First Lady Donna Walker was adopted into a Tlingit clan Thursday night during a surprise ceremony at the Governor\u2019s Mansion in Juneau. The adoption ceremony came at the end of an Indigenous Readings event hosted by the First Lady and organized as part of the Sharing Our Knowledge Tlingit Clan Conference at Centennial Hall, which runs through Sunday.<\/p>\n
Walker was given the name Koodeishgh\u00e9, once held by the late Lydia George of Angoon, and adopted into the Deisheetaan clan. Deisheetaan clan elder Selina Everson, of Juneau, approved the adoption, embracing Walker afterward with the affectionate words, \u201cNow you\u2019re my grandmother,\u201d a reference to her close relationship with George, Walker\u2019s namesake.<\/p>\n
Ishmael Hope performed the ceremony with his uncle Gerry Hope, elder Paul Marks, and Lance Twitchell, as Gov. Bill Walker, Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott and his wife, Toni, stood by.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis name (Koodeishgh\u00e9) is from a wonderful elder,\u201d Hope told the First Lady, \u201cand that shows the value Selina and the Deisheetaan have for you and your family.\u201d<\/p>\n
Audience members were asked to bear witness by repeating the name four times after Hope. Money was held to the First Lady\u2019s forehead by Gerry Hope as the name was pronounced, and then handed over to elder Marie Olson of the Wooshkeetaan clan.<\/p>\n
Gov. Walker was adopted into the Tlingit Kaagwaantaan Clan in April, making him part of the Eagle moiety. The First Lady is of the opposite moiety, a Raven, following Tlingit tradition for marriage partners.<\/p>\n
Earlier in the evening, unaware that she was about to be adopted, the First Lady commented on how much her husband\u2019s Tlingit adoption has meant to him.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf all the honors my husband has received, being adopted into the clan has been a highlight for him,\u201d Donna Walker said.<\/p>\n
The naming ceremony was not announced as part of the evening\u2019s program of events, which included poetry readings by Hope, Twitchell and Maria Williams, of Anchorage, and an oratory reading by Tlingit elder Nora Marks Dauenhauer. Ernestine Hayes, also a Tlingit poet and author, provided introductions. <\/p>\n
For more on the Tlingit Clan Conference, see the Nov. 4 issue of the Capital City Weekly.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
First Lady Donna Walker was adopted into a Tlingit clan Thursday night during a surprise ceremony at the Governor\u2019s Mansion in Juneau. The adoption ceremony came at the end of an Indigenous Readings event hosted by the First Lady and organized as part of the Sharing Our Knowledge Tlingit Clan Conference at Centennial Hall, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":20934,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-20933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20933","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=20933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20933"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=20933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}