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I always say that Hoonah, X'una Kaawu

is the richest place in the world

because we have the most
beautiful children in this world.

One day, one of you will stand in my place

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

what we hold deep in our hearts,

it must continue.

It must continue.

Respect, respect, respect everything.

Respect other people.

Respect what you are learning.

When you are respectful,

you are honoring your soul,

you are honoring yourself.

Keep that respect always.

Let's line up here.

Grandparents, our beautiful grandchildren

are coming this way, group.

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

and we express our love for each other.

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

We're holding the people in our hearts.

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

We're grasping them, we're embracing them

because our love for each other is strong.

We also believe strongly

that there is a Creator stronger than ourselves,

which is why we're here on earth.

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

but we are here to take care of each other.

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

we talk about the Raven and the Eagle,

we are actually talking about our history,

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

and how we are connected.

I teach it to our children.

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

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

I want them to know the importance

of them being born and a part of us,

that there is going to be acceptance.

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

that children, absolutely,
it overwhelms me every time

when I see a small child singing and dancing,

mimicking what he has been taught.

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

And not every Tlingit is going to grasp this.

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

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

there he is the next leader.

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

because we have something to offer.

is how our people,

all kind and gentle listeners,

I'm going to be speaking

in my grandfather's words.

My Tlingit name is

and.

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

means, "She's priceless."

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

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

and I come from the Ravens Nest house.

My father, David William Sr.,

his Tlingit name,,

when he became clan leader for the Chookaneidi.

When he was a child born,

he was given the name Kaash de yaaw dakaa.

My mother, Mamie Williams,

her Tlingit name,.

Let me tell you a little bit

about how I was born into the culture.

I was just a little girl and my friend Shuni said

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

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

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

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

"Mom, I'm an Eagle."

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

I wanted to be like my friends.

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

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

You are born into a beautiful culture, Carol.

You are born into something that is sustainable,

"and don't deny who you are."

That moment was the beginning of my education.

I was raised Tlingit
surrounded by Tlingit artists

and the main language spoken was Tlingit.

The word Tlingit means I am a person

and distinguishing ourselves from the animals.

We are people, we are a person.

So lovingly, kindly, patiently,

my mom taught me the joy of being Tlingit.

I don't often told the story.

My father, when he was in the third grade,

ran up to his teacher,

she's a nun and he said,

and because he spoke Tlingit,

she beat him, she beat my father.

She picked him up and ran with him

and threw him against the wall,

dropped him again and threw him.

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

He was never beaten before.

What did my father say to that nun?

,
"It's good to see you."

Where is the threat?

I don't get bitter about it.

No, that's the wrong way.

Let me teach you a little bit about who I am

so that you can have an understanding

and I would like to learn something of your culture.

Let us come together.

"It's good to see you."

I was looking this morning

at the regalia the children were wearing

and one boy has a missing button.

So I have to look and give him a button

so that the blanket can be complete.

It makes you feel so good that the children

have learned the beauty of the Tlingit culture,

the beauty of who they are.

Before Western contact,

Alaska Native people

have had entire indigenous knowledge systems,

our way of educating our own people

for thousands and thousands of years.

And then when Western contact happened

and colonization started happening in Alaska

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

we started seeing boarding
schools pop up all around Alaska.

What you're gonna see here are objects

that were taken from that time period,

and these objects are coming back home

to the Alaska Native community.

All of their objects that they had with them

were being taken from, you know,

whether if they were taken
from the children themselves

or if the parents sent them with the child,

there is this perception
that everything was burned

once children, you know, started going to schools.

Next to the model canoe is a photograph

of native children and this came,

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

kids as young as you know,

four or five years old being sent away.

It was completely legal to take our kids away,

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

take away our languages.

As the leader of the Alaska Native Heritage Center,

we have a responsibility to ensure

that the shared history is taught,

ensure that this never happens again.

So what we're gonna go to now

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

that's dedicated to boarding school survivors.

So let's take a walk outside.

So this is the beginning

of the Alaska Native Community Healing Garden.

So well, come on in.

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

The idea behind this pole,

we had the granddaughter of
a boarding school survivor

who reached out to the Alaska
Native Heritage Center.

Her name was Norma Jean Dunn.

And she said, "We need to have a pole

that is raised, dedicated

to every single Alaska native
boarding school survivor

and descendant and for
those who never came home."

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

a lot of people that see this pole,

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

which it is,

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

And so when you look at the pole,

what you're gonna see down here on the bottom

is a bear with her two cubs,

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

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

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

embracing two kids at the top,

it signifies our children
coming back to their community.

It's just so beautiful that we were able

to raise the healing pole here

at the Alaska Native Heritage Center.

And when we raised it,

we had over a thousand people who showed up.

And so for me, you know,

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

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

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

I introduced myself in Yup'ik.

My English name is Emily Eedenshaw,

my Yup'ik name Keneggnarkayaaggaq,

and I am Yup'ik and Inupiaq.

My family comes from Emmonak, Alaska,

which is a small Yup'ik village

on the mouth of the Yukon River.

But I live and work on the Dena'ina lands

and I currently serve as the president

and CEO of the Alaska Native Heritage Center.

Last year, I was also adopted

into the Raven St'langng Laanas Clan

in Old Masset at Haida Gwaii.

So I'm Raven Thunderbird.

I have the best job in the world

because I'm surrounded by the beauty

of our cultures every single day.

We welcome thousands of tourists

that come to the Heritage Center every year.

Anyone would've said this growing up,

I wouldn't have believed them,

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

I was not raised in my community.

My mom was adopted out at birth,

which unfortunately wasn't uncommon,

especially during the territorial days in Alaska.

And so my mother was raised
outside of our community

and culture and in turn, so was I.

I spent many years in Texas,

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

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

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

to who I am as an Alaska Native woman.

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

I have found that in my connection
to culture and community

has been a source of strength for me,

you know, but also understanding

that I have a responsibility to pay it forward.

And so everything I do really ensures

that every single Alaska Native person,

no matter where you live,

deserves to have access to your culture.

You know, here at the Heritage Center,

we often say we're more than a museum.

This is where our cultures come alive.

This is where you get to see us living

and breathing our ways of life.

But also you get to see our knowledge passed down

from generation to generation every day.

Or even speak our native languages,

or even speak our native ranges,

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

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

because of what happened in boarding schools.

And so I think there is a real hunger

and a resurgence happening all across Alaska

and even, you know, extending beyond Alaska,

almost like a cultural renaissance, if you will,

where you know, indigenous peoples,

our cultures are thriving,

our languages are being spoken in schools.

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

where we weren't allowed to do that.

And so there is a real hunger within our community,

but also from our visitors.

The untold stories from Alaska's First Peoples.

The untold stories from Alaska's First Peoples,

My name's Aaron Leggett.

I have the honor of serving as the president

of the Native Village of Eklutna,

it was the only federally and
now state recognized tribe.

And right now we're down at Chanshtnu,

or Westchester Lagoon.

Behind me is one of the
indigenous place name markers

and many of partners, we identify
important Dena'ina sites.

Right now we're at Chanshtnu, or Grass Creek.

This was a Dena'ina fishing camp.

The Dena'ina are the indigenous people

of South Central Alaska.

They've lived here for the past thousand years.

In the early 1920s when Anchorage was selected

as the headquarters for the Alaska Railroad,

the early mapmakers came down here

while the Dena'ina were fishing along the creek.

And they asked 'em,
"What do you call this?"

And they said, "Chanshtnu."

They wrote it down as Chester.

We said, "Well, close enough."

The point being that there was no old man Chester

that had a whiskey still

or a homestead along the creek here.

It's a derivation of the Dena'ina name Chanshtnu,

and Chanshtnu means Grass Creek.

You can see this grass that's starting to turn,

that is the grass that's being referred to.

If you look on the interpretive panel,

you'll see that name Chanshtnu.

And then above, you'll see this piece of artwork.

This is an abstraction of Dena'ina fire bag.

This was something that Dena'ina
men would carry with them

as both an important possession

and also a sign of status and wealth.

Inside the fire bag, he would have the things

that he needed to create a fire,
like flints and dry tinder,

things that he didn't want getting wet.

Later they would also be used

to carry gunpowder and ammunition.

This was created

by Ahtna Athabascan artist Melissa Shaginoff,

working with the committee.

And we ultimately selected the
fire bag as a Dena'ina symbol

to tell the story of perseverance
that the Dena'ina had

before the land got surveyed out from under us

and million dollar homes that you see behind us.

We were essentially forced off of this location

or told we had to vacate.

But these fish camps,

including my great-great grandparents',

were right all up and down this area here.

So we wanted to remind people

of the Dena'ina name Chanshtnu,

that it's not Chester, that it means Grass Creek

and that it's an important
Dena'ina fishing location

here in Anchorage.

So I've been at the Anchorage Museum

for the last 13 and a half years,

but before that I worked

at the Alaska Native Heritage Center

as the Assistant Curator
of Collections and Exhibits

and the Dena'ina Cultural Historian.

