00:20:37,920 --> 00:20:41,590
they came in through Canada
from the nuns in schools.

327
00:20:41,670 --> 00:20:43,870
They taught the women floral embroidery

328
00:20:44,850 --> 00:20:46,840
and then it transferred to beads.

329
00:20:46,920 --> 00:20:51,400
It worked its way across Canada, into Alaska,

330
00:20:51,480 --> 00:20:53,410
through the Alaska Commercial Company,

331
00:20:53,490 --> 00:20:55,150
the Hudson Bay Trading Company.

332
00:20:55,230 --> 00:20:58,690
And so today, a lot of floral designs

333
00:20:58,770 --> 00:21:03,770
are a well-known artistic
style of Athabascan beaders.

334
00:21:04,650 --> 00:21:09,520
Decorated in beaver fur on the trim

335
00:21:09,600 --> 00:21:12,250
and then moose hide for the actual construction.

336
00:21:12,330 --> 00:21:13,600
My necklace, again,

337
00:21:13,680 --> 00:21:16,960
made from red and black and white trade beads.

338
00:21:17,040 --> 00:21:18,910
And then these white shells here

339
00:21:18,990 --> 00:21:21,640
are called dentalium shells.

340
00:21:21,720 --> 00:21:23,920
They're a small sea mollusk.

341
00:21:24,000 --> 00:21:27,580
It grows down around Vancouver
Island near British Columbia.

342
00:21:27,660 --> 00:21:29,440
They were traded up the northwest coast

343
00:21:29,520 --> 00:21:32,167
with the Tlingit and the height of the Tsimshian

344
00:21:32,247 --> 00:21:33,775
to the Ahtna Athabascans,

345
00:21:33,855 --> 00:21:36,490
the Ahtna traded with those people for copper.

346
00:21:36,570 --> 00:21:37,390
In Tlingit culture,

347
00:21:37,470 --> 00:21:39,520
copper is the ultimate sign of status and wealth.

348
00:21:39,600 --> 00:21:44,283
And in our culture, these shells are.

349
00:21:45,150 --> 00:21:47,650
So, they were highly valued,

350
00:21:47,730 --> 00:21:50,380
they were a sign of status and wealth.

351
00:21:50,460 --> 00:21:52,870
If you look at the logo

352
00:21:52,950 --> 00:21:54,820
for the Alaska Native Heritage Center,

353
00:21:54,900 --> 00:21:58,623
you'll see just exactly what I'm depicting here.

354
00:21:59,640 --> 00:22:02,440
Well, the reason I chose this location

355
00:22:02,520 --> 00:22:05,050
is that this is a highly visible location.

356
00:22:05,130 --> 00:22:07,120
I think there's thousands of people that come by.

357
00:22:07,200 --> 00:22:09,010
Well, but also project is really about,

358
00:22:09,090 --> 00:22:10,187
is explaining to people

359
00:22:10,267 --> 00:22:12,850
that this still is our traditional homeland.

360
00:22:12,930 --> 00:22:13,810
We've never left it.

361
00:22:13,890 --> 00:22:14,710
We haven't been, you know,

362
00:22:14,790 --> 00:22:17,454
forcibly relocated thousands of miles away.

363
00:22:28,393 --> 00:22:31,360
I was asked to do that pole many, many years ago

364
00:22:31,440 --> 00:22:32,587
by the clan leader in that.

365
00:22:32,667 --> 00:22:35,277
And I begged them not to
gimme the directive to do that

366
00:22:35,357 --> 00:22:38,257
'cause I didn't feel I was
skilled enough to do that pole.

367
00:22:40,350 --> 00:22:41,677
I see people use it the way it's supposed to

368
00:22:41,757 --> 00:22:43,120
and people are happy that it's there

369
00:22:43,200 --> 00:22:44,620
because it reminds 'em of a past,

370
00:22:44,700 --> 00:22:46,120
they had a rich history here,

371
00:22:46,200 --> 00:22:48,880
and it's in the exact position the original was

372
00:22:48,960 --> 00:22:50,320
almost 300 years ago.

373
00:22:50,400 --> 00:22:53,020
Of course nobody was alive
that remembered the pole,

374
00:22:53,100 --> 00:22:55,630
but they had been told the stories

375
00:22:55,710 --> 00:22:56,830
and handed down through the years

376
00:22:56,910 --> 00:22:58,600
of what the original looked like.

377
00:22:58,680 --> 00:23:00,790
And now it's back, it's back in the river

378
00:23:00,870 --> 00:23:03,099
where the original stood at years ago.

379
00:23:06,480 --> 00:23:08,073
My name is Jeff Skaflestad.

380
00:23:09,030 --> 00:23:10,900
My grandfather came here from Norway,

381
00:23:10,980 --> 00:23:13,240
married my Native grandmother.

382
00:23:13,320 --> 00:23:15,670
The family I grew up in was a logging family.

383
00:23:15,750 --> 00:23:17,980
Went to school here in Hoonah, returned to Hoonah,

384
00:23:18,060 --> 00:23:18,813
was a teacher here,

385
00:23:18,893 --> 00:23:22,503
a math and science teacher till retirement.

386
00:23:23,490 --> 00:23:26,980
Carver and formline artist are what I do.

387
00:23:27,060 --> 00:23:29,050
They're kind of connected together.

388
00:23:29,130 --> 00:23:31,240
What we understand when we go back in history,

389
00:23:31,320 --> 00:23:33,940
it looks like that from the carving,

390
00:23:34,020 --> 00:23:36,730
they developed the distinctive formline art

391
00:23:36,810 --> 00:23:37,747
that we have now.

392
00:23:37,827 --> 00:23:40,540
And it's always been debated
back and forth what came first,

393
00:23:40,620 --> 00:23:42,340
but it looks like right now the evidence shows

394
00:23:42,420 --> 00:23:44,980
that carving came first and from the carving,

395
00:23:45,060 --> 00:23:50,060
it set the rules and made this
formline art so distinctive.

396
00:23:50,220 --> 00:23:53,110
In Western culture, we're stuck using the word art.

397
00:23:53,190 --> 00:23:56,890
And even though we think we've
identified a Tlingit term

398
00:23:56,970 --> 00:24:00,040
that might include the concept of art in some way,

399
00:24:00,120 --> 00:24:03,880
they are not exactly comparative.

400
00:24:03,960 --> 00:24:07,143
Everything you see in here
that we do is really not art.

401
00:24:08,370 --> 00:24:09,640
And when I say that it,

402
00:24:09,720 --> 00:24:11,770
it doesn't have the Western idea of art.

403
00:24:11,850 --> 00:24:13,660
You don't make something and you put it on the wall.

404
00:24:13,740 --> 00:24:16,510
You have this tremendous
responsibility when we do this art.

405
00:24:16,590 --> 00:24:20,260
Because in this art is spirituality, history,

406
00:24:20,340 --> 00:24:23,553
it tells the story of events, they were good, bad.

407
00:24:25,320 --> 00:24:27,550
We don't like to use the word totem poles.

408
00:24:27,630 --> 00:24:30,280
So for us, when we refer to an art piece

409
00:24:30,360 --> 00:24:32,590
that looks like this, this is called a kooteeyaa,

410
00:24:32,670 --> 00:24:35,800
and for us the most important part of the pole

411
00:24:35,880 --> 00:24:37,870
is the object that's on the bottom.

412
00:24:37,950 --> 00:24:39,970
So we start there first.

413
00:24:40,050 --> 00:24:42,130
So this is a famous story from my clan,

414
00:24:42,210 --> 00:24:43,210
the Chookaneidi clan.

415
00:24:43,290 --> 00:24:46,120
This pole is is called the Xa'Kooch kooteeyaa.

416
00:24:46,200 --> 00:24:48,850
Xa'Kooch is a famous warrior kind of equivalent,

417
00:24:48,930 --> 00:24:52,180
in Tlingit, equivalent to like maybe Achilles,

418
00:24:52,260 --> 00:24:54,577
stories from Greek area and that.

419
00:24:54,657 --> 00:24:56,530
And so at the time the people were living here,

420
00:24:56,610 --> 00:24:58,300
they lived out near the coast and that,

421
00:24:58,380 --> 00:25:00,100
and they were doing activities from boats.

422
00:25:00,180 --> 00:25:03,520
And there was a giant octopus
that would attack the boats

423
00:25:03,600 --> 00:25:06,370
and pull the people overboard
and eat them and kill them.

424
00:25:06,450 --> 00:25:10,473
So Xa'Kooch, which is represented
by the guy here in red,

425
00:25:11,460 --> 00:25:14,620
who's actually holding the octopus and the dagger,

426
00:25:14,700 --> 00:25:18,010
he was one day talking to his Raven brother-in-law

427
00:25:18,090 --> 00:25:19,800
and said, "It looks like I'm gonna have

428
00:25:19,880 --> 00:25:21,240
to be doing the battle with octopus.

429
00:25:21,320 --> 00:25:23,230
He has killed all of our warriors.

430
00:25:23,310 --> 00:25:25,300
I'm gonna have to do the
battle with this octopus."

431
00:25:25,380 --> 00:25:27,820
And this comes from a time when people

432
00:25:27,900 --> 00:25:29,530
and animals could understand each other,

433
00:25:29,610 --> 00:25:32,740
and people from the shore watch the battle going on,

434
00:25:32,820 --> 00:25:36,490
and the water's boiling and Xa'Kooch is in the air

435
00:25:36,570 --> 00:25:38,064
and then the creatures in the air.

436
00:25:38,144 --> 00:25:39,610
And all of a sudden the whole
thing just kind of submerges

437
00:25:39,690 --> 00:25:41,340
and it gets quiet, and that's it.

438
00:25:42,427 --> 00:25:45,910
"I made a promise to the porpoise people, I'm done.

439
00:25:45,990 --> 00:25:47,470
But I made the promise

440
00:25:47,550 --> 00:25:50,470
that you will never hunt
the porpoise again."

441
00:25:50,550 --> 00:25:52,023
And then Xa'Kooch dies.

442
00:25:52,860 --> 00:25:54,337
I had it on the other end of the store down here

443
00:25:54,417 --> 00:25:56,437
and I had some old timers come down here and that,

444
00:25:56,517 --> 00:25:57,760
and they came to the door here

445
00:25:57,840 --> 00:26:00,190
and looked across the room at it.

446
00:26:00,270 --> 00:26:01,547
And without me asking, they said,

447
00:26:01,627 --> 00:26:03,387
"Oh, so you did the Xa'Kooch pole."

448
00:26:04,290 --> 00:26:05,680
So I felt pretty good about that

449
00:26:05,760 --> 00:26:08,560
because they recognized
what I tried to depict here.

450
00:26:08,640 --> 00:26:12,460
Here Xa'Kooch, here's the dagger tied to his hand.

451
00:26:12,540 --> 00:26:14,830
And then this is the famous warrior.

452
00:26:14,910 --> 00:26:18,010
If I go to another town and
I go to another carver's work

453
00:26:18,090 --> 00:26:21,460
and someone says, "What
does this pole mean?"

454
00:26:21,540 --> 00:26:23,050
If I don't know the story already,

455
00:26:23,130 --> 00:26:24,190
I have no idea what it means.

456
00:26:24,270 --> 00:26:25,840
So it's not like there's some code

457
00:26:25,920 --> 00:26:27,580
that you learn about that.

458
00:26:27,660 --> 00:26:29,050
So if you remember cliff notes,

459
00:26:29,130 --> 00:26:31,090
and for those that went to
school here in the United States,

460
00:26:31,170 --> 00:26:34,390
cliff notes were like short
summaries of what you needed

461
00:26:34,470 --> 00:26:37,210
to know about a story or an event or something,

462
00:26:37,290 --> 00:26:39,520
so that's what these serve as.

463
00:26:39,600 --> 00:26:42,130
So what they are is we carved these

464
00:26:42,210 --> 00:26:44,017
and then we put in the main parts of the story

465
00:26:44,097 --> 00:26:46,120
and then we tell the story and people are there,

466
00:26:46,200 --> 00:26:48,790
they're present when I tell the story.

467
00:26:48,870 --> 00:26:52,840
Then they remember it and say
20, 30, 40, 50 years from now,

468
00:26:52,920 --> 00:26:56,530
I'm gone, and they wanna tell
their grandchildren about it,

469
00:26:56,610 --> 00:26:57,363
and they'll look at it like,

470
00:26:57,443 --> 00:26:59,941
"Well, let's see, how did this go now?"

471
00:27:00,021 --> 00:27:02,020
And then all of a sudden, it'll come to 'em like,

472
00:27:02,100 --> 00:27:03,700
oh, that's right, this is the porpoise.

473
00:27:03,780 --> 00:27:06,460
And so it reminds them of how the story goes.

474
00:27:06,540 --> 00:27:08,440
You learn this art, you have to learn all that too

475
00:27:08,520 --> 00:27:12,100
because you're simply just a
caretaker of the knowledge.

476
00:27:12,180 --> 00:27:15,940
This is not yours, you don't own it, you'll never own it,

477
00:27:16,020 --> 00:27:17,500
and you make that agreement

478
00:27:17,580 --> 00:27:20,560
when an artist takes you on as an apprentice,

479
00:27:20,640 --> 00:27:23,230
that you understand that I'm teaching you this

480
00:27:23,310 --> 00:27:25,660
with the idea that you're gonna pass this on

481
00:27:25,740 --> 00:27:27,490
to people who may not exist yet.

482
00:27:27,570 --> 00:27:29,493
This art is rule driven.

483
00:27:30,720 --> 00:27:32,560
Say someone says, "I want to be a poet,

484
00:27:32,640 --> 00:27:34,480
but I don't really want to learn the alphabet

485
00:27:34,560 --> 00:27:35,953
or syntax or grammar, anything like that,"

486
00:27:36,033 --> 00:27:38,440
it's like, well, it's pretty hard to do that.

487
00:27:38,520 --> 00:27:39,940
So you have to go through all these stages

488
00:27:40,020 --> 00:27:41,380
of learning the rules

489
00:27:41,460 --> 00:27:43,780
so that your poetry will mean something.

490
00:27:43,860 --> 00:27:45,160
So when you do this art,

491
00:27:45,240 --> 00:27:46,570
you have to go through all the basics

492
00:27:46,650 --> 00:27:48,400
of how the rules apply and so forth.

493
00:27:48,480 --> 00:27:49,840
And once you know the rules like that,

494
00:27:49,920 --> 00:27:52,570
then you can become creative
and then you can design

495
00:27:52,650 --> 00:27:55,606
and make things that are
original so you can be creative.

496
00:27:55,686 --> 00:27:57,715
And a lot of times Western artists can't see that.

497
00:28:04,779 --> 00:28:06,730
Seeing my grandfather at the kitchen table,

498
00:28:06,810 --> 00:28:09,280
people coming by, different elders would come by

499
00:28:09,360 --> 00:28:11,530
and they would talk history, culture.

500
00:28:11,610 --> 00:28:14,560
And my grandmother always had
a cup of coffee in their hand.

501
00:28:14,640 --> 00:28:15,880
And that's why even to this day,

502
00:28:15,960 --> 00:28:19,023
I can drink coffee as late as
I want, just instilled in me.

503
00:28:20,820 --> 00:28:22,443
My name is Richard Dalton III.

504
00:28:24,753 --> 00:28:27,053
My Tlingit name is Teeykat

505
00:28:27,133 --> 00:28:28,400
and I am T'akdeintaan from the Raven Nest House

506
00:28:31,200 --> 00:28:34,870
and Chookaneidi Yeil, child of Chookaneidi.

507
00:28:34,950 --> 00:28:36,790
I do a lot of form line design.

508
00:28:36,870 --> 00:28:40,000
And since graduating from
the Art Institute of Seattle,

509
00:28:40,080 --> 00:28:43,060
I started doing it more on the computer,

510
00:28:43,140 --> 00:28:47,673
using vector programs like
Freehand and Adobe Illustrator.

511
00:28:49,009 --> 00:28:52,270
Formline art to me and my people

512
00:28:52,350 --> 00:28:56,230
is a way for us to tell our history,

513
00:28:56,310 --> 00:29:00,610
the oral history of our people in past and present.

514
00:29:00,690 --> 00:29:04,540
And it's important for us that we're able to do that

515
00:29:04,620 --> 00:29:06,700
and distinguish different tribes,

516
00:29:06,780 --> 00:29:09,783
like our Raven Moiety and our Eagle Moiety.

517
00:29:10,890 --> 00:29:12,310
How did you learn how to do it?

518
00:29:12,390 --> 00:29:15,183
Where are you drawing your inspiration from?

519
00:29:16,200 --> 00:29:19,150
Do you know the difference
of the different moieties

520
00:29:19,230 --> 00:29:21,610
and different clans and different objects

521
00:29:21,690 --> 00:29:23,800
and elements of the design?

522
00:29:23,880 --> 00:29:27,010
And like anything, you need
to learn how to do something,

523
00:29:27,090 --> 00:29:28,867
how it was done before and where it came from

524
00:29:28,947 --> 00:29:32,710
and the meaning so that you're just not copying

525
00:29:32,790 --> 00:29:35,980
or duplicating without
knowledge or understanding.

526
00:29:36,060 --> 00:29:38,890
I think that goes for any indigenous tribe.

527
00:29:38,970 --> 00:29:41,650
These are some of the personal

528
00:29:41,730 --> 00:29:43,773
and commercial designs I've done.

529
00:29:44,790 --> 00:29:46,960
This one here is a Raven design.

530
00:29:47,040 --> 00:29:49,090
The primary of the colors that I use,

531
00:29:49,170 --> 00:29:51,310
black is always is my primary,

532
00:29:51,390 --> 00:29:53,890
in our culture, red is our secondary

533
00:29:53,970 --> 00:29:58,970
and the teal blue to green is our tertiary colors.

534
00:30:00,180 --> 00:30:03,550
And keep in mind that a lot of these colors

535
00:30:03,630 --> 00:30:05,860
weren't traditional to us.

536
00:30:05,940 --> 00:30:10,420
Like a lot of the totem poles originally years ago

537
00:30:10,500 --> 00:30:11,583
never had color.

538
00:30:12,863 --> 00:30:14,050
A lot of the colors were created

539
00:30:14,130 --> 00:30:16,473
and brought to us from Westerns.

540
00:30:18,600 --> 00:30:21,430
Here is a good example of the process.

541
00:30:21,510 --> 00:30:25,270
This past year, Goldbelt
had their 75th anniversary

542
00:30:25,350 --> 00:30:26,800
of having the gold medal.

543
00:30:26,880 --> 00:30:29,080
They gave me a design that an artist had did

544
00:30:29,160 --> 00:30:30,910
and they wanted me to clean it up

545
00:30:30,990 --> 00:30:35,350
and modify it so that they
could use it for silk screening,

546
00:30:35,430 --> 00:30:39,190
embroidery, posters, you name it.

547
00:30:39,270 --> 00:30:42,520
So coming from a commercial
graphic design background

548
00:30:42,600 --> 00:30:47,140
and marketing, I was able to
take that design, redraw it out

549
00:30:47,220 --> 00:30:51,490
and by vectorizing, it allows
my client to then take it

550
00:30:51,570 --> 00:30:55,623
and print it at any size and
it's always crisp and clean.

551
00:30:56,940 --> 00:30:59,350
When I went to the Art Institute of Seattle,

552
00:30:59,430 --> 00:31:02,273
I was learning vector and
Photoshop and things like that,

553
00:31:02,353 --> 00:31:06,460
and then I started vectorizing from that point on.

