I don\u2019t write many columns as Capital City Weekly editor. There are too many interesting people and events in Southeast Alaska to write articles about.<\/p>\n
But one of those people was Teri Rofkar, a Ravenstail and spruce root basket weaver from Sitka, and Dec. 2, at 60 years old, she passed away after a battle with cancer.<\/p>\n
I interviewed Teri twice \u2014 a little more than a year ago for a \u201cDay in the Life of\u201d profile, and this spring, when she was the featured artist for Tidal Echoes, Southeast Alaska\u2019s literary and arts journal.<\/p>\n
Teri was passionate, talented, creative, the kind of person the world needs more of. She was full of so many inspired ideas. For some of them, which she called her \u201cTlingit Superman\u201d series, she\u2019d received a Creative Capital grant. One robe she planned to make bulletproof with interwoven Kevlar, as a comment on America\u2019s militarization. Into another, she would weave LEDs and fiber optics that would light up as the aurora when the wearer danced. A third she made completely from mountain goat, the first all mountain goat Ravenstail robe in hundreds of years. She wove double helixes along the side, in the shape of DNA, as an acknowledgment of the unique nature of Baranof Island mountain goats.<\/p>\n
She traveled to Russia to see robes taken from Southeast Alaska, now in Russian museums, and was incredibly moved to see a robe from Lituya Bay \u2014 one intimately connected with her own family, as Lituya Bay is where she traced her ancestry back to.<\/p>\n
\u201cI called (my mom) up from Russia and said \u2018Mom, they are our grandmother\u2019s robes,\u2019\u201d she told me.<\/p>\n
The robes and baskets Teri wove are treasures, just as her grandmother\u2019s were.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m the one that\u2019s passing through for a brief period of time,\u201d she told me last year. \u201cI\u2019m carrying this traditional art for a while; it\u2019s going to go on beyond me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Teri, I\u2019m just a writer who was lucky enough to speak with and write about you, but you made an impact on me and many others. You are already missed.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\u2014 Mary Catharine Martin, Capital City Weekly managing editor<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n *Here\u2019s the profile I wrote about Teri in October 2015. http:\/\/www.capitalcityweekly.com\/stories\/100715\/ae_1260573122.shtml Alaska Robotics also made a wonderful short documentary about her when she was chosen as the 2013 Rasmuson Foundation Distinguished Artist. It\u2019s available here: http:\/\/alaskarobotics.com\/2013\/05\/15\/teri-rofkar\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I don\u2019t write many columns as Capital City Weekly editor. There are too many interesting people and events in Southeast Alaska to write articles about. But one of those people was Teri Rofkar, a Ravenstail and spruce root basket weaver from Sitka, and Dec. 2, at 60 years old, she passed away after a battle […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[74],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-17878","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-arts-and-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17878","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=17878"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17878\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17878"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17878"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17878"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=17878"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}