So my gloves are a pair of Athabascan beaded gloves.

These floral designs,

they came in through Canada
from the nuns in schools.

They taught the women floral embroidery

and then it transferred to beads.

It worked its way across Canada, into Alaska,

through the Alaska Commercial Company,

the Hudson Bay Trading Company.

And so today, a lot of floral designs

are a well-known artistic
style of Athabascan beaders.

Decorated in beaver fur on the trim

and then moose hide for the actual construction.

My necklace, again,

made from red and black and white trade beads.

And then these white shells here

are called dentalium shells.

They're a small sea mollusk.

It grows down around Vancouver
Island near British Columbia.

They were traded up the northwest coast

with the Tlingit and the height of the Tsimshian

to the Ahtna Athabascans,

the Ahtna traded with those people for copper.

In Tlingit culture,

copper is the ultimate sign of status and wealth.

And in our culture, these shells are.

So, they were highly valued,

they were a sign of status and wealth.

If you look at the logo

for the Alaska Native Heritage Center,

you'll see just exactly what I'm depicting here.

Well, the reason I chose this location

is that this is a highly visible location.

I think there's thousands of people that come by.

Well, but also project is really about,

is explaining to people

that this still is our traditional homeland.

We've never left it.

We haven't been, you know,

forcibly relocated thousands of miles away.

I was asked to do that pole many, many years ago

by the clan leader in that.

And I begged them not to
gimme the directive to do that

'cause I didn't feel I was
skilled enough to do that pole.

I see people use it the way it's supposed to

and people are happy that it's there

because it reminds 'em of a past,

they had a rich history here,

and it's in the exact position the original was

almost 300 years ago.

Of course nobody was alive
that remembered the pole,

but they had been told the stories

and handed down through the years

of what the original looked like.

And now it's back, it's back in the river

where the original stood at years ago.

My name is Jeff Skaflestad.

My grandfather came here from Norway,

married my Native grandmother.

The family I grew up in was a logging family.

Went to school here in Hoonah, returned to Hoonah,

was a teacher here,

a math and science teacher till retirement.

Carver and formline artist are what I do.

They're kind of connected together.

What we understand when we go back in history,

it looks like that from the carving,

they developed the distinctive formline art

that we have now.

And it's always been debated
back and forth what came first,

but it looks like right now the evidence shows

that carving came first and from the carving,

it set the rules and made this
formline art so distinctive.

In Western culture, we're stuck using the word art.

And even though we think we've
identified a Tlingit term

that might include the concept of art in some way,

they are not exactly comparative.

Everything you see in here
that we do is really not art.

And when I say that it,

it doesn't have the Western idea of art.

You don't make something and you put it on the wall.

You have this tremendous
responsibility when we do this art.

Because in this art is spirituality, history,

it tells the story of events, they were good, bad.

We don't like to use the word totem poles.

So for us, when we refer to an art piece

that looks like this, this is called a kooteeyaa,

and for us the most important part of the pole

is the object that's on the bottom.

So we start there first.

So this is a famous story from my clan,

the Chookaneidi clan.

This pole is is called the Xa'Kooch kooteeyaa.

Xa'Kooch is a famous warrior kind of equivalent,

in Tlingit, equivalent to like maybe Achilles,

stories from Greek area and that.

And so at the time the people were living here,

they lived out near the coast and that,

and they were doing activities from boats.

And there was a giant octopus
that would attack the boats

and pull the people overboard
and eat them and kill them.

So Xa'Kooch, which is represented
by the guy here in red,

who's actually holding the octopus and the dagger,

he was one day talking to his Raven brother-in-law

and said, "It looks like I'm gonna have

to be doing the battle with octopus.

He has killed all of our warriors.

I'm gonna have to do the
battle with this octopus."

And this comes from a time when people

and animals could understand each other,

and people from the shore watch the battle going on,

and the water's boiling and Xa'Kooch is in the air

and then the creatures in the air.

And all of a sudden the whole
thing just kind of submerges

and it gets quiet, and that's it.

"I made a promise to the porpoise people, I'm done.

But I made the promise

that you will never hunt
the porpoise again."

And then Xa'Kooch dies.

I had it on the other end of the store down here

and I had some old timers come down here and that,

and they came to the door here

and looked across the room at it.

And without me asking, they said,

"Oh, so you did the Xa'Kooch pole."

So I felt pretty good about that

because they recognized
what I tried to depict here.

Here Xa'Kooch, here's the dagger tied to his hand.

And then this is the famous warrior.

If I go to another town and
I go to another carver's work

and someone says, "What
does this pole mean?"

If I don't know the story already,

I have no idea what it means.

So it's not like there's some code

that you learn about that.

So if you remember cliff notes,

and for those that went to
school here in the United States,

cliff notes were like short
summaries of what you needed

to know about a story or an event or something,

so that's what these serve as.

So what they are is we carved these

and then we put in the main parts of the story

and then we tell the story and people are there,

they're present when I tell the story.

Then they remember it and say
20, 30, 40, 50 years from now,

I'm gone, and they wanna tell
their grandchildren about it,

and they'll look at it like,

"Well, let's see, how did this go now?"

And then all of a sudden, it'll come to 'em like,

oh, that's right, this is the porpoise.

And so it reminds them of how the story goes.

You learn this art, you have to learn all that too

because you're simply just a
caretaker of the knowledge.

This is not yours, you don't own it, you'll never own it,

and you make that agreement

when an artist takes you on as an apprentice,

that you understand that I'm teaching you this

with the idea that you're gonna pass this on

to people who may not exist yet.

This art is rule driven.

Say someone says, "I want to be a poet,

but I don't really want to learn the alphabet

or syntax or grammar, anything like that,"

it's like, well, it's pretty hard to do that.

So you have to go through all these stages

of learning the rules

so that your poetry will mean something.

So when you do this art,

you have to go through all the basics

of how the rules apply and so forth.

And once you know the rules like that,

then you can become creative
and then you can design

and make things that are
original so you can be creative.

And a lot of times Western artists can't see that.

Seeing my grandfather at the kitchen table,

people coming by, different elders would come by

and they would talk history, culture.

And my grandmother always had
a cup of coffee in their hand.

And that's why even to this day,

I can drink coffee as late as
I want, just instilled in me.

My name is Richard Dalton III.

My Tlingit name is Teeykat

and I am T'akdeintaan from the Raven Nest House

and Chookaneidi Yeil, child of Chookaneidi.

I do a lot of form line design.

And since graduating from
the Art Institute of Seattle,

I started doing it more on the computer,

using vector programs like
Freehand and Adobe Illustrator.

Formline art to me and my people

is a way for us to tell our history,

the oral history of our people in past and present.

And it's important for us that we're able to do that

and distinguish different tribes,

like our Raven Moiety and our Eagle Moiety.

How did you learn how to do it?

Where are you drawing your inspiration from?

Do you know the difference
of the different moieties

and different clans and different objects

and elements of the design?

And like anything, you need
to learn how to do something,

how it was done before and where it came from

and the meaning so that you're just not copying

or duplicating without
knowledge or understanding.

I think that goes for any indigenous tribe.

These are some of the personal

and commercial designs I've done.

This one here is a Raven design.

The primary of the colors that I use,

black is always is my primary,

in our culture, red is our secondary

and the teal blue to green is our tertiary colors.

And keep in mind that a lot of these colors

weren't traditional to us.

Like a lot of the totem poles originally years ago

never had color.

A lot of the colors were created

and brought to us from Westerns.

Here is a good example of the process.

This past year, Goldbelt
had their 75th anniversary

of having the gold medal.

They gave me a design that an artist had did

and they wanted me to clean it up

and modify it so that they
could use it for silk screening,

embroidery, posters, you name it.

So coming from a commercial
graphic design background

and marketing, I was able to
take that design, redraw it out

and by vectorizing, it allows
my client to then take it

and print it at any size and
it's always crisp and clean.

When I went to the Art Institute of Seattle,

I was learning vector and
Photoshop and things like that,

and then I started vectorizing from that point on.

And I remember it was hard coming back home

'cause it was something new.

And I had to go through a lot of explaining how, well,

I still do my traditional hand drawing

'cause I think that's important,

and then I go through various stages

and then go to the computer

and then I've mastered that into my own form

and the process that I can get things done.

That sheet, but can we move this up a little bit more

and make it more of a curve on that side, and?

When I was questioned about it,

"Like why are you doing this?

Why are you doing the computer?"

Well, it would be like you getting a new steel blade

from some other store or state or country

that you invested into a new tool for your carving.

You invested a new sewing
machine to do your blanket.

You know, things like that,

that we have all of these tools available to us

and some people pick it up and some people don't.

So that was just to help make them understand

that I'm not just selling out per se to digital world,

but there is a process that I maintain

so that I had that history of art,

had that history of drawing

and conceptualizing before
jumping on the computer.

