Transcript for the Piece Audio version of Coming Home: the Return of the Alutiiq Masks

*BILLBOARD:
HOST: You're listening to Native Voice One, the Native American radio service?.

I'm Shyanne Beatty and this is Coming Home: The Return of the Alutiiq Masks.

In 1872, a young French explorer sailed home from Alaska with a trunk full of Alutiiq artifacts. He spent six months collecting artwork, songs and stories. He never thought he would be saving the history of an entire culture.

PERRY EATON: Fifty years ago, if you sat down and told people, There's going to come a time when you really need to remember this story for your grandkids, the person would have laughed you right off the dock.

SVEN HAAKANSON: The masks themselves change people's attitudes because they tell stories.

HOSTS: The artifacts remained hidden inside a 13-century castle in Northern France until Alutiiq people started searching for their culture.

HELEN SIMEONOFF007 (00:31:20)
I was looking at the masks, and then all of a sudden I started crying. It was tears of thanks.

HOST: Alutiiq culture comes home, An Earthsongs special after this break.

(5-MINUTE BREAK-FILL WITH MUSIC)

*SEGMENT A - What is Alutiiq?

HOST: Coming Home: The Return of the Alutiiq Masks by Dmae Roberts, Clark Salisbury and your host, Shyanne Beatty. Listen for a moment to an Alutiiq song.

HOST: That song was produced by the Alutiiq Museum in Kodiak, Alaska where a resurgence of Alutiiq culture is taking place. It translates..

A good thing we are teaching you
our songs our dances our stories.
So that you may one day give them back.

HOST: Since the 1970s, Alaska Native peoples have actively sought to preserve traditions and reawaken cultural pride in their heritage. Culture camps abound in various parts of Alaska where youth learn long-held traditions and their Native languages. The Alaska Native Heritage Center in Anchorage brings students from around the state to train them in their cultural heritage. They become cultural guides to pass on that knowledge.

The work of preservation for a people decimated by colonization and cultural oppression is familiar to all Alaska Natives and Native Americans in the lower 48 states. Yet this cultural resurgence is relatively new.

To understand the story of the Alutiiq people, you have to understand their history from the time they were originally called Sugpiaq.

HELEN SIMEONOFF: When the Russians came, they called everybody in Alaska-- Aleuts. And that's a name for indigenous people in Siberia.

HOST: Sugpiaq Artist Helen Simeonoff has made a decades long quest to learn more about her own history.

HELEN SIMEONOFF: Since we looked like the people in Siberia, dark skin, dark hair, most everybody here in Alaska ended up with the name Aleut. And from that word came the word Alutiiq, and the elders decided we were going to stay with the name Aleut, so they settled on Alutiiq. But our real name is Sugpiaq, and it means the real people.

HOST: Before Russian contact in the 1700s, the Sugpiaq people lived along the Kodiak Island archipelago, the Kenai Peninsula and the Prince William Sound region of Southwestern Alaska. They were seafaring people, and subsisted off fishing and hunting seal and otter until the Russian fur traders came first through the Aleutian Islands and then to Kodiak.

LOREN ANDERSON: The population of the Sugpiaq people during that time had really diminished.

HOST: Loren Anderson, public programs manager at the Alaska Native Heritage Center.

LOREN ANDERSON: Our population had taken a sharp downturn and you know, people will say oh, there was over 20,000 people on Kodiak and some people the number was a lot less.

HOST: These short, muscular men who grew up paddling kayaqs were enslaved by the Russians to hunt seal and otter pelts. Whole villages of women and children were left to fend for themselves.

LOREN ANDERSON:
Some people say the Orthodox Church saved our people, because there were monks and priests being put in jail for baptizing us. So instead of becoming slaves of the Russians, where they'd take families away, or women and children and hold them hostage and make the men hunt, they baptized a lot of the people and made them Russian citizens and they weren't allowed to be used like that anymore.

HOST: The cost of salvation was the loss of their names and their language. Slowly cultural traditions became hidden. The only way that Alutiiq peoples could rise in status was to intermarry with the Russians.

PERRY EATON: The Russian period created a classification of residency called Creoles, or mixed bloods.

HOST: Alutiiq Maskmaker Perry Eaton says his Dad married a non-Native woman. In Russian times, he would have been considered Creole or Mixed Blood.

PERRY EATON: And under the Russian regime, they were elite, and ended up middle management in the company. And it was actually by design. 1805, the Czar forbid Russian women to come into Alaska, and it encouraged the hunters and the company men to marry local. And this created offspings that were blood-ties to the indigenous people, and basically, the folks wouldn't kill them.

