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ALASKA NATIVE
More Than a Museum
The Alaska Native Heritage Center strengthens cultural connections
By Richard Perry
Alaska Native Heritage Center (ANHC) is not just a life-sized diorama—although visitors can certainly find one there. Anchorage’s answer to Colonial Williamsburg or Tombstone, Arizona features six dwellings clustered around a pond named Lake Tiulana, albeit not in a way that the original Dena’ina Athabascan inhabitants of the Muldoon neighborhood would have recognized. The ersatz village represents, in one spot, the five major cultural strands throughout Alaska, which ANHC organizes geographically into Southeast, Southwest, Western, Northwest Arctic, and Interior territories.
ANHC is the only statewide cultural and education center dedicated to celebrating all Alaska Native cultures and heritages, including Iñupiaq, St. Lawrence Island Yupik, Athabascan, Eyak, Haida, Tsimshian, Tlingit, Unangaxˆ, Alutiiq/ Sugpiaq, Yup’ik, and Cup’ik.
At the far end of Lake Tiulana is an iconic whalebone arch more than 12 feet tall. In each of the dwellings along the shore, culture bearers answer questions and introduce guests to traditional lifeways.
“Our people did not traditionally live in isolation, so for Native people, partnership and interdependence are key,” says ANHC Operations Director Nikki Graham. “From teaching people about interethnic communication and Alaskan history from the Native perspective, we are here to tell our own story and to share our history through our own lens.”
As a member of ANHC senior leadership, Graham provides operational and strategic support to programs grounded in Alaska Native values which are fundamental to ANHC’s mission and community impact. Graham herself is of Yup’ik/ Blackfoot Indian/Dutch descent. She is originally from Homer, an enrolled member of the Ninilchik Village Tribe, and a shareholder of Cook Inlet Region, Inc.
“While tourism is a big part of what we do in celebrating, educating, and preserving our culture, we are also very engaged with our community and connect people worldwide about who we are as Native people,” says Graham. “Our first customer always has been and always will be the Alaska Native community.”
Christine_Kohler | iStock Gathering Place
The Alaska Federation of Natives called for the creation of a heritage center in a resolution adopted in 1987. Making that vision a reality took another dozen years. ANHC opened in 1999, not only with the village around Lake Tiulana but with a glossy new building that contains the Gathering Place for performances and presentations and the Hall of Cultures for exhibits and activities.
As the only statewide living cultural center, ANHC relies on its partnerships. Native values like gratitude and respect play a central role when building relationships with its tribal, governmental, and local partners. It works closely with organizations such as Southcentral Foundation, Cook Inlet Tribal Council, and other nonprofits that share the same values and have overlapping cultural responsibilities.
For example, earlier this year ANHC partnered with the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium and Alaska Native Science & Engineering Program to launch the Naaxein Teaching Partnership. The name comes from the Tlingit word for robe, and a 19th century Tlingit Chilkat robe is
at the center of the collaboration. The partnership’s first project took place in May during ANSEP’s Career Explorations Week, when more than twenty students assisted professionals using 3D modeling hardware and software to scan a delicate robe in ANHC’s collection, creating a virtual artifact. In a separate project, students worked on 3D imaging at the Koliganek water treatment facility.
ANHC also builds partnerships across the nation. Among the grants awarded to ANHC in 2020 was an America’s Cultural Treasures initiative from the Ford Foundation. ANHC was one of twenty organizations selected for the prestigious award.
“We still need to generate a profit, naturally,” Graham says, “but as a triple bottom line employer we consider the three Ps—people, planet, and profit—when making business decisions. It is really that resource impact consideration that reflects our traditional Native values in action and speaks to who we are as an Alaska Native organization. We are constantly growing and developing our people in the work that we do.”
A guiding principle at ANHC is that everyone, no matter where they live, should have access to their culture.
Connect to Culture
For Graham, one way of advancing the mission and vision of ANHC is by developing and overseeing social enterprises that generate unrestricted revenue. This includes Indigenous Awareness Workshops, Cultural Tourism, the Ch’k’iqadi Gallery, D’eshchin Café, Fab Lab, and Culture Boxes, to name just a few of the available programs.
Most of ANHC’s workforce is composed of youth interns. Many interns start at age 14 and come back for two or three seasons; they learn and become culture bearers and develop leadership skills on the job. The center hopes to extend the youth internships into an apprenticeship program.
