The City and Borough of Juneau formally apologized for the 1962 burning of the Douglas Indian Village at a Juneau Assembly meeting on Monday.
The apology was sudden, and not widely advertised, but it’s been on the mind of one Assembly member for years.
Andrea Cadiente-Laiti is the Tribal Administrator for the Douglas Indian Association. She stood to receive the apology alongside other tribal members at the Juneau Assembly meeting.
She said the burning of the village – where Savikko Park and the Douglas Harbor are now – happened more recently than many realize.
“People were shocked to find out we weren’t talking about 1862. We were talking about 1962,” she said.
That’s a little more than 60 years ago, recently enough that people who used to live in the village are still alive now.
In 2018, the Douglas Indian Association raised a kootéeyaa – or totem pole – honoring the Yanyeidí Taku people who lost their homes.
“A kootéeyaa itself won’t heal the pain,” Cadiente-Laiti said. “The proclamation alone won’t but it’s a start, and it’s a wonderful start.”
DIA President Butch Laiti was also at the meeting to accept the apology. He said he wants more public awareness of the history of the site.
“When I heard about this, I wrestled with this apology,” he said. “The problem I guess I have is the whole story is not out there, and I believe that to make this right, we have to tell the whole history of our relationship between Douglas, City of Douglas, Juneau, and the Lingít people.”
He said this history wasn’t taught when he was growing up, He had to learn about it through his own research.
Douglas Indian Association didn’t get much advance notice about the apology. Tribal administrator Cadiente-Laiti only heard about it days before. She said news of the apology was sudden, but welcome.
Mayor Beth Weldon said the reason for the timing of the apology is to honor the wish of departing Assembly Member ‘Wáahlaal Gidaag Barbara Blake.
“‘Wáahlaal Gidaag said we never quite got to the apology for the burning of the village on Douglas Island,” Weldon said. “And so with that, we looked into it, and it took us a little long — longer than we thought — to get it going and everything so, but we wanted her to share in the formal apology to the Douglas Indian Association for the burning of that village.”
Blake later said this apology was fulfilling a campaign promise she made in 2021. It’s not nearly enough though.
“It’s not okay,” she said. “We will do what we can to make it right, but this is at least the first step in that process.”
Blake chose not to run for reelection this fall, but said she plans to keep the pressure on the city to take this apology further and do more to commemorate what happened.
“Just because I’m stepping off the Assembly doesn’t mean I’m stepping away. I still live in Juneau,” she said. “I’m still going to be around and holding folks accountable. So I will be poking people if, if I don’t see some kind of movement.”
Blake said the other entities involved in the burning – like the Bureau of Indian Affairs – should also be apologizing.
This weekend, a U.S. Navy Admiral will offer the Lingít people another long-overdue apology, for the 1882 bombardment of the village of Angoon. Sealaska Heritage Institute plans to livestream the event on its Youtube channel.
RELATED: U.S. Navy apologizes for Southeast Alaska burning and bombardment of Kake in 1869
Clarise Larson contributed to this story.