Traditional Tlingit use of Sitka National Historical Park

Thornton, Thomas

This report summarizes traditional uses of Sitka National Historical Park by local Tlingits. Part One of the report attempts to sketch Indian River as a Kiks.adi landscape by analyzing the evolution of the major natural and cultural environments in the vicinity of the park from an ethnogeographic and ethnohistorical perspective. Using interview, archival, and published sources, key events in the park’s natural, mythic, and social history are detailed, including geological occurrences, ecological and habitat changes, the discovery and settlement of the area by the Kiks.adi clan and other Sitka Tlingit, and development of Indian River as a Tlingit, Russian, and American landscape. The record shows that, despite the pressures of contact, Sitka Tlingits have continued to maintain their physical, social, symbolic, and spiritual ties to Indian River. Part Two of the report examines various Native uses of the park by Tlingit villagers and members of the Model Cottage Settlement, a utopian colony founded by the Presbyterian church on a site now partly occupied by the park Visitors Center. Important historic uses of the park for Tlingit villagers and cottagers included recreational activities, entrepreneurial enterprises, and commemorative, spiritual, and other communal gatherings and activities, such as memorials for those who died in the infamous Battle of 1804. The report concludes that while social and symbolic uses of the park remain strong and have even been enhanced since the 1960s, subsistence and other material connections to the park have been largely severed. The conclusion provides recommendations for maintaining and improving Tlingit ties to Sitka National Historical Park, including proposals for enhancing traditional Native uses of the park in cooperation with the Sitka Tribe.

Traditional Tlingit use of Sitka National Historical Park

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