Haines mayor proposes transferring city’s Tlingit Park to Chilkoot Indian Association
- Mark Sabbatini
- 3 days ago
- 4 min read
Critics raised concerns about losing public use and oversight of the park
By Will Steinfeld
Chilkat Valley News
Mayor Tom Morphet is proposing transferring the borough’s Tlingit Park property to the Chilkoot Indian Association.
Morphet, who has discussed the idea with CIA tribal administrator Harriet Brouillette, is pitching the transfer as both a return of the land to its rightful owners and also a move to save the borough money. Critics have raised concerns about losing public use and oversight of the park. Discussion remains in preliminary stages, and any actual land transfer would have to go through a full slate of assembly hearings and votes.
The park has been municipal government property since 1962, when the City of Haines purchased it from the Presbyterian Church for $10.
It’s not a new idea that the old Presbyterian Mission land should return to the Chilkat Valley’s Alaska Native tribes. In the early 1990s, a state Presbyterian body advised the church to divest its Alaska land holdings back to Alaska Native communities. Soon after, the Chilkat Valley’s two tribal governments rallied for the right to 265 acres of land in the Chilkat Valley that remained under Presbyterian Church ownership at the time.
The late Edward Warren, at the time, referenced a 1922 federal statute stating that mission lands on reservation land revert back to indigenous owners once no longer used for mission or schooling purposes.
“There is no more education. There is no more mission. We’re asking you to honor the BIA document. The people here are landless, I’m really speaking to your conscience,” Warren was quoted as saying in a 1991 Chilkat Valley News article.
Morphet has referenced that history in speaking about the park land.
“In the early 1900s, Natives approved transfer of land at the site to the Presbyterian Church so the church could educate Native children at the Haines Mission,” Morphet wrote in a post on his personal blog. “The mission closed more than 60 years ago. By turns, the park property should have reverted back to our local Native population then.”
Alaska Native residents of Haines/Deishú were among a handful of Southeast Alaska communities that did not receive land under the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. Since then, CIA has regained a handful of small parcels around the current townsite, including the Chilkoot Estates Subdivision, which was previously part of the Presbyterian holdings.
Morphet and CIA tribal council member Georgiana Hotch this week have further pointed to the presence of a Lingít cemetery on the land as reason to return the land to tribal ownership.
“This is a really great gesture, because we do have a cemetery, and you can look at that as sacred rights to our people,” Hotch said. “We appreciate being able to put it on the table and talk about it.”
If officially offered ownership of the park, there’s reason to believe CIA would accept. Tribal council president James G̱ooch Éesh Hart said the tribe is “interested” in the transfer. “I feel like it’s something we could do and provide so I don’t see that it would be a problem,” Hart said.
Morphet also said he had discussed with Brouillette conditions that if ownership is transferred, the park’s amenities be kept open for public use.
As for budget savings, Morphet said he didn’t know how much offloading the park could save. He did note that the borough was adding a comparable amount of park land along Front Street with the Margaret Piggott land donation earlier this year.
The mayor’s pitch, however, has faced some skepticism and outright opposition.
When Morphet brought the idea to the Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee, former mayor Jan Hill spoke in public comment for what she said were “a lot of people in the community that aren’t going to come here and say it.”
“This just feels like a way to slough off borough responsibility and liability onto an organization that is totally grant driven,” Hill said. “This doesn’t feel as warm and fuzzy as Mr. Morphet is making it sound.”
The majority of people who weighed in during the meeting shared Hill’s views, including committee members Darsie Culbeck, Kathleen Menke, and Lori Smith, though all qualified their statements saying they had little information and little time to review the proposal.
Culbeck said that he might think differently if there was a “large outcry” in favor of transferring the park, but characterized the issue as currently something that “just came out of Tom’s head.”
“I don’t understand what problem we’re solving with it,” Culbeck said.
Smith raised concerns stemming from CIA’s management of the Fort Seward Parade Grounds.
“We have seen, correct me if I’m wrong, that the parade grounds now have new restrictions and conditions with its usage,” Smith said, saying that camping and slip and slides during Beerfest had been prohibited on the property. CIA tribal administrator Harriet Brouillette said this week the tribe had not prohibited camping or the slip and slide at the parade grounds.
Menke had a slightly different view, advocating for “co-management” of the park between CIA and the borough. But still, she expressed concern about the mayor’s plan.
“The general public that aren’t tribal members don’t really have access to CIA meetings or committees, discussions or decision-making processes. That gets a little tricky for the public if you’re doing a land transfer of public lands to CIA,” Menke said this week.
Committee member Alaina Birkel, however, spoke strongly in support of the plan.
“Being guests on Lingít Aaní, these are messy conversations as far as reckoning with really complex and harmful histories on unceded lands,” Birkel said — something in line with at least the advisory committee’s statement at the start of each meeting acknowledging the meeting is “located on Lingít Aaní.”
Birkel works as the director of intergovernmental affairs for the Chilkat Indian Village. Morphet said he had not contacted the Chilkat Indian Village about the land or the possible transfer.
“I think this is exactly what we should be contending with as a public, in terms of acting in good responsibility and honoring history and creating repair…. It’s my opinion that if you are honoring a tribe’s sovereignty, you aren’t putting conditions around land that you’re giving back,” Birkel said. “I hope it’s the beginning of many conversations.”
• This story originally appeared in the Chilkat Valley News.
