When young people face challenges in life, adults and educators can struggle with how to help.
Over the summer, students in Hoonah attended a culture camp that seeks to address some of these problems by connecting students with Alaska Native traditions.
The Haa Tóo Yéi Yatee culture camp is almost an hour drive from Hoonah.
Over the summer, about 35 students made the trip down a narrow, unpaved logging road to immerse themselves in Native art, food and language for four days.
The isolated location is intentional.
“We came out as far as we could to make sure that we didn’t have cell phone reception, and that the only connections that we had were with each other,” Heather Powell said.
Powell works for Hoonah City Schools, and she created this camp with support from many others in the community, partly to help students confront some of the biggest challenges in their lives.
“We have young people in our community that are facing depression, addiction, suicide,” she said. “Things can ail not only your physical well-being, but your spirit.”
She hopes a traditional mindset will lead to a more holistic approach.
“In these non-Native ways of doing, we acknowledge and then we diagnose just that thing, and we deal with just that thing, she said. “But a long time ago we worked with the entire person, the entire family. Because none of us has the strength to do everything.”
The activities at the camp are deeply rooted in history.
Inside a cabin, students gathered around a table to cut, file and hammer copper sheets into small tináas. Almost everyone was wearing one of the traditional copper shields around their neck by the end of the camp.
Outside, a group of students spread out along the water to gather beach asparagus during low tide.
Later, they prepared it for canning, along with salmon fresh from the smoke house.
Powell hopes that this will be an opportunity for students to practice speaking Tlingit, and she moves seamlessly in and out of the language. She
believes that integrating Tlingit into everyday education will help revitalize the language and connect students to tradition.
The students also made their own cultural contribution together.
Besides playing music they already knew, Powell and others lead the students in creating their own original song.
Ultimately, her vision goes beyond specific skills and activities to something much more fundamental.
“Teaching traditional ecological knowledge and teaching place-based learning are all the … all the rage these days,” she said. “But for us, this is survival. This is who we are. We have done things for time immemorial because it calls to us. This is our food, this is our responsibility, this is our passion.”
Powell said she plans to offer more camps in the Hoonah area focusing on different cultural activities.
Quinton Chandler in Juneau contributed to this report.
This reporting was made possible by a grant from WNET’s American Graduate project. Television coverage of American Graduate Day 2017 begins at noon Saturday, Oct. 14, 2017 on 360 North.
