If you drove into town from the ferry terminal two weeks ago or from up the Chilkat Valley, you may have noticed something odd about the cedar signs welcoming you to Haines.
In fact, the signs wouldn’t have welcomed you to Haines. Instead, they said “Welcome to Deishú.” That’s the original Lingít name of the area — before missionaries established a settlement here near the end of the 19th century.
Sometime in late April, someone replaced the word “Haines” with “Deishú” on the welcome signs at either end of town — one at Picture Point and the other at 1 Mile Haines Highway.
The perpetrator’s identity remains a mystery. But their actions have reinvigorated a long-running discussion about the town’s name and revitalization of the Lingít language.
The alterations, which according to Kreitzer occurred without the borough’s permission, came just a week after an idea popped up at a local Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee meeting to add the word “Deishú” to the signs. Since the incidents, there have been informal calls to go even further: to change the town’s name, or to put the question to a public vote. But no official proposals are on the table.
Borough manager Annette Kreitzer noticed the change at Picture Point as she drove down Lutak Road on her way back from Chilkoot Lake one morning.
“As I drove by I was just in my mind thinking, ‘Is that really what I just saw?’” Kreitzer said.
She asked Mayor Tom Morphet to take a look; he found the original cedar panel with the word “Haines” carved into it lying in the dirt next to the sign — and in its place was a plywood board with “Deishú” spelled out in similar black letters.
At 1 Mile, a plank with “Deishú” was fastened over the original sign rather than in its place.
Kreitzer said the borough’s public facilities crew took down the new signs and reverted them back to “Welcome to Haines” last week.
“As far as I’m aware those are the only two,” she said.
As of last Wednesday, borough staff hadn’t received any official requests for assembly action or petitions for a special election, Kreitzer said.
Borough staff have consulted with CIA on work to incorporate Lingít names on street signs and in the borough’s tourism brochure. At least five streets now have Lingít language signs, and more are planned, Kreitzer said.
James Hart, who is Chilkoot Indian Association’s council president, said he became aware of the “Welcome to Deishú” signs on Facebook and that he appreciated the conversation that they sparked.
Regarding the idea to change the borough’s name, Hart said the council hasn’t had any official discussions on the issue. “This isn’t a CIA position, but I think it is a discussion that needs to be had with the whole community,” he said.
Hart added that he has a sense of pride saying he’s from Haines but that there wasn’t an agreement in the first place to change the name from Deishú and that it would be nice to see the original name restored. He noted, though, that there used to be other Lingít communities in the area that would get lumped in under the name Deishú.
“These are place names that were thousands of years old, that tell a story about this place, this community, and this place of land,” he said. “Changing the name creates erasure of our culture and our ways of life. Reverting back to Deishú would be revitalizing that aspect of this community.”
The word itself — Deishú — means “end of the trail” or “beginning of the trail.” Hart said his understanding is that it signifies the area’s historic position as a trading route with access to both the ocean and the interior.
The “Welcome to Haines” sign at Picture Point was constructed just five or six years ago, while the one at 1 Mile was put up in the 1960s, according to Lee Heinmiller, director of Alaska Indian Arts. Heinmiller and local carver Greg Horner made the Picture Point sign, which is sandwiched between two halves of a 27-foot totem pole that was carved decades ago and had to be sliced in half to be removed from a California home and brought back to Haines.
Heinmiller said he wouldn’t mind adding “Deishú” to the signs but he added: “Having people vandalize the sign with that idea is not exactly the way you should be going about it. Once the decision is to change the wording on the sign, hopefully the work would be done with quality carving.”
He noted that on one of the welcome signs the “Deishú” lettering was etched into a “pretty crummy piece of wood that you wouldn’t even use to patch a hole in the wall of your house.”
Haines Borough Assembly member Gabe Thomas, who’s a member of Chilkoot Indian Association, voiced indifference about the name. “I don’t care if it’s Haines or if it’s Deishú, you can change the name all you want but you didn’t give the land back, did you?”
He added that he thinks the assembly should focus first on more important issues like infrastructure.
Assembly member Kevin Forster said that having signs that acknowledge the traditional area seems appropriate to him but that the issue of the borough’s name “feels like one of those bigger decisions that has to reflect the will of the people here.”
“It would be really important to understand CIA and CIV’s perspective,” he added, referring to Chilkoot Indian Association and Chilkat Indian Village, the two tribal governments in the valley.
If the issue came before the assembly, Forster said that he’d support a referendum.
