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Traditional Basket Weaving Program
SHI sponsored a class on traditional basket weaving in Hoonah, November 2002. The class was taught by renowned weaver Delores Churchill, a leading artist and teacher of basketry. Delores taught Hoonah students to weave hats and baskets with spruce roots and red cedar strips. The state University of Alaska Southeast was a partner in the project. (Photos)

Traditional Native Design Program
SHI sponsored a class on traditional Native design in Hoonah, November 2002. The class was led by Native artist Mick Beasley, who taught participants to draw a traditional bentwood box design. Beasley urges aspiring artists to learn traditional designs before attempting contemporary works.

"When you do traditional design, it's like you are walking in the artists' footsteps," Beasley said. "That's why replication is good. It's learning, it's nurturing." (Photos)

Ethnographic Field Research Project
SHI is funding an ethnographic field research program in partnership with the University of Southeast (UAS). The project is serving Alaska Native students from Yakutat, Klukwan, Ketchikan, Klawock and Kake. Each student is expected to do field research, explain their research techniques in class and write a final ethnographic paper summarizing their findings. Research projects proposed by students include:

• Spruce root gathering and preparation plus weaving techniques

• Subsistence, putting up and preparing salmon plus oral narratives that instruct how to catch, prepare and store salmon

• The changing roles of Tlingit women through the first half of the 20th Century, particularly the boarding school generation

• Stories on the origin of the crests belonging to the G aana x .adí clan and the history of the clan  

• Rock art on Prince of Wales Island on Kosciusko Island. Recording information from Elders from Kake, Ketchikan and Klawock  

• Partially completed manuscript written in Tlingit by student's grandfather, who taught and transcribed the Klawock dialect of the Tlingit language  

• Subsistence practices regarding berry gathering and traditional methods of preparing and preserving berries

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