The work of being ourselves: Following the tides from Yakutat to Kasaan
INTRO: I’m Annika Ord from the University of Alaska Fairbanks, and this is Alaska Voices, a place where community members, friends, and scientists can share stories and place-based knowledge in order to build a better tomorrow for Alaskans and the world.
Originally I grew up in Gakona, Alaska…Tyonek, Egypt, Idaho, Rampart, St. Lawrence Island, St. Paul…and I’m here with my student…my science buddy, my teacher, my homie…I’m his daughter.
GLORIA WOLFE, KHAASWÓOT: My name is Gloria Wolfe, I’m from Yakutat. I’m 40. My husband is related to these guys. So, excited to see where this conversation goes. Gunalchéesh.
NAANG K’ADANGÁAS ERIC HAMAR: Nang K’adangáas Eric Hamar. I am 33 years old, currently in Sitka, from Kasaan. Spent some time in Icy Bay outside of Yakutat. I am also related to these guys, either through blood or marriage, and through the good work of Indigenous peoples. 
GLORIA WOLFE, KHAASWÓOT: Ooh. 
GEORGE NIX: Ooh. Welcome. 
NAANG K’ADANGÁAS ERIC HAMAR: Young warrior.
GEORGE NIX: My name’s George Nix. I’m 34 years old. I’m currently also in Sitka, living in Kasaan, relationship with these guys is, like everyone said, cousins? Cousins. 
GLORIA WOLFE, KHAASWÓOT: Why do you guys do the work that you guys do?
GEORGE NIX: May I go first?
NAANG K’ADANGÁAS ERIC HAMAR: Yeah.
GEORGE NIX: I grew up down in Washington and, being Alaska Native, I was a spectator. That was all I could be down south was a spectator. Didn’t really get to be involved in actually being in the culture and I felt like an outsider. My first trip to Alaska, I visited Kake. They like to say Kake America. Within the first 15 minutes of arriving in that village, I felt like I was almost home. 
I was able to dive fully into the food security, and what that was for Kasaan was being able to provide foods for Elders and being able to take the youth and educate them on how to not only get it but get it respectfully. 
Coming up here, you learn from your Elders and from the people who have been here longer than you. The best way to get better at anything is asking questions and seeking those knowledge-bearers. One of the most, I guess inspirational things that I’ve heard was that every time an Elder passes away, it’s the equivalent to a library burning down. 
GLORIA WOLFE, KHAASWÓOT: Wow.
GEORGE NIX: And one of the most important things that we can do, especially with our Elders and our knowledge-bearers, is dig for that information. Ask them. Because they’re wanting to pass it along and I’ve noticed that. A lot of the ways that I’ve learned to practice and harvest and doing it respectfully and culturally is through listening and asking questions. 
So now that I have the ability to do that with a tribal entity behind me to support me and carry forth the missions that Kasaan is bringing, it’s an honor to be a part of that. I’m passionate about bringing food and protecting our food and showing them how to do it respectfully. 
GLORIA WOLFE, KHAASWÓOT: So this job’s going to help you to reconnect through reaching out and learning more. 
I know whenever I’m doing dry fish or any kind of fish or filleting or anything with some new people, I’m learning a new way. And I’m always telling my sons that, too. Someone asks you, “You know how to fillet fish?” You don’t have to say yeah right away. You could say, “I mean, I know a way but I’d love to learn from you. You want to show me how you do it?” 
Because there’s just so much knowledge within our people, so it’s cool you could do that through your work. 
NAANG K’ADANGÁAS ERIC HAMAR: I have a question for you, George. Where is your shrimp spot?
GEORGE NIX: Oooo. 
GLORIA WOLFE, KHAASWÓOT: Over there.
GEORGE NIX: I don’t know, yeah. Hmm.
NAANG K’ADANGÁAS ERIC HAMAR: You guys can’t see the lip movement in here right now.
GEORGE NIX: Yeah, the lips be pointing. Ah, in the water, is what I try to tell them.
