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Winner of the 1990 American Book Award of the Before Columbus Foundation. The first comprehensive analysis of the mortuary practices of the Tlingit Indians of Southeastern Alaska. ... Read more

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The Tlingit Indians of the Northwest Coast carved interior house posts, portal entrances and free standing totem poles with crests of animals, sea creatures, birds, and legendary and human figures, successfully combining symbolism and realism. This book examines the social and artistic relevance of the Tlingit carvings and relates many of the fascinating North American Indian legends upon which some of the carvings are based. ... Read more

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Considerable depth concerning fascinating legends
Tlingit mother Maria Bolanz and her daughter Gloria C. Williams collaborate to present Tlingit Art: Totem Poles & Art Of The Alaskan Indians, a compelling and informative social, cultural, and aesthetic examination of Tlingit Native American totem poles, carvings, and other artworks. Black-and-white photographs and illustrations highlight the thoughtful and "reader friendly" text which goes into considerable depth concerning the fascinating legends that form the basis of some of the carvings. Tlingit Art is an excellent and highly recommended contribution to Native American art history reference collections and supplemental reading lists. ... Read more

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The Haida and the Tlingit people of the northern Northwest Coast are renowned for their outstanding arts, among them elegant spruce-root basketry. Prized by non-Native collectors for more than a century, these finely woven creations are found in museums and private collections all over the world. Despite the continued popularity of these baskets, there is little published about them.

Sharon Busby examines the history and evolution of spruce-root basketry, starting with the archaeological evidence of baskets older than the Egyptian pyramids. She describes traditional uses and forms, as well as changes in style when basketry became part of the souvenir trade that developed in the late 1880s. She also describes the heroic efforts of 20th-century Haida and Tlingit teachers who kept the ancient traditions alive and the contemporary weavers who have revitalized the art.

Spruce-Root Basketry of the Haida and Tlingit provides the largest collection of color images of Haida and Tlingit baskets ever published, many of them for the first time. The skillful photography of Ron Reeder presents a visual history of spruce-root basketry from the 1850s to the present. He captures the lustrous patina of the old baskets made for traditional Native uses as well as the impressive variety of baskets made for sale in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Photographs also portrays the baskets made today by weavers who are a living part of a long tradition.

Historical photographs enhance the account of the late 19th and early 20th centuries and provide a visual counterpoint to the vibrant color images of the baskets today.Drawings by Margaret Davidson explain the complex weaving techniques used in these baskets for millennia.The combination of compelling images and informative text makes this book a welcome addition to the literature of basketry and Northwest Coast art for students, collectors, and admirers of this art form. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Spruce Root Basketry of the Haida and Tlingit
Great book for anyone interested in basket making.Covers all facets of Haida and Tlingit spruce root baskets, including their origins, uses, how they are made and even their care and appreciation of them.Numerous excellent pictures and illustrations compliment the text. ... Read more

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1909. This work represents the Smithsonian Institution Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 39. The following myths and texts were collected at Sitka and Wrangell, Alaska in January through April 1904 from the Tlingit Indians in residence there. Some of the stories were related by the writer's Sitka interpreter, Don Cameron, of the Chilkat Ka'gwantan, and others by a Yakutat man. ... Read more

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In 1993 the Tlingit tribes and clans convened a landmark conferences in Haines, Alaska, which brought Native peoples from Alaska and Canada together with scholars of their language, history, and culture to exchange information and develop a collaborative agenda for future research and policy initiatives. This volume represents the fruits of that unique exchange and collaboration. It includes original contributions by Native and non-Native scholars alike on a variety of key topics, including Tlingit historiography, migrations, warfare, kinship and property tenure, language and literacy, ethnogeography and cultural resource management, subsistence, and naming.

Bridging past and future, this source book fills an important niche in the literature and is designed especially to be accessible to all students of Tlingit culture. ... Read more

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In 1982, the fledgling Native nonprofit Sealaska Heritage Institute held a dance-and-culture festival to celebrate the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian cultures of Southeast Alaska. A couple of hundred Native people gathered in Juneau for the event, called Celebration. They could not have imagined then that Celebration woud spark a movement across the region - a renaissance of Native culture that prompted people largely unfamiliar with their heritage to learn their ancestral songs and dances and to make regalia for future Celebrations.

Today, Celebration is the largest cultural event in the state, drawing thousands of people to the five-day biennial festival. Celebration: Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian Dancing on the Land, featuring the work by the noted Alaska photographer Bill Hess, includes images from the first Celebrations to the present-day festivals. It is both an introduction to Native cultures and a cherished keepsake for the people who have participated in Celebration.

