I began coming to Sitka, Alaska in 2006 as an Artist in Residence for the Sitka Fine Arts Camp. This lead me to many new documentary projects including my present work with the Sitka Tribe of Alaska documenting their language revitalization project.
A documentarian's blog about storytelling in Alaska.
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
Sitka and the Tlingit Language Revitalization project
I began coming to Sitka, Alaska in 2006 as an Artist in Residence for the Sitka Fine Arts Camp. This lead me to many new documentary projects including my present work with the Sitka Tribe of Alaska documenting their language revitalization project.
Sitka is a magical place with thousands of years having passed since the unending winter of the last ice age that drove the Tlingits from Southeast Alaska. Only after the glaciers loosened their icy grasp, about nine hundred years ago, did the people return from the south. They built a village called Tongass.
Seeking evergreen trees suitable for building houses, a canoe party went north from Tongass along the outside coast. Ice flows still blocked the inside passages, and the land they found was thick with grass and alder, but no evergreens. Soon, large smoke plumes twenty miles to the northwest became visible. The party made camp and sent a canoe to investigate the source of the smoke. As it neared, the scouting party saw a mountain upon an island spouting fire and smoke.
The party grew closer and circled the island. At the Northwest end they found what they had been seeking; evergreen trees in abundance. The Tlingits had started to cut and split the island’s trees to build homes, when a woman in white appeared to them. She demanded that they leave her island in peace. Dressed for trouble, the Tlingit medicine man came forth to speak with the volcano woman, who called herself Shee. As they spoke, Shee noticed the jewelry of the Tlingit woman. She agreed that in return for earrings, bracelets and other gifts, the Tlingits could remain on her island.
A larger island nearby was also settled in later years and it was named Shee Island, after the volcano woman. Some built homes next to the water, while others moved insland. In the Tlingit language, ‘‘Atika’’ means outside, and the sound-dwellers were called Shee Atika (people on the outside of Shee Island. Their village bore the same name, and today is called Sitka.
As handed down by Herman Kitka (Permission to use by Herman Kitka, February 2, 2002 and published in Tlingit Recipes of Today and Long Ago by Pauline Duncan.) Shee asked the natives for their jewelry in exchange for using her island. Mr. Kitka stated that if there are individuals who go over to the Volcano Island, to shine a copper penny and leave it behind. This acknowledges their appreciation and respect to Shee, the volcano woman. This exerpt is taken from Kiksadi.com.
Monday, February 8, 2010
On photography
Musings on capturing images:
Susan Sontag wrote the essay On Photography, which gave media students and scholars an entirely different perspective of the camera in the modern world. The essay is an exploration of photographs as a collection of the world, mainly by travelers or tourists, and the way we therefore experience it. She outlines the concept of her theory of taking pictures as you travel:
The method especially appeals to people handicapped by a ruthless work ethic – Germans, Japanese and Americans. Using a camera appeases the anxiety which the work driven feel about not working when they are on vacation and supposed to be having fun. They have something to do that is like a friendly imitation of work: they can take pictures.
Sontag suggested photographic "evidence" be used as a presumption that "something exists, or did exist", regardless of distortion. For her, the art of photography is "as much an interpretation of the world as paintings and drawings are", for cameras are produced rapidly as a "mass art form" and are available to all of those with the means to attain them. Focusing also on the effect of the camera and photograph on the wedding and modern family life, Sontag reflects that these are a "rite of family life" in industrialized areas such as Europe and America.
To Sontag "picture-taking is an event in itself, and one with ever more peremptory rights - to interfere with, to invade, or to ignore whatever is going on". She considers the camera a phallus, comparable to ray guns and cars, which are "fantasy-machines whose use is addictive". For Sontag the camera can be linked to murder and a promotion of nostalgia while evoking "the sense of the unattainable" in the industrialized world. The photograph familiarizes the wealthy with "the oppressed, the exploited, the starving, and the massacred" but removes the shock of these images because they are available widely and have ceased to be novel. Sontag saw the photograph as valued because it gives information but acknowledges that it is incapable of giving a moral standpoint although it can reinforce an existing one.
Food for thought. H.
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