And what's nice about it is that with the new tools,

it has allowed us to turn
things around and share things.

And to take it even further,

this blanket was done through eighth generation

out of Seattle, Washington.

Would be like me developing a meme

where I took my blanket from
one of his photos that he had

and I threw it on there for a Yoda.

And that was just a fun thing to turn around.

It might have been Indigenous Day.

I was inspired a lot by my dad's books

that I read when I was young.

I had read that the Brooks Range

is the most uninhabited mountain range

in the United States.

And that just really spoke to me

and I wanted to go there and live there.

My home is located northwest of Fairbanks

up on Moose Mountain.

I'm away from the city lights,

so I have really good Aurora viewing up here.

I grew up in an area of Massachusetts

where the population density's pretty high.

And I always dreamed about what it would be like

to be out and live in the wilderness.

My dad died when he was 41

and my mom had five kids, and so she wasn't around much.

She was having to work to help support us.

And so we were raised very independently.

And so when I was 18,

I had already actually been on my own for a year

when I was 18 years old,

moved into an old abandoned mining cabin

that had no running water or electricity

right on the edge of the gates.

But for me it was absolutely magical,

to be living a dream like that

and learning what the wilderness had to teach.

I've always loved the night,
even when I was a little girl.

I love being out in the wilderness.

I am living my dream.

I can control my own schedule.

I get to see all kinds of
beautiful regions of Alaska.

For me, being out in nature under a star-filled sky,

I have kind of a profound sense

of connection and spirituality.

I feel connected to this vast universe.

There's oftentimes where I'm not photographing,

I will set my camera aside
and appreciate the moment.

It's a very important for me to be able to do that

so that I don't lose the joy.

One of my favorite images
is called "Wonderland."

It was captured right here in my yard.

I love how the moon is in the
scene illuminating the trees

that are covered in frost in November

and that the very subtle Aurora

coming through part halfway through the scene.

Here is called "Galactic Dreams."

And it's an image that has the
Milky Way running alongside

of the Aurora underneath and
Andromeda Galaxy as well.

And I have very, very few
images that include the Aurora

with the Milky Way and Andromeda Galaxy.

And the temperatures were
about 30 below that night.

This is kind of what's called an arctic entry,

where typically, you know,

people store all their arctic gear, snowshoes.

Tonight because it's warmer,

I definitely have my wools that I would put on

and a neck ring.

I like to wear a wool neck ring that I got in Iceland.

If it's a colder night, I go with my qiviut,

which is very lightweight and warm.

This is muskox wool.

It's one the warmest wool that you can buy.

On a, you know, cold night,

I have my fox hat that I like to wear

along with my beaver mittens,

which I wear over other mittens.

Tonight I would just be wearing

some simple little gloves like these

because I have access to my
fingers to photograph with.

It's the nice thing about fall

is you don't have to wear as much gear.

I would definitely wear a hat as well.

Frostbit can happen quickly
up here when temperatures are,

you know, say 40 below, I think it's like 10 seconds

for exposed skin to start to freeze.

You have to be very, very careful of that.

And I have been frostbit before.

So camera gear include plenty of hand warmers,

I always have at least two headlamps with me.

You know, the importance like,

when you're out on the cold temperatures,

bringing your camera gear
in, you have to think about,

you know, securing it in something

where a lot of moisture's not gonna develop.

So I myself like to wrap my cameras in down

and I will put 'em inside my pack

and then lay it on a like the cold floor

just so that they warm up slowly.

You have to be prepared for any type of condition.

There are things that happen unexpectedly,

road closures and you could be stuck out for a while.

People would say maybe it's a bit too much,

but I like to travel with firewood.

I have a saw, I have an ax, I have matches, lighters,

you know, a survival sleeping
bag that goes to 50 below.

Yeah, it's a lot of gear.

It takes a while, prepping for a trip.

Yeah, so this is my Aurora
nook in here is what I call it.

I have a nice sheep skin here, down sleeping bag,

first aid kit, spare tire, cooking utensils and food.

Little stove in here and also
pack water under the bed.

And one of the things I forgot to tell you about here

is I like to carry an inReach with me

because I am usually not in
an area that has reception,

and if there's any emergencies I can use this.

It has a little SOS button here

that kind of works off the satellites.

It depends on the temperatures,

but I do have another sleeping bag

that's a 40 to 50 below bag that I will throw in here

for when it gets a little bit colder.

My little pot for heating up water

and my tiny little cook stoves that I love

because if I am backpacking away from my van

and camping somewhere else,
this is what I'll take with me.

And this provides me a way to heat up water,

melt snow, make a hot cup of coffee, whatever it may be.

Nice and light and efficient.

But this is kind of my setup for fall right now.

I have a CB radio and an antenna

and I use that when I go up on the Dalton Highway

so that I can communicate with truckers

or anybody else on the road.

It's kind of an essential tool to have up there

because it's rough driving
conditions, things happen.

You need to know what's going on

and you need to be able to have and communicate.

Aurora photography is very technical.

There's so much to consider

when you are out photographing, you know,

'cause the Aurora is changing
its brightness constantly,

you're having to check your exposure,

your composition and at night,
that can be challenging,

as well as being prepared for the elements,

which can be quite challenging.

You know, when you're out in, you know,

sub-zero temperatures and making sure

that you know you're gonna keep yourself safe

and you're gear protected.

I work very hard at what I do
that to see something payoff

and that people appreciate it.

One of the apps that I like to use is called Windy.

It's fairly accurate.

This is commonly used by bush pilots here in Alaska.

This is showing the wind direction too.

Right now we don't have really any stars.

Doesn't mean that it's gonna push out

and be clear here any minute.

Or we could drive up the road

and see what it looks like.

To go a little bit further in this direction

is what I would do

and see if we can catch any clear spots up here.

The 30% cloud cover in that area.

So we're gonna go check it out.

Clouds have kind of been our ending lately.

As soon as you make it,
slowly started to disintegrate,

the best you can hope are good pictures of it.

Hi, my name's Heather Brice and I'm Steve's wife.

I have been carving ice for 27 years.

I have 11 world championship titles.

I transitioned from wood and
bronze to ice when I met Steve.

My name is Steve Brice, a 30 year ice carver.

Welcome to our workshop here
at Chino Hot Spring, Aurora.

Ice, oh, excuse me, Ice Museum.

- The Aurora Ice Museum.
- Yeah.

This is where we make all the parts and pieces

that are gonna go inside of the Ice Museum here.

So if I'm redoing a room or redoing a sculpture,

maybe about 90% of the time it'll be done in this area.

We've carved all over the world.

Probably the best location though

is here in Fairbanks, Alaska,

where the weather is always cold and predictable,

fairly predictable anyway.

If it's too cold, if it's too warm,

it becomes a severe challenge.

Pretty much other forms of sculpture,

you know you can control your atmosphere,

but a lot of ice events,

you have very little control over the weather.

Sad fact is some of our best
stuff never got great pictures.

Photographs make it a little easier

to know that it's gonna be destroyed.

It's the actual making of it
which is the creative process

that gets you addicted to doing ice.

The art is in the making.

The temporary aspect is part of the allure,

I think, especially for the public,

that it's only there for a fleeting time.

Has to be enjoyed immediately.

When two people are doing a piece, if you get stuck,

the other person can come over and see it easily.

Yeah, he does a lot of the big ice removal,

a lot of the bigger shaping.

I love fine tuning and really making the surfaces

and the textures and just the
really ornate detail pop in.

If either of us gets stuck,

it's because we're looking at it too much

and the other person's not looking at it so much.

They can come and see exactly what needs to happen.

And we help each other out with that all the time.

Really drawing as well

as a child, my aunt was really integral

in doing fun projects with us, my sister and I.

And I got started in like shop

and sculpture pretty early
in my elementary education.

And I love to pull inspiration from movies I've seen,

from children's books especially.

I love to create animals doing human things,

just a little bit whimsical.

The magic comes from the last two to 3% of what you do.

You know, you can sit there and do a scene

and run out of time and it is good,

but to turn it into magic,

you've gotta push it past an incredible level.

To become an ice sculptor,

it's advisable to go to an ice company

and ask if you can get hired

and acquire a few rudimentary tools

and take it from there.

A lot of sculptors can get a little bit experience

through the culinary field.

They go to chef school and
they learn how to do tabletops

and ice trays and shrimp trays and things like that.

In a heavy equipment accident,

I've not been a a painter or a drawer since

and I've been pretty much 95% ice ever since that

because when I put gloves on, I don't notice

that I'm missing half of my left hand or my left thumb.

Oh yeah, Bethel, I don't
think they have any electricity.

And I'm like, "What?"

Actually, my senior year in college,

I was trying to figure out what to do

and I decided to join Peace Corps VISTA program,

and initially I was going in
the Peace Corps to go abroad,

and then I heard too many horror stories

and so I decided to do VISTA,

which is Volunteers In Service To America.

