Transcript for the Piece Audio version of The Alutiiq Masks - Sharing HIstory

Host Intro:

By the mid 1800?s Russian fur traders enslaved the peoples of Kodiak to hunt for them and missionaries were trying to save them by giving them Russian names and language. One young French explorer in1871 stayed in Kodiak for six months, taking extensive notes in Russian about the culture, language and artwork of the Alutiiq peoples. When the explorer died in 1911, he left about 87 wooden ceremonial masks and more than 100 other artifacts from Kodiak to a small French museum where they survived two world wars. In 2000, Alutiiq artists started making pilgrimages to France to see the masks once lost to their culture. Producer Dmae Roberts with Koahnic (Koh-AHN-ick) Broadcast Corporation has this story.

SOUND: FADE UP AND UNDER FRENCH GUIDE WELCOMING CHILDREN.

DMAE ROBERTS: In Bologne Sur Mer off the coast of Northern France, there?s a 13th century castle turned museum. School children here are studying a collection of masks and artifacts from Kodiak Island in Alaska. They were collected by French Explorer Alphonse Pinart.

ANNE-CLAIRE LARONDE: He went to Alaska when he was 19 years old?

DMAE ROBERTS: Anne-Claire Laronde is the director of the Chateau Musee.

ANNE-CLAIRE LARONDE: He made a trip in kayak from the Aleutian Islands to Kodiak 1870 to 1871. And he stay in the winter to Kodiak and it 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 ROBERTS: Though the Chateau Musee cherished the collection, officials there knew little about the culture that created the masks. That changed in 2000 when Native Alaskan Artist Helen Simeonoff traveled to France to see the masks of her ancestors.

HELEN SIMEONOFF: I felt like I was walking around in a trance over seeing items I once was.

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

SOUND: GRADUALLY FADE OUT AMBIENCE

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

DMAE ROBERTS: The next year the director of the Alutiiq Museum in Kodiak, anthropologist and MacArthur ?genius fellow? Sven Haakanson got involved. He began a six-year effort to get the Chateau Musee to send the masks back to Kodiak on a loan.

HELEN SIMEONOFF: 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.

DMAE ROBERTS: Haakanson says the French government feared the the Alutiiq Museum might use the Native American Repatriation laws to try to keep the masks. Then in 2005, the Chateau Musee got a new director -- Anne-Claire Laronde. Haakanson found her more receptive. He decided to bring a delegation of 10 Alutiiq artists including Simeonoff to the Chateau Musee to meet Laronde.

ANNE -CLAIRE LARONDE: The big moment was when all the artists arrive in the room when we, the museum staff, 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. We were just looking at the masks and each other.

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 ROBERTS: Will Anderson is a photographer and president of the Koniag Native Corporation.

WILL ANDERSON: It was just a powerful experience. 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 ROBERTS: Sven Haakansen says this was the turning point.

SVEN HAAKANSEN: 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 sh are what they knew. It really made them open their eyes as to how important these collections are.

DMAE ROBERTS: It still took two more years of negotiations ? including a signed agreement by the Alutiiq peoples that they would return the masks.

FADE UP AND UNDER SOUND OF ?MUSEUM OPENING? SONG

DMAE ROBERTS: Last May, 34 of the masks came home to Kodiak. The Alutiiq Museum called the exhibit ?Like a Face.? Artist Helen Simeonoff says she never dreamed she?d see the collection in Kodiak.

HELEN SIMEONOFF: 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.

SOUND: FADE OUT AMBIENCE

DMAE ROBERTS: Next year, the Alutiiq Museum is collaborating with the Chateau Musee on a contemporary mask exhibit. There is hope for a permanent loan of the masks in the future. Meanwhile Sven Haakanson and his museum staff are working to translate Pinart?s extensive notes from Russian into Alutiiq and English ?

FADE UP SOUND OF SVEN SPEAKING RUSSIAN ALUTIIQ AND ENGLISH

SVEN HAAKANSEN: ?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?

SOUND: FADE UP MELISSA BURNS COMPOSITION

OUTRO: THIS PIECE IS PRODUCED BY DMAE ROBERTS AS PART OF A RADIO DOCUMENTARY ABOUT THE ALUTIIQ MASKS. TO SEE A SHORT FILM AND PHOTOS, VISIT EARTHSONGS.NET.

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