More than 200 years ago, Lingít and other Alaska Native people waged battles against invading and oppressive Russian colonists in Sitka. To this day, those battles are a symbol of Lingít resistance to colonialism. A Kiks.ádi warrior named Ḵ’alyáan led the attacks, and in 1804 he wore a carved Raven helmet during one of the battles.
In the early 1900s, the helmet was separated from the Kiks.ádi. It’s considered at.oow — a sacred, living clan item — but the Raven helmet has been behind glass at the Sheldon Jackson Museum since 1906.
Aanyaanáxch Ray Wilson is the Kiks.ádi clan leader and lives in Juneau. He said that at.oow hold spirits and clan members treat them like relatives.
“So when we don’t have our items, we can’t use them,” he said. “And there it is sitting right in a museum in Sitka and we can’t use it, and it belongs to us. It’s really hard to accept.”
Wilson is 92, and said the colonial legacy of the last two centuries have left Lingít people with only pieces of their history and cultural practices. But when they bring at.oow back into ceremonies, those items help restore what has been lost.
“The main thing is that it’s coming back to help our people. We all need help,” Wilson said. “These are really trying times, and they don’t seem to get any better. We need the culture to come back to make our people stronger again.”
According to recorded history, this is how the Raven helmet ended up in the Sheldon Jackson Museum: three Kiks.ádi men, including a descendant of Ḵ’alyáan, brought it to Alaska’s Territorial Governor John Brady. Brady co-founded the Presbyterian-run Sitka Industrial and Training School, which is now known as Sheldon Jackson College.
The helmet has been in the campus museum since. The state bought the museum and its collection in the 1980s.
But for years, Kiks.ádi leaders have said that isn’t how sacred clan items are given away. According to the Kiks.ádi’s recent petition for repatriation, at.oow are under cultural patrimony, which means all clan members own the item, and no individuals can give away sacred clan objects without the clan’s approval.
So for decades, the Kiks.ádi have been trying to get the helmet back from the state, arguing that it was not ever the state’s property. And last month, the Alaska State Museums finally agreed to start the process of returning ownership to the Kiks.ádi.
A spokesperson for the Alaska State Museums said in an email that the museums have been working with the Sitka Tribe of Alaska to “develop and nurture collaborative working relationships.” They said this repatriation is just one of several projects the two organizations are working on together.
Righting the wrongs of the past
Clan member Lduteen Jerrick Hope-Lang has been fighting to repatriate the helmet, just like his grandmother did two decades before. He said the process involved digging into the history of how the helmet changed hands.
“If you’re asserting you have the right to anything, there must be proof,” Hope-Lang said. “I want to see it.”
The written records claiming ownership start with the Presbyterian church, which ran the Sitka Industrial and Training School. Then, the Alaska State Museums bought the school’s museum and its collection in the 1980s.
Hope-Lang reached out to Jermaine Ross-Allam. He’s the director of the Presbyterian church’s Center for Repair of Historical Harms, and was instrumental in the fight to repatriate the helmet. Ross-Allam searched the church’s archives to find records of the helmet. He said he found records detailing how men brought the hat to the school.
“But, of course, there were no appropriate ceremonial protocols,” he said.
He said the act wasn’t authorized because it didn’t involve those protocols, so the church never had a right to the helmet in the first place. Therefore, the church didn’t have the right of possession when it sold the helmet as part of the museum’s collections to the state decades later.
Ross-Allam hopes righting the wrongs of the past inspires others to do the same, even if it feels like it’s too late.
“That should give people confidence to continue to engage in more acts of repair and solidarity,” he said. “No matter how big the repair job seems to be.”
Changing the narrative
Hope-Lang said it’s still painful for him to read the way the state dismissed his grandmother in documents from previous requests.
“When you look at the letters, when she’s asking for the piece, even just for cultural use at our bicentennial in 2004 and the way that she was spoken to,” he said. “The way that she was written about kind of as though she had no qualifications as a Kiks.ádi Lingít woman whose ancestors wore that piece, that’s still painful to read.”
Now, Hope-Lang looks forward to a future when the helmet will always be in Kiks.ádi hands. He said the knowledge of clan ownership makes a difference.
“It changes the narrative,” he said. “When you go in and you look at this piece, you’re not saying it belongs to somebody else, it belongs to you.”
He said young clan members won’t know the pain of not being able to claim it, and to use it for ceremony.
“The exciting thing is for the young people below us, who will become the caretakers, the future ancestors, that they won’t know this trauma,” Hope-Lang said. “This won’t be passed on to them.”
And Yeidikook’áa Brady-Howard, Sitka Tribe of Alaska chairwoman, said reclaiming this helmet is one story of many sacred items coming back to their people.
“And so those items that are scattered across the country are literally our ancestors living away from their homeland, in a sense,” she said.
Brady-Howard said the Raven helmet’s return comes at a time when the relationships between Indigenous people and organizations like churches and museums are changing for the better.
“I don’t feel that we can view the repatriation without also viewing it in the larger lens of colonialism and trauma,” she said. “But also truth, reconciliation and healing.”
The Alaska State Museums said there are still several steps before the repatriation process is complete. It must submit a notice to the Federal Registrar saying it intends to repatriate the item, and remove the helmet from its own collection.