554
00:31:06,540 --> 00:31:09,567
And I remember it was hard coming back home

555
00:31:09,647 --> 00:31:11,943
'cause it was something new.

556
00:31:12,960 --> 00:31:16,480
And I had to go through a lot of explaining how, well,

557
00:31:16,560 --> 00:31:18,790
I still do my traditional hand drawing

558
00:31:18,870 --> 00:31:20,470
'cause I think that's important,

559
00:31:21,330 --> 00:31:22,900
and then I go through various stages

560
00:31:22,980 --> 00:31:25,270
and then go to the computer

561
00:31:25,350 --> 00:31:27,880
and then I've mastered that into my own form

562
00:31:27,960 --> 00:31:29,680
and the process that I can get things done.

563
00:31:29,760 --> 00:31:32,380
That sheet, but can we move this up a little bit more

564
00:31:32,460 --> 00:31:36,190
and make it more of a curve on that side, and?

565
00:31:36,270 --> 00:31:37,457
When I was questioned about it,

566
00:31:37,537 --> 00:31:38,860
"Like why are you doing this?

567
00:31:38,940 --> 00:31:39,880
Why are you doing the computer?"

568
00:31:39,960 --> 00:31:43,000
Well, it would be like you getting a new steel blade

569
00:31:43,080 --> 00:31:48,010
from some other store or state or country

570
00:31:48,090 --> 00:31:51,850
that you invested into a new tool for your carving.

571
00:31:51,930 --> 00:31:56,380
You invested a new sewing
machine to do your blanket.

572
00:31:56,460 --> 00:31:57,763
You know, things like that,

573
00:31:57,843 --> 00:32:01,360
that we have all of these tools available to us

574
00:32:01,440 --> 00:32:03,890
and some people pick it up and some people don't.

575
00:32:04,740 --> 00:32:07,660
So that was just to help make them understand

576
00:32:07,740 --> 00:32:12,430
that I'm not just selling out per se to digital world,

577
00:32:12,510 --> 00:32:14,980
but there is a process that I maintain

578
00:32:15,060 --> 00:32:17,080
so that I had that history of art,

579
00:32:17,160 --> 00:32:19,180
had that history of drawing

580
00:32:19,260 --> 00:32:22,210
and conceptualizing before
jumping on the computer.

581
00:32:22,290 --> 00:32:25,060
And what's nice about it is that with the new tools,

582
00:32:25,140 --> 00:32:30,010
it has allowed us to turn
things around and share things.

583
00:32:30,090 --> 00:32:32,043
And to take it even further,

584
00:32:33,000 --> 00:32:37,810
this blanket was done through eighth generation

585
00:32:37,890 --> 00:32:39,430
out of Seattle, Washington.

586
00:32:39,510 --> 00:32:41,830
Would be like me developing a meme

587
00:32:41,910 --> 00:32:45,280
where I took my blanket from
one of his photos that he had

588
00:32:45,360 --> 00:32:47,560
and I threw it on there for a Yoda.

589
00:32:47,640 --> 00:32:49,150
And that was just a fun thing to turn around.

590
00:32:49,230 --> 00:32:51,744
It might have been Indigenous Day.

591
00:33:36,084 --> 00:33:38,920
I was inspired a lot by my dad's books

592
00:33:39,000 --> 00:33:40,630
that I read when I was young.

593
00:33:40,710 --> 00:33:42,990
I had read that the Brooks Range

594
00:33:43,070 --> 00:33:45,010
is the most uninhabited mountain range

595
00:33:45,090 --> 00:33:46,480
in the United States.

596
00:33:46,560 --> 00:33:48,250
And that just really spoke to me

597
00:33:48,330 --> 00:33:50,200
and I wanted to go there and live there.

598
00:33:50,280 --> 00:33:54,490
My home is located northwest of Fairbanks

599
00:33:54,570 --> 00:33:55,840
up on Moose Mountain.

600
00:33:55,920 --> 00:33:57,280
I'm away from the city lights,

601
00:33:57,360 --> 00:33:59,610
so I have really good Aurora viewing up here.

602
00:34:00,780 --> 00:34:03,310
I grew up in an area of Massachusetts

603
00:34:03,390 --> 00:34:06,010
where the population density's pretty high.

604
00:34:06,090 --> 00:34:09,190
And I always dreamed about what it would be like

605
00:34:09,270 --> 00:34:12,010
to be out and live in the wilderness.

606
00:34:12,090 --> 00:34:15,940
My dad died when he was 41

607
00:34:16,020 --> 00:34:20,380
and my mom had five kids, and so she wasn't around much.

608
00:34:20,460 --> 00:34:23,410
She was having to work to help support us.

609
00:34:23,490 --> 00:34:26,560
And so we were raised very independently.

610
00:34:26,640 --> 00:34:29,290
And so when I was 18,

611
00:34:29,370 --> 00:34:32,500
I had already actually been on my own for a year

612
00:34:32,580 --> 00:34:34,240
when I was 18 years old,

613
00:34:34,320 --> 00:34:36,850
moved into an old abandoned mining cabin

614
00:34:36,930 --> 00:34:39,040
that had no running water or electricity

615
00:34:39,120 --> 00:34:40,690
right on the edge of the gates.

616
00:34:40,770 --> 00:34:43,780
But for me it was absolutely magical,

617
00:34:43,860 --> 00:34:45,700
to be living a dream like that

618
00:34:45,780 --> 00:34:48,093
and learning what the wilderness had to teach.

619
00:34:48,930 --> 00:34:52,450
I've always loved the night,
even when I was a little girl.

620
00:34:52,530 --> 00:34:54,333
I love being out in the wilderness.

621
00:34:55,710 --> 00:34:57,580
I am living my dream.

622
00:34:57,660 --> 00:35:00,400
I can control my own schedule.

623
00:35:00,480 --> 00:35:04,600
I get to see all kinds of
beautiful regions of Alaska.

624
00:35:04,680 --> 00:35:09,680
For me, being out in nature under a star-filled sky,

625
00:35:10,290 --> 00:35:12,430
I have kind of a profound sense

626
00:35:12,510 --> 00:35:16,210
of connection and spirituality.

627
00:35:16,290 --> 00:35:19,120
I feel connected to this vast universe.

628
00:35:19,200 --> 00:35:22,030
There's oftentimes where I'm not photographing,

629
00:35:22,110 --> 00:35:25,750
I will set my camera aside
and appreciate the moment.

630
00:35:25,830 --> 00:35:28,690
It's a very important for me to be able to do that

631
00:35:28,770 --> 00:35:30,826
so that I don't lose the joy.

632
00:35:36,780 --> 00:35:40,180
One of my favorite images
is called "Wonderland."

633
00:35:40,260 --> 00:35:42,460
It was captured right here in my yard.

634
00:35:42,540 --> 00:35:47,540
I love how the moon is in the
scene illuminating the trees

635
00:35:48,270 --> 00:35:50,350
that are covered in frost in November

636
00:35:50,430 --> 00:35:52,780
and that the very subtle Aurora

637
00:35:52,860 --> 00:35:56,020
coming through part halfway through the scene.

638
00:35:56,100 --> 00:35:58,360
Here is called "Galactic Dreams."

639
00:35:58,440 --> 00:36:02,620
And it's an image that has the
Milky Way running alongside

640
00:36:02,700 --> 00:36:07,240
of the Aurora underneath and
Andromeda Galaxy as well.

641
00:36:07,320 --> 00:36:11,560
And I have very, very few
images that include the Aurora

642
00:36:11,640 --> 00:36:14,890
with the Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxy.

643
00:36:14,970 --> 00:36:17,763
And the temperatures were
about 30 below that night.

644
00:36:18,990 --> 00:36:22,180
This is kind of what's called an arctic entry,

645
00:36:22,260 --> 00:36:23,590
where typically, you know,

646
00:36:23,670 --> 00:36:26,650
people store all their arctic gear, snowshoes.

647
00:36:26,730 --> 00:36:29,440
Tonight because it's warmer,

648
00:36:29,520 --> 00:36:33,580
I definitely have my wools that I would put on

649
00:36:33,660 --> 00:36:35,523
and a neck ring.

650
00:36:36,750 --> 00:36:41,553
I like to wear a wool neck ring that I got in Iceland.

651
00:36:42,870 --> 00:36:46,060
If it's a colder night, I go with my qiviut,

652
00:36:46,140 --> 00:36:47,950
which is very lightweight and warm.

653
00:36:48,030 --> 00:36:49,210
This is muskox wool.

654
00:36:49,290 --> 00:36:51,693
It's one the warmest wool that you can buy.

655
00:36:53,700 --> 00:36:55,420
On a, you know, cold night,

656
00:36:55,500 --> 00:36:58,990
I have my fox hat that I like to wear

657
00:36:59,070 --> 00:37:01,270
along with my beaver mittens,

658
00:37:01,350 --> 00:37:03,790
which I wear over other mittens.

659
00:37:03,870 --> 00:37:05,170
Tonight I would just be wearing

660
00:37:05,250 --> 00:37:07,300
some simple little gloves like these

661
00:37:07,380 --> 00:37:11,170
because I have access to my
fingers to photograph with.

662
00:37:11,250 --> 00:37:13,090
It's the nice thing about fall

663
00:37:13,170 --> 00:37:15,273
is you don't have to wear as much gear.

664
00:37:16,140 --> 00:37:18,820
I would definitely wear a hat as well.

665
00:37:18,900 --> 00:37:22,363
Frostbit can happen quickly
up here when temperatures are,

666
00:37:22,443 --> 00:37:26,020
you know, say 40 below, I think it's like 10 seconds

667
00:37:26,100 --> 00:37:27,700
for exposed skin to start to freeze.

668
00:37:27,780 --> 00:37:29,880
You have to be very, very careful of that.

669
00:37:30,810 --> 00:37:33,250
And I have been frostbit before.

670
00:37:33,330 --> 00:37:37,443
So camera gear include plenty of hand warmers,

671
00:37:38,550 --> 00:37:41,980
I always have at least two headlamps with me.

672
00:37:42,060 --> 00:37:43,360
You know, the importance like,

673
00:37:43,440 --> 00:37:45,160
when you're out on the cold temperatures,

674
00:37:45,240 --> 00:37:49,540
bringing your camera gear
in, you have to think about,

675
00:37:49,620 --> 00:37:51,760
you know, securing it in something

676
00:37:51,840 --> 00:37:54,280
where a lot of moisture's not gonna develop.

677
00:37:54,360 --> 00:37:57,970
So I myself like to wrap my cameras in down

678
00:37:59,100 --> 00:38:02,230
and I will put 'em inside my pack

679
00:38:02,310 --> 00:38:04,180
and then lay it on a like the cold floor

680
00:38:04,260 --> 00:38:05,950
just so that they warm up slowly.

681
00:38:06,030 --> 00:38:09,910
You have to be prepared for any type of condition.

682
00:38:09,990 --> 00:38:14,320
There are things that happen unexpectedly,

683
00:38:14,400 --> 00:38:17,710
road closures and you could be stuck out for a while.

684
00:38:17,790 --> 00:38:19,540
People would say maybe it's a bit too much,

685
00:38:19,620 --> 00:38:22,360
but I like to travel with firewood.

686
00:38:22,440 --> 00:38:27,333
I have a saw, I have an ax, I have matches, lighters,

687
00:38:28,650 --> 00:38:31,923
you know, a survival sleeping
bag that goes to 50 below.

688
00:38:33,840 --> 00:38:35,320
Yeah, it's a lot of gear.

689
00:38:35,400 --> 00:38:37,844
It takes a while, prepping for a trip.

690
00:38:37,924 --> 00:38:41,463
Yeah, so this is my Aurora
nook in here is what I call it.

691
00:38:42,338 --> 00:38:46,600
I have a nice sheep skin here, down sleeping bag,

692
00:38:46,680 --> 00:38:51,680
first aid kit, spare tire, cooking utensils and food.

693
00:38:54,060 --> 00:38:58,510
Little stove in here and also
pack water under the bed.

694
00:38:58,590 --> 00:39:01,030
And one of the things I forgot to tell you about here

695
00:39:01,110 --> 00:39:04,240
is I like to carry an inReach with me

696
00:39:04,320 --> 00:39:09,320
because I am usually not in
an area that has reception,

697
00:39:09,540 --> 00:39:12,993
and if there's any emergencies I can use this.

698
00:39:13,958 --> 00:39:15,730
It has a little SOS button here

699
00:39:17,160 --> 00:39:19,930
that kind of works off the satellites.

700
00:39:20,010 --> 00:39:22,420
It depends on the temperatures,

701
00:39:22,500 --> 00:39:25,481
but I do have another sleeping bag

702
00:39:25,561 --> 00:39:28,570
that's a 40 to 50 below bag that I will throw in here

703
00:39:28,650 --> 00:39:31,323
for when it gets a little bit colder.

704
00:39:32,370 --> 00:39:36,190
My little pot for heating up water

705
00:39:39,420 --> 00:39:42,730
and my tiny little cook stoves that I love

706
00:39:43,620 --> 00:39:47,680
because if I am backpacking away from my van

707
00:39:47,760 --> 00:39:51,400
and camping somewhere else,
this is what I'll take with me.

708
00:39:51,480 --> 00:39:54,580
And this provides me a way to heat up water,

709
00:39:54,660 --> 00:39:57,933
melt snow, make a hot cup of coffee, whatever it may be.

710
00:39:59,610 --> 00:40:01,233
Nice and light and efficient.

711
00:40:02,340 --> 00:40:05,193
But this is kind of my setup for fall right now.

712
00:40:07,410 --> 00:40:10,210
I have a CB radio and an antenna

713
00:40:10,290 --> 00:40:13,720
and I use that when I go up on the Dalton Highway

714
00:40:13,800 --> 00:40:15,820
so that I can communicate with truckers

715
00:40:17,370 --> 00:40:19,420
or anybody else on the road.

716
00:40:19,500 --> 00:40:22,060
It's kind of an essential tool to have up there

717
00:40:22,140 --> 00:40:26,170
because it's rough driving
conditions, things happen.

718
00:40:26,250 --> 00:40:27,580
You need to know what's going on

719
00:40:27,660 --> 00:40:30,700
and you need to be able to have and communicate.

720
00:40:30,780 --> 00:40:33,340
Aurora photography is very technical.

721
00:40:33,420 --> 00:40:36,370
There's so much to consider

722
00:40:36,450 --> 00:40:38,457
when you are out photographing, you know,

723
00:40:38,537 --> 00:40:42,040
'cause the Aurora is changing
its brightness constantly,

724
00:40:42,120 --> 00:40:44,080
you're having to check your exposure,

725
00:40:44,160 --> 00:40:47,590
your composition and at night,
that can be challenging,

726
00:40:47,670 --> 00:40:50,410
as well as being prepared for the elements,

727
00:40:50,490 --> 00:40:52,420
which can be quite challenging.

728
00:40:52,500 --> 00:40:54,250
You know, when you're out in, you know,

729
00:40:54,330 --> 00:40:57,310
sub-zero temperatures and making sure

730
00:40:57,390 --> 00:40:59,410
that you know you're gonna keep yourself safe

731
00:40:59,490 --> 00:41:02,282
and you're gear protected.

732
00:41:02,362 --> 00:41:06,640
I work very hard at what I do
that to see something payoff

733
00:41:08,010 --> 00:41:10,240
and that people appreciate it.

734
00:41:10,320 --> 00:41:13,300
One of the apps that I like to use is called Windy.

735
00:41:13,380 --> 00:41:14,830
It's fairly accurate.

736
00:41:14,910 --> 00:41:17,800
This is commonly used by bush pilots here in Alaska.

737
00:41:17,880 --> 00:41:19,930
This is showing the wind direction too.

738
00:41:20,010 --> 00:41:23,020
Right now we don't have really any stars.

739
00:41:23,100 --> 00:41:25,030
Doesn't mean that it's gonna push out

740
00:41:25,110 --> 00:41:26,530
and be clear here any minute.

741
00:41:26,610 --> 00:41:28,000
Or we could drive up the road

742
00:41:28,080 --> 00:41:29,710
and see what it looks like.

743
00:41:29,790 --> 00:41:32,560
To go a little bit further in this direction

744
00:41:32,640 --> 00:41:33,700
is what I would do

745
00:41:34,650 --> 00:41:39,123
and see if we can catch any clear spots up here.

746
00:41:40,062 --> 00:41:43,180
The 30% cloud cover in that area.

747
00:41:43,260 --> 00:41:46,893
So we're gonna go check it out.

748
00:41:49,119 --> 00:41:51,416
Clouds have kind of been our ending lately.

749
00:42:05,850 --> 00:42:09,340
As soon as you make it,
slowly started to disintegrate,

750
00:42:09,420 --> 00:42:11,853
the best you can hope are good pictures of it.

751
00:42:12,750 --> 00:42:15,370
Hi, my name's Heather Brice and I'm Steve's wife.

752
00:42:15,450 --> 00:42:17,513
I have been carving ice for 27 years.

753
00:42:17,593 --> 00:42:20,170
I have 11 world championship titles.

754
00:42:20,250 --> 00:42:24,873
I transitioned from wood and
bronze to ice when I met Steve.

755
00:42:26,010 --> 00:42:30,130
My name is Steve Brice, a 30 year ice carver.

756
00:42:30,210 --> 00:42:33,550
Welcome to our workshop here
at Chino Hot Spring, Aurora.

757
00:42:33,630 --> 00:42:36,963
Ice, oh, excuse me, Ice Museum.

758
00:42:38,505 --> 00:42:39,338
- The Aurora Ice Museum.
- Yeah.

759
00:42:42,000 --> 00:42:44,800
This is where we make all the parts and pieces

760
00:42:44,880 --> 00:42:49,180
that are gonna go inside of the Ice Museum here.

761
00:42:49,260 --> 00:42:52,773
So if I'm redoing a room or redoing a sculpture,

762
00:42:54,690 --> 00:42:58,503
maybe about 90% of the time it'll be done in this area.

763
00:43:00,390 --> 00:43:02,170
We've carved all over the world.

764
00:43:02,250 --> 00:43:04,360
Probably the best location though

765
00:43:04,440 --> 00:43:05,800
is here in Fairbanks, Alaska,

766
00:43:05,880 --> 00:43:09,490
where the weather is always cold and predictable,

767
00:43:09,570 --> 00:43:11,590
fairly predictable anyway.

768
00:43:11,670 --> 00:43:14,650
If it's too cold, if it's too warm,

769
00:43:14,730 --> 00:43:16,510
it becomes a severe challenge.

770
00:43:16,590 --> 00:43:19,600
Pretty much other forms of sculpture,

771
00:43:19,680 --> 00:43:22,540
you know you can control your atmosphere,

772
00:43:22,620 --> 00:43:26,680
but a lot of ice events,

773
00:43:26,760 --> 00:43:29,613
you have very little control over the weather.

774
00:43:31,917 --> 00:43:36,760
Sad fact is some of our best
stuff never got great pictures.

775
00:43:36,840 --> 00:43:39,460
Photographs make it a little easier

776
00:43:39,540 --> 00:43:42,160
to know that it's gonna be destroyed.

777
00:43:42,240 --> 00:43:47,240
It's the actual making of it
which is the creative process

778
00:43:48,150 --> 00:43:50,853
that gets you addicted to doing ice.