Sealaska Heritage Institute is a regional Native nonprofit organization serving the indigenous peoples of Southeast Alaska. The Institute was founded in 1980 to administer cultural programs for Sealaska Corporation, a Native for-profit company formed under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. The Institute's mission is to perpetuate and enhance Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian cultures. ... Read more

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Describes the traditional lifestyle, arts and crafts, changing land, and modern life of the Tlingit Indians. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

From the time of glaciers to global warming...
I ordered this book for my grandchildren (who were ages 6 and 8 at the time).We are Tlingit but being so far removed from Alaska and that side of our family I am always looking for resources to give them a sense of our ancestry and culture.This book is definitely a good resource, although obviously brief and not "in depth".Given the length and the fact that it is geared toward children, it's a good basic "first read" for kids to acquaint them with Tlingit tribe and culture.The pictures are wonderful!

Authentic photos, clear text, and variety of subjects
This non-fiction book talks openly about the the Tlingit way of life now and in the past.Accompanied by black and white and more recent colored photos . Nice , large print for young readers with simple informative text. Pictures on every page.This would be a good addition to elementary school rooms especially in Alaska. ... Read more

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very nice stuff...
Excellent piece of work, this addition actually includes journal entries for Arthur Krause's treks up the Chilkat and Dyea (Taiya River) valleys, something the earlier additions lack. Arthur, unknown to many historians, was the first white man to write and describe the Taiya River (AKA. Chilkoot, Dyea) valley, which is now a national park. Anyone doing work on the Chilkoot Trail will find his Pre-Rush descriptions of his route up the valley and the natural history of the valley invaluable. Nice work. I do wonder however, if there is not more to his journal entries that has not been included in this addition? Also, some translational errors may have occurred, as the narratives don't alwats seem to make sense in following his route. Moreover, this work was translated from an unusual deutscher field shorthand, to german proper, to english. Neverthless, an excellent addition to the early Pre-Goldrush history of Southeast Alaska. Kudos.

SL Ferreira ... Read more

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In "Memory Eternal", Sergei Kan combines anthropology and history, anecdote and theory to portray the encounter between the Tlingit Indians and the Russian Orthodox Church in Alaska in the late 1700s and to analyze the indigenous Orthodoxy that developed over the next 200 years. As a native speaker of Russian with eighteen years of fieldwork experience among the Tlingit, Kan is uniquely qualified to relate little-known material from the archives of the Russian church in Alaska to Tlingit oral history and his own observations.By weighing the one body of evidence against the other, he has reevaluated this history, arriving at a persuasive new concept of 'converged agendas' - the view that the Tlingit and the Russians tended to act in mutually beneficial ways but for entirely different reasons throughout the period of their contact with one another. The Russian-American Company began operations in southeastern Alaska in the 1790s. Against a description of Tlingit culture at the time of the Russians' arrival, Kan examines Russian Orthodox theology, ritual practice, and missionary methods, and the Tlingit response to them.An uneasy symbiosis characterized the early era of the Russian-American Company, when the trading relationship outweighed any spiritual or social rapprochement.A second, major focus of Kan's study is the Tlingit experience with American colonial domination. He attributes a sudden revival of Tlingit interest in Orthodoxy in the 1880s as their attempt to maintain independence in the face of concerted efforts by the newcomers (and especially Presbyterian missionaries) to Americanize them."Memory Eternal" shows the colonial encounter to be both a power struggle and a dialogue between different systems of meaning. It portrays Native Alaskans not as helpless victims but as historical agents who attempted to adjust to the changing reality of their social world without abandoning fundamental principals of their precolonial sociocultural order or their strong sense of self-respect. Sergei Kan is professor of anthropology and Native American studies at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire. ... Read more

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The images in the pages of this book-animal, human, and spirit faces-evoke the powerful cultural legacy of the inhabitants of the Northwest Coast. Spirits of the Water presents approximately 175 examples of the art produced by the Native peoples of a region of great linguistic, cultural, and geographical diversity. Accompanying essays establish a historical and cultural context for this remarkable assemblage of objects, and explore the traditions of art, social organization, and ceremony that inspired their makers.

Early expeditions of exploration and trade to the northern Pacific coast were responsible for the acquisition of numerous objects, such as masks, tools, clothing, and baskets. Spirits of the Water examines the history of Russian, Spanish, English, and American expeditions in relation to the discovery and collection of these artifacts, many now considered to be extraordinary works of art. Gathered from international museums and private collections, these objects are among the oldest known works of Northwest Coast Indian art. This book also brings together many of the drawings and engravings made by the Spanish, English, and Russian artists who witnessed and recorded the first encounters with the lands of the Northwest Coast and their inhabitants.

These works of functional art, with their expressive abstractions of animals and supernatural beings, reveal the religious and social motivations intertwined in their powerful aesthetic presence. Masks in particular express the imagination and creativity of the maker while conveying social hierarchies and spiritual motivations. The contributors to this volume invoke the pragmatic and ceremonial worlds in which these artifacts were used and examine how the material cultures of the Northwest Coast were understood by explorers and collectors as diverse as Captain James Cook and Max Ernst. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

A very high-quality publication
This is a large, beautifully-done publication. It is loaded with very high-quality pictures of some wonderful examples of Pacific Northwest Coast artwork, especially masks. It is done is a style similar to museum "catalogs," with each picture having information about the item pictured.