GLORIA WOLFE, KHAASWÓOT: What brings you to your work or any work?
NAANG K’ADANGÁAS ERIC HAMAR: Like I said, I spent my young childhood outside of Yakutat and Icy Bay, my dad was working a logging camp up there. And it was one of those situations where my dad was the only Indigenous person there so I accidentally lived the culture. Because my dad wasn’t super connected to it at the time. I just spent all my youth hunting and fishing and mucking around on the beach and living on the coast, and that’s a huge part of the culture, but I didn’t get any of the looking part, you know? 
But then we moved back to Kasaan, which is where the family’s from. I spent my teenage years there and I worked with Stan Marsden on a totem pole that he was doing there at the school. It was the first pole that they had raised in Kasaan in like 100 years or something like that. 
And there was this thing that happened where I didn’t identify with my culture very much, and then I identified with it very strongly, and then I didn’t identify with it again. I think kind of chasing some American ideal of what I was supposed to do in my 20s, and individual success and what that looks like, which isn’t really the way. And then when I disassociated with it, yeah, I dropped the torch, you know? Like somebody passed the torch off, I wasn’t there to pick it up. 
When I came to that realization, I was like, “Oh, where’s the culture camps? Why isn’t this happening? Why isn’t that happening?” It was like, “Oh, it’s because nobody is doing it. I’m not doing it, nobody else is doing it,” you know? 
So I just decided to start doing it, and then tried to refocus on understanding what it means to be Haida, in the way that my great náan used to live and the way that her parents used to live. This idea of giving without receiving, really trusting in that even when it’s difficult, because that’s the opposite of the American society. It’s about taking, right? So if you’re giving, then now people want to take. 
GEORGE NIX: A true leader, a true person of power was someone who was willing to sacrifice almost all for his people or for their people. 
When we’re talking about honoring the generations before us and after us, that’s the most important part of all of this. That’s why we’re sitting here at these retreats, that’s why we go to all these conferences, because guess who was doing it before us? 
The only reason I have the opportunity to sit here and have these conversations is because of the ancestors that were fighting for my rights before this.
Understanding that and trying to change that Americanized way of thinking, of take and take and take. Could you even imagine if you could try to outgive me? I’m going to give better than you. What kind of world would we live in? We would be here taking care of each other, everybody would have food security. That was something that really stuck with me, was just, if you’re not at the table, you’re on the menu. 
NAANG K’ADANGÁAS ERIC HAMAR: This is why our languages are really important, because they change how you perceive. It’s really important because now a lot of us as Indigenous people are trying to either work with or against the federal government, the state government, colonizer governments. We use their language when we talk about those things and it’s really difficult to do that because we can’t necessarily convey the mindset through English. 
At least for the Haida people, we didn’t have chiefs, right? We didn’t have leaders in that way. We had íitl'aagíid, it means a rich man, is the quickest way to translate it, but really what it means is somebody who can’t make decisions or doesn’t make decisions, and it also means somebody who doesn’t talk much or doesn’t say much. 
So when you’re talking about someone who doesn’t have a lot of wealth,  you’re talking about someone who doesn’t say a whole lot, and doesn’t make any decisions. They don’t need to talk because other people do for them, right? They don’t need to make decisions, people respect what happens there. 
That’s the whole idea of wealth in this society is that, do good things, get good things. Keep feeding people and keep feeding people. If they do the same, then everybody’s getting fed.
GLORIA WOLFE, KHAASWÓOT: Yeah, the way we host each other really shows strength, and out-hosting each other all the time, that’s what makes us sustainable, is that we’re always hosting each other and always uplifting each other, and knowing that this s I think that really is what has helped us to sustain this culture through colonization. 
The depth of our culture is the way we love each other, the way we respect each other, the way we uplift each other. It’s these undercurrents. It’s these philosophies. It’s the respect and the reciprocity that go without saying. It’s the lens that you see somebody for their clan and their family. When you look at somebody, you can see their grandparents whose house you grew up having cookies at or they gave you moccasins or the uncle that helped teach you how to fillet your first fish is also their uncle, you know?
