Alaska Day Issue
Dear Editor: I appreciated all the work that was done this year to make our Alaska Day celebration fun and exciting for my family. We look forward to Alaska Day because when it comes in the middle of the week, we get a fun break that gets us through the October rains that signal us for the dark winter ahead. Alaska Day also is our town celebration that brings us together because our celebration tops everyone. No one celebrates Alaska Day like we do.
Thank you so much for all the historical coverage that you published in your newspaper! I looked closely at every picture and I read every word. As I read, my respect for what the Lingit people and understanding of what they have had to endure went higher and higher with each word.
The pictures of the barefoot Kiks.adi which at the time that picture was taken was after their survival march and return to the loss of their clan houses and so much more. Those pictures still haunt me, my heart went out to them. The words of the reporters that told of the Lingit village land grab of over 50 plots of land calling it homesteading reminded me of the Cherokee Strip in Oklahoma that was taken from the Cherokee (my husband’s people) when they opened it up to “homesteading.”
I also thought of how tragic it must have been for the Lingit later to have their fish camps burned and their land taken so they could no longer bring their fish in for the winter. As I was looking at the old pictures from downtown, I thought of Isabella Brady telling me that when she was a child if she was walking down the boardwalk in Sitka and she met white people, she had to get off the boardwalk so the white people could pass. Looking at those pictures, I did the math and realized that those pictures were taken before Isabella was there, so the situation was a lot worse at that time.
The report of the white military man who explained how good things would go for “good Indians.” He was talking to people who had occupied this place for thousands of years and had forgotten more than he would ever know about how to survive here as a living part of this land and ocean.
The articles deepened my respect for the strength and endurance of the Native people in Alaska. They have endured storms, tsunami, advancing glaciers, smallpox, TB, land theft, wars, imprisonment, milk, sugar, alcohol, church laws, racism, assault on language, just to name a few. But they are still here and in spite of it, they are strong today. They have songs, dances and stories older than this country. They know the value of the tiny frog and the herring egg. Their respect runs deep and they will teach you if you will be a student.
I made an incomplete list of things that my family has learned from the Natives in Sitka. We have learned to catch and eat fish (heads, eggs, eyes, tail), eat and gather seaweed, seal oil, find deer, eat from the beach and forest, to get and cook herring eggs, use and collect plant food and medicine, harvest seasonally, to RESPECT all life, respect elders, how to sing, dance, drum, draw, paint, bead, make drums, regalia, and “not to rest until the fish are in.” So many things we learn that someone before us learned from a Native. How could they have endured so much and still have so much and still be willing to share? That is one of the big things I celebrated this Alaska Day. The Lingit have taught us that a person is not measured by how much they have, but by how much they can respectfully give.
Whole clans did not survive, but the people that did survive can teach us much about this place in uncertain times. I especially appreciated that the Lingit opened up and shared some of their “sacred crying songs” from the Russian battle period and before that time in an effort to start to heal from the pain of the past as the transfer enactment ceremony was happening. The songs brought back ancestors that had left the songs in their care to heal and pass on to the next generation.
Gunalcheesh to those who shared the beautiful melodious soul bearing songs, they made my heart beat with yours. The more we work together, the more we can achieve.
Patty Dick, Sitka