I had a choice, I could go to Apopka, Florida

or Fairbanks, Alaska.

Now, Apopka is maybe less than 30 minutes

from my parents' house.

And I thought, oh my gosh,

I didn't join this program to be so close to home.

So I thought, well, I guess I'm going to Bethel, Alaska.

I talked to my college roommate, said, "Oh my god, Kathy,

I'm going to Bethel, Alaska."

And she said, "Oh, oh, there's someone on my floor

that's from Alaska, let
me ask him about it."

And she comes back and she says, "Oh yeah, Bethel,

I don't think they have any electricity."

And I'm like, "What?"

And well, what happened was the power plant

had burned down in Bethel like, a couple years prior.

And so that's what that person was remembering.

My name is Corlis Taylor.

I've lived in Alaska for 45 years

and I've been in Fairbanks for about 33 years.

I retired in 2020, and up until then,

I was working full-time and doing artwork part-time.

Both my grandparents were seamstresses,

my grandfather was a tailor,

and so there were always sewing machines around.

My mother and my grandmother

made all of my clothes growing up.

Didn't have my first dress
that was purchased at a store

until I was a sophomore in high school.

And I was out in Bethel,

I decided, okay, I need to figure out something to do.

So I thought, you know, I'm
gonna teach myself how to quilt.

And so I bought a book and taught myself to quilt

and made my first quilt.

And a friend saw it and
said, "Can you make me one?"

I'm like, "Okay."

So then I made my second quilt

and then just started making quilts.

I could make something really
incredible and wear it.

And so somebody was coming from California

to teach this wearable art
class at our local quilt store.

And so I took that class

and just kind of took off from there.

It just became my new love

because it was just being a way

to be really creative using fabric.

Yes, I call myself an artist.

I know that there's, in the art world, there's a lot of,

controversy might be a strong word,

but between craft and art.

I think this is a combination of craft and art.

Painters have this palette
of all these different colors

and they mix, you know, blue
and green or yellow and orange.

You know, they're mixing these colors

to come up with a new color.

Well, I'm doing the same thing with fabric.

You know, I will take a red fabric and a green fabric

and mix them together in a garment.

And this is the fabric that I chose

for the lining for this garment.

I usually start off with one piece of fabric

that I look at that I really love,

and then I take that one piece of fabric

and I look at it

and see what other colors are in that fabric

and then start collecting other pieces of fabric

that go with that one piece.

But I start off with the focal, my focal fabric.

I always start off by cutting a muslin.

And so this is my piece that I am building on.

I like to use anywhere from eight to 10,

15 different fabrics.

So I will probably pull out this kind of a turquoise,

deep turquoise greenish blue color fabric

to add to this collection.

As I said, you know,

painters have their different colors of paints,

they have the canvas that they are painting on,

they're using their different sizes

and shapes of brushes to make the strokes.

And so for me and for making wearable art,

this is my canvas.

So this white fabric here is the canvas

on which I'm building up all of my color.

Of course I'm influenced by the supply of fabric

that's here in town.

But then whenever I travel,

like I was just in Florida last week visiting my mom

where I'm from and we went to the fabric store

and I bought more fabric.

And so whenever I travel,

I'm getting fabrics and bringing back to my studio.

So my garments tend to be very wearable

as opposed to something that's more gallery art.

There are garments that are in galleries

and they're very, very elaborate kinds of things.

2015 or 2016, somewhere in there,

we had our first show in California.

When I see it on the runway, when a model is wearing it,

my first thought is,

wow, that looks really good on her.

And then my second thought is, oh my gosh,

I should have done something
a little bit different.

Oh, I should have had that fabric,

instead of having it there,
I should have had it there

or maybe I could have done.

You know, we always are self critiquing of what we do,

and when I sell garments and people buy them

and I see them wearing it, there's a little piece of me

that's sad because I like it so much

and I'm like, oh my gosh,

I really wanted to keep that, but I sold it,

and then part of me is just really, I don't know,

proud I guess is a word to use,
that someone liked my stuff,

liked my work enough not only did they buy it

and take it home, but they're wearing it out in public.

I am really proud when I see this airplane,

to see how it's impacted people
and in particular in Alaska.

People are really proud of the Xaat Kaani livery,

the first commercial aircraft

to be named in an indigenous word,

Xaat Kwaani are the Salmon people.

Nowadays there is a Tlingit word for art

and it's called, it's a new term.

It translates to the happening
of a significant event.

The is connected to who we are

and to our past.

And the
is showing that we still exist

and live in a modern day and we can have our language

and speak our language and bring in

and introduce new words in
our language if we need to.

And it's a part of how we are adapting

to the modern day and moving forward.

Introducing myself how my grandmother taught me.

My Tlingit name is Kaakeeyaa

and my English name is Crystal
Worl, a Raven Sockeye Clan.

I am Deg Hit'an Athabascan from my mother's side,

and I am Tlingit and Filipino from my father's side.

I am doing a lot of public
art, murals, large scale work.

I also do painting and
printmaking and graphic design,

co-owner and co-designer of Trickster Company

with my brother Rico.

We are an indigenous graphic
design art gift shop online.

I think I'm really blessed to have a family

that really nurtured my
creativity from a young age.

My grandmother has stories of recognizing

that I was gonna be an artist from a very young age

and she said that I would be
running around like a spazz

and the thing that would stop me in my tracks

was very vibrant, bold patterns and colors.

And then my mother never scolded me

for drawing on the walls.

To this day, I'm still drawing on walls.

We've been doing art well before art was a word.

We were creating a means to pass on information

to the next generation,
whether it be for our regalia

so that we could recognize each other

and know which clan someone was from

so that we know how to address them and care for them,

or libraries encoded in our totem poles

and our longhouses and our canoes or our paddles.

All of these are encoded with our cultural values,

our stories that belong to particular clans.

Designs that I do are formline, which is specific

to the Tlingit Haida and
Tsimshian tribes in Alaska

and throughout BC.

Formline is probably most
recognized by totem poles, canoes,

longhouse frontlets, and our Chilkat that we weave.

I think formline art comes from

and belongs to indigenous people,

and specifically the Tlingit Haida and Tsimshian.

For the most part, I think that formline

should be carried by our people.

Just like our ancestors, they adapted to the time.

What was modern and contemporary for them

may be what is traditional for us now.

And so moving forward and continuing,

being innovative and adaptable

and being able to change with times is significant,

while still simultaneously
being rooted in knowing

who you are, where you're from, and what does that mean.

And so that's why I say a lot

of indigenous people live in two worlds

because we're connected to our ancestors, our land,

the animals that we harvest,
that we've always harvested

from the past to the future generations

and our obligations to pass all that information

and also to the present and
living and being here and now

and existing as innovative
and creative indigenous people

that are thriving and speaking our language.

I was interviewed in "Alaska
Business Monthly" magazine

for my art.

At the same time, Marilyn Romano,

who is the vice president of Alaska Airlines,

had proposed that the new livery get painted

by an indigenous Alaskan artist.

And the mail woman comes into her office

and puts this magazine on her desk.

And I'm on the cover with my
art, and she reads the article

and she says, "I want her to do it."

Coincidentally, three years prior,

I had superimposed my artwork onto a Boeing 737.

I had been wanting to see
an Alaska Airlines airplane

designed by an Alaska Native.

So Marilyn Romano calls me and says,

"Hello Crystal Worl, is this you?"

And I'm like, "Yes."

"Wanted to talk to you about designing an airplane."

I saw your article

on the 'Alaska Business Monthly' magazine,

and I wanted to ask you if you'd be interested

"in designing an airplane
for Alaska Airlines."

I can't say no.

I'm really proud when I see this airplane

and to see how it's impacted
people throughout the globe.

I have memories of being a baby and in a crib

and looking up at a Audubon bird poster.

I'm Linda Infante Lyons and I am a painter.

Grew up here in Anchorage, Alaska,

and a lot of my inspiration
comes from the island of Kodiak

where my mother and grandmother
and great-grandmother,

my Alutiiq Alaska Native family

goes back 4,000 or more years.

I was always drawing and drawing on furniture

and getting in trouble, you
know, for drawing too much.

So I've always, always loved art.

Really what I'm trying to do is taking what I see

and then trying to express how I feel.

So it's important to me that
the paintings or the drawings,

mostly paintings now, show or express the feeling

that I get when I see these things out in the world.

My grandmother from Kodiak,
she was very inspirational.

I know that she did some drawing and painting,

but she was a very busy woman.

She raised a lot of children

and I don't think she had the chance

to develop her art career,

but I know that she's very creative.

She also was in love

with her natural surroundings in Kodiak,

and we spent a lot of time on the beaches,

beach combing and fishing and berry picking.

You know, she taught us names of the flowers,

how to tie a hook so you could fish.

My Kodiak grandmother was sort of that seed

of creativity since I was really young.

My portraits now are inspired by icons.

So in a sense they're symbols.

I'm not really picking out
the individual expression,

but something that's more universal.