779
00:43:51,960 --> 00:43:53,920
The art is in the making.

780
00:43:54,000 --> 00:43:57,040
The temporary aspect is part of the allure,

781
00:43:57,120 --> 00:43:59,470
I think, especially for the public,

782
00:43:59,550 --> 00:44:02,410
that it's only there for a fleeting time.

783
00:44:02,490 --> 00:44:04,600
Has to be enjoyed immediately.

784
00:44:04,680 --> 00:44:07,570
When two people are doing a piece, if you get stuck,

785
00:44:07,650 --> 00:44:10,480
the other person can come over and see it easily.

786
00:44:10,560 --> 00:44:15,040
Yeah, he does a lot of the big ice removal,

787
00:44:15,120 --> 00:44:17,290
a lot of the bigger shaping.

788
00:44:17,370 --> 00:44:22,270
I love fine tuning and really making the surfaces

789
00:44:23,280 --> 00:44:28,143
and the textures and just the
really ornate detail pop in.

790
00:44:29,100 --> 00:44:30,550
If either of us gets stuck,

791
00:44:30,630 --> 00:44:32,530
it's because we're looking at it too much

792
00:44:32,610 --> 00:44:35,320
and the other person's not looking at it so much.

793
00:44:35,400 --> 00:44:39,070
They can come and see exactly what needs to happen.

794
00:44:39,150 --> 00:44:42,860
And we help each other out with that all the time.

795
00:44:42,940 --> 00:44:47,290
Really drawing as well

796
00:44:47,370 --> 00:44:50,410
as a child, my aunt was really integral

797
00:44:50,490 --> 00:44:53,590
in doing fun projects with us, my sister and I.

798
00:44:53,670 --> 00:44:57,070
And I got started in like shop

799
00:44:57,150 --> 00:45:02,150
and sculpture pretty early
in my elementary education.

800
00:45:02,727 --> 00:45:05,560
And I love to pull inspiration from movies I've seen,

801
00:45:05,640 --> 00:45:07,810
from children's books especially.

802
00:45:07,890 --> 00:45:10,630
I love to create animals doing human things,

803
00:45:10,710 --> 00:45:12,153
just a little bit whimsical.

804
00:45:14,130 --> 00:45:18,317
The magic comes from the last two to 3% of what you do.

805
00:45:18,397 --> 00:45:21,910
You know, you can sit there and do a scene

806
00:45:21,990 --> 00:45:25,120
and run out of time and it is good,

807
00:45:25,200 --> 00:45:27,340
but to turn it into magic,

808
00:45:27,420 --> 00:45:30,963
you've gotta push it past an incredible level.

809
00:45:32,340 --> 00:45:33,880
To become an ice sculptor,

810
00:45:33,960 --> 00:45:37,450
it's advisable to go to an ice company

811
00:45:37,530 --> 00:45:39,970
and ask if you can get hired

812
00:45:40,050 --> 00:45:42,910
and acquire a few rudimentary tools

813
00:45:42,990 --> 00:45:45,400
and take it from there.

814
00:45:45,480 --> 00:45:48,400
A lot of sculptors can get a little bit experience

815
00:45:48,480 --> 00:45:50,299
through the culinary field.

816
00:45:50,379 --> 00:45:53,827
They go to chef school and
they learn how to do tabletops

817
00:45:53,907 --> 00:45:56,613
and ice trays and shrimp trays and things like that.

818
00:45:57,837 --> 00:45:59,590
In a heavy equipment accident,

819
00:45:59,670 --> 00:46:03,640
I've not been a a painter or a drawer since

820
00:46:03,720 --> 00:46:08,720
and I've been pretty much 95% ice ever since that

821
00:46:09,720 --> 00:46:13,600
because when I put gloves on, I don't notice

822
00:46:13,680 --> 00:46:17,343
that I'm missing half of my left hand or my left thumb.

823
00:46:27,120 --> 00:46:30,100
Oh yeah, Bethel, I don't
think they have any electricity.

824
00:46:30,180 --> 00:46:32,110
And I'm like, "What?"

825
00:46:32,190 --> 00:46:33,970
Actually, my senior year in college,

826
00:46:34,050 --> 00:46:35,560
I was trying to figure out what to do

827
00:46:35,640 --> 00:46:40,640
and I decided to join Peace Corps VISTA program,

828
00:46:40,770 --> 00:46:45,310
and initially I was going in
the Peace Corps to go abroad,

829
00:46:45,390 --> 00:46:47,920
and then I heard too many horror stories

830
00:46:49,230 --> 00:46:52,600
and so I decided to do VISTA,

831
00:46:52,680 --> 00:46:55,353
which is Volunteers In Service To America.

832
00:46:56,310 --> 00:47:01,240
I had a choice, I could go to Apopka, Florida

833
00:47:02,130 --> 00:47:04,180
or Fairbanks, Alaska.

834
00:47:04,260 --> 00:47:09,260
Now, Apopka is maybe less than 30 minutes

835
00:47:09,420 --> 00:47:12,040
from my parents' house.

836
00:47:12,120 --> 00:47:13,990
And I thought, oh my gosh,

837
00:47:14,070 --> 00:47:18,220
I didn't join this program to be so close to home.

838
00:47:18,300 --> 00:47:22,330
So I thought, well, I guess I'm going to Bethel, Alaska.

839
00:47:22,410 --> 00:47:25,285
I talked to my college roommate, said, "Oh my god, Kathy,

840
00:47:25,365 --> 00:47:27,157
I'm going to Bethel, Alaska."

841
00:47:27,237 --> 00:47:31,990
And she said, "Oh, oh, there's someone on my floor

842
00:47:32,070 --> 00:47:35,050
that's from Alaska, let
me ask him about it."

843
00:47:35,130 --> 00:47:38,500
And she comes back and she says, "Oh yeah, Bethel,

844
00:47:38,580 --> 00:47:41,680
I don't think they have any electricity."

845
00:47:41,760 --> 00:47:43,725
And I'm like, "What?"

846
00:47:43,805 --> 00:47:48,450
And well, what happened was the power plant

847
00:47:49,320 --> 00:47:54,320
had burned down in Bethel like, a couple years prior.

848
00:47:54,960 --> 00:47:58,503
And so that's what that person was remembering.

849
00:47:59,610 --> 00:48:00,970
My name is Corlis Taylor.

850
00:48:01,050 --> 00:48:03,070
I've lived in Alaska for 45 years

851
00:48:03,150 --> 00:48:06,310
and I've been in Fairbanks for about 33 years.

852
00:48:06,390 --> 00:48:10,600
I retired in 2020, and up until then,

853
00:48:10,680 --> 00:48:15,680
I was working full-time and doing artwork part-time.

854
00:48:15,960 --> 00:48:18,700
Both my grandparents were seamstresses,

855
00:48:18,780 --> 00:48:21,040
my grandfather was a tailor,

856
00:48:21,120 --> 00:48:23,920
and so there were always sewing machines around.

857
00:48:24,000 --> 00:48:25,570
My mother and my grandmother

858
00:48:25,650 --> 00:48:27,460
made all of my clothes growing up.

859
00:48:27,540 --> 00:48:30,820
Didn't have my first dress
that was purchased at a store

860
00:48:30,900 --> 00:48:32,797
until I was a sophomore in high school.

861
00:48:32,877 --> 00:48:34,210
And I was out in Bethel,

862
00:48:34,290 --> 00:48:37,480
I decided, okay, I need to figure out something to do.

863
00:48:37,560 --> 00:48:40,660
So I thought, you know, I'm
gonna teach myself how to quilt.

864
00:48:40,740 --> 00:48:44,350
And so I bought a book and taught myself to quilt

865
00:48:44,430 --> 00:48:45,820
and made my first quilt.

866
00:48:45,900 --> 00:48:48,040
And a friend saw it and
said, "Can you make me one?"

867
00:48:48,120 --> 00:48:49,330
I'm like, "Okay."

868
00:48:49,410 --> 00:48:51,040
So then I made my second quilt

869
00:48:51,120 --> 00:48:54,529
and then just started making quilts.

870
00:48:56,528 --> 00:49:00,310
I could make something really
incredible and wear it.

871
00:49:00,390 --> 00:49:04,000
And so somebody was coming from California

872
00:49:04,080 --> 00:49:09,080
to teach this wearable art
class at our local quilt store.

873
00:49:09,270 --> 00:49:11,140
And so I took that class

874
00:49:11,220 --> 00:49:13,630
and just kind of took off from there.

875
00:49:13,710 --> 00:49:16,060
It just became my new love

876
00:49:16,140 --> 00:49:19,990
because it was just being a way

877
00:49:20,070 --> 00:49:23,740
to be really creative using fabric.

878
00:49:23,820 --> 00:49:25,870
Yes, I call myself an artist.

879
00:49:25,950 --> 00:49:30,280
I know that there's, in the art world, there's a lot of,

880
00:49:30,360 --> 00:49:32,170
controversy might be a strong word,

881
00:49:32,250 --> 00:49:35,680
but between craft and art.

882
00:49:35,760 --> 00:49:39,970
I think this is a combination of craft and art.

883
00:49:40,050 --> 00:49:44,704
Painters have this palette
of all these different colors

884
00:49:44,784 --> 00:49:49,784
and they mix, you know, blue
and green or yellow and orange.

885
00:49:51,210 --> 00:49:53,410
You know, they're mixing these colors

886
00:49:53,490 --> 00:49:55,390
to come up with a new color.

887
00:49:55,470 --> 00:49:58,024
Well, I'm doing the same thing with fabric.

888
00:49:58,104 --> 00:50:01,150
You know, I will take a red fabric and a green fabric

889
00:50:01,230 --> 00:50:03,160
and mix them together in a garment.

890
00:50:03,240 --> 00:50:06,130
And this is the fabric that I chose

891
00:50:06,210 --> 00:50:08,493
for the lining for this garment.

892
00:50:09,570 --> 00:50:13,660
I usually start off with one piece of fabric

893
00:50:13,740 --> 00:50:16,750
that I look at that I really love,

894
00:50:16,830 --> 00:50:20,740
and then I take that one piece of fabric

895
00:50:20,820 --> 00:50:21,970
and I look at it

896
00:50:22,050 --> 00:50:26,050
and see what other colors are in that fabric

897
00:50:26,130 --> 00:50:28,930
and then start collecting other pieces of fabric

898
00:50:29,010 --> 00:50:30,640
that go with that one piece.

899
00:50:30,720 --> 00:50:34,480
But I start off with the focal, my focal fabric.

900
00:50:34,560 --> 00:50:38,710
I always start off by cutting a muslin.

901
00:50:38,790 --> 00:50:43,360
And so this is my piece that I am building on.

902
00:50:43,440 --> 00:50:47,320
I like to use anywhere from eight to 10,

903
00:50:47,400 --> 00:50:49,780
15 different fabrics.

904
00:50:49,860 --> 00:50:54,400
So I will probably pull out this kind of a turquoise,

905
00:50:54,480 --> 00:50:58,000
deep turquoise greenish blue color fabric

906
00:50:58,080 --> 00:51:00,663
to add to this collection.

907
00:51:01,890 --> 00:51:02,680
As I said, you know,

908
00:51:02,760 --> 00:51:06,730
painters have their different colors of paints,

909
00:51:06,810 --> 00:51:11,050
they have the canvas that they are painting on,

910
00:51:11,130 --> 00:51:13,480
they're using their different sizes

911
00:51:13,560 --> 00:51:17,020
and shapes of brushes to make the strokes.

912
00:51:17,100 --> 00:51:21,520
And so for me and for making wearable art,

913
00:51:21,600 --> 00:51:22,720
this is my canvas.

914
00:51:22,800 --> 00:51:25,720
So this white fabric here is the canvas

915
00:51:25,800 --> 00:51:28,863
on which I'm building up all of my color.

916
00:51:30,510 --> 00:51:35,260
Of course I'm influenced by the supply of fabric

917
00:51:35,340 --> 00:51:36,820
that's here in town.

918
00:51:36,900 --> 00:51:38,260
But then whenever I travel,

919
00:51:38,340 --> 00:51:41,770
like I was just in Florida last week visiting my mom

920
00:51:41,850 --> 00:51:45,220
where I'm from and we went to the fabric store

921
00:51:45,300 --> 00:51:47,283
and I bought more fabric.

922
00:51:48,390 --> 00:51:51,430
And so whenever I travel,

923
00:51:51,510 --> 00:51:55,540
I'm getting fabrics and bringing back to my studio.

924
00:51:55,620 --> 00:51:58,090
So my garments tend to be very wearable

925
00:51:59,010 --> 00:52:03,070
as opposed to something that's more gallery art.

926
00:52:03,150 --> 00:52:06,040
There are garments that are in galleries

927
00:52:06,120 --> 00:52:10,150
and they're very, very elaborate kinds of things.

928
00:52:10,230 --> 00:52:14,140
2015 or 2016, somewhere in there,

929
00:52:14,220 --> 00:52:18,040
we had our first show in California.

930
00:52:18,120 --> 00:52:21,910
When I see it on the runway, when a model is wearing it,

931
00:52:21,990 --> 00:52:22,750
my first thought is,

932
00:52:22,830 --> 00:52:25,390
wow, that looks really good on her.

933
00:52:25,470 --> 00:52:27,760
And then my second thought is, oh my gosh,

934
00:52:27,840 --> 00:52:30,490
I should have done something
a little bit different.

935
00:52:30,570 --> 00:52:32,290
Oh, I should have had that fabric,

936
00:52:32,370 --> 00:52:34,810
instead of having it there,
I should have had it there

937
00:52:34,890 --> 00:52:36,160
or maybe I could have done.

938
00:52:36,240 --> 00:52:41,170
You know, we always are self critiquing of what we do,

939
00:52:41,250 --> 00:52:44,500
and when I sell garments and people buy them

940
00:52:44,580 --> 00:52:47,500
and I see them wearing it, there's a little piece of me

941
00:52:47,580 --> 00:52:50,800
that's sad because I like it so much

942
00:52:50,880 --> 00:52:51,880
and I'm like, oh my gosh,

943
00:52:51,960 --> 00:52:54,520
I really wanted to keep that, but I sold it,

944
00:52:54,600 --> 00:52:59,600
and then part of me is just really, I don't know,

945
00:52:59,880 --> 00:53:04,880
proud I guess is a word to use,
that someone liked my stuff,

946
00:53:07,230 --> 00:53:12,230
liked my work enough not only did they buy it

947
00:53:13,710 --> 00:53:17,992
and take it home, but they're wearing it out in public.

948
00:53:28,263 --> 00:53:30,580
I am really proud when I see this airplane,

949
00:53:30,660 --> 00:53:35,080
to see how it's impacted people
and in particular in Alaska.

950
00:53:35,160 --> 00:53:38,860
People are really proud of the Xaat Kaani livery,

951
00:53:38,940 --> 00:53:40,600
the first commercial aircraft

952
00:53:40,680 --> 00:53:44,230
to be named in an indigenous word,

953
00:53:44,310 --> 00:53:46,332
Xaat Kwaani are the Salmon people.

954
00:53:49,410 --> 00:53:52,810
Nowadays there is a Tlingit word for art

955
00:53:52,890 --> 00:53:55,660
and it's called, it's a new term.

956
00:53:55,740 --> 00:54:00,693
It translates to the happening
of a significant event.

957
00:54:01,620 --> 00:54:05,380
The is connected to who we are

958
00:54:05,460 --> 00:54:07,180
and to our past.

959
00:54:07,260 --> 00:54:11,080
And the
is showing that we still exist

960
00:54:11,160 --> 00:54:14,980
and live in a modern day and we can have our language

961
00:54:15,060 --> 00:54:16,660
and speak our language and bring in

962
00:54:16,740 --> 00:54:20,770
and introduce new words in
our language if we need to.

963
00:54:20,850 --> 00:54:23,680
And it's a part of how we are adapting

964
00:54:23,760 --> 00:54:27,940
to the modern day and moving forward.

965
00:54:28,020 --> 00:54:30,884
Introducing myself how my grandmother taught me.

966
00:54:40,980 --> 00:54:42,520
My Tlingit name is Kaakeeyaa

967
00:54:42,600 --> 00:54:46,990
and my English name is Crystal
Worl, a Raven Sockeye Clan.

968
00:54:47,070 --> 00:54:51,430
I am Deg Hit'an Athabascan from my mother's side,

969
00:54:51,510 --> 00:54:55,660
and I am Tlingit and Filipino from my father's side.

970
00:54:55,740 --> 00:55:00,400
I am doing a lot of public
art, murals, large scale work.

971
00:55:00,480 --> 00:55:03,910
I also do painting and
printmaking and graphic design,

972
00:55:03,990 --> 00:55:07,030
co-owner and co-designer of Trickster Company

973
00:55:07,110 --> 00:55:08,320
with my brother Rico.

974
00:55:08,400 --> 00:55:13,143
We are an indigenous graphic
design art gift shop online.

975
00:55:13,980 --> 00:55:16,840
I think I'm really blessed to have a family

976
00:55:16,920 --> 00:55:20,943
that really nurtured my
creativity from a young age.

977
00:55:22,710 --> 00:55:25,720
My grandmother has stories of recognizing

978
00:55:25,800 --> 00:55:28,810
that I was gonna be an artist from a very young age

979
00:55:28,890 --> 00:55:32,680
and she said that I would be
running around like a spazz

980
00:55:32,760 --> 00:55:34,840
and the thing that would stop me in my tracks

981
00:55:34,920 --> 00:55:38,703
was very vibrant, bold patterns and colors.

982
00:55:39,720 --> 00:55:42,070
And then my mother never scolded me

983
00:55:42,150 --> 00:55:43,600
for drawing on the walls.

984
00:55:43,680 --> 00:55:45,723
To this day, I'm still drawing on walls.

985
00:55:47,400 --> 00:55:51,550
We've been doing art well before art was a word.

986
00:55:51,630 --> 00:55:56,470
We were creating a means to pass on information

987
00:55:56,550 --> 00:56:01,550
to the next generation,
whether it be for our regalia

988
00:56:02,070 --> 00:56:03,670
so that we could recognize each other

989
00:56:03,750 --> 00:56:06,250
and know which clan someone was from

990
00:56:06,330 --> 00:56:08,830
so that we know how to address them and care for them,

991
00:56:08,910 --> 00:56:12,040
or libraries encoded in our totem poles

992
00:56:12,120 --> 00:56:16,870
and our longhouses and our canoes or our paddles.

993
00:56:16,950 --> 00:56:21,950
All of these are encoded with our cultural values,

994
00:56:22,410 --> 00:56:25,713
our stories that belong to particular clans.

995
00:56:26,760 --> 00:56:30,670
Designs that I do are formline, which is specific

996
00:56:30,750 --> 00:56:34,210
to the Tlingit Haida and
Tsimshian tribes in Alaska

997
00:56:34,290 --> 00:56:36,190
and throughout BC.

998
00:56:36,270 --> 00:56:41,270
Formline is probably most
recognized by totem poles, canoes,

999
00:56:43,500 --> 00:56:48,340
longhouse frontlets, and our Chilkat that we weave.

1000
00:56:48,420 --> 00:56:51,730
I think formline art comes from

1001
00:56:51,810 --> 00:56:55,600
and belongs to indigenous people,

1002
00:56:55,680 --> 00:56:58,750
and specifically the Tlingit Haida and Tsimshian.