All of these things that sustain our culture, it’s not always visible. It’s not necessarily our responsibility to make it visible, it’s just our responsibility to live it, to keep living it and to have these cultural events. 
My niece used to always say she has this reoccurring nightmare, and her reoccurring nightmare is that she marries a guy and goes and lives inside of a city, like LA or New York, and is never able to access the real true earth. That she wakes up in concrete and lives in concrete and eats out of a store and her diet is soda and processed chicken and they never leave the walls of the city. She’s had this weird reoccurring nightmare. I’m like, “You don’t have to marry,” I don’t know. 
NAANG K’ADANGÁAS ERIC HAMAR: Her reoccurring nightmare is called the American Dream. 
GLORIA WOLFE, KHAASWÓOT: Right? And it’s so different than what we live that it’s a nightmare for some folks.
GEORGE NIX: No, for sure.
GLORIA WOLFE, KHAASWÓOT: What we’re coming across is one of the first generations in thousands of years where we don’t have fluent-speaking Elders and knowledge-bearers of our protocol. It’s people our age who know how to do a lot of those things and are putting on the culture camps and stewarding a lot of this cultural-style living and infusing it within organizations and really investing deeper into our tribes. 
When I came back to Yakutat, there wasn’t culture camps, either. I was like, “We’re probably going to do that.” So we started doing that. 
I think that’s really just our way. It’s like, noticing the needs of our community and being contributors, hosting other people. Finding ways to be a part of it. Not waiting to be asked. It’s like, you walk into the kitchen and you’re asking what to do, you’re already not doing anything. You already know there’s stuff to do, just wash a dish, you know?
GEORGE NIX: I was always told that it’s better to be asked to get out of the way than to get in the way.
GLORIA WOLFE, KHAASWÓOT: Right.
GEORGE NIX: I always like saying you can’t have the word community without unity in it, right? So whenever we’re hosting these events and these cultural aspects and stuff, it’s bringing all the aunties together and they’re in the kitchen and they’re laughing and they’re making things happen in there, and then the uncles are out harvesting and taking the littles out and getting slimy and bloody and stuff. That’s what it’s about. You could see light bulbs going off.
NAANG K’ADANGÁAS ERIC HAMAR: It’s huge, yeah, like you’ve got to get away from the idea of these culture camps as being like classes. It’s not classes, it’s a space for people to be Indigenous without having to feel reserved about it, you know? Because it doesn’t always feel safe to be Indigenous.
GLORIA WOLFE, KHAASWÓOT: Oh yeah.
NAANG K’ADANGÁAS ERIC HAMAR: You know what I mean? When you get into those situations and those spaces and everyone’s just hanging out and we’ve got multiple generations in a big house and we’re cooking and eating, that’s just how our ancestors lived their life. If there was something that needed help, somebody did it. If somebody was hungry, somebody else got them food. People were doing what they were good at and working together and spending that time. 
GEORGE NIX: They were intergenerational households.
GLORIA WOLFE, KHAASWÓOT: Yeah, yeah.
NAANG K’ADANGÁAS ERIC HAMAR: Yeah. And that’s what we have for a week?
GEORGE NIX: That’s a big deal. 
GLORIA WOLFE, KHAASWÓOT: Yeah, and that’s not weird for us. 
GEORGE NIX: That’s a big deal. 
NAANG K’ADANGÁAS ERIC HAMAR: For a lot of people it’s mind-blowing. 
GLORIA WOLFE, KHAASWÓOT: For some folks it’s, “I can’t do it.” Yeah.
GEORGE NIX: When we’re talking about Americanizing things, that was the most important part about breaking the family up.
GLORIA WOLFE, KHAASWÓOT: Yeah, oof. Yeah. That’s what we’re creating at these culture camps, is that intergenerational opportunity. We have to seek it out and be intentional about how we’re sharing. Because it’s so easy once you’re there.
NAANG K’ADANGÁAS ERIC HAMAR: Yeah.
