Under the covered basketball court at Harborview Elementary School in downtown Juneau, a group of carvers have just started working on a Raven totem pole. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s one of two healing totems meant to acknowledge atrocities that took place on Douglas Island to the Aak\u2019w Kw\u00e1an and T\u2019aaku Kw\u00e1an, people who\u2019ve lived in this area for thousands of years.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe tribe doesn\u2019t want that part of their history to be swallowed up and forgotten completely,\u201d tribal administrator for Douglas Indian Association Andrea Cadiente-Laiti said on the phone Friday.<\/p>\n
While the list of losses goes \u201con and on and on,\u201d Cadiente-Laiti said, she\u2019s referring to two particular events. In 1956, the Douglas Indian Cemetery was paved over to build the Douglas Highway and Gastineau Elementary School. Then, in 1962, the City of Douglas burned down the Douglas Indian Village to make room for the harbor and Savikko Park.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have one member on the Douglas Indian Association Tribal Council, John Morris, who was there as a young man. He watched his home being burned down,\u201d Cadiente-Laiti said. \u201cAll the Douglas Indian Village residents were displaced and they weren\u2019t compensated for relocation. If they were, it was very nominal.\u201d<\/p>\n
She said that era was a time of extreme racism.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey did things because they could do things, they seized things because they could seize things and they took advantage through manipulation of government regulations to determine what they were indeed able to take,\u201d Cadiente-Laiti said. \u201cWe knew there was a huge cemetery where that school is sitting.\u201d<\/p>\n
In more recent years, Cadiente-Laiti said DIA had been working hard to inform the community and the city government what had happened when \u201clo and behold, the unearthed graves.\u201d<\/p>\n
Gravesites were dug up in June 2012 during renovation and construction work of Gastineau School.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat brought to the forefront some of the travesties that occurred there,\u201d Cadiente-Laiti said.<\/p>\n
It was devastating to the tribe, especially the elders.<\/p>\n
\u201cI described what they went through during this as being akin to the grieving cycle; the whole range of emotions happened with these elders. When the gravesites were unearthed, these elders began to think about their own loved ones, their grandparents that were buried in that cemetery, not knowing where they are even buried \u2014 it opened up their grieving all over again,\u201d Cadiente-Laiti said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis unearthing created a visualization of what had taken place there. It was like our ancestors calling out, \u2018Look at what they have done to us,\u2019\u201d DIA Tribal Council member Paul Marks said on the phone Thursday.<\/p>\n
Marks led a blessing of the log currently being carved and the carvers on Memorial Day. The nearly 26-foot totem pole will stand at Gastineau Elementary School.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s to commemorate those that were buried in that area,\u201d Marks said. \u201cIt validates that there were graves there for a lot of people.\u201d<\/p>\n
\n\u2018A time for healing\u2019 and passing on tradition<\/strong><\/p>\n The group of carvers started shaping the pole this week. Their work area at Harborview Elementary School is fenced off. On Thursday, a daughter of one of the carvers was hanging out and helping to sweep red cedar pieces into neat piles. Tools like chisels, mallets and adzes surround the pole. Just outside the fencing, a few kids played basketball nearby.<\/p>\n Lead carver Mick Beasley walked around, giving advice to the three apprentice carvers there that day and an intermediate carver, who serves as a mentor. It\u2019s Beasley\u2019s first time leading a group to carve a totem.<\/p>\n \u201cI just try and figure out how to keep everyone busy, keep them from whacking each other. Safety is a big thing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Master carver Nathan Jackson of Ketchikan designed the totem and the goal is to have it finished in September.<\/p>\n \u201cI think we\u2019ll do fine,\u201d Beasley said.<\/p>\n The Raven totem pole and an Eagle one, which is being carved later, are part of a project called, \u201cA Time For Healing.\u201d The 40-foot Eagle totem will stand at Savikko Park, overlooking the former Douglas Indian Village.<\/p>\n Last year, Goldbelt Heritage Foundation got a $1.15 million grant to carve the totems, preserve traditional knowledge through the master-apprentice carving program and provide a variety of educational opportunities over the next two years, said project manager Fred White. Goldbelt Heritage has been worked closely with DIA and the Juneau School District.<\/p>\n Apprentice carver Herb Sheakley said he\u2019s excited to get to carve every day.<\/p>\n \u201cThis is my first huge project. The biggest thing I\u2019ve done before this was a frog bowl,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n For as much fun as he\u2019s having, the reason the totem is being carved is not lost on him.<\/p>\n \u201cIt means a lot to me for people to understand what our people went through and how much we\u2019ve all lost. And even now when we\u2019re working on this, we\u2019re not speaking our own language; we\u2019re speaking English,\u201d Sheakley said.<\/p>\n Carving is one way for Sheakley to connect with his culture. Another is learning to speak Tlingit. For almost a year, he\u2019s been a Tlingit language apprentice and has been working with elders.<\/p>\n \u201cI sit down with them, talk with them and record them. I learn 10 to 12 new things every day I\u2019m with them. There\u2019s so much knowledge I need to soak up and pass on to the next generation,\u201d Sheakley said.<\/p>\n Beasley called Sheakley a big asset to the project.<\/p>\n \u201cHe knows how to use the tools, he\u2019s got a good eye and he\u2019s young,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Beasley called all the apprentice carvers strong. He\u2019s working on building up their hands. He spends time with each of them as they work on different parts of the pole, trying to teach symmetry and the mechanics of carving.<\/p>\n At the same time Beasley is passing on tradition and culture.<\/p>\n \u201cThat\u2019s a given. That\u2019s exactly what we\u2019re doing. Our activity is doing that. That\u2019s everything,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Beasley said he doesn\u2019t try to define that aspect of carving. He learned to carve in high school through the Juneau Indian Studies program.<\/p>\n \u201cI was class of \u201976. They had the most beautiful yellow cedar in the world and they let us carve as much as we wanted, and that was the seed,\u201d Beasley said.<\/p>\n He said, by leading the totem carving, he\u2019s doing the same thing.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s planting seeds and we\u2019ll reap the harvest off this.\u201d<\/p>\n \u2022 Contact reporter Lisa Phu at 523-2246 or lisa.phu@juneauempire.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Under the covered basketball court at Harborview Elementary School in downtown Juneau, a group of carvers have just started working on a Raven totem pole. It\u2019s one of two healing totems meant to acknowledge atrocities that took place on Douglas Island to the Aak\u2019w Kw\u00e1an and T\u2019aaku Kw\u00e1an, people who\u2019ve lived in this area for […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":13062,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-13061","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13061","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13061"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13061\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13062"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13061"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13061"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13061"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=13061"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}