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Web posted Wednesday, April 21, 2004

Preserving the Tlingit 'fringe about the body'
Jennie Thlunaut was entrusted with Chilkat weaving technology, and she was prolific

By Ann Chandonnet
for the juneau empire

Jennie Thlunaut may be not a household name, but if she had lived in Japan she would probably have been declared a national treasure.

Jennie Thlunaut (1892-1986) was the Tlingit weaver whom Klukwan entrusted with the technology of Chilkat weaving. She devoted 75 years to this form of Pacific Northwest Indian art, creating more than 50 blankets and 25 tunics during her prolific career.

A typical weaver requires a year, full-time, to create a blanket. But Jennie produced 75 major pieces while raising her family, preserving subsistence foods and holding down a job. Some of her work she sold. Other blankets and tunics were gifts to relatives.

The Tlingit term for the traditional blanket is naaxein. It is not a blanket in the sense of bedding, but a dancing robe intended for ceremonial display. The heavy garment is edged with long fringes; when it is worn by a dancer who swirls and dips, the Tlingits see it as "a fringe about the body."

"We wear our history," as Austin Hammond said. "Our people don't write and read [traditionally] but what you see on the blanket is what we got from our uncles and fathers and grandpas."

Traditionally, Chilkat blankets were woven of mountain goat wool and red cedar bark. It takes weeks just to prepare the fibers, "spinning" the fine wool by rolling it on the bare legs. Tree lichens were used to dye the wool yellow. Oxidized copper yielded blue-green. The black dye derived from hemlock bark steeped in strong, aged urine. Chilkat blankets in museums have been estimated to be worth $100,000 each. The Smithsonian has 30 such blankets in storage.

"The value of a piece of Jennie's weaving exceeds the monetary value," says Tlingit linguist and author Nora Dauenhauer in a video about Thlunaut. "It is a deed to our land and history; it identifies our people and ties them together."

The ceremonial robe was found among the Haida and Tsimshian as well as the Tlingit. According to Tlingit tradition, this type of finger weaving originated among the Tsimshian and was carried to the Tlingit. (A basket weaver once told me that the technique was "traded for a song.") Blankets are considered regalia as well as wealth. They might be given away at potlatches to honored guests, or cut into strips to be given away. Later these pieces might be made into dance aprons or leggings.

According to information gathered by George Emmons, men furnished the mountain goat pelts, the cedar bark, the weaving frame, the full-size pattern on a painted board and the tools required. Women prepared the materials and wove the blanket.

The designs are usually geometric - crest patterns with rounded outlines. The Raven's Tail style uses designs derived from Tlingit twined basketry. One of the earliest records of a blanket is the painting by Mikkhail Tikhanov - made in 1818 at Sitka - of Chief Kotlean resplendent in such a robe. Early explorers such as James Cook and Urey Lisiansky collected these robes, and some wound up in museums as far away as Leningrad and Copenhagen. Lisiansky, at Sitka in 1804, described the robes as "very handsome."

As Western influences permeated Southeast Alaska in the 1800s, traders introduced factory-woven blankets and the art of Chilkat weaving was nearly lost.

Jennie was born to the Wolf House in 1892. (She often wove the wolf crest into her work.) Her Tlingit name was Shax' saani Keek', or "Younger Sister of the Girls." When Jennie was about 10, her mother, Ester, began to teach Jennie to weave blankets and spruce root baskets and sew beaded moccasins. Every April, her father, Matthew Johnson, traveled by canoe to Skagway to sell the baskets and moccasins. Jennie wed in 1905 in a match arranged by her parents. After her first husband died, she married John Mark Thlunaut. After his death in 1952, she returned to her two-room house in Klukwan. In an article by her granddaughter, Rosita Worl, Jennie reveals that she made her first blanket during the summer of 1908 while her husband labored at a mining camp in Porcupine. She earned $50 from that weaving. A later blanket was traded for her daughter's tuition at Sheldon Jackson School; it shows a frog emerging from winter hibernation.

Jennie demonstrated Chilkat weaving at the Smithsonian's Festival of American Folklife in 1984. In 1985, Jennie led a week-long weaving workshop in Haines. Clarissa Hudson writes of the week, "Jennie amazed us with her speed at weaving ... her fingers seemed to fly through the warp, and she didn't even use a pattern."

For more information, view "Jennie Thlunaut, Chilkat weaver," a video available at the downtown library. The video was produced c. 1988 with funding from Sealaska Heritage Foundation. The video was created by Nora Dauenhauer with assistance from Cyril George, Agnes Bellanger, Jan Steinbright and Jimmy Katseek.

Interviews of Jennie conducted in 1985 are preserved in "Haa Tuwunaagu Yis, for Healing Our Spirit," Vol. 2. Edited by Nora Dauenhauer and Richard Dauenhauer, this book was the winner of the 1991 American Book Award.

• Southeast Sagas is a series that appears in the Juneau Empire every other Wednesday. Its aim is to profile people and describe events that help to shed light on the varied history of this region of Alaska.

The culture in her hands: Jennie Thlunaut demonstrates Chilkat weaving at a public venue. During her long life, the master weaver produced 75 major pieces. alaska state library, ethel clayton montgomery collection, 1934-1989 / pca-248-21.