And these portraits are of Alaska native women.

I am trying to show them as symbols

of that expresses the authority
and spirit of these women

and their attachment to the land.

This is a work in progress icon portrait.

She's looking out into the
world, proclaiming the authority

that she has from millennia of living on the land.

To me, women are very important.

I came from a long line of very strong women,

very inspired by my grandmother,
inspired by my mother.

I have three daughters.

I also saw through my grandmother

how much she was the glue of the family.

She was the energy and the
one that had all the stories

and things that I needed to know as a child.

One of the things that really inspired me

is the Alutiiq mass

and a lot of Alaska native
mass have a central figure

and then they have an array around the head.

This concept is I think very similar aligns with,

you know, Christian beliefs
and Russian Orthodox Church,

very prominent in Kodiak.

My ancestors lived through
the Russian colonization

and my great-grandmother,
she spoke Russian and Alutiiq

and didn't speak English.

So, that history is very close.

I was participating in exhibits

called "Decolonizing Alaska,"

in which the artists were asked
to think about decolonizing

and how to sort repair some of the damage to culture,

Alaska Native culture, how to move forward, you know,

as a living culture and taking those pieces

that were often repressed, elevating them,

and in my mind, elevating the Alutiiq culture

and just melding it with Russian Orthodox

or Christian or just in general Western.

In other words, showing that
the Alaska Native culture

can be seen as equal as the Western.

I like the idea of instead of
decolonizing, indigenizing,

you know, raising up, making aware to the world,

you know, this very rich culture and history.

Like any art work,

as you create the work you discover new things,

things that you hadn't planned on doing,

and you actually learn

from creating the actual artwork,

teaches you new things or
leads you on different paths.

It's not a purposeful message,

it is a message that seems to grow over time

and then it becomes relevant

with what's happening in the world now.

And there's a lot of connections
that happen as you go.

There's also more subtle, you know,

messages or the imagery

can really start a conversation or an emotion.

You know, if someone can see
my work or other artist' work

and stop for a minute

and think about what they're
seeing and how they feel,

they may come away with a different idea or feeling,

but it opens your mind and
your heart to something new.

You are in the University
of Alaska Museum of the North

in Fairbanks, Alaska.

I'm Aldona Jonaitis

and I am the retired director of the University

of Alaska Museum of the North.

The museum has artwork that is contemporary,

middle 19th century, very
ancient, and some that is modern.

And this is one of our oldest pieces.

It's called the "Okvik Madonna."

It's about 2,000 years old, give or take.

And it is not the "Madonna," it's made of walrus ivory.

The Inupiat, who are the group of people in the north

who carved this, we assume,

have a story of the Mother of the Animals.

The Mother of the Animals is a being

from whom all the animals of the world emerge.

As you can see, there is a
little creature on her stomach

as she's holding this little creature

that probably is a seal.

Then if you look at her face, look at that smile,

this Mona Lisa's smile, that
piece is carved so exquisitely

with stone tools.

A little anecdote about this

is that when I came for a job
interview here 35 years ago,

I was walking through,

'cause I'm a Native American art historian,

so I've lectured a lot about Native American art,

and I walked to the gallery and I said,

'cause I had taught this many times at the beginning

of my class I said, "You have the 'Okvik Madonna'?

I wanna be in a museum that
has the 'Okvik Madonna.'"

And here I am.

This is another remarkable piece of ingenuity.

This artist who made this was the Siberian Yup'ik.

This is a gut parka.

It is made of seal gut, women gut seal gut, cut it,

opened it and sewed it together,

decorating it with feathers and teeth.

It is completely waterproof.

It is actually used.

It is used as the hunters go on the ice.

This piece, it's beautiful,

not only to us and to the Siberian Yup'ik,

it's beautiful to the animals.

So you are honoring them by making an artwork

that you're wearing when
you're going to harvest them.

And of course you always ask the animal,

"I would like to take your life away,

but I thank you for
allowing me to do that."

This metal piece is intended
to look like whale bones,

which the northern people use for food.

I have been showing you

what one might call traditional indigenous art,

art made by Alaskan natives.

This is a work

by a contemporary Tlingit woman called My Face.

The blue is a very rich, deep blue

that is a color that is very common in Tlingit art,

in painting, and a lot of other things.

These items represented how much wealth you have.

But of course what we wanna look at

is her bursting out of this background.

She's bursting out not of her culture,

this woman is very connected to her culture,

but she's bursting out of the constraints

that some people have saying,
"If you are a native person,

you have to make traditional art."

Of course it's indigenous art.

This was made by the Tlingit.

Photography has been around Alaska

since it was brought by the Russians.

The oldest photograph that's in the archives

of the state is from 1868

and it was made by Eadweard Muybridge

who photographed sequential
shots of horses running

to prove that when a horse
gallops it's off the ground.

Artists his still as studies of humans walking.

This is the Roseberry Gallery.

I'm a photographer, I've taught photography here

at the university for 35 years,

and we're headed over to see a man

who was a good friend of mine,
he died about 12 years ago,

who was responsible for all the photography

here at the museum, for the collection.

His name is Barry McWayne
and this is some of his work,

some of his landscape work in Alaska.

He was, you know, out of the film era

before digital photography,
though he transitioned himself.

But he was sort of like Alaska's Ansel Adams out

with a big format camera

doing large format landscape work.

And he put together this huge collection of images

that we now are seeing some work out of here today.

I think without Barry,

there are a lot of photographers in this state

who would've never sold a picture

and never had their work in a museum

or been inspired to do a solo show

or get into the community of photography.

I understand that there are
1,400 plus photographs now,

and that it's about a third of the entire collection

that the museum draws from for this gallery

and has in its storage.

So we're talking close to 5,000 pieces of sculpture,

native arts, photography,
paintings, everything, all arts.

You know, photography's kind of, it's one of those arts

that people still say, "Well,
there's photography in art,"

you know, because it's got a craft side to it,

it's got an informational side,

it's done in photojournalism,
it's done as home portraits.

So there's a lot of photography that's not art.

Mostly if you do a painting on the wall,

that's considered art right off the bat.

Photography has always had
this chip on its shoulder

and also this identity from other artists

as is it an art or not?

Photography has often been a minor part

of museums collections 'cause it wasn't as valuable.

Edward Weston, Ansel Adams,
those guys were getting hundreds

of dollars per print back in the '60s.

If you have a Weston "Pepper Number 30" now,

it's worth millions.

So photography is coming to its
own as being a valuable art,

which helps 'cause when the
marketplace identifies something

as an art, it's an art.

Of course photography is art, it's self expression,

it's emotional, it's craft,

it's all those things that go into any art.

These are from a reindeer herding series

that I did outta Nome, Alaska.

Reindeer were brought to Alaska

by a guy named Sheldon Jackson
back in the late 1800s.

Now what he saw was that a lot of native communities

were being made to settle into villages

and they had been nomadic,
they'd followed caribou around.

These people have meat, fur, leather, you know,

the resources that an animal like this gives.

So he brought reindeer from
Siberia where there were herds,

reindeer and caribou

are genetically the same animal pretty much.

But these are domesticated animal

and I shot these back in 1990,

just the year I started
teaching here at the university.

This work is by an amazing
photographer named Jim Barker,

who's in his 80s now, and he lived in Bethel, Alaska,

which is out in western Alaska.

It's a little hub community,
a mostly native community,

and he made these spectacular photographs

of the subsistence lifestyle out there.

He lived in a community for 12 years

working at the radio station, reading the news,

selling local photographs
and things like that in order

to produce this incredibly
important historic document.

These are people dragging in a beluga whale,

this is a young girl getting her hair fixed amongst,

two young girls getting their hair fixed amongst,

I mean, I couldn't walk in there

and not know these people and shoot this image.

It shows his acceptance by the community,

which is so important in documentary photography.

My name's Jovell.

I'm a full-time creative
working artist photographer.

When I'm not doing photography full-time,

I'm here at the gallery
doing anything from sweeping,

mopping, putting shows on.

Whatever needs to be done, I do it.

I came from Trinidad and Tobago

and moved to Alaska as a baby,

but my family is still West
Indian, we're still Caribbean.

My dad is incredibly supportive, I love my father.

My auntie also cool, but she's still asking me

when I'm gonna go back to school.

You know, I'm 32, I've had this gallery for seven years

and every year she keeps telling me, "Well, you know,

it's not too late to go
back and get a real job."

What I felt was a need in the community

for accessible art spaces.

Growing up in Anchorage, Alaska, I loved it,

but I didn't feel like there were a ton of spaces

for creatives, especially creatives

who were emerging to play or exhibit their work

or really sort of developed their skills.

I decided to build something
myself with a couple of friends

and so we built Akela Space, the gallery.

The gallery was started as a place

where emerging artists could showcase their work

and sort of get a feel for if they wanted

to be full-time creatives or full-time artists.

We built a studio in the back of the gallery,

somewhere where we could do

our commercial photography and videography

and do some more of that work

to help keep the lights on
in the place in early years.

