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Indigenous Peoples Day celebrated at UAS with film screenings
‘Pull With Me’ organized by Wooch.éen students highlights past, future of dugout canoes
By Ellie Ruel
Juneau Independent
Stories exploring the cultural revival of dugout canoes and journeys were shared at an Indigenous Peoples Day event on the University of Alaska Southeast campus. More than 70 people gathered in the Egan Library for film screenings and talks by Indigenous leaders, master carver Kaajis.yoodzi.áxk Wayne Price and his students.
Price carved his first canoe, an 18-foot dugout he dubbed “Little Brother” about 40 years ago. He was inspired to explore canoe carving after doing other carvings with an adze, a traditional woodworking tool with an elbow-like handle and steel blade.
“You have to hit that next chip just right, same spot, and you try to make it better and better all the time,” Price said. “I felt I was walking with my ancestors when you get good at it; I could feel them around me all the time, helping, being there, encouraging me to keep going, and this led to wanting to do a dugout.”
He was mentored by Archie Klaney, and carved “Little Brother” out of a red cedar log he towed from Wrangell.
Its inaugural journey from Skagway to Chilkoot was the first in a dugout canoe in over 50 years, Price said.
“I was just young and dumb,” he said. “I wanted to learn about dugouts, but you know, I had time to think about it later. That was a pretty awesome thing we just did.”
Now, Price’s 18th canoe is nearing completion. The canoe’s steaming is scheduled for Oct. 27 at the UAS campus. He started the project a year ago and is mentoring four apprentices.
Before the screening, he told his students to stand up.
“Honor these; they're next,” Price told the audience. “I've been training them as hard as I can, so that they're going to be the next boat builders.”
Price plans to step away from teaching at UAS, but said he’ll still be involved in canoe making.
“My canoe's paddling in a different direction, but the culture and the students that are trained —that is going to go on,” he said. “I've seen so much healing, historical trauma, generational trauma, addiction trauma, sexual abuse trauma, all kinds. I've seen it all. Somewhere out there, on that water, you come to an agreement, and when you get to the beach, you have a better outlook on what you're going to be doing next.”
In an interview, Price said he’s at a fun place in his life, and hopes to see more canoes on the water.
“I struggled those first few, and then finally got my feet under me, and now I know what it takes to make a dugout seaworthy. That comes with a lot of practice. To do all that work and then to have it really tippy, it's not a good feeling,” he said. “Studied and learned and did it again and finally started making them smooth and making them slowly roll. That's a good feeling. And then now teaching it, it's even a better feeling because I know it'll keep going.”
UAS student Markayla Katchatag helped organize the event and shared her film “Paddling is an Honor – Journey to Celebration 2026.”
“This knowledge was almost lost,” Katchatag said in an interview. “Working together to keep it alive heals our people.”
She is studying marine biology with a minor in Alaska Native studies. Katchatag said she was inspired to create her film because she wanted to capture her first canoe journey to Celebration, a biennial cultural event held in Juneau. The canoe journey was 100 miles over three days from Haines to Juneau, and at times they paddled through five- to six-foot white-capped seas. But the group made it to Shelter Island without taking on a drop of water, Price said.
"In that moment, I just had to trust that the dugout will take care of us. Our ancestors will take care of us, and Wayne will be able to take care of us. I just had to put all my trust into Wayne and our ancestors,” she said in her film.
On the canoe journey, Price talked about how traditional knowledge was almost lost in colonization through boarding schools.
“He shared with us how it made him so happy to see all of us experiencing and having a fun time,” Katchatag said. “Being able to go on a journey is just a small piece of mine and my family's healing journey. It's a way of healing past, present, future, generational trauma. It's an amazing opportunity to be able to keep this culture part of our cultural life, the traditional art.”
The second documentary shown by Andrés Camacho for Goldbelt Heritage Foundation is still a work in progress. He said he's adding footage from an August canoe journey, and Monday was only the second time the film "Ḵug̱aag̱aneix̱ (Let the People Heal)" was publicly shown — the first was during Celebration in June. Camacho said he hopes to complete the film later this fall.
“Our culture is 10,000 years old. We should never doubt it,” Price said. “It's taken care of us for so long, it's going to take care of us 10,000 more into the future, and could totally depend on it. And it's never let us down, not once yet. It's us that have to make the change to learn how to follow it.”
• Contact Ellie Ruel at ellie.ruel@juneauindependent.com. Jasz Garrett contributed to this article and can be contacted at jasz@juneauindependent.com or 907-723-9356.