I would say that roughly 75% of the items pictured in this book are masks, with the remainder being pictures of carved bowls, woven hats, small carved figures, etc. There are a couple of pictures of a decorated shirt and some boxes.

If you're looking for books that cover Pacific Northwest Coast native artwork in more general terms, or how to do it, or about totem poles, then there are better books.

If, however, you want a high-production-values book loaded with very high-quality pictures of some outstanding examples of Pacific Northwest Coast artwork, especially masks, then this is a fabulous book and you should not hesitate to buy it. ... Read more

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Tales told by Robert Zuboff, eighty-year-old chief of the Beaver Clan at Admiralty Island, who spent hours sharing tribal lore with the children. These tales picture the atmosphere of Tlingit culture more vividly than a textbook. They were meant to instruct, inform, and warn and have been valuable in the education of Native Americans for eons. ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (3)

patronizing look at Tlingits at best
Y'eil, not Jelch.For a guy who supposedly lives among the Tlingit and has so much respect for them and their history, he can't even get their most important diety correct.

From language, to simplified beliefs and dialogue he just missed with regard to the culture that is all around him in Wrangell - this miss came across as naive, disrespectful, patronizing, shallow, and insincere (at best).

I am Tlingit from just 90 miles south of Wrangell, and I bought this book with the hope of having my daughter read it.Boy am I glad I read it first.A nice story with an attempt to be respectful.It is clear, however, that the author did not know how to do so.

So many better books to read than to waste you time with this one.

Terrible
This book is just God-awful. I'm reading it at this moment, and nearly finished with it. All I can say about it is Jamie S. Bryson did a really poor job forming the dramatic stage he set out to create. I felt very little attachment to the characters, especially Mickey Church who has the mood swing of a thirteen year old girl, which is really just Bryson's way of trying to create drama. The book attempts to sum up a what could have been great drama in 163 pages. Don't buy this book, skip it and go straight to Two Old Women or something.

The Honeoye Falls Times Review
This book starts off very slow and doesn't really hit the point till the seventh chapter. However the story line from there on is pretty good and gets you wondering about the Tlingits of Alaska and their ways. One last thing that amazed me was how realistic to every day, ordinary kind of person reactions and conflicts and basically the wole era of the story was. Overall I think this book would have been five stars if Bryson had hit the point earlier and skipped the seven chapters of introduction in the begining. ... Read more

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Great, if slightly disappointing, news
A complete thrill to have so many new documents translated from the Russian; letters, orders, diaries; all the stuff that makes historians dance. However, the author doesn't know the overall field well enough, and it shows.
Definitely worth reading, but don't take it as the final word. ... Read more

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Chapters: Grits, Hominy, Sweet Corn, Corn Soup, Succotash, Maize, Pulque, Popcorn, Aztec Cuisine, Food of the Tlingit, Chicha, Acorn, Black Drink, Wild Rice, Juniper Berry, Bannock, Camassia, Cornbread, Andean Cuisine, Maya Cuisine, Cauim, Pemmican, Devil's Club, Camassia Quamash, Calochortus Nuttallii, Gaultheria Shallon, Mashed Pumpkin, Sofrito, Tepary Bean, Scuppernong, Mazamorra, Chuño, Humita, Piki, Frybread, Wild Onion Festival, Florida Arrowroot, Sagamite, Sxusem, Pinole, Kasiri, Wiiwish, Spruce Gum, Chinook Olives, Shawnee Cake, Rubaboo. Source: Wikipedia. Pages: 219. Not illustrated. Free updates online. Purchase includes a free trial membership in the publisher's book club where you can select from more than a million books without charge. Excerpt: Maize (Zea mays L. ssp. mays, pronounced ; which is known in many English-speaking countries as corn) is a grass domesticated by indigenous peoples in Mesoamerica in prehistoric times. The Aztecs and Mayans cultivated it in numerous varieties throughout central and southern Mexico, to cook or grind in a process called nixtamalization. Later the crop spread through much of the Americas. Between 1250 A.D. and 1700 A.D. nearly the whole continent had gained access to the crop. Any significant or dense populations in the region developed a great trade network based on surplus and varieties of maize crops. After European contact with the Americas in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, explorers and traders carried maize back to Europe and introduced it to other countries through trade. Its ability to grow in distinct climates, and its use were highly valued, thus spreading to the rest of the world. Maize is the most widely grown crop in the Americas with 332 million metric tons grown annually in the United States alone. Transgenic maize comprised 80% of the maize planted in the United States. While some maize varieties grow up to 7 metres (23 ft) tall, most commercially...More: http://booksllc.net/?id=20656228 ... Read more