HOST: And during the Russian occupation, artwork was being taken back to Mother Russia. The few masks left on Kodiak fell to decay. Contemporary Alutiiq maskmakers like Eaton had to teach themselves to carve.

PERRY EATON: Russians collecting stuff in the early 1800s. They actually had collectors here in Alaska whose charge was to collect the stuff. this is a period of time where American collecting is not done. I mean, we'd just finished the Indian wars.. We're still killing them. We're still cleaning that land so that we can do something constructive with it.

HOST: America purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867. No longer were Creoles equal or citizens. All of Alaska Natives were segregated and had lower-class status. Children who once spoke Russian and Alutiiq now had to learn English only.

HOST: In the 19th century, Russian influence was still strong as America tried to figure out what to do with its new territory.

HOST: Alutiiq culture and people were declining. Then, a 19-year-old French explorer paddled his kayak onto the rocky shores of Kodiak Island in the winter of 1871. His name was Alphonse Pinart. For the next six months he visited Alutiiq villages, take notes in Russian on every dance he saw and every song or legend he heard. He collected relics about to be destroyed by the church or buried in caves. And he commissioned artists to make ceremonial wooden masks.

HELEN SIMEONOFF I can picture him going from Kodiak to Afognak and going through Whale Pass, and past . He's. He's just freezing and writing in a little kayak is probably quite scary. And I can picture him landing in the village of Afognak, and being welcomed by the Creole families, and then being taken to the Aleut village, where of course the artwork would have been at.

SVEN HAAKANSON: (In Russian, Alutiiq and English?) Where should I search for that missing lad of mine? Up there, I wish I could search for him. Let me search for the missing one, among those who whirl about.

HOST: Anthropologist Sven Haakanson translated that poem from Pinart's Russian notes into Alutiiq and English.

SVEN HAAKANSON: When Pinart collected these masks in 1872, it was during a transition time in Alaska. Alaska had just been sold in 1867 to America. He came in 1871. if it wasn't for Pinart, the masks in our environment would have rotted away and/or been destroyed EDIT by somebody else because at the time, the beliefs were still fairly strong.

HOST: Sven Haakanson clears off his desk to show several binders of Pinart's notes in Russian.

SVEN HAAKANSON: And when he took them in 1872, he did a couple of things that a lot of people don't do. He recorded the songs, and he recorded legends. So, by combining the songs and the legends and the masks together, it makes for a very important history and documentation of the Sugpiaq history

HOST: Pinart sailed back to France and never returned. But he left his notes along the way to the Bancroft Library in San Francisco and a legacy of 87 Alutiiq masks to a small medieval castle in France.

HOST: Kodiak is a windswept coastal series of islands. Conditions are harsh. There was a cataclysmic volcanic eruption in 1912 near Kodiak that is said to be the largest of the 20th century. And in 1964 an earthquake of magnitude 9.2 rocked the Gulf of Alaska creating tidal waves that destroyed whole villages. Helen Simeonoff grew up in Afognak before the village had to be abandoned.

HELEN SIMEONOFF: In the village of Afognak we had Aleuttown, which is where the Natives lived, and we called the other side where they considered themselves Russians, not Creoles, but pure Russians, and we called that side, there was a division between the status of the people, pure Natives, and the Creole village.

HOST: Yet Simeonoff remembers an almost idyllic subsistence life in Afognak.

HELEN SIMEONOFF: we had a running stream, fresh water and we had banyas. That was our bathhouse. It's separate from the house, no electricity, no running water, no indoor plumbing. And for heat, you chop wood. And we lived subsistence lifestyle off the fish. Back then, the fish were good. They weren't toxic. And you could drink water right from the streams. You didn't have to test it first with a chemical kit. And so, life was really good.

LOREN ANDERSON: I think that's how a lot of this stuff stayed alive no one consciously taught you about being Native?

HOST: Loren Anderson.

LOREN ANDERSON: But the values that were handed down generation to generation were still there and so I didn't have a kayak. We had aluminum skiffs with outboard motors. And we eat salmon but everyone eats salmon, you can order salmon in any restaurant. We go berry picking but all people pick berries....my parents were teaching me my whole life, I just didn't realize it.

HOST: Sugpiaqs went about their daily lives, but many suffered the pain of cultural suppression. Helen Simeonoff remembers shock at learning her mother was hit by her teachers.

HELEN SIMEONOFF: And I said, Why would she hit you? And she said, "Because we're supposed to speak English. And my first language is Aleut, and I think in Aleut. And so I revert back during an anxious moment to my first language. And my second language was Russian, and my third language was forced upon me, which is English. And I don't think in English. To this day I think in Aleut. And so then that was a revelation for me, because I didn't know. And then my mom broke into these deep, gut-wrenching sobs.

