The Alaska Native Heritage Center in Anchorage finished up the final touches of a major renovation on Tuesday. The center now has four new exhibits, and a remodeled main building adorned with sealskin lamps, a mural modeled after porcupine quills and a custom carpet by an Alaska Native artist.
“We really wanted to pay attention to the details and uplift our Alaska Native artist community,” said Emily Edenshaw, the center’s president and CEO. “I just love the outcome, it’s so beautiful.”
The renovations and new exhibits are just one slice of a bigger project to celebrate the center’s 25th anniversary. The ongoing work is meant to serve both visitors to the museum, as well as Alaska Native people, by preserving traditions and creating space for healing.
One of the new exhibits features traditional qayaqs and canoes made by Alaska Native master boatbuilders, another showcases cultural belongings and Alaska Native Art that were stolen or removed from Alaska Native communities.
“In terms of our storage, we have over 3,000 cultural objects here at the Heritage Center.” Edenshaw said. “Our entire museum has almost tripled in size, and the reason why is we have a lot of cultural objects coming back home to Alaska.”
As part of the anniversary project, the center also plans to build a theater and a healing garden.
The center raised a healing totem pole in October 2023, and the idea for the garden came out of that, Edenshaw said. An elder had proposed building the totem pole.
“An elder named Norma Jean Dunn reached out to the Heritage Center and she said, ‘Emily, we need to construct and raise a healing pole that’s dedicated to every single Alaska Native boarding school survivor, as well as their descendants and those who never came home,’” Edenshaw recounted.
When hundreds of people attended the pole raising ceremony, Edenshaw said, it inspired more work around healing.
“When we had over a thousand people that came to our pole raising, we knew that our community was sending us a message that they’re hungry for it,” Edenshaw said. “And so, it was that pole raising that really birthed a lot of our other healing work.”
When finished, the healing garden will have nine more healing monuments along with the pole. After the garden is constructed, the center also plans to build a subsistence kitchen, where Alaska Native people will have the space and resources to make fish strips, process a moose or a seal, and pass on thousands of years of knowledge.
“We have so many Native youth that live in Anchorage who have never fileted a fish, who have never jarred salmon, who have never gone whaling, who have never walked on tundra,” Edenshaw said. “Every single Alaska Native person, no matter where you live, deserves to have access to your community and access to your knowledge.”
Edenshaw said that, because the center already has a smokehouse on site, the kitchen will fit in well with the programs they already offer.
The center has been able to raise enough money to cover the new theater and healing garden. Edenshaw said she feels confident and hopeful that the center will be able to raise the remaining money for the subsistence kitchen and other updates, such as a parking garage and lake restoration for the 25th anniversary project.
Anisa Vietze is Alaska Public Media's 2024 summer reporting fellow. Reach her at avietze@alaskapublic.org.
