National Park Service: Huna Tribal House Totum Poles Grant

The totem poles are required to complete the Tribal House, slated for construction from 2014-2016. Landscape architectural plans for the Tribal House site include placement of up to five totem poles. HIA has the cultural expertise, traditional craftsmen skills, and cultural authority to complete the totem poles.

The completion of the totem poles will also provide an opportunity to gather, compile, and preserve relevant ethnographic information from published literature, oral history audio/video recordings, and ongoing elder interviews regarding the history and culture of the Huna Tlingit clans. The project will also provide a venue for skilled craftsmen to pass traditional skills associated with form line design, carving, and adzing to another generation. The Master and Assistant Carvers will provide weekly instruction to Hoonah City Schools (HCS) students, other community youth, and community members. Importantly, the carving work site will serve as an informal classroom where craftsmen convey not only traditional skills, but also oral histories, life ways, and Tlingit laws and protocols. Traditionally, resource gathering activities in homeland were one means by which tribal elders transmitted traditional knowledge, cultural practices, and social mores to tribal youth. Unfortunately, an array of social and regulatory changes has drawn the Tlingit away from their traditional seasonal rounds in Glacier Bay, reducing opportunities for intergenerational learning. NPS believes that these ethnographic resources will be preserved by providing a venue that closely mirrors the traditional learning structure of the Tlingit whereby older relatives (uncles, grandfathers, etc.) conveyed traditional knowledge to youth in the course of everyday work.

As the federally recognized tribal government of the Huna Tlingit, HIA is responsible for preserving the tribe’s culture and values and maintaining its spiritual ties to traditional territories, including lands within Glacier Bay National Park. HIA has been collaborating with the NPS to develop the Huna Tribal House, including a range of cultural elements for the facility. In previous years, NPS and HIA have cooperatively produced an interior house screen, four house posts, and a house front for the Tribal House. Both parties recognize that the project will not only result in tangible products including totem poles and utilitarian items to adorn the Tribal House interior, but will also provide a venue for transmitting cultural knowledge to tribal youth and will strengthen the partnerships between NPS and HIA.

The NPS and HIA now wish to cooperatively complete two totem poles for the Huna Tribal House to convey the rich history and culture of the Huna Tlingit to the thousands of park visitors and tribal members who will visit the site for years to come. The project will result in two poles, between 15 feet and 24 feet tall, but will also provide numerous intangible benefits including the training of community youth and other tribal members.