1003
00:56:58,830 --> 00:57:01,600
For the most part, I think that formline

1004
00:57:01,680 --> 00:57:06,303
should be carried by our people.

1005
00:57:07,320 --> 00:57:10,930
Just like our ancestors, they adapted to the time.

1006
00:57:11,010 --> 00:57:14,320
What was modern and contemporary for them

1007
00:57:14,400 --> 00:57:17,560
may be what is traditional for us now.

1008
00:57:17,640 --> 00:57:21,340
And so moving forward and continuing,

1009
00:57:21,420 --> 00:57:24,490
being innovative and adaptable

1010
00:57:24,570 --> 00:57:28,210
and being able to change with times is significant,

1011
00:57:28,290 --> 00:57:31,870
while still simultaneously
being rooted in knowing

1012
00:57:31,950 --> 00:57:34,780
who you are, where you're from, and what does that mean.

1013
00:57:34,860 --> 00:57:37,000
And so that's why I say a lot

1014
00:57:37,080 --> 00:57:39,520
of indigenous people live in two worlds

1015
00:57:39,600 --> 00:57:43,330
because we're connected to our ancestors, our land,

1016
00:57:43,410 --> 00:57:46,990
the animals that we harvest,
that we've always harvested

1017
00:57:47,070 --> 00:57:50,350
from the past to the future generations

1018
00:57:50,430 --> 00:57:53,890
and our obligations to pass all that information

1019
00:57:53,970 --> 00:57:57,490
and also to the present and
living and being here and now

1020
00:57:57,570 --> 00:58:01,720
and existing as innovative
and creative indigenous people

1021
00:58:01,800 --> 00:58:04,263
that are thriving and speaking our language.

1022
00:58:07,260 --> 00:58:12,260
I was interviewed in "Alaska
Business Monthly" magazine

1023
00:58:12,360 --> 00:58:13,630
for my art.

1024
00:58:13,710 --> 00:58:16,090
At the same time, Marilyn Romano,

1025
00:58:16,170 --> 00:58:18,790
who is the vice president of Alaska Airlines,

1026
00:58:18,870 --> 00:58:21,730
had proposed that the new livery get painted

1027
00:58:21,810 --> 00:58:24,460
by an indigenous Alaskan artist.

1028
00:58:24,540 --> 00:58:26,290
And the mail woman comes into her office

1029
00:58:26,370 --> 00:58:28,540
and puts this magazine on her desk.

1030
00:58:28,620 --> 00:58:32,950
And I'm on the cover with my
art, and she reads the article

1031
00:58:33,030 --> 00:58:35,320
and she says, "I want her to do it."

1032
00:58:35,400 --> 00:58:37,810
Coincidentally, three years prior,

1033
00:58:37,890 --> 00:58:41,780
I had superimposed my artwork onto a Boeing 737.

1034
00:58:41,860 --> 00:58:45,730
I had been wanting to see
an Alaska Airlines airplane

1035
00:58:45,810 --> 00:58:49,810
designed by an Alaska Native.

1036
00:58:49,890 --> 00:58:52,593
So Marilyn Romano calls me and says,

1037
00:58:53,437 --> 00:58:54,970
"Hello Crystal Worl, is this you?"

1038
00:58:55,050 --> 00:58:56,147
And I'm like, "Yes."

1039
00:58:56,227 --> 00:58:59,290
"Wanted to talk to you about designing an airplane."

1040
00:58:59,370 --> 00:59:00,370
I saw your article

1041
00:59:00,450 --> 00:59:02,650
on the 'Alaska Business Monthly' magazine,

1042
00:59:02,730 --> 00:59:05,560
and I wanted to ask you if you'd be interested

1043
00:59:05,640 --> 00:59:08,410
"in designing an airplane
for Alaska Airlines."

1044
00:59:08,490 --> 00:59:09,690
I can't say no.

1045
00:59:10,950 --> 00:59:13,720
I'm really proud when I see this airplane

1046
00:59:13,800 --> 00:59:18,800
and to see how it's impacted
people throughout the globe.

1047
00:59:32,670 --> 00:59:36,550
I have memories of being a baby and in a crib

1048
00:59:36,630 --> 00:59:39,933
and looking up at a Audubon bird poster.

1049
00:59:40,770 --> 00:59:44,290
I'm Linda Infante Lyons and I am a painter.

1050
00:59:44,370 --> 00:59:46,240
Grew up here in Anchorage, Alaska,

1051
00:59:46,320 --> 00:59:51,310
and a lot of my inspiration
comes from the island of Kodiak

1052
00:59:51,390 --> 00:59:54,700
where my mother and grandmother
and great-grandmother,

1053
00:59:54,780 --> 00:59:56,860
my Alutiiq Alaska Native family

1054
00:59:56,940 --> 01:00:00,743
goes back 4,000 or more years.

1055
01:00:00,823 --> 01:00:04,240
I was always drawing and drawing on furniture

1056
01:00:04,320 --> 01:00:07,540
and getting in trouble, you
know, for drawing too much.

1057
01:00:07,620 --> 01:00:09,910
So I've always, always loved art.

1058
01:00:09,990 --> 01:00:13,810
Really what I'm trying to do is taking what I see

1059
01:00:13,890 --> 01:00:16,540
and then trying to express how I feel.

1060
01:00:16,620 --> 01:00:20,860
So it's important to me that
the paintings or the drawings,

1061
01:00:20,940 --> 01:00:25,940
mostly paintings now, show or express the feeling

1062
01:00:26,280 --> 01:00:30,220
that I get when I see these things out in the world.

1063
01:00:30,300 --> 01:00:35,300
My grandmother from Kodiak,
she was very inspirational.

1064
01:00:37,200 --> 01:00:40,210
I know that she did some drawing and painting,

1065
01:00:40,290 --> 01:00:41,770
but she was a very busy woman.

1066
01:00:41,850 --> 01:00:43,360
She raised a lot of children

1067
01:00:43,440 --> 01:00:44,980
and I don't think she had the chance

1068
01:00:45,060 --> 01:00:47,140
to develop her art career,

1069
01:00:47,220 --> 01:00:48,970
but I know that she's very creative.

1070
01:00:49,050 --> 01:00:51,193
She also was in love

1071
01:00:51,273 --> 01:00:53,890
with her natural surroundings in Kodiak,

1072
01:00:53,970 --> 01:00:57,250
and we spent a lot of time on the beaches,

1073
01:00:57,330 --> 01:01:01,150
beach combing and fishing and berry picking.

1074
01:01:01,230 --> 01:01:04,000
You know, she taught us names of the flowers,

1075
01:01:04,080 --> 01:01:06,663
how to tie a hook so you could fish.

1076
01:01:08,310 --> 01:01:11,890
My Kodiak grandmother was sort of that seed

1077
01:01:11,970 --> 01:01:13,953
of creativity since I was really young.

1078
01:01:16,560 --> 01:01:19,960
My portraits now are inspired by icons.

1079
01:01:20,040 --> 01:01:21,700
So in a sense they're symbols.

1080
01:01:21,780 --> 01:01:24,400
I'm not really picking out
the individual expression,

1081
01:01:24,480 --> 01:01:27,130
but something that's more universal.

1082
01:01:27,210 --> 01:01:31,000
And these portraits are of Alaska native women.

1083
01:01:31,080 --> 01:01:33,789
I am trying to show them as symbols

1084
01:01:33,869 --> 01:01:38,869
of that expresses the authority
and spirit of these women

1085
01:01:41,070 --> 01:01:42,720
and their attachment to the land.

1086
01:01:43,770 --> 01:01:46,420
This is a work in progress icon portrait.

1087
01:01:46,500 --> 01:01:49,900
She's looking out into the
world, proclaiming the authority

1088
01:01:49,980 --> 01:01:54,303
that she has from millennia of living on the land.

1089
01:01:56,820 --> 01:01:59,050
To me, women are very important.

1090
01:01:59,130 --> 01:02:01,153
I came from a long line of very strong women,

1091
01:02:01,233 --> 01:02:05,073
very inspired by my grandmother,
inspired by my mother.

1092
01:02:06,270 --> 01:02:07,270
I have three daughters.

1093
01:02:07,350 --> 01:02:10,360
I also saw through my grandmother

1094
01:02:10,440 --> 01:02:13,870
how much she was the glue of the family.

1095
01:02:13,950 --> 01:02:18,950
She was the energy and the
one that had all the stories

1096
01:02:21,480 --> 01:02:24,580
and things that I needed to know as a child.

1097
01:02:24,660 --> 01:02:25,990
One of the things that really inspired me

1098
01:02:26,070 --> 01:02:27,367
is the Alutiiq mass

1099
01:02:27,447 --> 01:02:30,760
and a lot of Alaska native
mass have a central figure

1100
01:02:30,840 --> 01:02:34,060
and then they have an array around the head.

1101
01:02:34,140 --> 01:02:38,703
This concept is I think very similar aligns with,

1102
01:02:40,440 --> 01:02:44,620
you know, Christian beliefs
and Russian Orthodox Church,

1103
01:02:44,700 --> 01:02:47,050
very prominent in Kodiak.

1104
01:02:47,130 --> 01:02:50,830
My ancestors lived through
the Russian colonization

1105
01:02:50,910 --> 01:02:55,790
and my great-grandmother,
she spoke Russian and Alutiiq

1106
01:02:55,870 --> 01:02:57,736
and didn't speak English.

1107
01:02:57,816 --> 01:03:00,610
So, that history is very close.

1108
01:03:00,690 --> 01:03:03,310
I was participating in exhibits

1109
01:03:03,390 --> 01:03:05,920
called "Decolonizing Alaska,"

1110
01:03:06,000 --> 01:03:10,180
in which the artists were asked
to think about decolonizing

1111
01:03:10,260 --> 01:03:15,260
and how to sort repair some of the damage to culture,

1112
01:03:16,590 --> 01:03:20,650
Alaska Native culture, how to move forward, you know,

1113
01:03:20,730 --> 01:03:24,760
as a living culture and taking those pieces

1114
01:03:24,840 --> 01:03:29,840
that were often repressed, elevating them,

1115
01:03:31,770 --> 01:03:35,380
and in my mind, elevating the Alutiiq culture

1116
01:03:36,600 --> 01:03:40,120
and just melding it with Russian Orthodox

1117
01:03:40,200 --> 01:03:43,150
or Christian or just in general Western.

1118
01:03:43,230 --> 01:03:48,230
In other words, showing that
the Alaska Native culture

1119
01:03:48,510 --> 01:03:53,510
can be seen as equal as the Western.

1120
01:03:54,030 --> 01:03:58,030
I like the idea of instead of
decolonizing, indigenizing,

1121
01:03:58,110 --> 01:04:01,210
you know, raising up, making aware to the world,

1122
01:04:01,290 --> 01:04:03,540
you know, this very rich culture and history.

1123
01:04:06,120 --> 01:04:07,150
Like any art work,

1124
01:04:07,230 --> 01:04:10,630
as you create the work you discover new things,

1125
01:04:10,710 --> 01:04:13,540
things that you hadn't planned on doing,

1126
01:04:13,620 --> 01:04:14,620
and you actually learn

1127
01:04:14,700 --> 01:04:16,990
from creating the actual artwork,

1128
01:04:17,070 --> 01:04:20,740
teaches you new things or
leads you on different paths.

1129
01:04:20,820 --> 01:04:22,780
It's not a purposeful message,

1130
01:04:22,860 --> 01:04:25,150
it is a message that seems to grow over time

1131
01:04:25,230 --> 01:04:26,320
and then it becomes relevant

1132
01:04:26,400 --> 01:04:28,240
with what's happening in the world now.

1133
01:04:28,320 --> 01:04:31,070
And there's a lot of connections
that happen as you go.

1134
01:04:32,040 --> 01:04:35,380
There's also more subtle, you know,

1135
01:04:35,460 --> 01:04:37,060
messages or the imagery

1136
01:04:37,140 --> 01:04:42,140
can really start a conversation or an emotion.

1137
01:04:42,570 --> 01:04:46,330
You know, if someone can see
my work or other artist' work

1138
01:04:46,410 --> 01:04:49,150
and stop for a minute

1139
01:04:49,230 --> 01:04:51,933
and think about what they're
seeing and how they feel,

1140
01:04:52,770 --> 01:04:56,050
they may come away with a different idea or feeling,

1141
01:04:56,130 --> 01:05:01,130
but it opens your mind and
your heart to something new.

1142
01:05:14,550 --> 01:05:18,430
You are in the University
of Alaska Museum of the North

1143
01:05:18,510 --> 01:05:20,110
in Fairbanks, Alaska.

1144
01:05:20,190 --> 01:05:21,607
I'm Aldona Jonaitis

1145
01:05:21,687 --> 01:05:25,150
and I am the retired director of the University

1146
01:05:25,230 --> 01:05:27,310
of Alaska Museum of the North.

1147
01:05:27,390 --> 01:05:31,597
The museum has artwork that is contemporary,

1148
01:05:33,600 --> 01:05:38,600
middle 19th century, very
ancient, and some that is modern.

1149
01:05:39,660 --> 01:05:44,110
And this is one of our oldest pieces.

1150
01:05:44,190 --> 01:05:46,780
It's called the "Okvik Madonna."

1151
01:05:46,860 --> 01:05:50,523
It's about 2,000 years old, give or take.

1152
01:05:51,910 --> 01:05:56,410
And it is not the "Madonna," it's made of walrus ivory.

1153
01:05:56,490 --> 01:05:59,980
The Inupiat, who are the group of people in the north

1154
01:06:00,060 --> 01:06:03,040
who carved this, we assume,

1155
01:06:03,120 --> 01:06:06,220
have a story of the Mother of the Animals.

1156
01:06:06,300 --> 01:06:10,090
The Mother of the Animals is a being

1157
01:06:10,170 --> 01:06:14,290
from whom all the animals of the world emerge.

1158
01:06:14,370 --> 01:06:18,640
As you can see, there is a
little creature on her stomach

1159
01:06:18,720 --> 01:06:20,710
as she's holding this little creature

1160
01:06:20,790 --> 01:06:23,170
that probably is a seal.

1161
01:06:23,250 --> 01:06:26,830
Then if you look at her face, look at that smile,

1162
01:06:26,910 --> 01:06:31,910
this Mona Lisa's smile, that
piece is carved so exquisitely

1163
01:06:33,570 --> 01:06:35,643
with stone tools.

1164
01:06:36,510 --> 01:06:37,870
A little anecdote about this

1165
01:06:37,950 --> 01:06:42,950
is that when I came for a job
interview here 35 years ago,

1166
01:06:43,050 --> 01:06:43,930
I was walking through,

1167
01:06:44,010 --> 01:06:45,880
'cause I'm a Native American art historian,

1168
01:06:45,960 --> 01:06:48,880
so I've lectured a lot about Native American art,

1169
01:06:48,960 --> 01:06:51,837
and I walked to the gallery and I said,

1170
01:06:53,210 --> 01:06:55,450
'cause I had taught this many times at the beginning

1171
01:06:55,530 --> 01:07:00,530
of my class I said, "You have the 'Okvik Madonna'?

1172
01:07:00,810 --> 01:07:05,020
I wanna be in a museum that
has the 'Okvik Madonna.'"

1173
01:07:05,100 --> 01:07:05,933
And here I am.

1174
01:07:08,280 --> 01:07:13,180
This is another remarkable piece of ingenuity.

1175
01:07:13,260 --> 01:07:17,950
This artist who made this was the Siberian Yup'ik.

1176
01:07:18,030 --> 01:07:20,740
This is a gut parka.

1177
01:07:20,820 --> 01:07:25,820
It is made of seal gut, women gut seal gut, cut it,

1178
01:07:26,010 --> 01:07:28,900
opened it and sewed it together,

1179
01:07:28,980 --> 01:07:32,410
decorating it with feathers and teeth.

1180
01:07:32,490 --> 01:07:36,160
It is completely waterproof.

1181
01:07:36,240 --> 01:07:38,170
It is actually used.

1182
01:07:38,250 --> 01:07:43,250
It is used as the hunters go on the ice.

1183
01:07:44,490 --> 01:07:47,380
This piece, it's beautiful,

1184
01:07:47,460 --> 01:07:51,820
not only to us and to the Siberian Yup'ik,

1185
01:07:51,900 --> 01:07:54,123
it's beautiful to the animals.

1186
01:07:55,200 --> 01:08:00,200
So you are honoring them by making an artwork

1187
01:08:01,050 --> 01:08:06,050
that you're wearing when
you're going to harvest them.

1188
01:08:06,750 --> 01:08:09,677
And of course you always ask the animal,

1189
01:08:09,757 --> 01:08:13,450
"I would like to take your life away,

1190
01:08:13,530 --> 01:08:18,530
but I thank you for
allowing me to do that."

1191
01:08:20,520 --> 01:08:25,520
This metal piece is intended
to look like whale bones,

1192
01:08:25,830 --> 01:08:30,830
which the northern people use for food.

1193
01:08:33,570 --> 01:08:34,780
I have been showing you

1194
01:08:34,860 --> 01:08:38,963
what one might call traditional indigenous art,

1195
01:08:41,400 --> 01:08:44,920
art made by Alaskan natives.

1196
01:08:45,000 --> 01:08:47,020
This is a work

1197
01:08:47,100 --> 01:08:52,100
by a contemporary Tlingit woman called My Face.

1198
01:08:52,410 --> 01:08:57,250
The blue is a very rich, deep blue

1199
01:08:57,330 --> 01:09:02,330
that is a color that is very common in Tlingit art,

1200
01:09:03,120 --> 01:09:05,200
in painting, and a lot of other things.

1201
01:09:05,280 --> 01:09:10,280
These items represented how much wealth you have.

1202
01:09:10,470 --> 01:09:13,030
But of course what we wanna look at

1203
01:09:13,110 --> 01:09:18,110
is her bursting out of this background.

1204
01:09:18,510 --> 01:09:20,860
She's bursting out not of her culture,

1205
01:09:20,940 --> 01:09:23,740
this woman is very connected to her culture,

1206
01:09:23,820 --> 01:09:27,880
but she's bursting out of the constraints

1207
01:09:27,960 --> 01:09:31,330
that some people have saying,
"If you are a native person,

1208
01:09:31,410 --> 01:09:33,880
you have to make traditional art."

1209
01:09:33,960 --> 01:09:35,950
Of course it's indigenous art.

1210
01:09:36,030 --> 01:09:40,600
This was made by the Tlingit.

1211
01:09:40,680 --> 01:09:42,280
Photography has been around Alaska

1212
01:09:42,360 --> 01:09:44,440
since it was brought by the Russians.

1213
01:09:44,520 --> 01:09:46,450
The oldest photograph that's in the archives

1214
01:09:46,530 --> 01:09:48,277
of the state is from 1868

1215
01:09:48,357 --> 01:09:50,590
and it was made by Eadweard Muybridge

1216
01:09:50,670 --> 01:09:53,650
who photographed sequential
shots of horses running

1217
01:09:53,730 --> 01:09:56,350
to prove that when a horse
gallops it's off the ground.

1218
01:09:56,430 --> 01:09:59,583
Artists his still as studies of humans walking.

1219
01:10:01,800 --> 01:10:03,423
This is the Roseberry Gallery.

