On Ḵutulagaaw and the stewardship of shared history

Actors rehearse "Ḵutulagaaw: The Tlingit – Russian Battles" at Thunder Mountain Middle School on Thursday, Sept. 10, 2026. (Ellie Ruel / Juneau Independent)

By Pamela Rae Thlintode Huteson

This is an open letter to Dr. Rosita Kaaháni Worl:

Gunalchéesh for your leadership at Sealaska Heritage Institute and for bringing "Ḵutulagaaw: The Tlingit-Russian Battles" to the stage in partnership with Perseverance Theatre. As the first Tlingit opera in recorded history, performed in our language and telling our history from our own perspective, it is a historic achievement. That matters deeply.

I write as a fellow writer and publisher and as a member of Thunderbird Shankweidi–Thunder Wolf House. My family carries our connection to the Shangukeidi ancestors with respect, and I have long respected your work to protect our at.óow and intellectual traditions.

I am writing in support of the position you have expressed publicly: that the history of the 1802 and 1804 battles cannot be separated from all the people who stood against the Russians. The Kiks.ádi hold a central and honored place in that history. Their wish to be consulted, recognized, and heard should be treated with respect. At the same time, other Tlingit clans and the Haida also took part in the resistance. Honoring Kiks.ádi stewardship and recognizing shared participation do not have to cancel one another.

This question is deeply personal to me because I have recently seen how differing accounts of history can divide people within one clan.

Six months ago, during a Shankweidi potlatch meeting in Klawock, our Thunderbird origins were debated. The outcome was the recognition of two distinct clans and houses:

1) Thunderbird Shankweidi–Thunder Wolf House

2) Shank’weidi–Wolf House

Those of us in Thunderbird Shankweidi–Thunder Wolf House carry the account that the Shangukeidi once lived on Prince of Wales Island and held lands including Fish Egg Island across from Craig. Also, how my Raven grandfather, Francis Peratrovich, carved Thunderbird medallions for my uncles and me, one for each of us, and told us, “You are Thunderbirds.”

In addition, Elder Nels Lawson of Sitka, also told me that the Tuxikan Ravens lacked Wolf women to marry, so they canoed north and returned with Shangukeidi women. When the women’s families eventually found them, they could return home or remain. Those who stayed were thereafter called Shankweidi. In Klawock there is also a pole depicting a wealthy woman with rays of light streaming from her head. I see in her the Shangukeidi woman who married the Sun.

Members of Shank’weidi–Wolf House carry a different account. They believe the Shank’weidi came first and that those who moved north changed their name to Shangukeidi and later took on the Thunderbird. Their matriarch has said that they simply wish to remain Klawock Shank’weidi.

I do not share these two accounts to ask you to settle our local division. I share them because they demonstrate what can happen when histories cross houses and villages — and when the transmission of knowledge has been broken by illness, early death, displacement, and colonization.

As I understand your dissertation, "Tlingit At.oow: Tangible and Intangible Property," traditional Tlingit law recognizes more complexity than the simple choice between “one clan owns everything” and “no clan owns anything.” Ownership, use, and indemnification can represent different interests, and more than one clan can sometimes hold an interest in at.óow.

That complexity offers hope for a path between secrecy and appropriation.

I believe we must distinguish between claiming ownership of a story and responsibly telling it. A clan can remain the recognized steward and rights-holder while a history is taught or retold with proper consultation, attribution, and context. Ceremonial rights, clan crests, songs, public education, and literary retellings are not necessarily the same kind of use and should not automatically be treated as though they are.

Our people have endured events that threatened our very survival: warfare and cannon fire, influenza, measles, tuberculosis, STD’s, the removal of children to boarding schools, and the suppression of our languages and traditions. After so much loss, I believe clan stewardship must keep our stories alive. Tlingit people should be able to learn the stories that form our history and cosmology while the clans responsible for carrying those stories are always named and honored.

Did Raven create only the Raven moiety? Cannot an Eagle mother tell her children how Raven brought the heavenly lights into the world?

My grandmother’s life shows why access to these histories matters. When she was young, she became so ill that she was sent to Anchorage for a long time. Her grandmother, whom our family remembers as one of the captured Shangukeidi women, had died young. Later, my grandmother’s mother died not long after the birth of her youngest child.

There were no aunties, grandparents, or great-grandparents left to pass down the stories. My grandmother retained our clan, crests, and house names, and the knowledge that the Eagle and Wolf pole belonged to us—but she wanted to return home carrying stories.

She came back with the Tlingit words to “Silent Night” and with the bluntly named story of “Children of Shit! When they leave the body, they don’t know where they came from.”

The old wording is shocking and somewhat humorous, but it carries a grave warning: people who have been cut off from their history can become strangers to themselves.

When I published "Legends in the Wood: Stories of the Totems," many people thanked me because they had never been told the stories represented on the totem poles. I drew from recorded versions such as “Wolf and the Raven, and used literary craft to create dialogue and describe settings, and identified a story as Raven or Eagle whenever that was known. I never claimed that my clan owned all those stories.

I was praised by some people for keeping the stories alive, yet treated as an enemy by others for telling them. That experience taught me that attribution and cultural responsibility matter — but so does literature. A brief listing that says “this happened, and then that happened” is not the same as a living story that allows readers to enter another time, hear the characters speak, and understand why their choices mattered.

Part of the work I hope to continue is researching variations found in 19th-century records and later collections and organizing them by clan, house, and village. A descendant who knows her grandmother’s village and clan should have somewhere to begin searching for her history. Sealaska Heritage has already undertaken an enormous amount of preservation work; I am not placing this responsibility upon you. I mention it to explain what keeping the stories alive means to me.

Ḵutulagaaw has brought a difficult and necessary question into public view: How do we protect clan stewardship while honoring the truth that our histories are intertwined?

I do not believe every story is free for anyone to claim or use in any manner. Neither do I believe protection should leave Tlingit descendants unable to know their own world. We need a path where stewardship, consultation, attribution, access, and living literature can stand together.

We have survived too much to let our descendants become, in the stark words of that old story, people who leave the body without knowing where they came from.

With deep respect and gratitude for your work,

• Pamela Rae Thlintode Huteson is an Alaska Native author, illustrator, and storyteller who lives in Klawock. She is Thunderbird Shankweidi of the Thunder Wolf House.