The Juneau Public Library recently celebrated the addition of 30 audio interviews to their collection. The recordings were done in Juneau, Haines and Klukwan. Many focus on Alaska Native education.
The initial inspiration for the project stems from StoryCorps, a national oral history organization that’s received support from many local entities.
Among the recordings is this conversation between scholar Lance Twitchell and writer and educator Ernestine Hayes. Here are a few some excerpts from their 45-minute conversation.
Twitchell: My name is Lance Twitchell, or Xh’unei, and my relationship to Ernestine Hayes is we are colleagues, we are partners in a fight against coloniality, and she would be my clan auntie and my clan daughter, is how I consider it, and I am very happy to be here.
Hayes: I’m Ernestine Hayes. I’m 71 years old. Today is Dec. 6, 2016. Here we are at the UAS Egan Library in Auk Kwan territory. And I’m here with my colleague Lance Twitchell, and we are, as he says, battling together.
Twitchell: Everybody who walks on this very soil is walking on a place where the Tlingit language was born, and if they’re walking in other places, where those other languages were born. A big part of trying to be — moving in a different direction that colonialism is saying, “Hey, that you’re not the only thing that’s around,” and, “Hey, you’re not the only important thing,” and also, “Things didn’t start with you.” And so, a big part is trying to educate this general populace so that they know, so that the indigenous is not a nameless, faceless thing that’s frozen in time, that has no capability of doing modern things.
Hayes: If we built a racist society, what would it look like? Who would be incarcerated? Who would be the dropouts? Who would have the highest suicide rates? Who would have the highest rate of parental termination? Who’s language would be disappearing? Who would be sick from addiction, and tuberculosis and diabetes? If we build a racist culture, that’s what it would look like, and that’s what this looks like.
Twitchell: I think about the arrogance of the colonial world and then how that translates now to this total reluctance to see the blatant racism that carries through so many, just system after system after system, and drives you nuts cause you’re like, trying to talk to somebody and you just realize how they don’t get it.
Hayes: I think some of us have to be warriors and I just have defined a line where I stand. And I’ll stand there as long as I can, and when I can no longer stand there, I will lay there. But I will not, you know, move back from that line.
Twitchell: Ernestine, you are one of the most important voices in my life, so I like having this conversation with you.
Hayes: Thank you.