GEORGE NIX: Yep/
GLORIA WOLFE, KHAASWÓOT: Right? Once everybody shows up, we’re just like, “Hey, I don’t like how you filleted that fish. I’m going to show you how to do it next time, you do the next 40,” or whatever, you know? That worked out really well.
NAANG K’ADANGÁAS ERIC HAMAR: Everybody’s laughing, it’s a good time. 
I remember reading this in some old book, it might have been Gilbert Said or something like that. Gilbert McLeod. He was from Craig. He was an Elder over there and he was talking about how his uncles just talked mad crap because you have to pay attention to find out when they’re being serious. So you’re always paying attention. Because you never know. You never know when there’s going to be a nugget of wisdom. You’ve got to be listening.
GEORGE NIX: Gotta be ready to catch it and hang onto it. 
NAANG K’ADANGÁAS ERIC HAMAR: They’re talking mad crap the whole time and you’re like.
GEORGE NIX: And then the knowledge bomb, yeah, yeah.
NAANG K’ADANGÁAS ERIC HAMAR: Right, so then I would do that, when I was in Washington, I was like, I’m talking crap, all the time. And people would say like, “Man, that guy’s a real jerk.” I was like, “You guys aren’t listening. You’re not paying attention.”
GEORGE NIX: Sometimes I get to the point where I’m like, “Hey, the only reason I’m acting like this is because I think I like you.”
GLORIA WOLFE, KHAASWÓOT: Right, it’s that investment of time and energy. 
GEORGE NIX: Yeah, exactly, like I’m going to sit here—
GLORIA WOLFE, KHAASWÓOT: Silliness and sarcasm and yeah, laughter.
GEORGE NIX: Laughter’s the best medicine.
NAANG K’ADANGÁAS ERIC HAMAR: When I was younger, there was only 40 people in Kasaan. There wasn’t a whole lot of Elders there at that point, there was just one or two. Some of those Elders were the same Elders we have now. 
We got this big gap all of a sudden, like for instance, right, as a 16-year-old, I hadn’t had seal or the oil. Didn’t know anybody that did it. Didn’t know how to do it myself. My dad didn’t know how to do it. So you’re starting at ground zero, trying to reinvent the wheel. Or reinvent the seal, if you will. 
GEORGE NIX: Holy. 
NAANG K’ADANGÁAS ERIC HAMAR: That’s for my kids. 
I wasn’t used to eating seal. I didn’t know what it was supposed to taste like, and so I made it taste a way that I could eat it without being used to eating it that way. Yeah, so I cold-press my seal oil. I run it through a meat grinder, like a fine meat grinder, and then I strain it. The cold-press stuff is like almost floral, like it’s super subtle. It’s really fine.
GEORGE NIX: It’s like a sweet-salty cucumber, almost, flavor.
GLORIA WOLFE, KHAASWÓOT: Wow.
NAANG K’ADANGÁAS ERIC HAMAR: It’s the sole property of the Kasaan Haida.
GEORGE NIX: Oh yeah. 
NAANG K’ADANGÁAS ERIC HAMAR: George’s brother did some like, was it habanero-infused seal oil? 
GEORGE NIX: He infused some habanero.
GLORIA WOLFE, KHAASWÓOT: Holy heck, some infusions. 
NAANG K’ADANGÁAS ERIC HAMAR: It’s good. Heard it was good. 
GEORGE NIX: Yeah, he made some other fermented hot sauce that he used seal oil in.
NAANG K’ADANGÁAS ERIC HAMAR: So now we’re doing that with a lot of the kids, right? We had a summer lunch program and they were serving those kids abalone down there. A lot of those kids were like, “gross,” “yuck,” “stink.”
GLORIA WOLFE, KHAASWÓOT: Weird.
NAANG K’ADANGÁAS ERIC HAMAR: Well, because nobody had had it. They didn’t know what it was, like, nobody had been eating it. So when they were introduced to that, they were like, “Where’s the fish sticks?” I was like, “Uh, they’re not here.” 