1220
01:10:06,000 --> 01:10:07,900
I'm a photographer, I've taught photography here

1221
01:10:07,980 --> 01:10:09,963
at the university for 35 years,

1222
01:10:11,250 --> 01:10:13,390
and we're headed over to see a man

1223
01:10:13,470 --> 01:10:16,370
who was a good friend of mine,
he died about 12 years ago,

1224
01:10:17,220 --> 01:10:18,640
who was responsible for all the photography

1225
01:10:18,720 --> 01:10:21,243
here at the museum, for the collection.

1226
01:10:22,170 --> 01:10:26,020
His name is Barry McWayne
and this is some of his work,

1227
01:10:26,100 --> 01:10:28,810
some of his landscape work in Alaska.

1228
01:10:28,890 --> 01:10:31,990
He was, you know, out of the film era

1229
01:10:32,070 --> 01:10:35,590
before digital photography,
though he transitioned himself.

1230
01:10:35,670 --> 01:10:38,080
But he was sort of like Alaska's Ansel Adams out

1231
01:10:38,160 --> 01:10:40,210
with a big format camera

1232
01:10:40,290 --> 01:10:43,420
doing large format landscape work.

1233
01:10:43,500 --> 01:10:47,410
And he put together this huge collection of images

1234
01:10:47,490 --> 01:10:50,163
that we now are seeing some work out of here today.

1235
01:10:51,270 --> 01:10:54,370
I think without Barry,

1236
01:10:54,450 --> 01:10:55,930
there are a lot of photographers in this state

1237
01:10:56,010 --> 01:10:57,850
who would've never sold a picture

1238
01:10:57,930 --> 01:10:59,350
and never had their work in a museum

1239
01:10:59,430 --> 01:11:01,630
or been inspired to do a solo show

1240
01:11:01,710 --> 01:11:05,110
or get into the community of photography.

1241
01:11:05,190 --> 01:11:08,740
I understand that there are
1,400 plus photographs now,

1242
01:11:08,820 --> 01:11:11,350
and that it's about a third of the entire collection

1243
01:11:11,430 --> 01:11:13,270
that the museum draws from for this gallery

1244
01:11:13,350 --> 01:11:16,030
and has in its storage.

1245
01:11:16,110 --> 01:11:20,200
So we're talking close to 5,000 pieces of sculpture,

1246
01:11:20,280 --> 01:11:25,280
native arts, photography,
paintings, everything, all arts.

1247
01:11:25,950 --> 01:11:30,550
You know, photography's kind of, it's one of those arts

1248
01:11:30,630 --> 01:11:33,317
that people still say, "Well,
there's photography in art,"

1249
01:11:33,397 --> 01:11:36,220
you know, because it's got a craft side to it,

1250
01:11:36,300 --> 01:11:37,870
it's got an informational side,

1251
01:11:37,950 --> 01:11:41,500
it's done in photojournalism,
it's done as home portraits.

1252
01:11:41,580 --> 01:11:43,600
So there's a lot of photography that's not art.

1253
01:11:43,680 --> 01:11:45,280
Mostly if you do a painting on the wall,

1254
01:11:45,360 --> 01:11:47,440
that's considered art right off the bat.

1255
01:11:47,520 --> 01:11:51,130
Photography has always had
this chip on its shoulder

1256
01:11:51,210 --> 01:11:53,500
and also this identity from other artists

1257
01:11:53,580 --> 01:11:55,383
as is it an art or not?

1258
01:11:57,270 --> 01:12:01,000
Photography has often been a minor part

1259
01:12:01,080 --> 01:12:03,340
of museums collections 'cause it wasn't as valuable.

1260
01:12:03,420 --> 01:12:06,370
Edward Weston, Ansel Adams,
those guys were getting hundreds

1261
01:12:06,450 --> 01:12:08,380
of dollars per print back in the '60s.

1262
01:12:08,460 --> 01:12:11,020
If you have a Weston "Pepper Number 30" now,

1263
01:12:11,100 --> 01:12:12,250
it's worth millions.

1264
01:12:12,330 --> 01:12:16,060
So photography is coming to its
own as being a valuable art,

1265
01:12:16,140 --> 01:12:18,760
which helps 'cause when the
marketplace identifies something

1266
01:12:18,840 --> 01:12:20,830
as an art, it's an art.

1267
01:12:20,910 --> 01:12:23,080
Of course photography is art, it's self expression,

1268
01:12:23,160 --> 01:12:25,750
it's emotional, it's craft,

1269
01:12:25,830 --> 01:12:27,910
it's all those things that go into any art.

1270
01:12:27,990 --> 01:12:30,370
These are from a reindeer herding series

1271
01:12:30,450 --> 01:12:32,380
that I did outta Nome, Alaska.

1272
01:12:32,460 --> 01:12:34,000
Reindeer were brought to Alaska

1273
01:12:34,080 --> 01:12:37,630
by a guy named Sheldon Jackson
back in the late 1800s.

1274
01:12:37,710 --> 01:12:40,150
Now what he saw was that a lot of native communities

1275
01:12:40,230 --> 01:12:42,520
were being made to settle into villages

1276
01:12:42,600 --> 01:12:45,580
and they had been nomadic,
they'd followed caribou around.

1277
01:12:45,660 --> 01:12:48,820
These people have meat, fur, leather, you know,

1278
01:12:48,900 --> 01:12:50,890
the resources that an animal like this gives.

1279
01:12:50,970 --> 01:12:53,860
So he brought reindeer from
Siberia where there were herds,

1280
01:12:53,940 --> 01:12:54,790
reindeer and caribou

1281
01:12:54,870 --> 01:12:57,370
are genetically the same animal pretty much.

1282
01:12:57,450 --> 01:12:59,680
But these are domesticated animal

1283
01:12:59,760 --> 01:13:01,690
and I shot these back in 1990,

1284
01:13:01,770 --> 01:13:04,360
just the year I started
teaching here at the university.

1285
01:13:04,440 --> 01:13:07,300
This work is by an amazing
photographer named Jim Barker,

1286
01:13:07,380 --> 01:13:10,960
who's in his 80s now, and he lived in Bethel, Alaska,

1287
01:13:11,040 --> 01:13:12,370
which is out in western Alaska.

1288
01:13:12,450 --> 01:13:16,120
It's a little hub community,
a mostly native community,

1289
01:13:16,200 --> 01:13:18,580
and he made these spectacular photographs

1290
01:13:18,660 --> 01:13:20,770
of the subsistence lifestyle out there.

1291
01:13:20,850 --> 01:13:23,080
He lived in a community for 12 years

1292
01:13:23,160 --> 01:13:26,020
working at the radio station, reading the news,

1293
01:13:26,100 --> 01:13:30,010
selling local photographs
and things like that in order

1294
01:13:30,090 --> 01:13:33,040
to produce this incredibly
important historic document.

1295
01:13:33,120 --> 01:13:35,350
These are people dragging in a beluga whale,

1296
01:13:35,430 --> 01:13:38,110
this is a young girl getting her hair fixed amongst,

1297
01:13:38,190 --> 01:13:40,263
two young girls getting their hair fixed amongst,

1298
01:13:40,343 --> 01:13:42,580
I mean, I couldn't walk in there

1299
01:13:42,660 --> 01:13:44,680
and not know these people and shoot this image.

1300
01:13:44,760 --> 01:13:47,200
It shows his acceptance by the community,

1301
01:13:47,280 --> 01:13:49,956
which is so important in documentary photography.

1302
01:13:59,592 --> 01:14:00,345
My name's Jovell.

1303
01:14:00,425 --> 01:14:03,100
I'm a full-time creative
working artist photographer.

1304
01:14:03,180 --> 01:14:04,660
When I'm not doing photography full-time,

1305
01:14:04,740 --> 01:14:07,120
I'm here at the gallery
doing anything from sweeping,

1306
01:14:07,200 --> 01:14:08,530
mopping, putting shows on.

1307
01:14:08,610 --> 01:14:10,330
Whatever needs to be done, I do it.

1308
01:14:10,410 --> 01:14:11,680
I came from Trinidad and Tobago

1309
01:14:11,760 --> 01:14:13,120
and moved to Alaska as a baby,

1310
01:14:13,200 --> 01:14:15,880
but my family is still West
Indian, we're still Caribbean.

1311
01:14:15,960 --> 01:14:18,760
My dad is incredibly supportive, I love my father.

1312
01:14:18,840 --> 01:14:21,520
My auntie also cool, but she's still asking me

1313
01:14:21,600 --> 01:14:22,870
when I'm gonna go back to school.

1314
01:14:22,950 --> 01:14:25,900
You know, I'm 32, I've had this gallery for seven years

1315
01:14:25,980 --> 01:14:27,610
and every year she keeps telling me, "Well, you know,

1316
01:14:27,690 --> 01:14:31,450
it's not too late to go
back and get a real job."

1317
01:14:31,530 --> 01:14:32,920
What I felt was a need in the community

1318
01:14:33,000 --> 01:14:35,290
for accessible art spaces.

1319
01:14:35,370 --> 01:14:37,540
Growing up in Anchorage, Alaska, I loved it,

1320
01:14:37,620 --> 01:14:39,490
but I didn't feel like there were a ton of spaces

1321
01:14:39,570 --> 01:14:41,560
for creatives, especially creatives

1322
01:14:41,640 --> 01:14:45,070
who were emerging to play or exhibit their work

1323
01:14:45,150 --> 01:14:48,340
or really sort of developed their skills.

1324
01:14:48,420 --> 01:14:51,850
I decided to build something
myself with a couple of friends

1325
01:14:51,930 --> 01:14:54,880
and so we built Akela Space, the gallery.

1326
01:14:54,960 --> 01:14:56,260
The gallery was started as a place

1327
01:14:56,340 --> 01:14:58,600
where emerging artists could showcase their work

1328
01:14:58,680 --> 01:15:00,730
and sort of get a feel for if they wanted

1329
01:15:00,810 --> 01:15:03,640
to be full-time creatives or full-time artists.

1330
01:15:03,720 --> 01:15:05,650
We built a studio in the back of the gallery,

1331
01:15:05,730 --> 01:15:06,610
somewhere where we could do

1332
01:15:06,690 --> 01:15:09,190
our commercial photography and videography

1333
01:15:09,270 --> 01:15:11,200
and do some more of that work

1334
01:15:11,280 --> 01:15:14,193
to help keep the lights on
in the place in early years.

1335
01:15:15,930 --> 01:15:18,340
I don't know that I would say
I'm a mentor for some artists.

1336
01:15:18,420 --> 01:15:20,020
I think that the older I get,

1337
01:15:20,100 --> 01:15:22,810
the more I feel like I'm
slipping into that mentor role.

1338
01:15:22,890 --> 01:15:24,280
You can't be the guy forever,

1339
01:15:24,360 --> 01:15:25,900
nor should you try to be the guy forever.

1340
01:15:25,980 --> 01:15:28,360
I think at a certain point, we have to step

1341
01:15:28,440 --> 01:15:30,880
into that uncle or auntie role in the community

1342
01:15:30,960 --> 01:15:33,340
and I think the gray hair in my beard

1343
01:15:33,420 --> 01:15:35,643
is telling me that I'm getting there.

1344
01:15:36,913 --> 01:15:39,580
I was in high school and I was playing football,

1345
01:15:39,660 --> 01:15:42,010
not very well, I was terrible at football,

1346
01:15:42,090 --> 01:15:46,420
but I would take photos of the junior varsity games

1347
01:15:46,500 --> 01:15:49,390
and then over time, those same
athletes would come up to me

1348
01:15:49,470 --> 01:15:52,000
and say, "Hey man, can you
take my picture off the field?"

1349
01:15:52,080 --> 01:15:53,500
So we would run around town, you know,

1350
01:15:53,580 --> 01:15:54,970
we'd go to like a cool building

1351
01:15:55,050 --> 01:15:58,030
or we'd go to the top of a rooftop or silly stuff

1352
01:15:58,110 --> 01:16:01,060
and we would just take fun
pictures and make fun images.

1353
01:16:01,140 --> 01:16:02,740
I grew up very introverted,

1354
01:16:02,820 --> 01:16:07,030
so photography allowed me
to kind of go back and forth

1355
01:16:07,110 --> 01:16:09,100
between participant and observer.

1356
01:16:09,180 --> 01:16:10,780
So when I wanted to be included

1357
01:16:10,860 --> 01:16:11,860
and wanted to be a part of the fun,

1358
01:16:11,940 --> 01:16:14,530
I could be a participant, I could take those photos,

1359
01:16:14,610 --> 01:16:17,170
but when I was nervous or maybe I felt like I needed

1360
01:16:17,250 --> 01:16:19,030
to go back into my shell a little bit,

1361
01:16:19,110 --> 01:16:21,610
I could switch modes and go back into observer mode

1362
01:16:21,690 --> 01:16:23,463
and still be in that same room.

1363
01:16:24,600 --> 01:16:26,650
It felt good to give people images

1364
01:16:26,730 --> 01:16:29,220
that they could see themselves in and feel proud.

1365
01:16:29,300 --> 01:16:31,180
So I think everybody's beautiful.

1366
01:16:31,260 --> 01:16:33,400
I think being photogenic is more of a mind state

1367
01:16:33,480 --> 01:16:35,680
than it is any physical attribute.

1368
01:16:35,760 --> 01:16:38,440
I often joke with people that
the key to being photogenic

1369
01:16:38,520 --> 01:16:40,300
or the key to confidence in photos

1370
01:16:40,380 --> 01:16:45,010
is to pretend that you are an ugly boy.

1371
01:16:45,090 --> 01:16:48,220
You know, if you ever walk into a bar or nightclub,

1372
01:16:48,300 --> 01:16:50,950
it's always the ugliest boy who is trying to flirt

1373
01:16:51,030 --> 01:16:53,230
with the prettiest person in the room.

1374
01:16:53,310 --> 01:16:56,463
That ugly boy has the most
confidence out of anybody.

1375
01:16:57,450 --> 01:16:59,560
A lot of the work that we tend to show in the space

1376
01:16:59,640 --> 01:17:00,760
tends to be from artists

1377
01:17:00,840 --> 01:17:04,510
who are from a marginalized community of some sort,

1378
01:17:04,590 --> 01:17:06,160
and that isn't always intentional,

1379
01:17:06,240 --> 01:17:07,990
but we want to give the opportunities

1380
01:17:08,070 --> 01:17:11,553
to the people who we feel don't
get them as often as others.

1381
01:17:12,720 --> 01:17:16,360
Very rare that I feel like a photo that I make is good.

1382
01:17:16,440 --> 01:17:18,280
A lot of times I don't question

1383
01:17:18,360 --> 01:17:20,260
why my eye is drawn to something.

1384
01:17:20,340 --> 01:17:21,700
I just say, "Well, let me get this photo

1385
01:17:21,780 --> 01:17:23,500
and I'll figure out why later."

1386
01:17:23,580 --> 01:17:25,000
Creativity is a tool that we use

1387
01:17:25,080 --> 01:17:27,610
to better understand ourselves.

1388
01:17:27,690 --> 01:17:29,890
The creation of that, I think oftentimes

1389
01:17:29,970 --> 01:17:31,780
is just for that same end goal,

1390
01:17:31,860 --> 01:17:33,700
to better understand ourselves,

1391
01:17:33,780 --> 01:17:35,470
the roles that we may play in community,

1392
01:17:35,550 --> 01:17:37,630
how we fit in with the world around us.

1393
01:17:37,710 --> 01:17:38,950
I think a lot of that stuff

1394
01:17:39,030 --> 01:17:42,370
is just trying to take things that are in your head

1395
01:17:42,450 --> 01:17:45,280
and get 'em out into the world and make sense of them.

1396
01:17:45,360 --> 01:17:48,790
It's up to you as the creator, as the artist to decide,

1397
01:17:48,870 --> 01:17:50,440
is this something deeply personal

1398
01:17:50,520 --> 01:17:52,150
that I want to keep for myself,

1399
01:17:52,230 --> 01:17:54,940
or is this something that I
wanna share with the world?

1400
01:17:55,020 --> 01:17:56,290
I believe that good art

1401
01:17:56,370 --> 01:17:59,650
should be a catalyst for conversation.

1402
01:17:59,730 --> 01:18:02,103
I feel like good art should be polarizing.

1403
01:18:03,990 --> 01:18:06,880
After viewing a piece or after consuming art,

1404
01:18:06,960 --> 01:18:11,050
you should be so motivated to speak on it,

1405
01:18:11,130 --> 01:18:12,910
whether that be that you love it so much

1406
01:18:12,990 --> 01:18:13,960
that you need to tell somebody

1407
01:18:14,040 --> 01:18:16,990
or you hate it so much that you need to tell somebody.

1408
01:18:17,070 --> 01:18:21,160
Good art should drive you to
one of those sides of the fence

1409
01:18:21,240 --> 01:18:22,630
and spark that conversation

1410
01:18:22,710 --> 01:18:24,880
because if we feel moved to talk about something,

1411
01:18:24,960 --> 01:18:26,050
now we're talking to each other,

1412
01:18:26,130 --> 01:18:27,310
now we're talking with our neighbors,

1413
01:18:27,390 --> 01:18:29,140
now we're talking with community members

1414
01:18:29,220 --> 01:18:32,500
that we might not have had a
conversation with otherwise.

1415
01:18:32,580 --> 01:18:34,600
We don't only show art that we like

1416
01:18:34,680 --> 01:18:37,000
or that we think is cool in this space.

1417
01:18:37,080 --> 01:18:40,600
We show art that we think is
going to incite a conversation.

1418
01:18:40,680 --> 01:18:42,580
We show art that we think the community

1419
01:18:42,660 --> 01:18:44,860
is gonna respond to in one way or another,

1420
01:18:44,940 --> 01:18:46,930
and they're gonna keep the conversation going.

1421
01:18:47,010 --> 01:18:49,840
At that point, once you put it out into the world,

1422
01:18:49,920 --> 01:18:53,080
you can no longer dictate
what the world does with it.

1423
01:18:53,160 --> 01:18:55,233
It just has to spread like wildfire.

1424
01:18:56,640 --> 01:19:00,010
This current generation of
artists I think is so talented

1425
01:19:00,090 --> 01:19:02,800
and one of the things that I
really appreciate about them

1426
01:19:02,880 --> 01:19:06,640
is that they have so many tools at their disposal.

1427
01:19:06,720 --> 01:19:09,670
I often say that it should take them half as long

1428
01:19:09,750 --> 01:19:11,163
to get twice as good,

1429
01:19:12,180 --> 01:19:15,880
because the things that I
had in terms of photography,

1430
01:19:15,960 --> 01:19:17,260
I didn't have a lot of money growing up,

1431
01:19:17,340 --> 01:19:19,990
I had the penny pension save to get my first cameras.

1432
01:19:20,070 --> 01:19:22,480
My first cameras were often hand-me-downs

1433
01:19:22,560 --> 01:19:24,550
and things that I just borrowed.

1434
01:19:24,630 --> 01:19:27,340
But nowadays, we've got so many incredible tools

1435
01:19:27,420 --> 01:19:29,590
for creativity in our pocket.

1436
01:19:29,670 --> 01:19:31,750
You know, I'm hoping that we can get back to a place

1437
01:19:31,830 --> 01:19:35,650
where creativity comes first
and expression comes first.

1438
01:19:35,730 --> 01:19:38,770
To provide equipment that people
can use, they can learn on,

1439
01:19:38,850 --> 01:19:41,530
they can practice on without
having to break the bank.

1440
01:19:41,610 --> 01:19:42,490
If art is your calling

1441
01:19:42,570 --> 01:19:45,670
and if it's what you wanna do
for a living, yes, pursue it.

