Discussion, Meal Set For Indigenous Day

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Created on Friday, 11 October 2024 15:34

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By GARLAND KENNEDY
Sentinel Staff Writer
    A public gathering involving food, music, dance and discussions on the importance of Indigenous people and cultures will take center stage Monday at this year’s celebration of Indigenous Peoples’ Day.
    The event, to be at Harrigan Centennial Hall, will include a potluck banquet and a panel discussion on Tlingit ways of life, followed by smaller seminars.

With one of her paintings behind her, Sheldon Jackson Museum artist-in-residence Denali McGlashan (Unangax) leads a watercolor workshop at the state museum this afternoon. McGlashan will offer a talk on Indigenous Peoples’ Day 1-2 p.m. at the museum and simultaneously on Zoom. The talk, titled “Compasses, Clocks & Caustics,” includes reflections on her art and upbringing in rural subsistence communities. (Sentinel Photo by James Poulson)

    Celebrated locally since 2017 on the second Monday of October, Indigenous Peoples’ Day this year will bring Sitkans together under the overarching theme of “Linking Generations: Our Ancestors, Us and Our Future.” One of the underlying concepts of Monday’s program is “Haa Shagoon,” or “our ancestors,” though the phrase carries a deeper meaning around ancestry and history, a note written by David Kanosh Yookis’kookéik in the event program states.
    The master of ceremonies will be Alex Xaanatlseix Johnson-Rice, 26, who will guide a four-member panel in a discussion premised on a single, deceptively simple question: he will ask the panelists about the meaning of the phrase “Haa Kusteeyi,” or “our way of life.”
    “I’m grateful for the opportunity to be here. It’s really fun to figure it all out, because for our panelists, we have one question, really simple,” Johnson-Rice said in an interview. “They get 10 minutes each, and then we’re going to have 20 minutes after, and I say it’s a really simple question because it’s one, but it’s a very open ended question, and that’s, ‘what does Haa Kusteeyi mean to you?’”
    The phrase is also part of the title of a compilation of Indigenous studies edited by the renowned scholars Nora Marks Dauenhauer and Richard Dauenhauer, “Haa Kusteeyi: Our Culture, Tlingit Life Stories.”
    Johnson-Rice’s involvement with his culture began as a child, growing up in the Sitka Native Education Program and under the tutelage of his uncle, Chuck Miller, whose Tlingit names were Daanax.ils’eik and Geistéen.
    Johnson-Rice said that for himself, the most important part of Haa Kusteeyi centers on the gathering of traditional foods, a skill he honed with the uncles’ assistance.
    “My uncles, they’ve done a very good job of teaching me how to be a Tlingit; they taught me how to hunt, they taught me how to fish… The most important part of Haa Kusteeyi to me is processing our foods and putting up traditional foods,” he said. “Like my wife, she was just hunting, so our freezer is full of moose meat – she’s from Holy Cross – so she brought some meat home.”
    Johnson-Rice recalls the traditional family deer hunting trips every September 15, the day doe season opens.
    “The 15th is a very special day for me; it’s the anniversary of my father’s passing… The first year (after that loss) I went hiking back Indian River. Last year, my uncle Chuck and I went out and then this year, my uncle Tom and I went out, and it was blowing like 40 miles an hour, raining sideways, and I was still out.”
    Johnson-Rice stressed the importance of sharing meat from a successful hunt.
    “The thing that got me hooked on harvesting foods was when I would share it. I don’t care about putting horns on the wall… It’s about getting my grandma meat. That’s all it is. I have a job to do.”
    In addition, Johnson-Rice tries to add to his Tlingit vocabulary daily, and was for a time an instructor at the Sitka Native Education Program.
    “I was a cultural instructor there for a couple of years. And I’m very grateful for the people I worked under. I was surrounded by giants, all of them have so much to offer, and my uncle was one of them,” he said. His uncle Chuck Miller was 51 when he died of cancer this past July.
    Johnson-Miller said that learning Tlingit as a child helped him internalize and think in the language, but he hopes to continue expanding his understanding of the language and culture.
    “The thing that keeps me going is I don’t know all of the answers, and I want to find them,” Johnson-Rice said. “That’s the thing that really keeps me so intrigued. And you could try your absolute hardest and spend your whole life learning, and I still feel like, at the end of my days, I’ll still say I only have scratched the surface of what our ancestors have known.”
    Members of Monday’s panel discussion will be Tommy Naal xak’w Joseph, a nationally famed Sitka wood carver and artist; Keet Tláa Anne Johnson, a cultural education who helped launch SNEP; Paul Yaandu.ein Marks, who as a child spoke Tlingit at home; and Herman L’eiwtu Éesh Davis, a culture bearer and fluent Tlingit speaker.
    IDP organizer Debe Brincefield has been working to coordinate social media outreach and organize the vendors that will be present at Monday’s celebration.
    Originally from Florida, Brincefield is part Muskogee Creek, and her adopted Tlingit name is Dosikiyee.
    “I’ve been here 23 years, and what it means to me – it really goes deep in my heart that Indigenous people are finally being recognized and they’re no longer being overlooked, and just this day means so much to us,” Brincefield said. “It was Columbus Day growing up in elementary school, none of us were taught about Indigenous people, and I’m just so glad to see that they’re starting to get the respect that they need and deserve, and I was adopted 20 years ago by my Raven mother… We were very honored to be a part of this community and to be part of the Indigenous culture and her family.”
    Numerous vendors are lined up to sell their wares Monday, and Brincefield is encouraging people interested in a table, which is free, to contact her at 907-738-4323. She especially encouraged Alaska Native vendors and artists to reach out to her for a spot.
    University of Alaska Southeast administrative assistant Christine Galiza is celebration coordinator, and a committee of more than a dozen have spent months planning the gathering. Sitka Tribe of Alaska and the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes also are involved.
    Prior to the keynote panel, which begins at 6 p.m. and lasts for an hour, a potluck dinner will be served, starting at 4 p.m. Brincefield invites those attending to bring a dish if possible.
    At 4:30 p.m. there will be a welcome dance by the Sheet’ká Kwáan, Kaagwaantaan and Noow Tlein dancers, followed at 5:15 by a violin performance by the middle school Tlingit language and violin class.
    A special presentation will be at 5:30 p.m., and the panel discussion will start a half an hour later.
    At 7 p.m., breakout sessions will commence, with topics including a seminar on Lingit language, another on deer calls, one on ending homelessness, and another on the language of tidepools.
    Johnson-Rice hopes to see a swath of the community turn out and enjoy the event.
    “It’s been really cool to bring the whole community together to celebrate what it means to be Indigenous,” he said.
    “My culture has always been important to me, and then it’s a sense of community, too… The big thing about being Tlingit and what it means to be Indigenous, to me, is the sense of community that you get and that you build throughout your lifetime and the connections that you have and the people that you know,” he said.