HOST: Perhaps it was this deep sorrow that gave Helen Simeonoff the motivation to become an artist and to seek out the artwork of her ancestors.

In 1994 Helen Simeonoff was in Kodiak. She listened to a lecture by a doctoral student about the Alutiiq collection Pinart had left to the Chateau Musee in France.

HELEN SIMEONOFF: And I just about had a heart attack, and I thought, Oh, my God. This woman has valuable information and so that's how I learned about the Pinart collection of Sugpiaq masks. And it's been a journey.

HOST: Simeonoff makes solo pilgrimage to France. when Coming Home: The Return of the Alutiiq Masks, continues.

*SEGMENT B Sharing History

HOST: This is Coming Home: The Return of the Alutiiq Masks, an Earthsongs documentary special. I'm your host Shyanne Beatty. Singer Melissa Burns composed a song for the return of the masks.

MELISSA BURNS: The song is about those that came before us. They were made on Kodiak Island. They are coming back to us. They were hiding quietly and hiding quietly means that they were hiding over in France. We knew that they were there. But they were hiding quietly. And now they're coming forward. Now we can all see them. But we feel happy because they were saved and they're preserved.

HOST: Melissa Burns' song speaks to the value of preserving art as a record of culture and history. The Alutiiq masks were already a legend when Alutiiq Maskmaker Perry Eaton was a youth in 1958. But the stories still bubbled to the surface now and then when he and his father were fishing.

PERRY EATON: And a very, very inspirational man, a man who really did a lot to shape my identity as a Native, Charlie Kristopherson and my dad were talking. And Charlie kind of looked at him, and we were re-hanging the net. And Charlie says, Yeah, in the old days they used to use masks. And Mrs. Heitman, who was in her eighties at the time, from Afognak, born probably right around the time Pinart was there, pipes up, and she was sitting on the side there, and she said, Nope. Nope. Nope, nope. No masks on the island. They've taken them all away. They came and took them all away, of course being quite pleased because they purged all that sacrilege and evil stuff off the Island.

HOST: It's only been in the last couple decades that Alutiiq peoples once called Sugpiaq have been reclaiming their language, history and their art. Many are returning to calling themselves by their original names Sugpiag. It's a change that's been happening within Sven Haakanson's lifetime. His cultural awakening began in college when he was brought by his professors to the Inuit Studies conference.

SVEN HAAKANSON: So I'm over in Copenhagen, Denmark listening to one of the foremost scholars, Dr. Lydia Black, on Russian-American history, and Aleut history and Aleut. And I'm like, Wow.So after she got done lecturing, I sat down with her, and we talked for several hours. And I was wondering to myself, Why am I on the other side of the world, learning about my culture when I should be home doing that, because up until then, we knew very little about our heritage.

HOST: Haakanson finished college and got his doctorate in Anthropology at Harvard University. Meanwhile Sugpiaq Artist Helen Simeonoff had a burning desire to go to France to see the masks of her ancestors. Producer Dmae Roberts continues the story of the return of the masks.

DMAE: In Bologne Sur Mer off the coast of Northern France, there?s a 13th century castle. The Chateau Musee is a real medieval castle complete with a moat. Here school children are studying a collection of masks and artifacts brought from Kodiak Island, Alaska by Explorer Alphonse Pinart. It seems odd that, among all the European art, school children in France have the opportunity to learn more about Alutiiq history here than Alutiiq children in Kodiak. Here children are learning about Alaska.

DMAE: French websites proclaim this is the largest Eskimo collection in Europe. For a long time, the museum knew little about the differences between Alaska Native peoples. And they couldn't fathom how a people could be cut off from their own history.

ANNE-CLAIRE LARONDE: It's something very difficult to make people understand in Europe when you have heritage all around you. So you can't understand what it means not to have objects to show you what was your, the culture of your fathers and grandfather and grand-grandfather. So it really takes time to explain and to make people understand that.

DMAE: Anne-Claire Laronde is the director of the Chateau Musee. She says this is one of the few places people can learn about Pinart and the Alutiiq artifacts.

ANNE-CLAIRE LARONDE: He went to Alaska when he was 19 years old and he made a trip in kayak from the Aleutian Islands to Kodiak Archipelago in 1870 and to 1871. And then he stayed during the winter in Kodiak and then at spring turned back to France. And this is during this month that he collected the masks and all the information he put in his notes that we have today to understand Alutiiq culture of that time.

DMAE: Though the Chateau Musee cherished the collection, France had no connection with the cultures that created the masks. That changed when Helen Simeonoff saved all her money and frequent flyer miles in order to fulfill her quest to see the masks even though she?d never been overseas.

