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SUMMER 2014 | $3.99 THE MAGAZINE OF NATIVE PEOPLES, COMMUNITIES, AND WAYS OF LIFE Harvesting FISH EGGS AND FACEBOOK REINDEER: THE OTHER RED MEAT CHEFORNAK SUMMER PATIENCE IN POINT HOPE NATIVE FOODS PHOTO CONTEST Sit’ Tlein aakulagtevkenata | focus delicate dance is at play in Yakutat Bay. Called Yaakwdáat by the Tlingit The story of A people who harvested here for millennia, floes Hubbard Glacier’s spirit and indigenous knowledge discharged by Hubbard Glacier, or Sit’ Tlein, of Tlingit seal-hunting clink against each other like cubes in a glass. practices Pop, crackle, sizzle. A swift current keeps things in constant negotiation while the sea BY LESLIE HSU OH gently combs the shores. The sun transforms everything white into a translucent drip. 32 FIRST ALASKANS ▶ SUMMER 2014 Kai Monture (Tlingit) awaits the arrival of his community to Shaanáx Kuwóox’, the place of the ancestral seal-hunting camp near Hubbard Glacier, or Sit’ Tlein. PHOTO BY BRANDON McELROY, PROGRESSIVE MEDIA ALASKA Aboard a 33-foot aluminum miles wide, and 600 feet tall at its ter- his eyes with a pair of dark sunglasses offshore fishing vessel, archaeolo- minal face, Sit’ Tlein silences everyone and a navy blue cap embroidered with gists, Forest Service employees, and with a shotgun crack, then a teasing the words “Native Veteran,” Ramos indigenous researchers gather trickle of ice, followed by a section of leans back and projects his voice up around George Ramos Sr., as he the glacier about the size of a building into a baby blue sky caught in whis- prepares an offering to Sit’ Tlein, or calving. By the time the thunderous pers of white clouds. Láayaduxk’áns’. Ramos, known as sound fades and the massive wave from He addresses Sit’ Tlein in both Woochjáxueesh in his Tlingit heritage, the entry of the ice into the water dis- Tlingit and English while rubbing the is of the Raven Moiety, people of the sipates against the hull, things are so tobacco with his right hand, “Our Coho Clan, Frog House—and is the quiet that you can hear the “goo goo ga grandfathers, our uncles on our moth- inspiration for the group’s activities. ga” of seal pups on distant ice floe. er’s side, I thank you. We have come to The largest tidewater glacier in North In his left hand, Ramos holds a bag your country where we used to hunt. America measuring 76 miles long, 7 of American Spirit tobacco. Shielding And you brought me here when I was FIRST ALASKANS ▶ SUMMER 2014 33 aakulagtevkenata | focus a little boy as you used to put the food Crowell says, “We want strong into the fire and call your grandfather. ownership from the community, not ‘There’s only We ask you to be with us. Don’t let just helping us or looking on. Ideas for trouble come among us and don’t let the project and guidance on the way a few fluent anyone get hurt in this country.” it should be done are coming from the After he sprinkles tobacco over community itself.” the side of the boat, Ramos hands At a kickoff meeting, Abraham said, Elders left his daughter, Judith, a loaf of bread. “I am really excited about this project. Known in Tlingit as Daxootsu, of the I have dreamed of doing some of that have the Raven Moiety, people of the Copper these things in Yakutat for the second River Clan, Owl House, Judith breaks generation. They need to know where ancient stories, off the bread chunk-by-chunk, each their ancestors camped and where time saying “Gunalchéesh,” before they lived and where they gathered feeding it to the sea. their food. Under oral tradition we oral history, can talk about it, but we need to have it validated by scientists for the sec- place names, Besides serving as a senior researcher ond generation.” of a study directed by Smithsonian an- The significance of this validation migration thropologist Aron Crowell and funded is that human and environmental his- by the National Science Foundation, tory encoded in living oral traditions stories, Judith is fulfilling her parent’s dreams. and place names can now be chrono- Her father inspired the research model logically correlated with archaeologi- by suggesting to Steve Langdon, former cal and geological data. For example, traditional Department Chair of the University the story of how the Gineix Kwáan of Alaska Anchorage’s Anthropology migrated from Copper River region knowledge of Department, the value of studying an- down to Yakutat Bay and made their cestral sealing camps and place names first settlement near Knight Island is seal hunting.’ he learned as a young seal hunter. Ra- not only centuries old, according to mos hypothesized that the seal camps Crowell, but “a very specific story in must be greater in age the farther the terms of place and the people who distance from the modern front of Sit’ were involved. It includes interesting Tlein. observations about where the glacier Judith Daxootsu Ramos Judith’s mother, Elaine Abraham, was and how it retreated. We can ask senior reseacher and assitant is the other senior researcher. Called ‘when did that happen?’ We can pur- professor, University of Alaska Chewshaa in Tlingit, she is clan mother sue that story by looking at archaeo- Fairbanks of the Raven Moiety, people of the logical and geological evidence.” Copper River Clan, Owl House, as That evidence so far suggests that well as Chair of the Alaska Native Sci- the migration might have taken place ence Commission and renowned as a around A.D. 1500, when the glacier pioneer. silt partially filled the bay but when but not Knight Island, Mann can Principal investigator Crowell, Yakutat’s harbor seal population, figure out when the story took place Alaska Director of the Smithsonian In- which thrives in its field of ice floes, based upon the geological date. At the tuition’s Arctic Studies Center, says, “It was already well established. same time, Crowell can do archaeo- is fairly unusual for a major research Co-principal investigator Daniel logical radiocarbon-dating at Knight study to start with a theory and an oral Mann, Assistant Professor in the De- Island and look at when people first tradition provided by an Elder [Ramos] partment of Geology and Geophysics occupied the villages there. Together, in the community.” It is also notable at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, they can precisely date when people that community scholars including is mapping and radiocarbon-dating built that village and the other sealing Elaine Abraham and Judy Ramos share moraines, trim lines, the overrun of camps mentioned in stories passed fully in the responsibilities of analyzing forest beds, and other evidence of the down generation after generation. the research. Judith is writing her dis- retreat and advance of Sit’ Tlein and Crowell can also study evidence of the sertation on this research for a Ph.D. in surrounding glaciers as well as sea distinctive Copper River culture that Indigenous Studies at the University of level history. the migrants bought with them. For Alaska Fairbanks, where she is teach- If the oral narrative indicates the example, earlier excavations by the ing as Assistant Professor. glacier fills up a large part of the bay Smithsonian’s Frederica De Laguna in 34 FIRST ALASKANS ▶ SUMMER 2014 1949-1952 revealed an abundance of copper artifacts such as knife blades and jewelry at the Tlakw.ann (Old Town) site, probably brought from the Gineix Kwáan’s original homeland. Environmental history is also en- coded in place names. For example, K’ootsinadi (or Knight Island) means “shaken land” signifying that so many people lived there that their feet shook the ground. ‘U-nahd’idayahc (or Point Latouche) is an Eyak word meaning “month when animals bear their young.” In addition, researchers are also looking at linguistic source of place names. The most important and fascinat- ing discovery made so far occurred in 2011 when the largest seal camp in Disenchantment Bay, believed to have been used from about 1845-1899 annu- ally from May through July for hunting harbor seals in the ice floes, was -fi nally rediscovered after years of failed attempts to locate cultural remains. The illusive camp, known as Shaanáx Kuwóox’ (“wide valley”) in Tlingit and PHOTO COURTESY OF GEORGE RAMOS Qek’otliya in Eyak, had been obscured by an earthquake in 1899 that uplifted Sometime in the 1940s, George Ramos (right) and his uncle Jack the land and shifted it inland where it Ellis at one of the seal camps currently being excavated. became overgrown with a thick cover of alders, devil’s club, and ferns. Judith’s son, Kai Monture, or Kaakh’utxhéich, follows his mother’s clan as is culturally appropriate, and says, “There’s always reservations toys. Community members participat- in the past on the basis of insufficient that you have of strangers coming ed in a ceremony, which some Elders evidence. Now, not only can Yakutat into your land like this and handling said they have never experienced in Tlingit youth walk in the footsteps things that belonged to your Ances- their lifetime, to “reclaim that land of their Ancestors but the old seal tors and family, but I know they have and to also feed the spirits of our camps mentioned in the stories told the best of intentions.” family or ancestors that might have by their grandparents are now eligible Elders and members of the Yakutat died there… We did that ceremony to for inclusion on the National Register Tlingit community visited the site put them at ease and let them know of Historic Places and some may be last summer after Crowell and his that what was happening was a good returned to tribal ownership.

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