I don't know that I would say
I'm a mentor for some artists.

I think that the older I get,

the more I feel like I'm
slipping into that mentor role.

You can't be the guy forever,

nor should you try to be the guy forever.

I think at a certain point, we have to step

into that uncle or auntie role in the community

and I think the gray hair in my beard

is telling me that I'm getting there.

I was in high school and I was playing football,

not very well, I was terrible at football,

but I would take photos of the junior varsity games

and then over time, those same
athletes would come up to me

and say, "Hey man, can you
take my picture off the field?"

So we would run around town, you know,

we'd go to like a cool building

or we'd go to the top of a rooftop or silly stuff

and we would just take fun
pictures and make fun images.

I grew up very introverted,

so photography allowed me
to kind of go back and forth

between participant and observer.

So when I wanted to be included

and wanted to be a part of the fun,

I could be a participant, I could take those photos,

but when I was nervous or maybe I felt like I needed

to go back into my shell a little bit,

I could switch modes and go back into observer mode

and still be in that same room.

It felt good to give people images

that they could see themselves in and feel proud.

So I think everybody's beautiful.

I think being photogenic is more of a mind state

than it is any physical attribute.

I often joke with people that
the key to being photogenic

or the key to confidence in photos

is to pretend that you are an ugly boy.

You know, if you ever walk into a bar or nightclub,

it's always the ugliest boy who is trying to flirt

with the prettiest person in the room.

That ugly boy has the most
confidence out of anybody.

A lot of the work that we tend to show in the space

tends to be from artists

who are from a marginalized community of some sort,

and that isn't always intentional,

but we want to give the opportunities

to the people who we feel don't
get them as often as others.

Very rare that I feel like a photo that I make is good.

A lot of times I don't question

why my eye is drawn to something.

I just say, "Well, let me get this photo

and I'll figure out why later."

Creativity is a tool that we use

to better understand ourselves.

The creation of that, I think oftentimes

is just for that same end goal,

to better understand ourselves,

the roles that we may play in community,

how we fit in with the world around us.

I think a lot of that stuff

is just trying to take things that are in your head

and get 'em out into the world and make sense of them.

It's up to you as the creator, as the artist to decide,

is this something deeply personal

that I want to keep for myself,

or is this something that I
wanna share with the world?

I believe that good art

should be a catalyst for conversation.

I feel like good art should be polarizing.

After viewing a piece or after consuming art,

you should be so motivated to speak on it,

whether that be that you love it so much

that you need to tell somebody

or you hate it so much that you need to tell somebody.

Good art should drive you to
one of those sides of the fence

and spark that conversation

because if we feel moved to talk about something,

now we're talking to each other,

now we're talking with our neighbors,

now we're talking with community members

that we might not have had a
conversation with otherwise.

We don't only show art that we like

or that we think is cool in this space.

We show art that we think is
going to incite a conversation.

We show art that we think the community

is gonna respond to in one way or another,

and they're gonna keep the conversation going.

At that point, once you put it out into the world,

you can no longer dictate
what the world does with it.

It just has to spread like wildfire.

This current generation of
artists I think is so talented

and one of the things that I
really appreciate about them

is that they have so many tools at their disposal.

I often say that it should take them half as long

to get twice as good,

because the things that I
had in terms of photography,

I didn't have a lot of money growing up,

I had the penny pension save to get my first cameras.

My first cameras were often hand-me-downs

and things that I just borrowed.

But nowadays, we've got so many incredible tools

for creativity in our pocket.

You know, I'm hoping that we can get back to a place

where creativity comes first
and expression comes first.

To provide equipment that people
can use, they can learn on,

they can practice on without
having to break the bank.

If art is your calling

and if it's what you wanna do
for a living, yes, pursue it.

You will have to figure out
how to do the business side.

But I would hope that these emerging artists

and artists who have been in the game for a while

are still taking time to create for themselves,

for that intrinsic value and can find some space

to think about things other than their finances.

I moved here about nine years ago.

I drove up from San Diego to Skagway,

came up just for like a summer job,

and I had no idea I would end up in Anchorage.

It was sort of like, like,

okay, let's see what happens from here.

I really love the small community here.

I love how like, we're all just really connected.

That makes me feel like at home.

So my name is Rejoy Armamento.

I am an illustrator and a muralist.

My dad, he is, you know, he's an artist.

He's always just like drawing things,

making things, building things.

And then also my mom,

she was like really into decorating the house,

and so I was like surrounded
by just like being in spaces

where base was very like conscious,

just, I like to do a lot of freestyling.

I like where it can take me

and then I like to listen to the piece

and sometimes it will just
dictate where it should go,

and then I get excited.

I think I notice like when I'm really excited

and I just see things come together

and I realize, oh yeah, that's an art piece for me.

I love being the observer,

just kind of like watching things,

visiting places and seeing patterns

like on the street or something like that.

It's like the outside world,

another big inspiration is like my internal world.

I'm a very spiritual person
and I'm very introspective,

so I feel like my inspiration,

it kind of comes from sort of like,

I don't know, it could be ancestral

or just sort of like the subconscious

just sort of inspiring my work.

Because you know, it's a dialogue.

Like you sometimes you don't even know,

you don't realize what you're making

and then you know, people just tell you like,

what's going on, then you realize it.

But a lot of people say

that my art is very playful and childlike,

the kind of emotion that I like to convey,

like a sense of aliveness.

I'm mostly self-taught.

I went to school for a graphic design,

but I took like, you know,

a few drawing and painting classes.

So all the paints were like, you know,

but everything that I know
is pretty much just through,

I dunno, learning from YouTube

or like just observing things and trying 'em out.

I've also learned a lot from
the people in my community too.

If I don't know something, I
like to ask another artist,

like for advice on how to approach things.

One of my first murals is
a Hunter S. Thompson mural

for this dispensary downtown.

That was my first commissioned piece.

So it was like, "Ooh," you know, it was a pretty big deal.

It's still one of my favorites

because I feel like it
definitely represents my style.

I love portraits, he's like smoking a cigarette.

I just remember having so much fun

playing around with the smoke,

like just make it look very psychedelic.

My style is very fluid and fun.

"On the sacred spirit land of Yaokwa

just off the island of Bellicher stood a man

draped head to toe in a thick black tunic

with a wooden Kushtaka mask covering his face.

The mask was painted a bright red

and showed a hand reaching
out of the mouth of an otter

as a human was being devoured.

Yaokwa was the place of
creation for the Klagook tribe,

the land that humans were not allowed to enter,

but no one had seen the
spirits outside of the stories

"in a long time."

When I was in high school,

I walked my younger brother to school

there in the mornings and back home,

and it was kind of a long walk

and trying to like keep his attention,

especially in the winter it's cold.

And so I started just telling him a story.

So every day I would tell him a little bit more

of the story, talking about
a young boy who was Tlingit,

who was around his age

and it was a fantasy one where he has these powers

and he's going on an adventure,

and my brother really enjoyed that.

He'd get excited too, we'd start to walk home,

he's like, "All right, what happened now?"

So that's really how that one started.

For me, I'm writing it as an analogy

for racism and discrimination

and it centers in a fictionalized
southeast Alaska setting,

which is something, another
big part of all my writing

is that I want representation.

I want to see more of who I am and who our people are

and I think that's the most
important thing on writing

is write something that you would wanna read.

I also like that you can just go in

and read it at not as deep of a level

and then you still enjoy it

and you can get entertainment from like,

what's gonna happen next to this character?

So I like telling stories
that work in multiple ways.

As a writer, this is things that I work through

and that I learn and that I
can express through my writing.

But on the other hand,

that's also what readers are looking for.

And as a reader who loves fantasy and young adults

and high fantasy, these are
always the kind of stories

that I wanted to see more of,

and so that's why I write them.

I wanna be able to put out
the things that want to read

and be able to normalize

and have more representation for us

and especially normalizing,

there's a lot of Tlingit language in my novel,

and so normalizing the use of it

and putting it in is really important to me.

My name is Kaasteen, my second
Tlingit name is S'xeinda. at,

my English name is Katelynn
Drake, but I go by Kaasteen.

I am Tlingit and I am a
member of the Chookaneidi Clan

and on my father's side,

I'm a daughter of the Inupiaq people.

But I am from Hoonah, but I grew up

splitting my time really between Anchorage,

Juneau, and Hoonah.

It was a mix of bouncing between places.

Most of my summers were spent
between Juneau and Hoonah

and my family comes from Hoonah, we have a long line

and that is also what feeds into my storytelling

is there's so much history here and our family,

we have a long line of fishermen and artists

and storytellers and that all comes through

and really storytelling is so important

to us as Tlingit people.

Some of the earliest inspirations, I would say,

my Tlingit names for example,
even they are rooted in story

'cause stories are so powerful.

My name, Kaasteen, the story of that one

depicts how us as Chookaneidi actually journeyed

from where we were originally from in Glacier Bay

to how we came here to Hoonah.

