RE: L.O.E.S - 4 - The Power Of A Name

I am not a Tlingit, but many of my friends growing up were. The Tlingit have fully assimilated into Western culture, wear the same clothes, work at the same jobs, and live in the same neighborhoods and homes. There is a section of town where they are concentrated, the 'Indian Village' (or was when I was growing up, which was decades ago, now), and they also had a set of holidays pertaining to their culture. At the time I wasn't very interested in Tlingit culture, and what I was interested in many Tlingit teenagers were also, so we associated where there was common ground, and I didn't learn about the regalia they wore during their cultural celebrations. I learned very little, I should say, because I did learn their beadwork on their blankets was highly valued by collectors, their totem poles were some of most impressive anywhere, and they had an apprenticeship program for Tlingit youth who wanted to work in the traditional arts Tlingits maintained. They also traditionally had very skilled carpenters and constructed their pre-contact longhouses from planks by traditional methods that were very robust compared to tepees or igloos, for example, that would last for centuries in the damp maritime climate. I actually have some artworks I made as a child, and my parents made, from sheets of copper using the motifs and symbols of the Tlingit. Their artwork is very bold, and I like it a lot.

Alaska wasn't originally an American territory, but Russian, when it was claimed by Western empires. The Russians brought cannon on their ships, and tried to use them to subjugate the Tlingit. They shelled their village at Sitka, trying to defeat them militarily. The Tlingit split the tribe and the portion with little old ladies, children, and etc. moved across Baranof Island to a secret camp unknown to the Russians. A number of warriors and powerful chiefs remained in Sitka, however, to defeat the Russians.

They in fact did defeat the Russians militarily, by the means of well greasing up with bear fat and swimming out to the cannon bearing ships at night with a large rock. The grease helped to insulate them from the very cold water, so they could use that rock against the wooden hulls of the ships for hours. By this means they succeeded in sinking the several ships the Russians used to bombard their village, and this ended the Russian attempts to enslave the Tlingit. After that the Russians sold Alaska to the Americans for a bargain price.

My friends were rightly proud of their Tlingit heritage, and also told me that the Tlingit enslave the Haida, a very powerful tribe to the south, while the Haida enslaved the Tsimshian. This was confirmed by a Tsimshian GF. The Tlingit have never been conquered by anyone, ever, that I know of, and this includes the US government. The Tlingit originally had a Potlatch economy, which is a gift giving system of obligating the members of the tribe to the chiefs. The best spots for dip netting salmon, for example would be assigned by a chief to a certain household, who then were guaranteed great wealth of salmon if they weren't too lazy to go and catch them. The men of the household owed the chief favors in return for being given the good fishing spot. It's from Potlatch economies we get pot luck dinners, where the many attendees each bring a dish, and this feasting was one of the ways the chiefs doled out wealth, by giving families gathering spots for berries or seals, for instance, and ceremoniously providing quantities of meat, or delicacies like 'gink', or 'stink heads' (Chinook salmon heads that have been buried in an anaerobic black sand beach for several weeks while they fermented. As the name suggests, they were very fragrant, but the Tlingit considered them delicacies), or valuable resources, like bear fat, a grove of cedar trees, or whatever. By these gifts the chiefs secured obligations from their people, and by being loyal to the chiefs, the people gained great wealth. The region was so rich in resources the Tlingit have never practiced any kind of agriculture, and other than backyard gardens and pet llamas, no one in Sitka does.

That's a lot more than I thought I knew, TBH.