1442
01:19:45,750 --> 01:19:48,190
You will have to figure out
how to do the business side.

1443
01:19:48,270 --> 01:19:51,100
But I would hope that these emerging artists

1444
01:19:51,180 --> 01:19:53,680
and artists who have been in the game for a while

1445
01:19:53,760 --> 01:19:56,290
are still taking time to create for themselves,

1446
01:19:56,370 --> 01:20:00,160
for that intrinsic value and can find some space

1447
01:20:00,240 --> 01:20:04,087
to think about things other than their finances.

1448
01:20:14,310 --> 01:20:17,440
I moved here about nine years ago.

1449
01:20:17,520 --> 01:20:21,250
I drove up from San Diego to Skagway,

1450
01:20:21,330 --> 01:20:23,170
came up just for like a summer job,

1451
01:20:23,250 --> 01:20:25,240
and I had no idea I would end up in Anchorage.

1452
01:20:25,320 --> 01:20:26,890
It was sort of like, like,

1453
01:20:26,970 --> 01:20:29,440
okay, let's see what happens from here.

1454
01:20:29,520 --> 01:20:32,440
I really love the small community here.

1455
01:20:32,520 --> 01:20:34,900
I love how like, we're all just really connected.

1456
01:20:34,980 --> 01:20:37,240
That makes me feel like at home.

1457
01:20:37,320 --> 01:20:39,310
So my name is Rejoy Armamento.

1458
01:20:39,390 --> 01:20:42,220
I am an illustrator and a muralist.

1459
01:20:42,300 --> 01:20:46,180
My dad, he is, you know, he's an artist.

1460
01:20:46,260 --> 01:20:48,850
He's always just like drawing things,

1461
01:20:48,930 --> 01:20:51,340
making things, building things.

1462
01:20:51,420 --> 01:20:53,890
And then also my mom,

1463
01:20:53,970 --> 01:20:56,200
she was like really into decorating the house,

1464
01:20:56,280 --> 01:21:00,430
and so I was like surrounded
by just like being in spaces

1465
01:21:00,510 --> 01:21:03,100
where base was very like conscious,

1466
01:21:03,180 --> 01:21:07,780
just, I like to do a lot of freestyling.

1467
01:21:07,860 --> 01:21:10,210
I like where it can take me

1468
01:21:10,290 --> 01:21:13,270
and then I like to listen to the piece

1469
01:21:13,350 --> 01:21:17,380
and sometimes it will just
dictate where it should go,

1470
01:21:17,460 --> 01:21:19,420
and then I get excited.

1471
01:21:19,500 --> 01:21:21,940
I think I notice like when I'm really excited

1472
01:21:22,020 --> 01:21:24,100
and I just see things come together

1473
01:21:24,180 --> 01:21:27,213
and I realize, oh yeah, that's an art piece for me.

1474
01:21:28,350 --> 01:21:30,640
I love being the observer,

1475
01:21:30,720 --> 01:21:33,130
just kind of like watching things,

1476
01:21:33,210 --> 01:21:36,010
visiting places and seeing patterns

1477
01:21:36,090 --> 01:21:38,020
like on the street or something like that.

1478
01:21:38,100 --> 01:21:39,730
It's like the outside world,

1479
01:21:39,810 --> 01:21:43,000
another big inspiration is like my internal world.

1480
01:21:43,080 --> 01:21:47,380
I'm a very spiritual person
and I'm very introspective,

1481
01:21:47,460 --> 01:21:50,093
so I feel like my inspiration,

1482
01:21:50,173 --> 01:21:54,070
it kind of comes from sort of like,

1483
01:21:54,150 --> 01:21:55,750
I don't know, it could be ancestral

1484
01:21:55,830 --> 01:21:58,060
or just sort of like the subconscious

1485
01:21:58,140 --> 01:22:00,063
just sort of inspiring my work.

1486
01:22:01,500 --> 01:22:02,530
Because you know, it's a dialogue.

1487
01:22:02,610 --> 01:22:04,090
Like you sometimes you don't even know,

1488
01:22:04,170 --> 01:22:06,430
you don't realize what you're making

1489
01:22:06,510 --> 01:22:09,729
and then you know, people just tell you like,

1490
01:22:09,809 --> 01:22:12,130
what's going on, then you realize it.

1491
01:22:12,210 --> 01:22:14,020
But a lot of people say

1492
01:22:14,100 --> 01:22:17,740
that my art is very playful and childlike,

1493
01:22:17,820 --> 01:22:21,010
the kind of emotion that I like to convey,

1494
01:22:21,090 --> 01:22:25,063
like a sense of aliveness.

1495
01:22:26,220 --> 01:22:28,270
I'm mostly self-taught.

1496
01:22:28,350 --> 01:22:30,160
I went to school for a graphic design,

1497
01:22:30,240 --> 01:22:31,570
but I took like, you know,

1498
01:22:31,650 --> 01:22:34,270
a few drawing and painting classes.

1499
01:22:34,350 --> 01:22:36,880
So all the paints were like, you know,

1500
01:22:36,960 --> 01:22:41,960
but everything that I know
is pretty much just through,

1501
01:22:42,300 --> 01:22:44,800
I dunno, learning from YouTube

1502
01:22:44,880 --> 01:22:49,030
or like just observing things and trying 'em out.

1503
01:22:49,110 --> 01:22:53,830
I've also learned a lot from
the people in my community too.

1504
01:22:53,910 --> 01:22:57,160
If I don't know something, I
like to ask another artist,

1505
01:22:57,240 --> 01:23:00,093
like for advice on how to approach things.

1506
01:23:02,250 --> 01:23:05,950
One of my first murals is
a Hunter S. Thompson mural

1507
01:23:06,030 --> 01:23:08,680
for this dispensary downtown.

1508
01:23:08,760 --> 01:23:11,620
That was my first commissioned piece.

1509
01:23:11,700 --> 01:23:15,303
So it was like, "Ooh," you know, it was a pretty big deal.

1510
01:23:16,200 --> 01:23:17,950
It's still one of my favorites

1511
01:23:18,030 --> 01:23:22,180
because I feel like it
definitely represents my style.

1512
01:23:22,260 --> 01:23:26,410
I love portraits, he's like smoking a cigarette.

1513
01:23:26,490 --> 01:23:29,200
I just remember having so much fun

1514
01:23:29,280 --> 01:23:30,490
playing around with the smoke,

1515
01:23:30,570 --> 01:23:32,590
like just make it look very psychedelic.

1516
01:23:32,670 --> 01:23:35,250
My style is very fluid and fun.

1517
01:23:47,603 --> 01:23:49,870
"On the sacred spirit land of Yaokwa

1518
01:23:49,950 --> 01:23:52,060
just off the island of Bellicher stood a man

1519
01:23:52,140 --> 01:23:54,790
draped head to toe in a thick black tunic

1520
01:23:54,870 --> 01:23:57,970
with a wooden Kushtaka mask covering his face.

1521
01:23:58,050 --> 01:23:59,800
The mask was painted a bright red

1522
01:23:59,880 --> 01:24:02,740
and showed a hand reaching
out of the mouth of an otter

1523
01:24:02,820 --> 01:24:04,840
as a human was being devoured.

1524
01:24:04,920 --> 01:24:08,770
Yaokwa was the place of
creation for the Klagook tribe,

1525
01:24:08,850 --> 01:24:11,560
the land that humans were not allowed to enter,

1526
01:24:11,640 --> 01:24:14,440
but no one had seen the
spirits outside of the stories

1527
01:24:14,520 --> 01:24:15,567
"in a long time."

1528
01:24:19,380 --> 01:24:20,350
When I was in high school,

1529
01:24:20,430 --> 01:24:22,540
I walked my younger brother to school

1530
01:24:22,620 --> 01:24:24,550
there in the mornings and back home,

1531
01:24:24,630 --> 01:24:26,350
and it was kind of a long walk

1532
01:24:26,430 --> 01:24:28,540
and trying to like keep his attention,

1533
01:24:28,620 --> 01:24:29,950
especially in the winter it's cold.

1534
01:24:30,030 --> 01:24:33,850
And so I started just telling him a story.

1535
01:24:33,930 --> 01:24:35,590
So every day I would tell him a little bit more

1536
01:24:35,670 --> 01:24:39,850
of the story, talking about
a young boy who was Tlingit,

1537
01:24:39,930 --> 01:24:41,710
who was around his age

1538
01:24:41,790 --> 01:24:45,400
and it was a fantasy one where he has these powers

1539
01:24:45,480 --> 01:24:47,470
and he's going on an adventure,

1540
01:24:47,550 --> 01:24:48,940
and my brother really enjoyed that.

1541
01:24:49,020 --> 01:24:50,530
He'd get excited too, we'd start to walk home,

1542
01:24:50,610 --> 01:24:52,270
he's like, "All right, what happened now?"

1543
01:24:52,350 --> 01:24:55,960
So that's really how that one started.

1544
01:24:56,040 --> 01:24:59,140
For me, I'm writing it as an analogy

1545
01:24:59,220 --> 01:25:01,270
for racism and discrimination

1546
01:25:01,350 --> 01:25:05,260
and it centers in a fictionalized
southeast Alaska setting,

1547
01:25:05,340 --> 01:25:08,380
which is something, another
big part of all my writing

1548
01:25:08,460 --> 01:25:10,450
is that I want representation.

1549
01:25:10,530 --> 01:25:14,500
I want to see more of who I am and who our people are

1550
01:25:14,580 --> 01:25:17,902
and I think that's the most
important thing on writing

1551
01:25:17,982 --> 01:25:21,430
is write something that you would wanna read.

1552
01:25:21,510 --> 01:25:22,990
I also like that you can just go in

1553
01:25:23,070 --> 01:25:25,120
and read it at not as deep of a level

1554
01:25:25,200 --> 01:25:26,230
and then you still enjoy it

1555
01:25:26,310 --> 01:25:28,390
and you can get entertainment from like,

1556
01:25:28,470 --> 01:25:30,880
what's gonna happen next to this character?

1557
01:25:30,960 --> 01:25:35,960
So I like telling stories
that work in multiple ways.

1558
01:25:36,240 --> 01:25:39,730
As a writer, this is things that I work through

1559
01:25:39,810 --> 01:25:44,200
and that I learn and that I
can express through my writing.

1560
01:25:44,280 --> 01:25:45,610
But on the other hand,

1561
01:25:45,690 --> 01:25:47,920
that's also what readers are looking for.

1562
01:25:48,000 --> 01:25:52,360
And as a reader who loves fantasy and young adults

1563
01:25:52,440 --> 01:25:55,810
and high fantasy, these are
always the kind of stories

1564
01:25:55,890 --> 01:25:57,640
that I wanted to see more of,

1565
01:25:57,720 --> 01:26:00,153
and so that's why I write them.

1566
01:26:01,050 --> 01:26:04,000
I wanna be able to put out
the things that want to read

1567
01:26:04,080 --> 01:26:06,700
and be able to normalize

1568
01:26:06,780 --> 01:26:09,700
and have more representation for us

1569
01:26:09,780 --> 01:26:11,020
and especially normalizing,

1570
01:26:11,100 --> 01:26:13,900
there's a lot of Tlingit language in my novel,

1571
01:26:13,980 --> 01:26:16,420
and so normalizing the use of it

1572
01:26:16,500 --> 01:26:19,113
and putting it in is really important to me.

1573
01:26:29,820 --> 01:26:33,873
My name is Kaasteen, my second
Tlingit name is S'xeinda. at,

1574
01:26:35,220 --> 01:26:39,040
my English name is Katelynn
Drake, but I go by Kaasteen.

1575
01:26:39,120 --> 01:26:43,270
I am Tlingit and I am a
member of the Chookaneidi Clan

1576
01:26:43,350 --> 01:26:44,740
and on my father's side,

1577
01:26:44,820 --> 01:26:46,750
I'm a daughter of the Inupiaq people.

1578
01:26:46,830 --> 01:26:50,680
But I am from Hoonah, but I grew up

1579
01:26:50,760 --> 01:26:53,410
splitting my time really between Anchorage,

1580
01:26:53,490 --> 01:26:55,360
Juneau, and Hoonah.

1581
01:26:55,440 --> 01:26:57,340
It was a mix of bouncing between places.

1582
01:26:57,420 --> 01:27:01,570
Most of my summers were spent
between Juneau and Hoonah

1583
01:27:01,650 --> 01:27:05,080
and my family comes from Hoonah, we have a long line

1584
01:27:05,160 --> 01:27:08,680
and that is also what feeds into my storytelling

1585
01:27:08,760 --> 01:27:13,210
is there's so much history here and our family,

1586
01:27:13,290 --> 01:27:17,230
we have a long line of fishermen and artists

1587
01:27:17,310 --> 01:27:20,800
and storytellers and that all comes through

1588
01:27:20,880 --> 01:27:25,750
and really storytelling is so important

1589
01:27:25,830 --> 01:27:27,910
to us as Tlingit people.

1590
01:27:27,990 --> 01:27:31,060
Some of the earliest inspirations, I would say,

1591
01:27:31,140 --> 01:27:34,960
my Tlingit names for example,
even they are rooted in story

1592
01:27:35,040 --> 01:27:36,850
'cause stories are so powerful.

1593
01:27:36,930 --> 01:27:39,280
My name, Kaasteen, the story of that one

1594
01:27:39,360 --> 01:27:43,000
depicts how us as Chookaneidi actually journeyed

1595
01:27:43,080 --> 01:27:46,030
from where we were originally from in Glacier Bay

1596
01:27:46,110 --> 01:27:49,480
to how we came here to Hoonah.

1597
01:27:49,560 --> 01:27:51,160
Stories like that are a history for us,

1598
01:27:51,240 --> 01:27:52,480
they record that for us

1599
01:27:52,560 --> 01:27:54,280
and they tell the story of where we come from

1600
01:27:54,360 --> 01:27:55,930
and who we are.

1601
01:27:56,010 --> 01:27:58,420
Here are some of my pieces that I've made

1602
01:27:58,500 --> 01:28:01,360
and all of them have a story to them.

1603
01:28:01,440 --> 01:28:05,980
This is a drum that I made for my auntie.

1604
01:28:06,060 --> 01:28:08,763
I wanted to depict her and her family.

1605
01:28:09,750 --> 01:28:12,010
Because we're Chookaneidi, our crests,

1606
01:28:12,090 --> 01:28:17,050
our main one is Eagle and we have different crests

1607
01:28:17,130 --> 01:28:20,530
or Octopus, Eagle, Porpoise.

1608
01:28:20,610 --> 01:28:22,630
And so in this one particularly,

1609
01:28:22,710 --> 01:28:24,670
I was telling the story of her and her family.

1610
01:28:24,750 --> 01:28:29,750
So up here we have my aunt
depicted as the mother octopus

1611
01:28:30,240 --> 01:28:31,720
and both of her daughters

1612
01:28:31,800 --> 01:28:34,900
who she's carrying in her tentacles here.

1613
01:28:34,980 --> 01:28:36,430
She's holding up both daughters

1614
01:28:36,510 --> 01:28:38,560
and then down here her youngest is,

1615
01:28:38,640 --> 01:28:40,390
her son is a little porpoise.

1616
01:28:40,470 --> 01:28:45,470
And so I wanted this drum to
show her how I see her family

1617
01:28:45,810 --> 01:28:49,060
and her caring and supporting her children

1618
01:28:49,140 --> 01:28:50,770
and being that mother.

1619
01:28:50,850 --> 01:28:52,900
Recently, actually last year,

1620
01:28:52,980 --> 01:28:54,880
started kind of venturing a little bit

1621
01:28:54,960 --> 01:28:57,700
and trying my hand at making regalia.

1622
01:28:57,780 --> 01:28:59,560
This was a vest that I had made.

1623
01:28:59,640 --> 01:29:03,970
You can see I have a eagle here, there's some seaweed,

1624
01:29:04,050 --> 01:29:05,740
can't see it, but I have a bear on the back,

1625
01:29:05,820 --> 01:29:08,477
and all of it just to show who I am.

1626
01:29:33,564 --> 01:29:34,803
It is facing the water

1627
01:29:34,883 --> 01:29:39,883
so that any visitors
approaching from the waterside

1628
01:29:40,050 --> 01:29:44,543
would be able to tell that this Xunaa Shuka Hit

1629
01:29:47,310 --> 01:29:50,377
belongs to all of these people.

1630
01:29:54,570 --> 01:29:58,960
This house, Xunaa Shuka
Hit, represents the homeland

1631
01:29:59,040 --> 01:30:04,040
that we all came from and is now our homeland,

1632
01:30:05,670 --> 01:30:08,710
which is now being taken care of

1633
01:30:08,790 --> 01:30:10,923
by the National Park Service.

1634
01:30:13,560 --> 01:30:15,220
The purpose of this house

1635
01:30:15,300 --> 01:30:19,540
is to have a footprint back
in our home that we had left

1636
01:30:19,620 --> 01:30:23,255
because of the glacier that advanced upon us.

1637
01:30:23,335 --> 01:30:27,980
Kaach Yaas, Chookaneidi,.

1638
01:30:30,420 --> 01:30:33,340
Gordon Greenwald, my English name,

1639
01:30:33,420 --> 01:30:36,693
Kaach Yaas from Huna Kaawu or Huna Lands.

1640
01:30:37,980 --> 01:30:41,590
This screen represents the four clans

1641
01:30:41,670 --> 01:30:44,290
and their homelands and why they left.

1642
01:30:44,370 --> 01:30:48,160
You have the T'aakdeintaan people in Lituya Bay,

1643
01:30:48,240 --> 01:30:52,810
their homeland, and the glacier
in the head of Lituya Bay

1644
01:30:52,890 --> 01:30:56,230
and the numerous tsunamis
that washed through Lituya Bay

1645
01:30:56,310 --> 01:30:58,120
that washed the people out.

1646
01:30:58,200 --> 01:31:01,660
Though the T'aakdeintaan no
longer live in Lituya Bay,

1647
01:31:01,740 --> 01:31:06,740
their canoe is still anchored
and you see Mount Fairweather,

1648
01:31:07,350 --> 01:31:10,420
the mother mountain to the T'aakdeintaan people

1649
01:31:10,500 --> 01:31:12,883
and all of the Huna people.

1650
01:31:13,980 --> 01:31:17,500
As you go along, you see the spirit of the glacier

1651
01:31:17,580 --> 01:31:20,440
that was called down because of disrespect

1652
01:31:20,520 --> 01:31:23,890
and crushed the houses and the villages

1653
01:31:23,970 --> 01:31:27,760
of the other three clans of Huna people.

1654
01:31:27,840 --> 01:31:31,210
And you have Kaasteen, a young lady

1655
01:31:31,290 --> 01:31:33,453
that was in seclusion at the time,

1656
01:31:34,530 --> 01:31:36,460
and you'll see, look at her eyes,

1657
01:31:36,540 --> 01:31:39,070
you'll see the glacier reflecting in her eyes

1658
01:31:39,150 --> 01:31:40,443
as it's coming forward.

1659
01:31:42,120 --> 01:31:45,940
One of the oral history was
that Kaasteen was left behind

1660
01:31:46,020 --> 01:31:47,620
because of her actions

1661
01:31:47,700 --> 01:31:51,220
and the T'aakdeintaan people covered her

1662
01:31:51,300 --> 01:31:55,870
and gave her many sea otter robes to stay warm.