Stories like that are a history for us,

they record that for us

and they tell the story of where we come from

and who we are.

Here are some of my pieces that I've made

and all of them have a story to them.

This is a drum that I made for my auntie.

I wanted to depict her and her family.

Because we're Chookaneidi, our crests,

our main one is Eagle and we have different crests

or Octopus, Eagle, Porpoise.

And so in this one particularly,

I was telling the story of her and her family.

So up here we have my aunt
depicted as the mother octopus

and both of her daughters

who she's carrying in her tentacles here.

She's holding up both daughters

and then down here her youngest is,

her son is a little porpoise.

And so I wanted this drum to
show her how I see her family

and her caring and supporting her children

and being that mother.

Recently, actually last year,

started kind of venturing a little bit

and trying my hand at making regalia.

This was a vest that I had made.

You can see I have a eagle here, there's some seaweed,

can't see it, but I have a bear on the back,

and all of it just to show who I am.

It is facing the water

so that any visitors
approaching from the waterside

would be able to tell that this Xunaa Shuka Hit

belongs to all of these people.

This house, Xunaa Shuka
Hit, represents the homeland

that we all came from and is now our homeland,

which is now being taken care of

by the National Park Service.

The purpose of this house

is to have a footprint back
in our home that we had left

because of the glacier that advanced upon us.

Kaach Yaas, Chookaneidi,.

Gordon Greenwald, my English name,

Kaach Yaas from Huna Kaawu or Huna Lands.

This screen represents the four clans

and their homelands and why they left.

You have the T'aakdeintaan people in Lituya Bay,

their homeland, and the glacier
in the head of Lituya Bay

and the numerous tsunamis
that washed through Lituya Bay

that washed the people out.

Though the T'aakdeintaan no
longer live in Lituya Bay,

their canoe is still anchored
and you see Mount Fairweather,

the mother mountain to the T'aakdeintaan people

and all of the Huna people.

As you go along, you see the spirit of the glacier

that was called down because of disrespect

and crushed the houses and the villages

of the other three clans of Huna people.

And you have Kaasteen, a young lady

that was in seclusion at the time,

and you'll see, look at her eyes,

you'll see the glacier reflecting in her eyes

as it's coming forward.

One of the oral history was
that Kaasteen was left behind

because of her actions

and the T'aakdeintaan people covered her

and gave her many sea otter robes to stay warm.

They left Glacier Bay and went to Chah-nulth.

And you have the spirit of the cliff

that they built their fort up on.

The Kaagwaantaan people brought us copper.

So you'll see the copper shield here.

The Kaagwaantaan canoe with
the wolf and the brown bear

is still anchored in Chah-nulth,

though they live in Hoonah also.

The Wooshkeetaan people,
when they left Glacier Bay,

went to what we now call
Excursion Inlet and built a fort.

Then you see up here in the middle,

there's a canoe with people

and all the people have their
paddles raised except for one

for when we come to a new village site

or another village site, we
drift offshore with our canoes.

We raise our paddles, may we come ashore?

I come as your friend, I have no weapons.

That represents all the other
people, whomever they are.

They come to our homeland as our friends.

This kooteeyaa that we have is
representing the Eagle clans

that are currently in Hoonah.

Hoonah originally had three Eagle clans

that came out of Glacier Bay.

These other clans are currently in Hoonah

and have become members of our community.

You have the Thunderbird of the Shangukeidee,

then you have the Brown Bear people,

you have the Shark people,
then you have the Porpoise,

the Chookaneidi people,

and then you have the Kaagwaantaan people.

Then you'll see on the kooteeyaa, the orator.

That is the one that passes on

all of our historical information
that must be passed to us

as we go from generation to generation.

The second kooteeyaa here is
representing the Raven people

that are now in Hoonah.

So we have the black-footed kittiwake down here

representing the T'aakdeintaan
people, my father's people.

You have the Dog Salmon,

the L'eeneidi that are also in Hoonah now.

The Kaach. adi, the Land Daughter people

that are in Hoonah and have
been for many generations.

You have the Deisheetaan, the Beaver people

that are now in Hoonah, the Koowu,

the L'uknax. adi people that are in Hoonah,

Taakw. aaneidi, the Sea Lion people,

the Woodworm people that are
in Hoonah, the Frog people,

the Kiks. adi people.

And then you see on the pole there are singers

that sing our songs and then you have the Ravens.

It's hard for me to imagine that people don't think

of indigenous cultures within Alaska

as a very living and vibrant culture

because I just see it everywhere in Alaska

and see the culture blooming
in very different ways,

whether that's through the dance
form, through the art form,

through the language acquisition.

Definitely feels like I have
been witness to a renaissance

of Alaska Native culture within Alaska.

My name is Da-ka-xeen Mehner.

I was born and raised here in Fairbanks,

but I actually grew up in
both Fairbanks and Anchorage.

I don't feel like I particularly have a medium,

but looking for work that
addresses the issues of the day.

Now growing it up in Fairbanks and small cabins,

drawing was my general pastime.

So this is referred to as a moon mask,

kind of the face in the center

and the outside representing the moon.

I'll eventually get in some more detail

that shows the rays coming off of there.

It's made from yellow cedar

and it was a mask that I'd
started a number of years ago.

You know, I am Tlingit and so I quite often defer back

to the black and red as primary and tertiary colors,

but sometimes I just like to play around

and see what colors will work with what.

I leave people with questions.

Hopefully they have a little more thoughts

about the world around us and
have some maybe investigation

that they would like to do after seeing my work.

I feel like my work

really just represents my own perspective,

but I do, I guess enjoy examining power structures

in the world and reflecting
on how those power structures

influence indigenous communities.

You know, that beginning exploration of drawing,

it was a place to find worlds outside

of the ones that I knew and I think the arts have a way

of transporting people, whether
you're a maker or a viewer.

Teach at the University of Alaska Fairbanks

in the Native Arts Center.

It's a program that started
in 1965 by Ronald Senungetuk,

so we're coming up on our 60th
anniversary of the program.

It's a very unique program where we are able

to offer degrees in native
arts in the BFA and MFA level.

The importance of the indigenous arts program

or the native arts program
that we have at the university

really shows a commitment by the institution

that this form is valuable
within an institutional program

to be able to share it in a way that is formalized.

I think it's very valuable

to be able to kind of pass on
knowledge within this form,

but then also be able to give students a degree

that then they can move on into
a professional career with.

I always tell people, "It's easy to teach technique."

"It's hard to teach creativity," right?

And so I think that's one of the keys in the program

is being able to unlock people's creativity,

and I'm not sure if I really teach creativity,

but how to unlock other people's creativity.

We've had students from around the state, of course,

we get a lot of students from Western Alaska,

Northern Alaska and the interior of Alaska.

We've had students from Southeast Alaska.

The program is fairly popular
with international students,

so we get a lot of students

from Sweden and Norway and Japan.

Really interesting seeing

kind of maybe that global perspective

within the classroom experience.

A lot of our students or alumni go on

to just be practicing artists, you know,

effectively becoming a single
owner business and working.

We've got artists that are
showing all over Alaska right now

or alumni from the program that
are showing all over Alaska

and sometimes out of state in Santa Fe,

across the United States
in different exhibitions.

It's really interesting seeing how many students

that have left the program
do become teachers themselves

and kind of this cyclical
passing on of information

that I feel like the new generation

is so much more well equipped than I was.

There are many more opportunities
now to study language,

there are many more opportunities
to study dance forms,

there's so many more opportunities
to study visual art forms

that I felt like when I was coming up,

unless you were working directly
with an individual artist

as a master apprentice,

there weren't really many
opportunities to take a course

and learn any of those things.

It's a moon mask with yellow cedar.

It was one I started a little while ago,

so it's nice to maybe revisit and come back to it.

I've got one eye cut in

and maybe I'd start working
on cutting in the other eye.

Well, masks were traditionally
worn in performance.

Early on in my career,

I saw very few people actually
wearing them and using them.

But today I feel like most dance groups have masks

that they work with in their performance.

And so maybe the masks that I'm making are more,

they're really artwork that references a mask,

but really it's a piece of work that is not a mask,

if that makes any sense.

The native people have to be around native people.

That's when they get lost,

when they don't have contact with their own people,

'cause some people don't know how to deal

with all the hustle and bustle of town

when they come from the villages.

Originally, knitting wouldn't

have been a Alaska native traditional art.

It was something that would've been introduced

by first contact with the missionaries

and that kind of thing.

And it was picked up so well

because you could knit hats for your family,

mittens and glove.

These two ladies were at
that first workshop in 1969.

They are all elders that are deceased now,

but they knit their whole
lives for the cooperative

up until that point when they
were not able to knit anymore.

Most of them live out in
the different village areas

and they do the knitting in their own home

and they mail it back here

and then this wonderful lady
helps to get it ready for sale.

