SHI TO SPONSOR LECTURE ON JUNEAU INDIAN VILLAGE, PROTECTING ABORIGINAL RIGHTS, NATIVE IDENTITY
Event free, open to the public
Nov. 14, 2019
(Flyer)
Sealaska Heritage Institute (SHI) will sponsor a lecture on Juneau’s Indian Village, protecting aboriginal rights and reclaiming Native identity.
The lecture, Juneau Indian Village: Pilings, Pavement and Politics, will be given by Ernestine Hayes, a Tlingit author and former Alaska State Writer Laureate 2016-2018.
“The story of the Juneau Indian Village functions as a metaphor for the Alaska Native experience: as with Tlingit society itself, the Juneau Indian Village and its residents have been renamed, removed and redefined by outside influences for generations,” Hayes wrote.
In the lecture, Hayes will trace the history of her birthplace and relate it to protecting aboriginal rights and reclaiming Indigenous identity.
Hayes belongs to the Wolf House of the Kaagwaantaan clan of the Tlingit nation. Her essays, articles, short stories and poetry have been published in many venues, including a section of her poem The Spoken Forest for permanent installation at Totem Bight State Park. Author of Blonde Indian, an Alaska Native Memoir and The Tao of Raven, Hayes makes her home in Juneau not far from the village where she was raised.
The lecture is scheduled from noon-1 pm, Monday, Nov. 18, at Sealaska Heritage’s Walter Soboleff Building, 105 S. Seward St. in Juneau. The lecture will be videotaped and put online shortly after the talk.
This program is provided under the Preparing Indigenous Teachers and Administrators for Alaska Schools (PITAAS) program and funded by the Alaska Native Education Program.
Sealaska Heritage Institute is a private nonprofit founded in 1980 to perpetuate and enhance Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian cultures of Southeast Alaska. Its goal is to promote cultural diversity and cross-cultural understanding through public services and events. SHI also conducts social scientific and public policy research that promotes Alaska Native arts, cultures, history and education statewide. The institute is governed by a Board of Trustees and guided by a Council of Traditional Scholars, a Native Artist Committee and a Southeast Regional Language Committee.
CONTACT: Amy Fletcher, SHI Media and Publications Director, 907.586.9116, amy.fletcher@sealaska.com.