1663
01:31:55,950 --> 01:32:00,130
They left Glacier Bay and went to Chah-nulth.

1664
01:32:00,210 --> 01:32:01,870
And you have the spirit of the cliff

1665
01:32:01,950 --> 01:32:03,730
that they built their fort up on.

1666
01:32:03,810 --> 01:32:08,500
The Kaagwaantaan people brought us copper.

1667
01:32:08,580 --> 01:32:10,443
So you'll see the copper shield here.

1668
01:32:13,226 --> 01:32:17,680
The Kaagwaantaan canoe with
the wolf and the brown bear

1669
01:32:17,760 --> 01:32:20,920
is still anchored in Chah-nulth,

1670
01:32:21,000 --> 01:32:23,170
though they live in Hoonah also.

1671
01:32:23,250 --> 01:32:26,133
The Wooshkeetaan people,
when they left Glacier Bay,

1672
01:32:27,960 --> 01:32:32,960
went to what we now call
Excursion Inlet and built a fort.

1673
01:32:33,540 --> 01:32:37,600
Then you see up here in the middle,

1674
01:32:37,680 --> 01:32:39,820
there's a canoe with people

1675
01:32:39,900 --> 01:32:43,870
and all the people have their
paddles raised except for one

1676
01:32:44,940 --> 01:32:47,020
for when we come to a new village site

1677
01:32:47,100 --> 01:32:51,310
or another village site, we
drift offshore with our canoes.

1678
01:32:51,390 --> 01:32:54,850
We raise our paddles, may we come ashore?

1679
01:32:54,930 --> 01:32:56,980
I come as your friend, I have no weapons.

1680
01:32:58,020 --> 01:33:01,293
That represents all the other
people, whomever they are.

1681
01:33:03,840 --> 01:33:07,113
They come to our homeland as our friends.

1682
01:33:08,700 --> 01:33:13,700
This kooteeyaa that we have is
representing the Eagle clans

1683
01:33:17,100 --> 01:33:18,917
that are currently in Hoonah.

1684
01:33:19,830 --> 01:33:23,650
Hoonah originally had three Eagle clans

1685
01:33:23,730 --> 01:33:26,290
that came out of Glacier Bay.

1686
01:33:26,370 --> 01:33:29,260
These other clans are currently in Hoonah

1687
01:33:29,340 --> 01:33:32,860
and have become members of our community.

1688
01:33:32,940 --> 01:33:36,220
You have the Thunderbird of the Shangukeidee,

1689
01:33:36,300 --> 01:33:38,830
then you have the Brown Bear people,

1690
01:33:38,910 --> 01:33:42,700
you have the Shark people,
then you have the Porpoise,

1691
01:33:42,780 --> 01:33:44,437
the Chookaneidi people,

1692
01:33:44,517 --> 01:33:47,560
and then you have the Kaagwaantaan people.

1693
01:33:47,640 --> 01:33:50,800
Then you'll see on the kooteeyaa, the orator.

1694
01:33:50,880 --> 01:33:53,230
That is the one that passes on

1695
01:33:53,310 --> 01:33:58,310
all of our historical information
that must be passed to us

1696
01:33:59,070 --> 01:34:01,810
as we go from generation to generation.

1697
01:34:01,890 --> 01:34:06,890
The second kooteeyaa here is
representing the Raven people

1698
01:34:07,170 --> 01:34:09,070
that are now in Hoonah.

1699
01:34:09,150 --> 01:34:12,370
So we have the black-footed kittiwake down here

1700
01:34:12,450 --> 01:34:15,963
representing the T'aakdeintaan
people, my father's people.

1701
01:34:16,920 --> 01:34:18,243
You have the Dog Salmon,

1702
01:34:19,590 --> 01:34:23,283
the L'eeneidi that are also in Hoonah now.

1703
01:34:24,210 --> 01:34:27,400
The Kaach. adi, the Land Daughter people

1704
01:34:27,480 --> 01:34:31,990
that are in Hoonah and have
been for many generations.

1705
01:34:32,070 --> 01:34:35,620
You have the Deisheetaan, the Beaver people

1706
01:34:36,480 --> 01:34:40,651
that are now in Hoonah, the Koowu,

1707
01:34:40,731 --> 01:34:45,731
the L'uknax. adi people that are in Hoonah,

1708
01:34:48,383 --> 01:34:51,213
Taakw. aaneidi, the Sea Lion people,

1709
01:34:53,460 --> 01:34:58,460
the Woodworm people that are
in Hoonah, the Frog people,

1710
01:34:59,580 --> 01:35:01,030
the Kiks. adi people.

1711
01:35:01,110 --> 01:35:03,550
And then you see on the pole there are singers

1712
01:35:03,630 --> 01:35:06,543
that sing our songs and then you have the Ravens.

1713
01:35:10,830 --> 01:35:14,320
It's hard for me to imagine that people don't think

1714
01:35:14,400 --> 01:35:16,930
of indigenous cultures within Alaska

1715
01:35:17,010 --> 01:35:19,030
as a very living and vibrant culture

1716
01:35:19,110 --> 01:35:21,520
because I just see it everywhere in Alaska

1717
01:35:21,600 --> 01:35:25,300
and see the culture blooming
in very different ways,

1718
01:35:25,380 --> 01:35:28,240
whether that's through the dance
form, through the art form,

1719
01:35:28,320 --> 01:35:29,950
through the language acquisition.

1720
01:35:30,030 --> 01:35:34,780
Definitely feels like I have
been witness to a renaissance

1721
01:35:34,860 --> 01:35:38,290
of Alaska Native culture within Alaska.

1722
01:35:38,370 --> 01:35:40,150
My name is Da-ka-xeen Mehner.

1723
01:35:40,230 --> 01:35:42,340
I was born and raised here in Fairbanks,

1724
01:35:42,420 --> 01:35:46,083
but I actually grew up in
both Fairbanks and Anchorage.

1725
01:35:46,980 --> 01:35:48,730
I don't feel like I particularly have a medium,

1726
01:35:48,810 --> 01:35:53,810
but looking for work that
addresses the issues of the day.

1727
01:36:00,630 --> 01:36:04,840
Now growing it up in Fairbanks and small cabins,

1728
01:36:04,920 --> 01:36:07,503
drawing was my general pastime.

1729
01:36:08,490 --> 01:36:11,763
So this is referred to as a moon mask,

1730
01:36:13,080 --> 01:36:15,400
kind of the face in the center

1731
01:36:15,480 --> 01:36:19,210
and the outside representing the moon.

1732
01:36:19,290 --> 01:36:22,750
I'll eventually get in some more detail

1733
01:36:22,830 --> 01:36:26,080
that shows the rays coming off of there.

1734
01:36:26,160 --> 01:36:30,278
It's made from yellow cedar

1735
01:36:30,358 --> 01:36:33,670
and it was a mask that I'd
started a number of years ago.

1736
01:36:33,750 --> 01:36:38,750
You know, I am Tlingit and so I quite often defer back

1737
01:36:39,300 --> 01:36:44,300
to the black and red as primary and tertiary colors,

1738
01:36:44,520 --> 01:36:46,840
but sometimes I just like to play around

1739
01:36:46,920 --> 01:36:49,983
and see what colors will work with what.

1740
01:36:51,690 --> 01:36:54,003
I leave people with questions.

1741
01:36:55,080 --> 01:36:57,580
Hopefully they have a little more thoughts

1742
01:36:57,660 --> 01:37:02,660
about the world around us and
have some maybe investigation

1743
01:37:04,380 --> 01:37:06,783
that they would like to do after seeing my work.

1744
01:37:07,920 --> 01:37:08,673
I feel like my work

1745
01:37:08,753 --> 01:37:11,050
really just represents my own perspective,

1746
01:37:11,130 --> 01:37:15,070
but I do, I guess enjoy examining power structures

1747
01:37:15,150 --> 01:37:19,000
in the world and reflecting
on how those power structures

1748
01:37:19,080 --> 01:37:21,483
influence indigenous communities.

1749
01:37:22,470 --> 01:37:25,060
You know, that beginning exploration of drawing,

1750
01:37:25,140 --> 01:37:29,320
it was a place to find worlds outside

1751
01:37:29,400 --> 01:37:32,830
of the ones that I knew and I think the arts have a way

1752
01:37:32,910 --> 01:37:36,753
of transporting people, whether
you're a maker or a viewer.

1753
01:37:38,100 --> 01:37:40,990
Teach at the University of Alaska Fairbanks

1754
01:37:41,070 --> 01:37:42,160
in the Native Arts Center.

1755
01:37:42,240 --> 01:37:45,760
It's a program that started
in 1965 by Ronald Senungetuk,

1756
01:37:45,840 --> 01:37:48,973
so we're coming up on our 60th
anniversary of the program.

1757
01:37:49,053 --> 01:37:51,490
It's a very unique program where we are able

1758
01:37:51,570 --> 01:37:55,563
to offer degrees in native
arts in the BFA and MFA level.

1759
01:37:57,840 --> 01:37:59,740
The importance of the indigenous arts program

1760
01:37:59,820 --> 01:38:02,530
or the native arts program
that we have at the university

1761
01:38:02,610 --> 01:38:07,490
really shows a commitment by the institution

1762
01:38:08,760 --> 01:38:13,760
that this form is valuable
within an institutional program

1763
01:38:14,970 --> 01:38:19,970
to be able to share it in a way that is formalized.

1764
01:38:22,500 --> 01:38:24,400
I think it's very valuable

1765
01:38:24,480 --> 01:38:27,970
to be able to kind of pass on
knowledge within this form,

1766
01:38:28,050 --> 01:38:31,570
but then also be able to give students a degree

1767
01:38:31,650 --> 01:38:34,983
that then they can move on into
a professional career with.

1768
01:38:35,910 --> 01:38:40,480
I always tell people, "It's easy to teach technique."

1769
01:38:40,560 --> 01:38:42,760
"It's hard to teach creativity," right?

1770
01:38:42,840 --> 01:38:47,840
And so I think that's one of the keys in the program

1771
01:38:48,060 --> 01:38:51,790
is being able to unlock people's creativity,

1772
01:38:51,870 --> 01:38:54,610
and I'm not sure if I really teach creativity,

1773
01:38:54,690 --> 01:38:57,723
but how to unlock other people's creativity.

1774
01:39:00,480 --> 01:39:03,850
We've had students from around the state, of course,

1775
01:39:03,930 --> 01:39:07,270
we get a lot of students from Western Alaska,

1776
01:39:07,350 --> 01:39:10,360
Northern Alaska and the interior of Alaska.

1777
01:39:10,440 --> 01:39:13,660
We've had students from Southeast Alaska.

1778
01:39:13,740 --> 01:39:16,990
The program is fairly popular
with international students,

1779
01:39:17,070 --> 01:39:18,310
so we get a lot of students

1780
01:39:18,390 --> 01:39:21,460
from Sweden and Norway and Japan.

1781
01:39:21,540 --> 01:39:22,690
Really interesting seeing

1782
01:39:22,770 --> 01:39:24,790
kind of maybe that global perspective

1783
01:39:24,870 --> 01:39:27,010
within the classroom experience.

1784
01:39:27,090 --> 01:39:29,950
A lot of our students or alumni go on

1785
01:39:30,030 --> 01:39:34,036
to just be practicing artists, you know,

1786
01:39:34,116 --> 01:39:39,116
effectively becoming a single
owner business and working.

1787
01:39:39,450 --> 01:39:42,700
We've got artists that are
showing all over Alaska right now

1788
01:39:42,780 --> 01:39:46,780
or alumni from the program that
are showing all over Alaska

1789
01:39:46,860 --> 01:39:50,283
and sometimes out of state in Santa Fe,

1790
01:39:51,960 --> 01:39:55,180
across the United States
in different exhibitions.

1791
01:39:55,260 --> 01:39:58,300
It's really interesting seeing how many students

1792
01:39:58,380 --> 01:40:02,530
that have left the program
do become teachers themselves

1793
01:40:02,610 --> 01:40:06,580
and kind of this cyclical
passing on of information

1794
01:40:06,660 --> 01:40:08,800
that I feel like the new generation

1795
01:40:08,880 --> 01:40:11,500
is so much more well equipped than I was.

1796
01:40:11,580 --> 01:40:15,730
There are many more opportunities
now to study language,

1797
01:40:15,810 --> 01:40:18,760
there are many more opportunities
to study dance forms,

1798
01:40:18,840 --> 01:40:23,050
there's so many more opportunities
to study visual art forms

1799
01:40:23,130 --> 01:40:25,360
that I felt like when I was coming up,

1800
01:40:25,440 --> 01:40:28,540
unless you were working directly
with an individual artist

1801
01:40:28,620 --> 01:40:30,490
as a master apprentice,

1802
01:40:30,570 --> 01:40:33,940
there weren't really many
opportunities to take a course

1803
01:40:34,020 --> 01:40:38,290
and learn any of those things.

1804
01:40:38,370 --> 01:40:41,860
It's a moon mask with yellow cedar.

1805
01:40:41,940 --> 01:40:44,260
It was one I started a little while ago,

1806
01:40:44,340 --> 01:40:48,610
so it's nice to maybe revisit and come back to it.

1807
01:40:48,690 --> 01:40:50,080
I've got one eye cut in

1808
01:40:50,160 --> 01:40:52,960
and maybe I'd start working
on cutting in the other eye.

1809
01:40:53,940 --> 01:40:58,510
Well, masks were traditionally
worn in performance.

1810
01:40:58,590 --> 01:41:00,190
Early on in my career,

1811
01:41:00,270 --> 01:41:05,270
I saw very few people actually
wearing them and using them.

1812
01:41:05,820 --> 01:41:09,130
But today I feel like most dance groups have masks

1813
01:41:09,210 --> 01:41:13,143
that they work with in their performance.

1814
01:41:14,580 --> 01:41:18,070
And so maybe the masks that I'm making are more,

1815
01:41:18,150 --> 01:41:23,150
they're really artwork that references a mask,

1816
01:41:24,270 --> 01:41:27,870
but really it's a piece of work that is not a mask,

1817
01:41:27,950 --> 01:41:29,585
if that makes any sense.

1818
01:41:43,376 --> 01:41:45,370
The native people have to be around native people.

1819
01:41:45,450 --> 01:41:47,710
That's when they get lost,

1820
01:41:47,790 --> 01:41:50,403
when they don't have contact with their own people,

1821
01:41:52,012 --> 01:41:53,830
'cause some people don't know how to deal

1822
01:41:53,910 --> 01:41:56,560
with all the hustle and bustle of town

1823
01:41:58,020 --> 01:42:00,280
when they come from the villages.

1824
01:42:00,360 --> 01:42:02,530
Originally, knitting wouldn't

1825
01:42:02,610 --> 01:42:07,390
have been a Alaska native traditional art.

1826
01:42:07,470 --> 01:42:10,090
It was something that would've been introduced

1827
01:42:10,170 --> 01:42:12,610
by first contact with the missionaries

1828
01:42:12,690 --> 01:42:15,040
and that kind of thing.

1829
01:42:15,120 --> 01:42:17,530
And it was picked up so well

1830
01:42:17,610 --> 01:42:21,490
because you could knit hats for your family,

1831
01:42:21,570 --> 01:42:23,283
mittens and glove.

1832
01:42:24,900 --> 01:42:29,640
These two ladies were at
that first workshop in 1969.

1833
01:42:30,780 --> 01:42:33,670
They are all elders that are deceased now,

1834
01:42:33,750 --> 01:42:38,290
but they knit their whole
lives for the cooperative

1835
01:42:38,370 --> 01:42:42,755
up until that point when they
were not able to knit anymore.

1836
01:42:49,710 --> 01:42:53,230
Most of them live out in
the different village areas

1837
01:42:53,310 --> 01:42:57,070
and they do the knitting in their own home

1838
01:42:57,150 --> 01:42:58,870
and they mail it back here

1839
01:42:58,950 --> 01:43:03,280
and then this wonderful lady
helps to get it ready for sale.

1840
01:43:03,360 --> 01:43:05,770
And those two wonderful ladies

1841
01:43:05,850 --> 01:43:07,930
are the ones that helped sell it

1842
01:43:08,010 --> 01:43:10,960
to different people that come by and visit.

1843
01:43:11,040 --> 01:43:16,040
It started in 1969, Dr. John
J. Teal was the founder,

1844
01:43:17,550 --> 01:43:20,200
saw that a lot of the people

1845
01:43:20,280 --> 01:43:22,540
were having to leave the village area

1846
01:43:22,620 --> 01:43:26,320
and they were losing their culture by doing that.

1847
01:43:26,400 --> 01:43:29,110
And he wanted to do something

1848
01:43:29,190 --> 01:43:34,190
where they could go ahead and work in their own home

1849
01:43:34,740 --> 01:43:38,050
and yet sell that product.

1850
01:43:38,130 --> 01:43:40,120
And he saw the wonderful hand work

1851
01:43:40,200 --> 01:43:42,820
that they were already doing.

1852
01:43:42,900 --> 01:43:43,960
They picked something

1853
01:43:44,040 --> 01:43:47,260
that was special to an area like this one

1854
01:43:47,340 --> 01:43:50,110
where the first workshop was held.

1855
01:43:50,190 --> 01:43:52,390
It was out on Nunavut Island

1856
01:43:52,470 --> 01:43:54,790
and it was about 1,200 years old.

1857
01:43:54,870 --> 01:43:59,530
They went to each area, they
went ahead and did patterns

1858
01:43:59,610 --> 01:44:02,860
or based on something that was traditional

1859
01:44:02,940 --> 01:44:04,983
and special to that area.

1860
01:44:06,090 --> 01:44:08,920
Most of the people that live out in the villages,

1861
01:44:09,000 --> 01:44:11,050
there are not jobs available,

1862
01:44:11,130 --> 01:44:14,350
so they live subsistence lifestyle,

1863
01:44:14,430 --> 01:44:16,660
which means they live off the land.

1864
01:44:16,740 --> 01:44:21,040
They spend time catching fish
in the summer, putting it up,

1865
01:44:21,120 --> 01:44:24,260
drying it, getting it ready for the freezer.

1866
01:44:26,490 --> 01:44:28,180
This is a map of Alaska

1867
01:44:28,260 --> 01:44:31,480
and the red and green are
cooperative members are from,

1868
01:44:31,560 --> 01:44:34,840
the wild muskox are located.

1869
01:44:34,920 --> 01:44:38,133
And then the barns are where are the captive muskox.

1870
01:44:39,420 --> 01:44:44,420
Qiviut is a natural fiber,

1871
01:44:44,700 --> 01:44:47,590
a natural byproduct from the muskox.

1872
01:44:47,670 --> 01:44:50,583
They shed naturally each spring.

1873
01:44:51,600 --> 01:44:56,290
And so it wasn't an introduced
animal, it was an animal

1874
01:44:56,370 --> 01:45:01,090
that was native to different
areas of Alaska already.

1875
01:45:01,170 --> 01:45:03,760
And that was other thing that he wanted.

1876
01:45:03,840 --> 01:45:06,820
He wanted something that would be able

1877
01:45:06,900 --> 01:45:11,900
to utilize a local animal or an item

1878
01:45:12,810 --> 01:45:17,230
that the people could incorporate into their life

1879
01:45:17,310 --> 01:45:22,310
and yet still incorporate
their life into that item.

