Haines’ mayor would like the borough’s Tlingit Park to be owned by the Tlingits.
In November’s Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee, the Mayor Tom Morphet made the case for granting the land, part of which is a Tlingit cemetery, to a local tribe, the Chilkoot Indian Association. The plan was met with mixed reactions.
The mayor first brought up the concept this spring and says he has had conversations with the Chilkoot Indian Association’s tribal administrator.
“I’ve been having informal discussions with Harriet Brouillette … and I posted back in March on my site,” he said. “And I also posted on Facebook, and I just figured the public wasn’t interested because I never heard anything bad. But there was quite a bit on Facebook this week, or the past few weeks, and a lot of people have questions.”
Morphet stressed that the idea is conceptual, and would need to be approved by the Tribe and the Haines Borough Assembly.
“The idea that we’ve refined, as much as it’s been refined, is to transfer the park property, the grassy part to the Tribe,” he said. “… this would require a new property line to be drawn. But the borough, at this time, would retain ownership of the … senior center and the playground of our dreams next to it. So this would be just the tribal house pavilion, the Native grave sites and the picnic tables restroom that would become owned by the CIA.”
The land would come with a caveat, according to Morphet’s plan. The trail through the park would remain open to public use.
Morphet said there are two reasons to change ownership of the land. The first is that he believes the land should already be Native-owned. He said it was originally granted to the Presbyterian Church to be used as a mission school. Federal law says that property used for indigenous mission schools should revert to Tribes.
On his mayor’s web page, Morphet wrote the following:
“The park, a Tlingit graveyard, should have gone back to the Tlingits 40 years ago when the Presbyterian Church was deeding the last of its vacant mission properties back to the Tribe. But by then the City of Haines had scooped up the parcel for a downtown park.”
Morphet said another reason is cost. The borough has less money and more responsibilities than ever.
“The borough has a million-dollar deficit,” he said. “Also, we’ve just accepted a new park, park land from Margaret Piggott, that will cost money to maintain over time, or develop or do whatever we’re going to do.”
Former Mayor Jan Hill listened to the presentation and expressed concern. She worried that changing owners could cause unintentional harm.
“I understand the warm and fuzzy feeling that some people get from this,” she said. “But it just feels like this is a way to slough off borough responsibility and liability onto an organization that’s totally grant driven — and that doesn’t feel warm and fuzzy to me. It could put this organization in a really tough financial spot.”
Georgiana Hotch is a Chilkoot Indian Association council member. She spoke at the meeting in favor of more discussion.
“… this is a really great gesture,” she said. “Because we do have, we do have a cemetery. You can look at that as sacred, like sacred sites to our people. It’s community-oriented, which is good for the entire city. And we appreciate being able to put it on the table and talk about it.”
Members of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee agreed that more information is needed. Their next meeting is Jan. 14.
You can contact this reporter at melinda@khns.org.