“ANHC is a special place for our community and primarily our youth,” Graham says. “We want all our community members to have access and the ability to connect to their culture and identity.”
One example of ANHC operationalizing this principle is the
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Unguwat: Resilience and Connection (URC) program. URC is intended to serve Alaska Native youth with culturally and socially appropriate programming to decrease the likelihood of suicide and substance misuse.
The URC program offerings receive federal funds through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration while drawing on Alaska Native community knowledge and priorities. One of the first classes at Alaska Pacific University included a parka making class with Iñupiaq/Yup’ik Elder Marge Nakak, one of the elder culture bearers at ANHC.
Another component of the URC is ANHC opening its doors weekly for community dance practice. Tatiana Ticknor, who is Tlingit, Dena’ina, and Deg Xinag Athabascan, leads a Native dance group held twice a week.
“Our weekly local Native dance group is very successful,” Ticknor says. “Earlier, there was no dance class available, and many find it helpful to themselves and our community.”
The Subject of Objects
Although ANHC is not simply a museum, it performs that function through its stewardship of cultural belongings held in the public trust. Angie Demma is the curator of collections and exhibits at ANHC. Before joining ANHC, she held curatorial positions at the Anchorage Museum, Alaska Native Arts Foundation, and the Municipality of Anchorage. She also taught Alaska Native art history at UAA.
ANHC’s collection consists of Alaska Native public art, traditional watercraft, regalia, and cultural objects from all five state regions. These range from items that are hundreds of years old to contemporary examples showcasing the continuity and innovation represented in Alaska Native cultures. The collection was primarily donated, though some items were also purchased over the last twenty years.
Of more than 3,000 objects in ANHC’s collection, about half arrived quite recently. In April 2022, ANHC welcomed 1,744 cultural items donated by Wells Fargo. The bank operated twelve museums across the country, but when those institutions closed to visitors in 2020, Wells Fargo decided to shut down eleven of them permanently.
One of those was the Alaska Heritage Museum in Midtown Anchorage, established in 1968 by Elmer Rasmuson, then the head of National Bank of Alaska, which Wells Fargo took over in 2000. The museum was unique in Wells Fargo’s portfolio, most of which was dedicated to regional banking and gold mining histories. After it decided to close the Alaska Heritage Museum, the bank made plans to re-home its collection of 14,000 items at thirty-five different organizations, almost all of them in Alaska.
“Many items are being returned through ethical repatriation,” says Demma. “In fact, the Smithsonian is one of the museums returning things because of an ethical obligation. This includes private organizations and collections, such as Wells Fargo, which gifted cultural belongings, especially sacred ones, to tribal nonprofits and organizations. They do this because it is the right thing to do.”
When organizations in the Lower 48 are looking for an appropriate entity to gift cultural belongings or artifacts, ANHC is often among the first results in their searches.
“I receive calls nearly daily from the Lower 48, for instance, when someone has passed away and they have artwork they want to gift back to the region it originally was from,” Demma says.
Nikki Graham, Operations Director, ANHC Across Years and Miles
Storing items in drawers or displaying them behind glass would not serve ANHC’s mission as a living cultural center. It is not so much a traditional museum as it is a place to engage, interact, ask questions, and discover more about Alaska Native peoples and arts.
For the Alaska Native people who participate in ANHC’s programs, it is an opportunity to learn more about their own identity and make connections with other Alaska Native people from around the state. The center is a point of contact for urban Native youth to connect with an identity from remote reaches of Alaska.
“We host an annual series of Alaska Native master-level artist classes,” Graham says. “This includes making traditional regalia, weaving, practicing endangered art forms, as well as dancing. These opportunities are provided at no cost to the participants.”
On those occasions, ANHC brings out artifacts and regalia from the collection. Access to artists and culture bearers is essential, Demma says, so that they have an opportunity to view materials and art that they are currently working on that is connected to the past directly. This informs today’s artists to better understand the context from the past.
“I get a lot of feedback from artists, who are sometimes moved to tears,” Demma says. “When we share items in our collection in workshops and other events, artists will from time to time have a close connection to the items made or used by their family from past generations.”
In one instance, Tom Huntington, who is active in preserving traditional methods of moose hide tanning in the Interior, learned that some of the tools in the ANHC collection were used by his relatives in the past.
“It is really important for me, especially as a non-Native, to push up against the colonization mindset,” Demma says. “To make sure that I am providing access appropriately to these items. That is what ANHC is all about.”
