And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
From: Pat Morris <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
September 12, 1999
Museum returns sacred Tlingit
Indian carving to tribe
Wooden beaver spent years hidden in stacks
Scripps-McClatchy -
NEW YORK -- In 1911, the American Museum of Natural History bought the Tlingit
Indians' most sacred item: the carved beaver that once sat on the prow of the only war
canoe to survive the U.S. Navy's bombardment of the Southeast Alaska village of Angoon
in 1882. The museum paid artifacts collector George Emmons $45 for the piece, which
then was nearly forgotten on the museum's back shelves.
On Saturday, in a quiet ceremony in a private third-floor conference room of the
landmark Central Park museum, 72-year-old Angoon elder Peter Jack and Tlingit leader
Dean George spoke in their native tongue to welcome the carved beaver back into tribal
hands.
George wondered what it must have been like when, 107 years ago next month, young John
Paul steered the war canoe around the bend of Catham Strait and saw only black smoke
rising from where his village once stood.
John Paul had been out hunting when the warships arrived and leveled the village.
In the following weeks and months, the canoe became the Tlingits' lifeblood. It was
their only tool to bring game and wood to the isolated, starving villagers who had
fled into the forest to escape the attack.
The canoe was so vital to the survival of Angoon that, years later when it finally
cracked apart in a winter storm, villagers cremated the vessel as if it were one of
their own people. To them, the canoe was a living creature whose spirits were freed on
the funeral pyre. They believe those spirits still live today in the beaver carving
that had been removed before the canoe was burned.
How the carving ended up in Emmons' hands is not clear. But the beaver's return now,
at a time when Alaska Natives again are feeling their culture under attack as state
protections for traditional hunting and fishing rights are being debated, is taken as
a sign of hope.
Rather than the black smoke of a village's remains on its return to Angoon, Jack said
this time the beaver "will see a different kind of smoke that we see as a threat to
our children for subsistence and living off the land, our way of life."
"That smoke can be less threatening by bringing home something like this," Jack said
solemnly.
The carving's dramatic uncovering occurred in January, when a group of 13 Tlingits
were at the museum to look at its collection of their artifacts. The beaver wasn't
among the pieces they saw. It was shelved in a collection of artifacts that museum
curators call "problematic objects" when a clearer identify is not known.
Harold Jacobs, then a repatriation specialist for the Tlingit-Haida Central Council,
was the person who discovered it in the stacks, and he said in an interview that it
was as if the spirits were drawing him to it.
"I was standing in one of the aisles looking at objects and I kept looking down at the
end," he said. "I could see something of that face sticking out. I would look at more
things, then look back and look at that face. ... When I got along side it, I gasped
because I knew what it was."
The prow was brought out onto a table, and the Tlingits gathered around in wonderment.
Elders began to tell stories, each in turn, about the canoe, how it had been the only
one to survive the bombardment, how it became the tool for the village's survival.
"That stopped all the work for the next couple of hours," said Steve Henrikson,
curator of collections for the Alaska State Museum in Juneau, who was along on the
trip.
"The elders say that when it is time for artifacts to be found, they will reveal
themselves," Henrikson said. "That is what everyone felt happened in this case."
The following morning, the group gathered again at the museum and conducted a Tlingit
ceremony to welcome the item home, and once again the tears flowed.
"We opened with prayer, and then from there we called upon the clan leaders," said
Leonard John, who headed the trip for Kootznoowoo Inc.
"While they were talking the impact was so powerful, just to hear the story and just
to see the emotion that was caught up with it, the realization that had it not been
for this war canoe, I probably would not be here," John said. "We were hanging on by a
thread because the United States government had bombed Angoon. Just this one war canoe
is what kept our village alive. Even now it brings a lump in my throat."
The bombardment of Angoon dug long-festering wounds into the village's soul. It is
without doubt the Tlingits' darkest day, the response of a young Navy commander to a
threat the Tlingits nevams and another vessel and some 60 troops to head for Angoon,
directing his lieutenants to first try to persuade the Tlingits into surrendering the
boats and releasing the Northwest Trading Co. men.
But when village leaders complied, the military leaders demanded payment from them as
punishment. When the Tlingits failed to meet that demand, the bombardment began.
What property was not destroyed by the shelling was burned to the ground. Only five
houses were left standing. Food that had been gathered and dried throughout the summer
and fall was destroyed. Six children died in the rubble.
Recently, a letter a sailor aboard the Adams wrote to relatives in Massachusetts was
found, and in it appears what is believed to be the only account of the bombardment
other than what Merrimen provided.
The letter writer, believed to have been Frank H. Clark, the assistant paymaster on
the Adams, described the Angoon bombardment Merrimen's first opportunity for "glory"
that wasn't going to be wasted.
"Most of the officers including myself consider it a brutal and cowardly thing and
entirely uncalled for," the letter said of the bombardment.
In 1973, the Tlingits filed a damage lawsuit and eventually were paid $90,000, the
estimated value of the property losses in 1882. And in 1982, the centennial of the
bombardment, the Navy gave the Tlingits a letter acknowledging that the attack should
never have happened.
But the wounds of that night remain emblazoned on the minds of the Tlingit people
today, the story told and retold by elders.
Leonard John said his hope is that the return of the beaver prow might begin to end
the nightmare. That was in the group's thoughts when they celebrated its discovery in
January.
"We used that opportunity to pray to God and ask God to bring healing to our people
because as a result of this bombardment, our people have suffered from alcoholism and
drug addiction and low self-esteem," he said.
"Our culture was taken away from us," he said. "We've been struggling as a people. So
we called upon God to help our people as he helped us survive so that we could be made
whole again."
Jack restated that prayer Saturday.
"This will bring our people together, and then hopefully they'll be able to realize
who they are," he said.
It's possible that might happen.
The beaver's return will be celebrated next week when it arrives at the Alaska State
Museum in Juneau. Eventually, it probably will end up at a museum in Angoon, where
traditional Tlingit ways still are practiced.
But some Tlingits, including Mathew Fred, head of the Deisheetaan clan to whom the
canoe belonged a century ago, said the beaver's return won't end the pain of 1882.
"We won't breathe good until there's an apology," he said. "We will always remember."
http://www.spokane.net/news-story-body.asp?Date=091299&ID=s634444&cat=sectio
n.Regional
http://wolfseeker.com
http://www.InsideTheWeb.com/mbs.cgi/mb629759
http://www.sunlink.net/~wlfskr
Reprinted under the Fair Use http://www4.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.html doctrine
of international copyright law.
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Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit)
Unenh onhwa' Awayaton
http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/
UPDATES: CAMP JUSTICE
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