HELEN SIMEONOFF: And I thought, just all I know is I have to do it. And if there's a mountain, you climb over it, or dig under it or go around it. You just do it and I didn't have a clue how to get around, over in Europe.

HELEN SIMEONOFF: I felt like I was walking around in a trance, and reliving the experience because, I felt like I was in major shock, my culture once did these things. They once carved the masks, and did the dances, and the legends, and the songs, and the history, and you know, it was my people.

DMAE: Simeonoff had never seen so many Alutiiq artifacts in one room.

HELEN SIMEONOFF: This man Pinart saved our whole culture single-handedly. He brought it all back. He brought beaded headdress, platters, bowls, and huge masks. And he traveled in treacherous waters. How'd he do that? I mean this man,it's incredible what he did.

PERRY EATON: I don't even remember where I heard about it. But I knew there was a collection of Kodiak masks in France somewhere.

DMAE: Perry Eaton.

PERRY EATON: So I went to see Helen, who at the time I didn't know, even though we'd grown up in the same community. And of course I saw the photos and I told my wife, We're going to France. And I think four or five months later I went to France to see them.

DMAE: Up to this time, Eaton had only seen a few scarce photos of the masks.

PERRY: I was angry because people had not prepared me for what I was going to see. And the anthropologists, God Bless em you know, their idea of a visual is this little picture that's a head-on shot, but they don't tell you they're huge and some of them have seven inches in depth, and some of them are half-inch in depth. And as an artist, of course, that head-on view doesn't mean anything. You can't see or you can't appreciate what you're looking at.

DMAE: Seeing the masks taught Eaton more about his craft. Though masks are still a great part of Alutiiq life, most historic masks were either destroyed by conquest or burned in ceremonies. Very few Alutiiq artifacts remained in Kodiak. Perry Eaton.

PERRY EATON: We know that some of the masks came out of caves, on the south end of the island. But we also know a lot of the masks were burned after the ceremony in part because the spirit was there, and because the power was there. You certainly didn't want your enemy capturing your power.

DMAE: By this Sven Haakanson had become the director of the Alutiiq Museum in Kodiak. He began a six-year negotiation with the Chateau Musee to bring the masks home..

SVEN HAAKANSON: Since 2002 they turned us down three times. Three different times. Mainly because I don't think they understood, not only the importance but the value to us, these masks had.Well, to them, it's a sense of national pride, now. And they've cared for them for 136 years. They kept them in excellent shape. And it's become part of Frances' collection, I mean, as a nation.

DMAE: Haakanson says the French government feared the Native American Repatriation laws and thought the Alutiiq museum might try to keep the masks. But then in 2005, when Anne-Claire Laronde became the director of the Chateau Musee. Haakanson found her receptive. He brought a delegation of 10 Sugpiaq and Alutiiq artists including Simeonoff and Eaton to meet Laronde. Perry Eaton.

PERRY EATON: Well, these doggone masks are in a castle. I mean, a real castle with a moat. And I went in, and we went upstairs. And of course I was just stunned, looking at them. I'd never seen that much physical art from the Island in one place, ever. I mean, just like, my God.

DMAE: Anne-Claire Laronde says everyone gathered together to view all the artifacts.

ANNE-CLAIRE LARONDE: The big moment was when all the artists arrive in the room when we, the museum staff, when we have just put the masks on tables. It was the first contact. So it was very, a very moving moment. Everybody during half an hour couldn't speak.

DMAE: Helen Simeonoff.

HELEN SIMEONOFF: And when I saw Doug Inga, and when he walked into the room, I remember looking at him. And he just threw his head back and he started crying. And then I was shocked by his reaction.

DMAE: Alutiiq Artist Doug Inga.

DOUG INGA: For me it was like going home. I couldn't um hold my feeling in cause it was so over whelming then I broke down, I cried. Couldn't enter the room for 10 minutes. I was crying and crying. When I went in and like I was home.

HELEN SIMEONOFF: And then, all of a sudden, it became silent. And I thought, Oh, what's happening..And when I watched Doug Inga and the impact that it had on him, then I realized, Wow. This is going to have a big impact on our people, a huge impact. It's like, it's like rebirthing of our people.

WILL ANDERSON: I was actually starting to feel a bit embarrassed because I really starting to feel really emotional. And I was kind of worried, Man, am I the only one that's going to get teary-eyed from this?

DMAE: Will Anderson is a photographer and president of the Koniag Incorporated, A Native corporation in Kodiak. He says the mood was solemn.

WILL ANDERSON: I think it suddenly realizing how much of our culture that we had lost, to see so much of it spread out on a table before us. Yeah. I think that's probably as much as anything, just an understanding of there?s so much a part of us that we really haven't been aware of. And suddenly to have it just spread out in front of you, to handle and to touch, and just the idea that some of these objects could have been worn by a family member of mine is really just an overpowering thing.

