On any given day, Alaska State Museum Curator of Collections Steve Henrikson traverses 4,000 years of history. There\u2019s Alaska Native history, culture and art. There are migrations. Russians. Modern artists. Wars. Statehood. There\u2019s even NASA. And with 115 years of collections, \u201cthere\u2019s enough depth there that things that have been in the collection many, many years have come in and never really been researched that much,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
This year, Henrikson, who\u2019s been with the museum more than two decades, is the recipient of a 2016 Governor\u2019s Award for the Humanities.<\/p>\n
University of Alaska Southeast professor and writer Ernestine Hayes recommended Henrikson for the Governor\u2019s award after working with him for a few years, and seeing what he\u2019s done at the college, around Juneau, and in his own writing. He\u2019s knowledgeable, thorough, and gracious, too, she said.<\/p>\n
In almost three total decades of work recording and preserving Alaskan history, art and culture, he\u2019s also accumulated quite a few interesting stories about the objects in the museum \u2014 and the detective work a hidden history can require.<\/p>\n
A few years ago, one of those objects was a football-shaped, rusty, dirty piece of metal on a back shelf, not filed with a reference number like most items.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always wondered what it was,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
It was when he was reading some 1920s correspondence from Father Andrew Kashevaroff, the museum\u2019s first curator, to the Secretary of the Navy \u2014 Kashevaroff died soon afterwards, which was why the object went unfiled \u2014 that Henrickson realized the shell was found in Angoon.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt went from being a rusty piece of iron to being an exhibit from the bombardment of Angoon, in 1882,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
The shell was still live, too, with a fuse, gunpowder, and crystallized nitroglycerin visible inside.<\/p>\n
Henrikson called JPD, hoping they might be able to render it safe without destroying it.<\/p>\n
An officer came, put it in a briefcase, and they put it somewhere safe until the Army\u2019s EOD (Explosive Ordnance Disposal) squad could come deal with it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey handed it back to me in pretty much the same state\u201d (but without explosives,) he said. \u201cIt\u2019s great to have that kind of stuff in the collection, because it\u2019s like the physical evidence of history\u2026 There are revisionist historians out there that say things like \u2018This didn\u2019t happen.\u2019 Well, how do you explain (the shell?)\u201d<\/p>\n
The museum also has a shell from the bombardment of Kake.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was policy at the time to have gunboat diplomacy to show Alaska Natives who was in charge,\u201d he said. \u201cThey would bombard Alaska Natives just as a reminder. Just by doing research on our own collection, we\u2019re able to find some really great information.\u201d<\/p>\n
It\u2019s also happened, though, that items in the collection have gone missing.<\/p>\n
Back in the 1970s, the museum had a branch in Anchorage where it kept its aircraft. That branch burned down after someone started a fire. Moon rocks NASA gifted each state from the Apollo 11 landing survived, as documented in the records\u2026 then went missing.<\/p>\n
\u201cTwenty years later, this guy contacted us saying that he had it, and he wanted to sell it to the museum,\u201d Henrikson said.<\/p>\n
That guy was Coleman Anderson, a former skipper on the boat \u201cWestern Viking,\u201d featured on the TV show The Deadliest Catch. According to past newspaper articles, Anderson claimed he found the rocks while Dumpster diving after the fire.<\/p>\n
The FBI, NASA\u2019s Office of the Inspector General and the Alaska Attorney General\u2019s office all got involved.<\/p>\n
Initially, Henrikson remembers, Anderson wanted a finder\u2019s fee. He also claimed the rocks had been damaged and he had restored them, Henrikson said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe saw pretty quickly we weren\u2019t going to pay his finder\u2019s fee. So he told us he took it out of the country so we couldn\u2019t try and seize it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
They told him that in order to authenticate it, however, he had to take it to the Johnson Space Center.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we got it, it was clearly untouched from the fire,\u201d Henrikson said. \u201cThere was nothing wrong with it at all\u2026 and once he caught wind of (Homeland Security\u2019s involvement,) he totally collapsed. So we got the moon rock back, and felt really proud that we were able to do it\u2026. If we say we\u2019re going to keep something in the permanent collection, that\u2019s what needs to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
Henrikson specializes in Tlingit art, culture and history, and war helmets in particular.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s working on a book about Tlingit war helmets. He\u2019s finished the research, but anticipates writing it after he retires. He\u2019s also writing a book on the history of the Alaska State Museum.<\/p>\n
He first moved to Alaska in 1987 as a curator at the National Park in Sitka. It was a few years later that he was hired as curator of collections, in Juneau, and a few years after that he was adopted by Angoon\u2019s Killer Whale clan at a potlatch in Klukwan and given the name Eech T\u2019ei, which means \u201cBehind the Reef,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou spend the rest of your life living up to the name that you\u2019ve been given. I try to do that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
A final story has to do with history that was in danger of being lost.<\/p>\n
Retired fishery biologist Paul Kissner was out fishing on Montana Creek in the mid 1990s and saw, eroding out of the streambed, what looked like a pre-contact Tlingit fish weir.<\/p>\n
Henrikson and anthropologist Wallace \u201cWally\u201d Olson got their waders on, went out there, and saw that was indeed what it was \u2014 a pre-contact fish trap, still with its original spruce root lashing. As the stream ate away at the bank, the roots looked fresh. But within 30 seconds of the air hitting them, they turned dark.<\/p>\n
They sandbagged the area, got some money, and did \u201ca full blown archaeological excavation.\u201d They saved 75 percent of the four feet in diameter, ten or eleven foot long original trap.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt turned out to be a major part of my life being in on the discovery of it, the excavation, and the conservation process involved,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
They had to keep the trap wet as they excavated it, then soaked it in wax so it could eventually dry out, but not disintegrate.<\/p>\n
For years, Henrikson\u2019s wife, weaver Janice Criswell, saved spruce roots, bigger than the ones she normally used for her weaving, until they had enough for a replica, which they built.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019d like to do another one and see how it works,\u201d he said. \u201cOnly by trial and error would we be able to figure it out. Even something as basic as which way it was pointed in the stream.\u201d<\/p>\n
And so the work of reconstructing, interpreting, and sharing history continues.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that the amount of work and the quality of work that (Henrikson) does is not as widely recognized as it could be, in part because of the nature of his position and in part because he\u2019s a humble man,\u201d Hayes said. \u201cYou can tell that he loves what he does.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact Capital City Weekly staff writer Mary Catharine Martin at maryc.martin@capweek.com.<\/p>\n
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