By SHANNON HAUGLAND
Sentinel Staff Writer
Six years ago, Lauren Peters learned she had a relative, Sophia Tetoff of St. Paul Island, who was buried at Carlisle Indian School in Pennsylvania.
Lauren Peters. (Sentinel Photo)
On Saturday, Peters, who is a PhD scholar in Native American Studies at the University of California, Davis, will give a presentation here on the return of Tetoff’s remains to St. Paul Island in 2021.
She will share the story of Sophia’s return, and nationwide efforts to bring home children from Indigenous boarding school cemeteries.
The free presentation is 6 p.m. at the Sheet’ka Kwaan Naa Kahidi.
Peters’ visit is sponsored by Sitka Public Library and the Friends of the Sitka Public Library; the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, Aspen Suites, and former Sitka librarian Sarah Bell. Sitka High School, where Peters visited with students, also contributed to the trip expenses.
At the Saturday talk, Bob Sam will give a welcome and introduction. He became acquainted with Peters when he reached out to her about Alaskan children buried at Carlisle.
Such “rematriations,” undertaken by women in the family take considerable effort and funds, since they are not part of the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, Peters said today.
She spoke briefly with the Sentinel after meeting with Sitka High and Pacific High students in the Sitka High library. Mt. Edgecumbe High School students from St. Paul and St. George also were invited to attend.
Peters said she’s also hoping to do research at Sheldon Jackson school campus, now home of the Sitka Fine Arts Camp and other nonprofit organizations.
“I’m really grateful to the school district and library for hosting me,” she said. Today she was wearing a black and red totemic sash presented to her by Melonie Boord, the school board liaison to Pacific High. Boord said the sash, created by Sitka artist Sarah Williams, was meant “as a welcome to Sheet’ka and to express appreciation of sharing her story and experience in bringing Sophia home.”
Tetoff, who was Peters’ grandmother’s aunt, was taken from St. Paul Island to the Jesse Lee Home for Children in Unalaska by Methodist missionaries. After her sister died, she was sent to the Carlisle Indian School.
“She spent most of her time on ‘outing’ programs – she worked, she didn’t go to school,” Peters said. “She became sick after being there five years, and she died and was buried in the cemetery in 1906.”
Peters’ mother was born in St. Paul, and raised in Belkofski and King Cove in the Aleutians.
Peters, who is enrolled in the Agdaagux Tribe of King Cove, was raised in Northern California. and currently lives there.
“The short version is my original Tetoff relative was from Kodiak, and his son was Steven Tetoff, who was the original blacksmith at Fort Ross, and he died there,” Peters said. Fort Ross was the southernmost Russian settlement in the Russian American era, from 1812 to 1841. Today it is a National Historic Landmark, denoting its importance to the history of the U.S.
After his death, the Russian American Company sent Tetoff’s wife and child to St. Paul.
“A hundred and ten years later my mom was born on St. Paul,” Peters said. Her mother married a California man, and Peters grew up at Fort Ross, where she is now the Alaska Native adviser.
“We have a big group that gets together, called Cal-Alaska,” she said. The group has Alaska and California connections.
In Carlisle, Pennsylvania, efforts have been underway since 2016 to return remains of Native American children to proper resting places in home communities.
Peters spoke also about the “rematriation” process, which is undertaken by women in the family to return remains of their forebears at old residential school sites and other places, to their ancestral lands.
Those undertaking this don’t call it “repatriation,” Peters said.
“We are a matriarchal society, and it’s patriarchy is what got us in the first place,” Peters said. “White landed males were able to vote and they weaponized that against Native people, made all the decisions on our behalf, took our land, took our children. And so when we invite a child back into our fold, it’s a very maternal thing to do. And so we like to call it ‘re-matriation.’”
Since it’s not covered by NAGPRA, the cost and research required to find and return remains is borne by the family. Peters said it cost about $18,000 to return Sophia to St. Paul.
Peters thanked those who hosted her in Sitka, and invited Sitkans to join her for Alaska Native Day at Fort Ross, which is celebrated every other year, including this Memorial Day weekend, at Fort Ross.
“Everyone is invited, and we’d like people to come,” she said.
