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Press Release
May 24, 2006 (Photo)
SHI TO RELEASE VIDEO ABOUT DISCOVERY OF ANCIENT REMAINS
Program to air statewide during Celebration 2006
Sealaska
Heritage Institute (SHI) is releasing a documentary about the discovery
of ancient human remains found in the 1990s and the partnership that
arose among Alaska Native people, scientists and government agencies.
The 30-minute video, Kuwóot yas.éin (His Spirit is Looking Out From the
Cave), will air at noon, Friday and 5 pm, Saturday, June 2-3, during
Gavel-to-Gavel Alaska’s coverage of Celebration 2006. (For information
on Gavel-to-Gavel Alaska channels by community, see
www.ktoo.org/gavel/cable.cfm). The video also will be shown during
the festival at Centennial Hall, Friday, June 2. SHI has partnered with
Hidden Landscapes, a national distributor, to market the program. The
video also is available through SHI for $25.
SHI produced the video in collaboration with the
Tongass National Forest, the Denver Museum of Nature & Science,
and the National Park Service with support from the National Science
Foundation Office of Polar Programs.
The program documents the discovery of 10,000-year-old human remains in
a cave on Prince of Wales Island in Southeast Alaska and the unique
partnership that formed among the Tongass National Forest staff,
scientists and Alaska Native tribes to learn about this ancient person.
The video describes the initial notification
and consultation required by the Native American Graves
Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA),
explores the collaborative relationships that developed among Southeast
Alaska Native people, scientists and government agencies and asks the
question: “In an era when the interests of scientists often
conflict with those of indigenous peoples, why did this partnership
work?”
It also reveals how the picture of the past told in Native oral
histories often echoes scientific theories constructed from
archeological evidence. The scientific findings offer substantive
parallels to Tlingit oral traditions about the longevity of human
occupation of the region and about life during the last ice age.
Finally, the video describes the circumstances of the discovery and
explains the earliest known human occupation of south-coastal Alaska and
the implications for our understanding of early maritime adaptations in
Alaska and the peopling of the Americas.
CONTACT: Dr. Rosita Worl, SHI President, 463-4844; Terry Fifield,
Archaeologist, Prince of Wales Island Districts, Tongass National
Forest, 826-1642; E. James Dixon, Anthropologist, University of
Colorado, Boulder, 303-735-7802; Chuck Smythe, Ethnography Program
Manager, Northeast Region National Park Service, 617-223-5014