1880
01:45:23,640 --> 01:45:26,590
So many of our patterns that our members

1881
01:45:26,670 --> 01:45:30,850
are based on traditional patterns or artifacts

1882
01:45:30,930 --> 01:45:33,760
of the area that they come from

1883
01:45:33,840 --> 01:45:38,840
that are very important to
them and symbolize that area.

1884
01:45:41,100 --> 01:45:44,110
I first started to learn to knit,

1885
01:45:44,190 --> 01:45:48,760
I think in middle school, like at a club.

1886
01:45:48,840 --> 01:45:52,773
And then my mom taught me how
to do this type of knitting.

1887
01:45:55,110 --> 01:45:58,300
I noticed just something to do,

1888
01:45:58,380 --> 01:46:01,473
meeting different people across the world,

1889
01:46:01,553 --> 01:46:04,900
some of my family from the villages

1890
01:46:04,980 --> 01:46:07,870
and catching up with them

1891
01:46:07,950 --> 01:46:12,950
and just working on crafts like this on the job.

1892
01:46:15,810 --> 01:46:20,810
I think started knitting for this co-op in the '80s,

1893
01:46:26,070 --> 01:46:30,900
and I started working here I think 2015.

1894
01:46:32,100 --> 01:46:40,100
- Yeah.
- I like working here 'cause it's comfortable.

1895
01:46:40,710 --> 01:46:45,710
I get to meet people and I love doing my job.

1896
01:46:48,840 --> 01:46:53,840
I first was taught by my
maternal grandmother how to knit

1897
01:46:56,520 --> 01:47:01,520
and crochet and I at first did more crocheting.

1898
01:47:03,180 --> 01:47:04,480
When I first started knitting,

1899
01:47:04,560 --> 01:47:08,860
I knit a baby like Barbie scarf that much

1900
01:47:08,940 --> 01:47:12,220
and then I put it down until I started working here

1901
01:47:12,300 --> 01:47:14,590
and that introduced knitting to me.

1902
01:47:14,670 --> 01:47:18,160
And I am like Sandra, I like knitting.

1903
01:47:18,240 --> 01:47:22,263
I find that it's soothing.

1904
01:47:23,370 --> 01:47:27,310
In fact, like I commented
it's soothing enough some days

1905
01:47:27,390 --> 01:47:29,980
when it's hectic and I go home and knit,

1906
01:47:30,060 --> 01:47:32,337
I'll knit and it'll put me to sleep.

1907
01:47:36,630 --> 01:47:40,030
That's what's made the co-op a success

1908
01:47:40,110 --> 01:47:42,250
is the fact that again,

1909
01:47:42,330 --> 01:47:46,120
you can take knitting with you anywhere

1910
01:47:46,200 --> 01:47:49,570
and you can do it anywhere,

1911
01:47:49,650 --> 01:47:53,943
but in different village
areas where we have members,

1912
01:47:55,200 --> 01:47:58,120
sometimes I think maybe they go

1913
01:47:58,200 --> 01:48:00,880
and talk to each other when they need help.

1914
01:48:00,960 --> 01:48:04,030
They can visit with one another if they're close.

1915
01:48:04,110 --> 01:48:06,910
But it's not a requirement,

1916
01:48:06,990 --> 01:48:11,703
it's not a group participation type activity.

1917
01:48:13,080 --> 01:48:18,080
It's very much can be a filling activity if you want.

1918
01:48:20,130 --> 01:48:25,130
I think there's newer members that are younger.

1919
01:48:26,640 --> 01:48:30,550
It's finding your own crafts or clothes,

1920
01:48:30,630 --> 01:48:33,340
things like that to have for yourself

1921
01:48:33,420 --> 01:48:38,170
or giving it away to friends or relatives.

1922
01:48:38,250 --> 01:48:40,150
We just talk about what's happened

1923
01:48:40,230 --> 01:48:45,040
or what we've seen that was interesting or funny

1924
01:48:45,120 --> 01:48:47,830
or what's just going on in our lives

1925
01:48:47,910 --> 01:48:51,606
while we're doing our crafts.

1926
01:48:51,686 --> 01:48:55,413
Yeah, I'm good.

1927
01:49:10,800 --> 01:49:13,960
So only certain women were able to weave.

1928
01:49:14,040 --> 01:49:15,993
You had to be chosen.

1929
01:49:18,090 --> 01:49:22,240
With many elders, you kind of learn not to ask why

1930
01:49:22,320 --> 01:49:24,580
and you just need to wait and see.

1931
01:49:24,660 --> 01:49:27,130
You just need to take in what they say

1932
01:49:27,210 --> 01:49:29,020
and follow what they say.

1933
01:49:29,100 --> 01:49:31,990
The answer will come, and she did, right?

1934
01:49:32,070 --> 01:49:34,070
When she saw me, she
said, "She's the one."

1935
01:49:34,150 --> 01:49:36,130
And I remember her pointing at me like that.

1936
01:49:36,210 --> 01:49:37,870
"She's like, She's the one."

1937
01:49:37,950 --> 01:49:40,203
I take on a responsibility.

1938
01:50:04,410 --> 01:50:08,920
My Tlingit names are
Kudeiyatoon and Kudataan Tlaa.

1939
01:50:09,000 --> 01:50:12,610
My English name is Darlene See.

1940
01:50:12,690 --> 01:50:15,910
I'm Raven Kaach. adi, Land Daughter

1941
01:50:15,990 --> 01:50:18,010
from the house Looking Out.

1942
01:50:18,090 --> 01:50:21,820
My mother is Tlingit and my father is Aleut,

1943
01:50:21,900 --> 01:50:25,510
and I'm a grandchild of the Chookaneidi

1944
01:50:25,590 --> 01:50:27,640
and the Wooshkeetaan,

1945
01:50:27,720 --> 01:50:29,703
the Brown Bear clan and the Shark clan.

1946
01:50:30,810 --> 01:50:33,430
The oldest form of weaving right over here,

1947
01:50:33,510 --> 01:50:38,230
Ravenstail weaving, that was lost

1948
01:50:38,310 --> 01:50:40,360
to our people about 200 years.

1949
01:50:40,440 --> 01:50:45,190
You know, and weavers would weave robes and tunics

1950
01:50:45,270 --> 01:50:50,270
and aprons for high cast people, used in ceremonies,

1951
01:50:52,260 --> 01:50:53,733
very important ceremonies.

1952
01:50:55,410 --> 01:50:59,350
The Ravenstail weaving is a
geometric style of weaving

1953
01:50:59,430 --> 01:51:02,377
and a lot of the motifs that you see,

1954
01:51:02,457 --> 01:51:07,447
the weavings that you see are on basketry.

1955
01:51:07,527 --> 01:51:09,520
And so a lot of that is incorporated

1956
01:51:09,600 --> 01:51:11,650
into a different medium.

1957
01:51:11,730 --> 01:51:13,900
Instead of using spruce root, the medium,

1958
01:51:13,980 --> 01:51:16,630
and traditionally we use mountain goat wool.

1959
01:51:16,710 --> 01:51:18,040
And it got lost,

1960
01:51:18,120 --> 01:51:21,940
it was lost to our people or a number of reasons.

1961
01:51:22,020 --> 01:51:23,590
But then Chilkat weaving,

1962
01:51:23,670 --> 01:51:26,380
this right here is an example of Chilkat weaving,

1963
01:51:26,460 --> 01:51:30,760
and it was also for ceremonial purposes as well,

1964
01:51:30,840 --> 01:51:32,530
woven for that reason.

1965
01:51:32,610 --> 01:51:36,250
And Chilkat is the only weaving in the whole world

1966
01:51:36,330 --> 01:51:38,860
that you can weave a perfect circle in.

1967
01:51:38,940 --> 01:51:42,250
Not many people were doing Ravenstail for a while.

1968
01:51:42,330 --> 01:51:47,330
Probably because you can put
more oral history on here,

1969
01:51:47,797 --> 01:51:51,243
you know, with various Chilkat designs.

1970
01:51:52,920 --> 01:51:55,930
Well, one of the things
really special about Chilkat

1971
01:51:56,010 --> 01:52:00,650
is there's a lot of unsaid things weavers pass on

1972
01:52:06,510 --> 01:52:08,590
to other weavers, especially with Chilkat,

1973
01:52:08,670 --> 01:52:11,230
certain things that you must do

1974
01:52:11,310 --> 01:52:14,830
and many things that you should not do.

1975
01:52:14,910 --> 01:52:17,860
And it's really important with any type of weaving

1976
01:52:17,940 --> 01:52:22,810
or any kind of work, you really
need to be in a great space

1977
01:52:22,890 --> 01:52:24,340
with your head and your heart,

1978
01:52:24,420 --> 01:52:27,640
'cause everything goes into
your weaving from your hands,

1979
01:52:27,720 --> 01:52:29,500
with Chilkat especially.

1980
01:52:29,580 --> 01:52:32,050
Like when you first get up in the morning,

1981
01:52:32,130 --> 01:52:37,120
don't eat for a couple hours, just tea or water, coffee

1982
01:52:37,200 --> 01:52:41,290
and weave for at least a
couple hours, two, three hours.

1983
01:52:41,370 --> 01:52:43,420
And then if you're hungry, you can eat.

1984
01:52:43,500 --> 01:52:46,240
There's many different things follow like that.

1985
01:52:46,320 --> 01:52:51,320
It's really important to
continue making items available

1986
01:52:52,260 --> 01:52:55,540
for other indigenous people.

1987
01:52:55,620 --> 01:52:57,460
Yes, it's important to make money,

1988
01:52:57,540 --> 01:53:02,470
but it's also very important to lift up my uncle,

1989
01:53:02,550 --> 01:53:05,830
to lift up our clan together

1990
01:53:05,910 --> 01:53:09,850
and to treat our guests that were there

1991
01:53:09,930 --> 01:53:11,680
during our time of need.

1992
01:53:11,760 --> 01:53:15,370
I'm working on a Chilkat apron for an adult

1993
01:53:15,450 --> 01:53:17,673
or else a young child's robe.

1994
01:53:18,690 --> 01:53:21,010
I know traditionally you weren't supposed

1995
01:53:21,090 --> 01:53:24,070
to be weaving your own at oo,

1996
01:53:24,150 --> 01:53:26,650
which is gonna be at oo, clan property.

1997
01:53:26,730 --> 01:53:29,590
And I talked to a few elders about that, you know,

1998
01:53:29,670 --> 01:53:34,670
and with a full sized Chilkat
robe could cost anywhere from,

1999
01:53:35,970 --> 01:53:40,363
I don't know, 60, $90,000 if not more.

2000
01:53:42,000 --> 01:53:45,670
There's a lot of work that goes into a Chilkat robe.

2001
01:53:45,750 --> 01:53:49,180
And a few elders had mentioned to me, yes,

2002
01:53:49,260 --> 01:53:51,970
traditionally you would hire the opposite clan

2003
01:53:52,050 --> 01:53:56,260
to be doing that for you, but it's okay it.

2004
01:53:56,340 --> 01:53:59,350
And weaving in sections here with Chilkat,

2005
01:53:59,430 --> 01:54:01,390
wherever there's a straight line here,

2006
01:54:01,470 --> 01:54:04,870
you're going to end up having a draw string.

2007
01:54:04,950 --> 01:54:06,190
What I mean by a draw string,

2008
01:54:06,270 --> 01:54:11,270
you'll have a string here that you can interlock.

2009
01:54:11,400 --> 01:54:16,150
And so whenever there's the
black straight line area

2010
01:54:16,230 --> 01:54:18,580
is where you can have interlocks here.

2011
01:54:18,660 --> 01:54:22,330
Like here's a little draw string here

2012
01:54:22,410 --> 01:54:25,240
and I can pull it and it pulls the weaving together.

2013
01:54:25,320 --> 01:54:27,100
So you're weaving in sections.

2014
01:54:27,180 --> 01:54:30,490
So whatever you see flat straight lines,

2015
01:54:30,570 --> 01:54:33,190
the main formline, you can
put a draw stringing in there.

2016
01:54:33,270 --> 01:54:37,090
And so I'm weaving on this section right here,

2017
01:54:37,170 --> 01:54:41,740
which has the claw right
here, the black and white claw

2018
01:54:41,820 --> 01:54:43,300
and with the white and the black.

2019
01:54:43,380 --> 01:54:45,610
And here are the claw fingers here

2020
01:54:45,690 --> 01:54:48,520
coming over to the other motifs.

2021
01:54:48,600 --> 01:54:53,600
And there's interlocks along
the way here and that I've got,

2022
01:54:53,790 --> 01:54:57,033
and so I can interlock, and
so weaving in those sections.

2023
01:54:57,930 --> 01:55:02,913
And here's another interlock here with the border.

2024
01:55:04,110 --> 01:55:06,220
And see, just pull in it,

2025
01:55:06,300 --> 01:55:09,873
puts the weaving straight together, here, yep.

2026
01:55:13,980 --> 01:55:16,510
Will probably take a couple months.

2027
01:55:16,590 --> 01:55:20,860
Traditionally, you didn't really get black.

2028
01:55:20,940 --> 01:55:22,893
You kind of got a charcoal,

2029
01:55:24,210 --> 01:55:26,710
kind of maroonish black, I guess.

2030
01:55:26,790 --> 01:55:28,570
They would dye use natural colors

2031
01:55:28,650 --> 01:55:32,620
'cause all we had was in yellow wolf moss.

2032
01:55:32,700 --> 01:55:34,840
And you get that in British Columbia.

2033
01:55:34,920 --> 01:55:38,380
Our people traded and our
people traded for wolf moss.

2034
01:55:38,460 --> 01:55:41,410
We don't have any in our area.

2035
01:55:41,490 --> 01:55:45,940
To get the deeper color, you needed to use urine.

2036
01:55:46,020 --> 01:55:49,330
And the darkest yellow, the best urine to get

2037
01:55:51,082 --> 01:55:54,540
is from like up to a nine month old baby.

2038
01:55:58,320 --> 01:56:00,220
There's some things that you just don't talk about,

2039
01:56:00,300 --> 01:56:05,300
you know, and to me a lot of
those things were so enriching

2040
01:56:07,257 --> 01:56:11,710
and so confirming to my soul, you know,

2041
01:56:11,790 --> 01:56:16,790
you're connecting with, I really
don't wanna say art forms,

2042
01:56:18,540 --> 01:56:20,356
but out of a lack of word,

2043
01:56:20,436 --> 01:56:22,810
you know, connecting with these art forms

2044
01:56:22,890 --> 01:56:27,040
that are connections to our
past, our oral histories.

2045
01:56:27,120 --> 01:56:31,360
Some women will sing songs or you're going along

2046
01:56:31,440 --> 01:56:34,000
and you're talking to the tree people

2047
01:56:34,080 --> 01:56:36,310
and letting them know why you're there,

2048
01:56:36,390 --> 01:56:39,670
letting them know you're not
gonna take more than you need

2049
01:56:39,750 --> 01:56:41,860
and you're not gonna waste anything.

2050
01:56:41,940 --> 01:56:43,540
With our culture, we believe everything

2051
01:56:43,620 --> 01:56:47,703
has a spirit, everything,
animate and inanimate objects.

2052
01:56:55,110 --> 01:56:56,553
So here we're looking

2053
01:56:56,633 --> 01:57:01,300
at what we consider our healing kooteeyaa.

2054
01:57:01,380 --> 01:57:05,800
This one is representing
both the Huna Tlingit people

2055
01:57:05,880 --> 01:57:08,290
and the National Park Service.

2056
01:57:08,370 --> 01:57:11,350
So we start with at the bottom,

2057
01:57:11,430 --> 01:57:14,260
Glacier Bay is our food basket.

2058
01:57:14,340 --> 01:57:18,580
So you see the basket with the sea otter, halibut,

2059
01:57:18,660 --> 01:57:22,000
fish, our seagull eggs.

2060
01:57:22,080 --> 01:57:26,170
And as we move up the kooteeyaa, you see the houses

2061
01:57:26,250 --> 01:57:29,560
that were being crushed by the advancing glaciers

2062
01:57:29,640 --> 01:57:31,743
that forced us out of our homeland,

2063
01:57:32,793 --> 01:57:35,770
and we scattered for many years

2064
01:57:35,850 --> 01:57:38,740
as our people left in their canoes.

2065
01:57:38,820 --> 01:57:43,820
As you go up the pole, you'll
see there that on the one side

2066
01:57:45,060 --> 01:57:49,780
is Lituya Bay, the T'aakdeintaan people,

2067
01:57:49,860 --> 01:57:53,110
that was their homeland of Lituya Bay.

2068
01:57:53,190 --> 01:57:56,620
And they were washed outta
Lituya Bay with tsunamis.

2069
01:57:56,700 --> 01:57:59,913
And so as they scattered for many years also,

2070
01:58:00,900 --> 01:58:03,970
we wandered looking for our new home.

2071
01:58:04,050 --> 01:58:09,050
Then you have the face of no
spirit that has too many hands,

2072
01:58:10,380 --> 01:58:15,380
too many rules that has
locked us out of our homeland,

2073
01:58:15,690 --> 01:58:17,343
the federal government.

2074
01:58:18,810 --> 01:58:22,780
And through the years, our ancestors

2075
01:58:22,860 --> 01:58:26,650
were going through some
turbulent times, rough waters.

2076
01:58:26,730 --> 01:58:30,160
You see the tears of what they wanted.

2077
01:58:30,240 --> 01:58:35,240
It was the foods from home and the land of home.

2078
01:58:36,959 --> 01:58:37,712
And so you'll see

2079
01:58:37,792 --> 01:58:41,583
that we were walking back toward our homeland.

2080
01:58:42,810 --> 01:58:47,260
Then came a time in which the National Park Service

2081
01:58:47,340 --> 01:58:52,120
and Huna Tlingit people came to an understanding

2082
01:58:52,200 --> 01:58:54,940
and they got a paper understanding

2083
01:58:55,020 --> 01:58:59,530
that allowed us back into our homeland at times.

2084
01:58:59,610 --> 01:59:02,020
You'll see the waters are calming,

2085
01:59:02,100 --> 01:59:05,350
they're not calm yet, but they're calming.

2086
01:59:05,430 --> 01:59:08,650
And then we had an agreement

2087
01:59:08,730 --> 01:59:13,180
and a working relationship
with the Huna Tlingit people

2088
01:59:13,260 --> 01:59:17,343
and the National Park Service
to build Xunaa Shuka Hit,

2089
01:59:18,180 --> 01:59:20,853
our home now back in our homeland.

2090
01:59:22,980 --> 01:59:25,053
We all know what a chain and padlock is.

2091
01:59:26,135 --> 01:59:30,040
It was my way of trying to say
that the federal government

2092
01:59:30,120 --> 01:59:32,380
has locked us out of our homeland,

2093
01:59:32,460 --> 01:59:34,810
has not allowed us the free access

2094
01:59:34,890 --> 01:59:36,850
that we always dream of having.

2095
01:59:36,930 --> 01:59:39,670
Yet it's very contemporary.

2096
01:59:39,750 --> 01:59:41,650
It's a way of sending the message

2097
01:59:41,730 --> 01:59:44,050
to whomever is looking at it.

2098
01:59:44,130 --> 01:59:47,223
Someday I hope to be able to unlock that padlock.

2099
01:59:50,220 --> 01:59:53,950
All of us know that we walk in the footprints

2100
01:59:54,930 --> 01:59:58,330
of our ancestors and our grandparents.

2101
01:59:58,410 --> 02:00:01,954
We are walking back toward our homeland.