Rosita Worl, as a young woman, studied cultural anthropology. One of her first research projects involved studying the North Slope’s whaling culture, where she noticed that most of the leaders where also whaling captains (Photo courtesy of SHI).
A recent photo of Dr. Rosita Worl as president of the Sealaska Heritage Institute (Photo courtesy of SHI).
It will be 50 years tomorrow, that Dr. Rosita Worl stood in the back of the room at a historic Alaska Federation of Natives convention, when delegates voted to approve President Nixon’s signing of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. As an Alaska Native, she felt a rush of excitement as the votes were cast. At the time, she was a student, studying to become an anthropologist — and later went on to become president of the Sealaska Heritage Institute.
Dr. Rosita Worl attributes the renaissance of Southeast Native cultures, in part, to being able to leverage Native corporation profits for language and culture preservation programs (Photo courtesy of SHI).
Dr. Rosita Worl says Alaska Natives and the federal government had two competing goals in passing the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. Alaska Natives wanted to preserve their lands and their cultures, while the main goal of Congress was to assimilate Native peoples (Photo courtesy of SHI).
On today’s Juneau Afternoon, Dr. Worl looks back on that moment, in which she not only had a front row seat on history, but also the eyes of a trained observer, who tracked the cultural changes that followed.
Listen to the program:
Rhonda McBride hosts today’s program. You can catch Juneau Afternoon,Tuesday through Friday, live at 3:00 p.m. on KTOO Juneau 104.3. The rebroadcast airs at 7:00 p.m. on KTOO. You can also listen online at ktoo.org.
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