TLINGIT

Take a stroll along some of Juneau’s downtown streets and you’ll find brand new signs with maps and information about each location. But the signs do more than just tell you where you are — each one tells an oral history about the place as part of an audio storytelling project called Juneau Voices.

The artwork of a Tlingit artist from Juneau will be featured on a new postage stamp set for distribution next year.

Rico Lanáat’ Worl is the founder of Trickster Company, a design shop based in Juneau that incorporates traditional Northwest Coast Art into everything from T-shirts and stickers to skateboard decks and basketballs.

He said that an art director with the U.S. Postal Service named Antonio Alcala called him up one day.

Late Tlingit scholars Nora Ḵeixwnéi Marks and Richard Xwaayeenák̲ Dauenhauer once dedicated the first volume of their book “Classics of Tlingit Oral Literature” to Tlingit orators. They co-edited the four-volume series and were two-time winners of the American Book Award.

The couple carried the knowledge of Southeast Alaska’s Native languages into the 21st century.

A Tribe in Southeast Alaska has won permanent protection for the site of a historic Tlingit village whose descendants claim centuries-old ties to Glacier Bay. Complex negotiation secured 150 acres that had been eyed by commercial developers.

Capital City Fire and Rescue recently refurbished one of its ambulances. It saved the city the expense of buying a new one. And as an added bonus, the ambulance serves as a piece of public art.

Both sides of the newly revamped ambulance feature Tlingit formline designs by Mary Goddard and Crystal Kaakeeyáa Worl; they symbolize the human power of healing.

Five sacred Tlingit items could be returned to Central Council Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska. 

The U.S. Mint released a coin commemorating the work of Alaska Native leader Elizabeth Peratrovich.

The 2020 Native American $1 coin is currently only available online, but Alaskans are advocating for a wider release.

A fossil of a marine reptile in Southeast Alaska has officially been declared a new species. The 220 million-year-old Thalattosaur is older than the dinosaurs. And as Angela Denning reports from Petersburg, Tlingit Elders have named it after a well-known creature in their traditional stories.

John Lawrence is a cultural interpreter for the Sealaska Heritage Institute visitor center. His father was Tlingit, and his mother was Haida. Those two groups, along with the Tsimshian people, make up the three major Alaska Native groups of Southeast Alaska.

As a cultural interpreter, Lawrence tries to answer any questions visitors might have. Questions like, “What’s that thing on the wall?” or, “What kind of paint did they use on that thing?”

Walter Echo-Hawk is, essentially, a walking law library. It makes sense, given that he’s been practicing law since 1973.

He rattles off cases from memory — from the WWII-era Korematsu case that was used to uphold internment of Americans of Japanese descent, to the Dred Scott decision from 1857, when the U.S. Supreme Court held that the Constitution didn’t include citizenship for black people.