For about eight years, four carved wooden shields, known in Tlingit as Tináa, hung in the Harborview Elementary School entryway, welcoming students and their parents to school.
“They sort of formed a gathering spot for families who are entering the building and waiting for their children,” Harborview principal Tom McKenna told the Empire Friday morning. “It was also a spot where children were photographed to be honored for their achievements.”
Now, that spot is less special. The Tináa are gone, stolen last week.
Sometime between school hours Tuesday afternoon and Wednesday morning somebody made off with the shields, according to police.
The Juneau Police Department is investigating the theft, which school officials reported Wednesday morning. Police don’t yet have any suspects, and it’s too early to determine why the thief took the artwork, JPD spokesperson Erann Kalwara said.
While police are working to get to the bottom of the theft, school officials are asking the community for any information that may lead to the return of the shields.
McKenna posted pictures of the four shields on Juneau Problem Corner, a public Facebook group. Though the post hasn’t yet yielded any answers, it has caught people’s attention. As of Friday afternoon, McKenna’s post had been shared 185 times.
“That’s our primary interest: to have them returned,” McKenna said. “This is uncharacteristic of the Harborview community. We’re all upset about this, and we want them back.”
Harborview students and staff members aren’t the only people distraught. Benjamin Schleifman, the Tlingit artist who carved the Tináa, described the theft as “heartbreaking.”
Schleifman carved the shields, which are typically made out of copper and historically were a symbol of wealth and status, eight years ago on commission for the Juneau School District Indian Studies Program. At the time, he didn’t know they would end up in Harborview, but he was glad that they did.
“I don’t know how or why they ended up in the school, but I was super happy about it because they were some of my favorite pieces,” Schleifman said in a phone interview. “They’re not my best work, mind you, but I really enjoyed making them, and I love that school.”
Schleifman and Harborview go way back. About 13 years ago, he worked in the school as a para-educator for the Indian Studies Program.
Kalwara said that JPD have estimated the value of the Tináa at $1,000 each, but investigators are still working to nail down the actual value of the artwork. If he were to sell them to a private buyer today, Schleifman said he would ask $2,500 for each shield.
McKenna said that the monetary value of the Tináa is beside the point.
“The most important thing the community needs to know is that these are of extreme cultural and sentimental value for our school community,” he said. “They are irreplaceable.”
This is the third time this year that a theft of Alaska Native art has made the news. In late February, somebody stole three Tlingit paddles, a 4-foot-tall Tlingit walking stick and an Iñupiaq mask from Barrow out of Glacier Valley Elementary School’s library.
[Police recover school’s stolen artwork]
In both cases, the art made it back to its proper home. But art theft — and Native-art theft in particular — seems to be a growing trend.
Kalwara didn’t have any statistics on hand to corroborate this when she spoke with the Empire Friday, but she said anecdotal evidence shows as much. She has worked as a JPD spokesperson for the past four years, and during that time, she has observed an uptick in Native-art theft, especially this year.
[Cedar mask artwork stolen from JACC]
“This year really is when I’ve notice this happening more,” she told the Empire. “This is becoming more of an event recently, but overall more things are being stolen, which is a very sad thing for our community.”
According to JPD’s 2016 Annual Report, there were 169 burglaries in 2015 — 64 percent more than in the year before. There were nearly 1,000 cases of theft and larceny reported in 2015. That’s nearly a 34 percent increase over the previous year.
Behind the vast majority of those thefts and burglaries, there’s a person, a family, or an organization that lost something of value. In the case of the stolen Tináa, the victims were children, which is why Schleifman said the crime is so upsetting.
“I was really hoping somebody would’ve turned them in by now,” he said. “It’s art for kids, for God’s sake.”
• Contact reporter Sam DeGrave at 523-2279 or sam.degrave@juneauempire.com.
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