WILL ANDERSON: And the only I could really relate it to is, you know, when there's been a death in the family, and you kind of see the body for the first time of the deceased family member, and there?s this outpouring of emotion and that's really what it was like.

DMAE: For Sven Haakansen this was the turning point.

SVEN HAAKANSON: I don't think would ever have actually realized how valuable they were. I mean, me coming as a scholar is okay. But when I came with a group of people who wanted to learn, and were willing to share what they knew. It really made them open their eyes as to how important these collections are.

DMAE: Helen Simeonoff.

HELEN SIMEONOFF: I was just shocked that there was beaded headdress, there was cooking utensils, (had ladles), there was a (bidarkas), miniature collected from Woody Island, and (visor hats) hats. He had been at (Unga) and he had also been in my grandmother's village of Uganik. And when I looked and saw that two of the beaded headdress had been made in Afognak, I thought, It could be one of my ancestors made these items. And then that's when it clicked.

PERRY EATON: These pieces, collectively, define the art form.

DMAE: Perry Eaton.

PERRY EATON: And it's sort of like having the key to the hieroglyphics, the Rosetta stone, all of the things that have been so defining in culture rolled up in this visual package.

DMAE: It still took two more years of negotiation between the French Government and the Alutiiq peoples who had to sign assurances they wouldn't not keep the masks.

ANNE-CLAIRE LARONDE: Oh, they were afraid not to see them coming back. They were afraid in Boulogne to lose part of their heritage. So it show, it is obvious that the masks are a common heritage. They are a heritage for Kodiak, they are a heritage for Boulogne too. And we have something to share.we are linked, in fact.

DMAE: Singer Melissa Burns.

MELISSA BURNS: It's a controversial issue the Native organizations on Kodiak Island had to sign resolutions that we wouldn't interfere with this exhibit coming to or going back to the museum in France. And some people say, Well, they're our peoples. They belong to us. They belong here in Kodiak. But in all reality, if Alphonse Pinart didn't come through and collect these items, they wouldn't be around for us today, to learn from, and to see, and to appreciate. The museum in France went through a lot. and he had also been in my grandmother's village of Uganik. And when I looked and They went through two World Wars, and they were well-cared-for items. If they were left in Kodiak, they could have been in the bottom of a (brabra) pit, where we would have never have seen them. And so we're very thankful for that.

DMAE: On May 24, 2008, 34 of the masks came home to Kodiak. The Alutiiq Museum called the exhibit, Like a Face.

DMAE: Those who grew up in Kodiak in the last 50 years had never seen anything like this exhibit.

MAN: Feels good, especially me growing up here. So ah I heard about this one man talking about masks for years. Yeah this is my first time being back here back home and ah one of the best times for coming is during the masks.

ELDER WOMAN: I thinks its that's why so many native people and I'm not saying its just Alaska but all over the world or AK native. Just the struggle to be Native, Alaska Native. Inupiaq, Yupik, Cupik, and any area of the state its always been a struggle.

DMAE: Helen Simeonoff says it was a dream come true.

HELEN SIMEONOFF: And when I went to the mask opening in Kodiak, I thought, I can't believe this. This is stunning for our people to be able to see and reconnect with their culture, that's something monumental. Kodiak's never had anything like this happen, ever.

DMAE: Next year, the Alutiiq Museum is collaborating with the Chateau Musee on a contemporary mask exhibit and there is hope for a permanent loan of the masks in the future. I'm Dmae Roberts.

HOST: You're listening to Coming Home: The Return of the Alutiiq Masks brought you by Native Voice One and Koahnic Broadcast Corporation. I'm Shyanne Beatty.The resurgence of a culture when we return.

SVEN HAAKANSON: (COLLAGE OF THREE LANGUAGES) Where's that absent one, my lad? Where are they? Where's that absent one? Let me search for him. Let me search for him in those who whirl about.

HOST: For more info about this program or to see a movie about the Alutiiq masks, visit Earthsongs dot net slash coming home. To order the music in this special edition of Earthsongs from the ?Generations CD? or to find out more about Alutiiq culture, visit the Alutiiq museum website at alutiiqmuseum.org. That?s A-L-U-T-I-I-Q MUSEUM DOT ORG.

*SEGMENT C GENERATIONS or AN ALUTIIQ RENAISSANCE.

HOST: This is Coming Home: The Return of the Alutiiq Masks an Earthsongs documentary special produced by Dmae Roberts, Clark Salisbury and your host Shyanne Beatty.

