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Download Date 27/09/2021 06:07:46 Use of Tlingit art and identity by non-Tlingit people in Sitka, Alaska Item Type Thesis Authors Kreiss-Tomkins, David Download date 27/09/2021 06:07:46 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/11122/4587 USE OF TLINGIT ART AND IDENTITY BY NON-TLINGlT PEOPLE fN SlTKA. ALASKA By David Kreiss-Tomkins RECOMMENDED: .f ~-'-----~-'----L-..:=-----?d.___,,,,,~~-<- -~~~---~-· Beth R . Leonard, Ph.Di1 ~~ ~ / {_-- Da-ka'.:x een Melmer. M~.A. --- Sine Anahita, Ph.D. APPROVED: USE OF TLINGIT ART AND IDENTITY BY NON-TLINGIT PEOPLE IN SITKA, ALASKA A THESIS Presented to the Faculty of the University of Alaska Fairbanks in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS By David Kreiss-Tomkins, B.A. Fairbanks, Alaska May 2014 v ABSTRACT Tlingit culture, as with many Indigenous cultures that exist under colonial rule, is often described as being in danger of disappearing. Despite this, the appropriation of and subsequent use of cultural practices by non-Tlingit people, and especially white people, is a continuation of the process of colonization when it is enacted in a manner that is not critical of current and historical racism, capitalist pressures and colonial violence. This project addresses the topic through recorded conversations with seven Tlingit women in Sitka, Alaska in an attempt to place Tlingit cultural production and use in the broader contexts of Indigenous cultural sovereignty and resistance to US imperial power. While various types and extremes of cultural appropriation are examined and compared to theory examining privilege and oppression, this project does not delineate general rules for appropriate and inappropriate use of culture. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Signature Page ........................................................................................................................... i Title Page ................................................................................................................................... iii Abstract ...................................................................................................................................... v Table of Contents ....................................................................................................................... vii List of Appendices ..................................................................................................................... ix Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................... xi Chapter 1: Introduction .............................................................................................................. 1 Chapter 2: Methodology ............................................................................................................ 11 Theory ........................................................................................................................... 17 Implementation ............................................................................................................. 27 Chapter 3: Analysis of Theory ................................................................................................... 33 How is Native culture viewed? ..................................................................................... 33 Can resistance to non-Native appropriation of Native culture by Native peoples be seen as a continuation of resistance to colonization of Native land and bodies? ..... 45 Realist ideology in art created by Alaska Native people .............................................. 56 Chapter 4: Use of Tlingit culture by non-Tlingit individuals: adoption and privilege .............. 77 “Being” Tlingit and telling Tlingits how to be.............................................................. 78 Names in exodus: the importance of names as family and cultural resources .............. 93 White and masculine privilege in adoptions ................................................................. 103 White people as teachers and in ceremony: access to status through Tlingit adoption ........................................................................................................................ 114 Alternate theory ............................................................................................................ 124 viii Page Chapter 5: Use of Tlingit culture by non-Tlingit schools and institutions ................................. 129 Social construction of Nativeness in institutional identity ............................................ 135 Highlighting multiculturalism: naming as a method of resisting accusations of racism ............................................................................................................................ 146 Expectations of performance: desire for Native representation through art and bodies ............................................................................................................................ 153 Expendable culture: generic and superficial art ............................................................ 167 Appropriating allyship: white people's place in Native organizations .......................... 176 Place names and pronunciation ..................................................................................... 182 Chapter 6: Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 187 Bibliography .............................................................................................................................. 193 Appendices ................................................................................................................................. 203 ix LIST OF APPENDICES Page Institutional Review Board Approval ........................................................................................ 203 Institutional Review Board Extension ....................................................................................... 204 Project Consent Form ................................................................................................................ 205 Transcript Review Instructions .................................................................................................. 208 xi ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to first thank the seven women who agreed to share their experiences, political critiques, stories of trauma and excitement, theory and hopes with me through the conversations that they allowed me to record. Their patience and kindness with me and my attempts at organizing a research model was evident throughout the years over which I prolonged my academic studies. I am honored to present you here with the five women who desired that they be publically connected to this thesis. Their names are Peg Blumer, Judy (Ḵaachkaadu.aat) Brady, Cayrn V. Coleman, Sharon A. McIndoo (Shaawatgeigei) and X'asheech Tláa (Louise Brady). They, along with the two other women have invested significant time and thought into the subjects presented within. Any positive results that this work may produce ultimately are the product of their labor. In addition, I would like to thank my advisory committee and chair. Dr. Sarah Stanley also helped with critiques of structure and content. Dr. Mary Ehrlander reviewed my writing and pushed me to better defend my arguments; as department head she also provided me with the teaching assistantship that allowed me to more easily fund this research. In addition to their advice on the text, all of them inspired me through the courses I took from them and the materials to which they introduced me. Any unwieldy writing or poor logic is the result of my own process and is not for their lack of attempts to repair it. 1 INTRODUCTION This project is the result of my desire to examine systems of white privilege as they relate to Tlingit people in the community in which I grew up. My interest in this topic originates from multiple, complex sources that include my parents' interests, the childhood friendships I relied on, the work of my grade school teachers, and, no doubt, many other influences of which I was, and am still, not aware. However, my first memory of thinking critically about race and privilege belongs to my time as an undergraduate student. Having grown up in Sitka, a town of about 8,000 people on the outside coast of an island in the southeastern archipelago of Alaska, going to Oberlin College, a small school in northern Ohio, was an education in many things beyond the topics of the courses I took. I found that one of the greatest opportunities available was to learn from fellow students who had already spent years thinking about and challenging social injustice in their own communities. From them I learned to enjoy the unending difficulty of thinking about my own involvement as a young white man raised by a heteronormative couple, of whom one was a doctor, in a society that has a certain terror of addressing topics that directly address race, gender, class, sexuality, age, and, of course, many other exciting topics. From these friends, I then was able to adjust the direction of my studies and take advantage of the excellent teachers available in departments of the school I had not previously thought of investigating. My own politics, then, reflect a bias towards the feminist teachings of Audre Lorde, Angela Davis, Gloria Anzaldúa, and many others. Returning to Alaska, I was curious to see how white privilege operates in Sitka, a community
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