And those two wonderful ladies

are the ones that helped sell it

to different people that come by and visit.

It started in 1969, Dr. John
J. Teal was the founder,

saw that a lot of the people

were having to leave the village area

and they were losing their culture by doing that.

And he wanted to do something

where they could go ahead and work in their own home

and yet sell that product.

And he saw the wonderful hand work

that they were already doing.

They picked something

that was special to an area like this one

where the first workshop was held.

It was out on Nunavut Island

and it was about 1,200 years old.

They went to each area, they
went ahead and did patterns

or based on something that was traditional

and special to that area.

Most of the people that live out in the villages,

there are not jobs available,

so they live subsistence lifestyle,

which means they live off the land.

They spend time catching fish
in the summer, putting it up,

drying it, getting it ready for the freezer.

This is a map of Alaska

and the red and green are
cooperative members are from,

the wild muskox are located.

And then the barns are where are the captive muskox.

Qiviut is a natural fiber,

a natural byproduct from the muskox.

They shed naturally each spring.

And so it wasn't an introduced
animal, it was an animal

that was native to different
areas of Alaska already.

And that was other thing that he wanted.

He wanted something that would be able

to utilize a local animal or an item

that the people could incorporate into their life

and yet still incorporate
their life into that item.

So many of our patterns that our members

are based on traditional patterns or artifacts

of the area that they come from

that are very important to
them and symbolize that area.

I first started to learn to knit,

I think in middle school, like at a club.

And then my mom taught me how
to do this type of knitting.

I noticed just something to do,

meeting different people across the world,

some of my family from the villages

and catching up with them

and just working on crafts like this on the job.

I think started knitting for this co-op in the '80s,

and I started working here I think 2015.

- Yeah.
- I like working here 'cause it's comfortable.

I get to meet people and I love doing my job.

I first was taught by my
maternal grandmother how to knit

and crochet and I at first did more crocheting.

When I first started knitting,

I knit a baby like Barbie scarf that much

and then I put it down until I started working here

and that introduced knitting to me.

And I am like Sandra, I like knitting.

I find that it's soothing.

In fact, like I commented
it's soothing enough some days

when it's hectic and I go home and knit,

I'll knit and it'll put me to sleep.

That's what's made the co-op a success

is the fact that again,

you can take knitting with you anywhere

and you can do it anywhere,

but in different village
areas where we have members,

sometimes I think maybe they go

and talk to each other when they need help.

They can visit with one another if they're close.

But it's not a requirement,

it's not a group participation type activity.

It's very much can be a filling activity if you want.

I think there's newer members that are younger.

It's finding your own crafts or clothes,

things like that to have for yourself

or giving it away to friends or relatives.

We just talk about what's happened

or what we've seen that was interesting or funny

or what's just going on in our lives

while we're doing our crafts.

Yeah, I'm good.

So only certain women were able to weave.

You had to be chosen.

With many elders, you kind of learn not to ask why

and you just need to wait and see.

You just need to take in what they say

and follow what they say.

The answer will come, and she did, right?

When she saw me, she
said, "She's the one."

And I remember her pointing at me like that.

"She's like, She's the one."

I take on a responsibility.

My Tlingit names are
Kudeiyatoon and Kudataan Tlaa.

My English name is Darlene See.

I'm Raven Kaach. adi, Land Daughter

from the house Looking Out.

My mother is Tlingit and my father is Aleut,

and I'm a grandchild of the Chookaneidi

and the Wooshkeetaan,

the Brown Bear clan and the Shark clan.

The oldest form of weaving right over here,

Ravenstail weaving, that was lost

to our people about 200 years.

You know, and weavers would weave robes and tunics

and aprons for high cast people, used in ceremonies,

very important ceremonies.

The Ravenstail weaving is a
geometric style of weaving

and a lot of the motifs that you see,

the weavings that you see are on basketry.

And so a lot of that is incorporated

into a different medium.

Instead of using spruce root, the medium,

and traditionally we use mountain goat wool.

And it got lost,

it was lost to our people or a number of reasons.

But then Chilkat weaving,

this right here is an example of Chilkat weaving,

and it was also for ceremonial purposes as well,

woven for that reason.

And Chilkat is the only weaving in the whole world

that you can weave a perfect circle in.

Not many people were doing Ravenstail for a while.

Probably because you can put
more oral history on here,

you know, with various Chilkat designs.

Well, one of the things
really special about Chilkat

is there's a lot of unsaid things weavers pass on

to other weavers, especially with Chilkat,

certain things that you must do

and many things that you should not do.

And it's really important with any type of weaving

or any kind of work, you really
need to be in a great space

with your head and your heart,

'cause everything goes into
your weaving from your hands,

with Chilkat especially.

Like when you first get up in the morning,

don't eat for a couple hours, just tea or water, coffee

and weave for at least a
couple hours, two, three hours.

And then if you're hungry, you can eat.

There's many different things follow like that.

It's really important to
continue making items available

for other indigenous people.

Yes, it's important to make money,

but it's also very important to lift up my uncle,

to lift up our clan together

and to treat our guests that were there

during our time of need.

I'm working on a Chilkat apron for an adult

or else a young child's robe.

I know traditionally you weren't supposed

to be weaving your own at oo,

which is gonna be at oo, clan property.

And I talked to a few elders about that, you know,

and with a full sized Chilkat
robe could cost anywhere from,

I don't know, 60, $90,000 if not more.

There's a lot of work that goes into a Chilkat robe.

And a few elders had mentioned to me, yes,

traditionally you would hire the opposite clan

to be doing that for you, but it's okay it.

And weaving in sections here with Chilkat,

wherever there's a straight line here,

you're going to end up having a draw string.

What I mean by a draw string,

you'll have a string here that you can interlock.

And so whenever there's the
black straight line area

is where you can have interlocks here.

Like here's a little draw string here

and I can pull it and it pulls the weaving together.

So you're weaving in sections.

So whatever you see flat straight lines,

the main formline, you can
put a draw stringing in there.

And so I'm weaving on this section right here,

which has the claw right
here, the black and white claw

and with the white and the black.

And here are the claw fingers here

coming over to the other motifs.

And there's interlocks along
the way here and that I've got,

and so I can interlock, and
so weaving in those sections.

And here's another interlock here with the border.

And see, just pull in it,

puts the weaving straight together, here, yep.

Will probably take a couple months.

Traditionally, you didn't really get black.

You kind of got a charcoal,

kind of maroonish black, I guess.

They would dye use natural colors

'cause all we had was in yellow wolf moss.

And you get that in British Columbia.

Our people traded and our
people traded for wolf moss.

We don't have any in our area.

To get the deeper color, you needed to use urine.

And the darkest yellow, the best urine to get

is from like up to a nine month old baby.

There's some things that you just don't talk about,

you know, and to me a lot of
those things were so enriching

and so confirming to my soul, you know,

you're connecting with, I really
don't wanna say art forms,

but out of a lack of word,

you know, connecting with these art forms

that are connections to our
past, our oral histories.

Some women will sing songs or you're going along

and you're talking to the tree people

and letting them know why you're there,

letting them know you're not
gonna take more than you need

and you're not gonna waste anything.

With our culture, we believe everything

has a spirit, everything,
animate and inanimate objects.

So here we're looking

at what we consider our healing kooteeyaa.

This one is representing
both the Huna Tlingit people

and the National Park Service.

So we start with at the bottom,

Glacier Bay is our food basket.

So you see the basket with the sea otter, halibut,

fish, our seagull eggs.

And as we move up the kooteeyaa, you see the houses

that were being crushed by the advancing glaciers

that forced us out of our homeland,

and we scattered for many years

as our people left in their canoes.

As you go up the pole, you'll
see there that on the one side

is Lituya Bay, the T'aakdeintaan people,

that was their homeland of Lituya Bay.

And they were washed outta
Lituya Bay with tsunamis.

And so as they scattered for many years also,

we wandered looking for our new home.

Then you have the face of no
spirit that has too many hands,

too many rules that has
locked us out of our homeland,

the federal government.

And through the years, our ancestors

were going through some
turbulent times, rough waters.

You see the tears of what they wanted.

It was the foods from home and the land of home.

And so you'll see

that we were walking back toward our homeland.

Then came a time in which the National Park Service

and Huna Tlingit people came to an understanding

and they got a paper understanding

that allowed us back into our homeland at times.

You'll see the waters are calming,

they're not calm yet, but they're calming.

And then we had an agreement

and a working relationship
with the Huna Tlingit people

and the National Park Service
to build Xunaa Shuka Hit,

our home now back in our homeland.

We all know what a chain and padlock is.

It was my way of trying to say
that the federal government

has locked us out of our homeland,

has not allowed us the free access

that we always dream of having.

Yet it's very contemporary.

It's a way of sending the message

to whomever is looking at it.

Someday I hope to be able to unlock that padlock.

All of us know that we walk in the footprints

of our ancestors and our grandparents.

We are walking back toward our homeland.