HOST: Drummer and Singer Loren Anderson wrote this song called I found my drum.

LOREN ANDERSON I created a song on the Generations album that is SPEAKS LANGUAGE Means my drum, I found it, come and listen. Means again to go searching but not go far. Realizing it's always been inside myself and my heart. And then SPEAKS LANGUAGE.

HOST: Alaska Natives as well as Native Americans in the lower 48 states are making major strides in reclaiming their cultures. The Tsi-Akim Maidu (chai AH kim my-do) Tribe in the California Sierras are once again holding ceremonies like Calling Back the Salmon. The Coushatta tribe of Louisiana began a talking dictionary online to preserve their language. But only 25 years ago, Alutiiq people knew little of their heritage. Now they are in the midst of a cultural resurgence.

NADIA JACHINSKY-HORELL: So when you're in Kodiak today, you see people wearing shirts that have masks on them?.

HOST: Nadia Jachinsky-Horell is an Alutiiq graduate student at the University of Washington. She's an Art History major specializing in Alaskan Native art.

NADIA JACHINSKY-HORELL: I was just in Old Harbor this week for a culture camp, and there are masks on the sides of the street. So masks are really part of the physical landscape, I'd say, right now, which is exciting, and definitely one way that I think mask carving will continue.

HOST: Jachinsky-Horel describes one Native culture camp, popular in Alaska, where Alaska Native elders and youth gather to celebrate their traditions, language, music and dances.

NADIA JACHINSKY-HORELL: 15:57 We were learning how to process some fish skins. We were kayaking. And there were a couple elders at the camp. And so they were speaking Alutiiq in the morning, we were eating traditional foods, I just learned, is the traditional word for smoked salmon. So we would eat that for breakfast for example. And cooking fish, cooking salmon with , or cow parsnip. So it's a really great experience to be in one place where the goal is just to celebrate culture, and learn these traditions and to pass them on and sit around beading with other women or watching to learn how you can string porcupine quills. It's a really wonderful experience.

HOST: Dig Afognak began in 1993 as an archaeological dig located in the remains of Afognak village, devastated by the 1964 earthquake. Now the campsite comes alive every summer with culture camps for young people. Alutiiq and Sugpiaq elders volunteer to teach their skills. At one camp, Loren Anderson teaches young people to drum and sing. kids to sing and dance.

LOREN ANDERSON: We have no record of how the dances were. We can only speculate watching Yu'pik dances and how they do it. And trying to derive an answer from what we've seen in other cultures that are similar to ours.

LOREN ANDERSON: So when we create new masks and create new songs, use the masks maybe not quite in the way our ancestors did, but so we don?t forget. SPEAKS So it's not done in the same context as our ancestors, dancing with these masks as a form of prayer. But dancing today as a way to remember how things used to be or how things could be in the future.

HOST: Alaska has 11 different Native cultural groups with 21 distinct languages. And every one of those groups has a cultural resurgence program. whether it's culture camps in the summer or language preservation programs during the year. Producer Dmae Roberts visited the language and cultural preservation programs at The Alutiiq Museum in Kodiak.

DMAE: Every day elder language masters meet with their apprentices in each other's homes or at community centers. The goal is to pass on the Alutiiq language to younger generations so it doesn't die out.

DMAE: The language masters and apprentices sing songs, play games and simply talk to each other.

PETER BOSKOFSKY: There is no place where you can go and everybody's speaking Alutiiq. There's no Alutiiq road signs. So you have to create the conversational environment.

DMAE: The Alutiiq Museum in Kodiak created the language apprentice program. Peter Bos-kov-sky is Alutiiq. And he's the museum's language outreach specialist. He's also a language apprentice and practices daily here with Alutiiq Elder Phyllis Peterson.

PHYLLIS PETERSON Oh yeah. Peter is a Peter. He's learning.

DR: Are you teaching Peter?

PHYLLIS PETERSON When he comes here, he asks me questions. I answer his question. (Speaking Alutiiq.)

DMAE: Alaska Native languages have been severely suppressed since 1900. By 1982, when the Alaska Native Language Center published the "Native Peoples and Languages of Alaska" map, there were an estimated 900 speakers of Alutiiq in all dialects. There were no villages where Alutiiq was being taught to children. By 2003, a survey by the Alutiiq Museum found about 50 speakers were left. The youngest speaker being 55 years old. Susan Malutin has been a language apprentice for three-and-a-half years.

SUSAN MALUTIN: But one of the neatest things is because the alphabet is developed, and we have written words, our elders are learning how to read. So as we're learning, apprentices, how to speak it, we are watching them learn how to read their language for the very first time. And that's pretty incredible, to see a seventy-year-old, eighty-year-old, learn how to read.

DMAE: Malutin makes audio recordings of the elders and keeps a written record of the language. Every day the language apprentices discover new words to put in the Alutiiq dictionary started by Jeff Leer and Irene Reed in the 1970s.

PETER BOSKOFSKY: (Elders 7-15-08) And it's not a finished dictionary. It's still a rough draft. And Susie's been working over the years, filling in a lot of the spaces in that dictionary. So the dictionary that she has there, there are probably words they aren't written down anywhere. So it's priceless.

DMAE: Nick Alokli worked all his life in the canneries in Kodiak where he faced discrimination and isolation. Now as a language master, he's found a new mission in life to pass on his knowledge of the Alutiiq language.

NICK ALOKLI: Well to me, after the way I was treated, I was able to start be ashamed of my race, my culture, my language. But now I can talk anything because doing this language now, trying to revive that culture and language, that really helped me. And that's how come I'm happy, that it's going to work this time. So I'm going to keep on working with them till I can't anymore, or till I'm gone.

DMAE: As they sing Quyanna Tailuci, thank you for coming, the point is clear that a song, a piece of art, or a story is a powerful way to remember a culture and to save it.

DMAE: The small staff of the Alutiiq Museum works tirelessly to bring art into the museum as a living part of culture.

AUDIO: Chumai, hello, I'm Peter Buskovsky. Chumai I'm Sophie Pegoneka. Chumai I'm Nick Alokli, this the Alutiiq word of the week.

DMAE: The museum even works with their local radio station KMXT to air the Alutiiq word of the week.

AUDIO: A lesson in Alutiiq language and culture. This week's word is "Ai Ja hok?" which means "little cute one." People use this when speaking to or describing children. Come here, little "Ai Ja hok" to your sisters chubby toddler. Or tell a friend, Oh your baby is such an "Ai Ja hok".

DMAE: Preserving a language takes a daily effort. Sven Haakanson, the director of the Alutiiq Museum revitalization is a constant struggle that hasn?t received much government support.

SVEN HAAKANSON: And it's excuse after excuse after excuse, and it's like, Look. You guys spent billions of dollars to exterminate these languages. Now you guys want to spend 50,000, $100,000 to help us bring it back? Why aren't you guys helping us change that? Give us the money, the tool, the ability to do that so we can actually implement them and teach them as a foreign language.?We can't even have our own North American, Native American languages are not treated as a foreign. They aren't treated as anything. You can't even get credit for them in the schools.

DMAE: There are only 35 speakers fluent in Alutiiq left on the island most over the age of 68. Yet Haakanson thinks there's hope if the language can be taught in public schools.

SVEN HAAKANSON: The school district has finally become more receptive to working with us, and one of the ways of doing that is using the local culture, working with the people, so that they work together. If you can get the adults and the children both believing in the system that works, then it's going to turn around.

DMAE: To some it may seem like an uphill climb to preserve a language that was almost wiped out. But The Alutiiq Museum believes that if they can train 10 people. Then those 10 will train 10 more and these speakers will save the language.one person at a time. I'm Dmae Roberts.

HOST: This is Coming Home: The Return of the Alutiiq Masks. I'm Shyanne Beatty.

HOST: Sven Haakansan believes that preserving a culture has to be a cross-generational effort. In this camp at the Alutiiq Museum he's teaching adults and youth to work together. This week-long camp is special because it features maskmaking using the Alutiiq Masks, Like a Face exhibit as inspiration.

SVEN HAAKANSON: Usually in our traditional society, Alutiiq carving, you don't carve away from yourself, you gonna cut each other. Always cut toward yourself doing this?(sounds)

HOST: About a dozen young people, parents and guardians sit expectantly in the back of the museum. Most have not carved before. But now they have a guide?
HOST: the Alutiiq masks that have been brought back to Kodiak. When Haakanson started carving as an adult, he had no models to draw from until he started visiting museums around the world and saw his culture's artifacts.

SVEN HAAKANSON: I started to teach myself how to carve, because I wanted to learn more. ....and I started spending more time looking at the collections in a different eye. it's not I don't care if they decide to become carvers, what I care about is they can carry it with them forever, no matter where they go in the world, no matter what they do. I had it from the elders, who were sharing the oral histories. And so to me, it's taking that oral history, the carvings, and starting to build on it, so that they can take it to another level as they get older

HOST: At the end of the class, parents and youth have a wooden maskette to not only remember the exhibit but also to remember the skill. The work of cultural preservation goes further than skill-building.

HOST: The Alutiiq Museum is also an Archeological repository. Haakanson shows what's in the backroom

HOST: There are hundreds of shelves each laden with artifacts with more than 150,000 artifacts brought back from past archeological digs. Before he was museum director, Haakanson started a traveling exhibit with the Alutiiq Museum throughout rural Alaska show people these artifacts.

SVEN HAAKANSON: The whole purpose behind it is to put this information back into a living context. And the challenge we have is getting this kind of stuff to share it, collections that go back to anywhere from 2- to 800 years ago. Beautiful masquettes, (open shelves) beautiful dolls. (opens shelves) So we have an amazing collection that, I mean you guys went, like, Wow! Can you imagine sharing this with our own community that didn't even realize what we had?

HOST: Will Anderson chairs the Alutiiq Heritage Foundation. He'd like to see all the materials here catalogued for future generations.

WILL ANDERSON: I just think back to five or six years ago, when I would try to find something about our culture, books in the bookstore or online. And there really wasn't much available and I really want to change that. I really would like to see the museum publish a catalog or a book, maybe every other year until we do have all of the material that's available everywhere in the world in printed form so the Alutiiq people, wherever they might be, can purchase that material and learn what they can about their culture.

HOST: The 34 Alutiiq masks, on loan from the Chateau Musee in France, were only in Kodiak for a few months. But they return helped write missing pages of Alutiiq history. And the return of the masks back to France as promised has made it possible for more cooperation between the two museums. The Alutiiq Museum and the Chateau Musee are already planning to bring the other 35 masks from Pinart's collection back home in Kodiak.

These artifacts are the missing link to history and culture for the Alutiiq and Sugpiaq peoples. And a connection to more stories and songs that were once thought lost forever.

HOST: Since many of the masks were used with songs and stories in ceremonies, Haakanson and his staff have been able to translate from Pinart's notes in Russian and from signatures on the masks. Haakanson reads this story he calls "The Spirit Bear ."

SVEN HAAKANSON: One day, while they were dancing in the cheklaik, a fearless woman asked why during those games they did not go to the shore. Then she decided to go by herself holding in one hand a wooden stick, the kind used for drying fish. She immediately saw something red on the sea, like fire.

SVEN HAAKANSON: From it appeared two men and one woman. The woman held a human hand in her mouth. They moved closer and were soon on the shore, and the woman who had come out of the cabin holding a wooden spear had prepared to defend herself. They came out of the water in the direction of the mountains. They fell and in their places were only found some drops of water. Soon after, they got back and flew over to the mountains and soon vanished completely.

HOST: As with so many Alaska Native and Native American cultures, the Alutiiq and Sugpiaq people were in danger of vanishing completely. But through determination and perseverance, Native corporations, community groups, universities and museums like The Alutiiq Museum are working to reclaim their language, traditions and artwork. And the return of the masks to Kodiak in 2008 was an empowering moment in Alutiiq and Sugpiaq history. Alphonse Pinart may have saved the artifacts from Kodiak. But it was the people of Kodiak who brought the art home and in doing so, saved their own culture.
Perry Eaton.

PERRY EATON Fifty years ago, if you sat down and told people, There's going to come a time when you really need to remember this story for your grandkids the person would have laughed you right off the dock. It's about an alive, living culture. It's about an expression of who we are, and where our baseline, and where our basis is. And whether it's indigenous people, or fourth generation Italians in America, they're always looking to validate and examine the origins and the history of the individual.

SVEN HAAKANSON: (Reads.) He's taking you to the North, to the universe's end. "From where" This way. Go inside. The two are playing.

HOST: "Coming Home: The Return of the Alutiiq Masks" was produced by Dmae Roberts, Shyanne Beatty, Clark Salisbury who also this program and Koahnic Broadcast Corporation. The President and CEO of Koahnic is Jaclyn Sallee. The Executive Producer of Earthsongs is Susan Braine.

Our editor was Catherine Stifter. Our Scholar was Dr. Robert Shaw. Additional help came from Sara Caswell, Tali (rhymes with ?alley?) Singer. We also had help from Mary Donaldson, Mike Wall, Lori (Seebee) Seibe of KMXT in Kodiak and Jennifer Canfield, Marjorie Van Halteren (Hall-tir-uhn), Vernon Chimegalrea, Thea Lawton, Rachel Tuia (too-ya) and Loren Dixon of KNBA in Anchorage, Alaska.

Funding was made possible by
the Rasmuson Foundation,
the United States Artists residency program
Alaska Humanities Forum
and the National Endowment for the Arts

Special thanks to the The Alutiiq Museum, the Anchorage Museum at Rasmusan Center and The Cook Inlet Tribal Council, Incorporated.

I'm Shyanne Beatty and this has been a Earthsongs documentary special brought to you by Native Voice One, the Native American radio service at NV1 dot org.

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