That’s part of the reason that I like doing the cold-press stuff, too, or infusing, bringing some of that modern stuff to it. Because there’s a lot of people that have recoiled at seal, like “Eugh, I can’t do that.” But then I’ll make some chili and they’re like, “No, that was great chili, that was good. What was that?” 
GEORGE NIX: “What was that protein in that chili?” 
NAANG K’ADANGÁAS ERIC HAMAR: That was seal, bro.
GLORIA WOLFE, KHAASWÓOT: That was the seal.
 NAANG K’ADANGÁAS ERIC HAMAR: That was the seal. That’s what it is. Good stuff.
GLORIA WOLFE, KHAASWÓOT: See my boots? That’s also the same animal. 
NAANG K’ADANGÁAS ERIC HAMAR: Also the seal. Also the seal.
GLORIA WOLFE, KHAASWÓOT: Yeah, I think that brings up something for me that is also shifting, is when kids make comments like that. When I was a kid, you can internally know that you don’t like it, but you’ve got to find some way to be like, “Okay, thanks, Auntie,” take it and remove.
GEORGE NIX: That’s part of the respect of it.
GLORIA WOLFE, KHAASWÓOT: Yeah, it’s the respect. You cannot disrespect these animals. You cannot disrespect someone else’s cooking. You cannot disrespect anything because they’re hosting you. 
GEORGE NIX: At this last culture camp, before we did anything with the animals, we got the group of kids together and we made it very clear that we were going to be as respectful as we possibly can because these animals sacrificed themselves for us. “They presented themselves for us in order to have this opportunity to show you how to do it.”
So wrinkled noses and stank faces and all that kind of stuff, of course it’s going to happen, but being able to adjust it then and there in that situation and that opportunity, to not shame them, but bring enlightenment to the idea of, “You’re being disrespectful.” It’s really important to understand that we have to put respectful energy into what we’re doing.
NAANG K’ADANGÁAS ERIC HAMAR: Words are power.
GLORIA WOLFE, KHAASWÓOT: Yeah, I think that’s a lot of the slow cadence that you’re talking about, and the taking turns of Indigenous cultures, too, is that words have power component, and really letting people have their time, that moment, and also just letting the energy just sit and be. Just feel the maybe new ideas that were brought up, and not forcing an answer right away, not forcing a solution. 
They used to talk about in Yakutat, how at city council meetings, when it was all Indigenous people, they were the slowest meetings of all time. They would just take hours because there would be something brought up and they would be like, “What is the wish of the board?” Everybody would just sit there for like 10 minutes like, “Hm,”  thinking about all the history of all time.
NAANG K’ADANGÁAS ERIC HAMAR: Mindful.
GEORGE NIX: Mindful, yeah.
GLORIA WOLFE, KHAASWÓOT: And the implications of this for my great great great grandchildren, no one’s speaking or talking, and then finally the most respected person who’s allowed to speak first, you know—and people know who can break that ice—says something. It just has these unspoken rules within the culture that you know who can speak in that way.
I love that about our culture. I mean this is what I want our kids to have. This is why we do the things. That’s why Tlingít and Haida and all these organizations, it’s like we’re a race against the clock, but at the same time the solution is just to be Indigenous. 
GEORGE NIX: We say it in the village, a full-time Haida is doing Haida things. That’s it.
NAANG K’ADANGÁAS ERIC HAMAR: That’s the best way.
GEORGE NIX: We’re actively living our culture. 
NAANG K’ADANGÁAS ERIC HAMAR: I think we were talking about that the other day with Forrester Island. Forrester Island, for those of you who don’t know, is about 20 miles off the coast of Prince of Wales, out in the ocean and there’s nothing between it and Prince of Wales. But people used to go out there, it was shared territory between the west coast and the east coast of Prince of Wales for bird eggs. All the birds go out there and lay their eggs out there. 
Well, it’s such a trek, 20 miles of open ocean, and the island was considered so powerful that when people would go over there, it has a name, but nobody would say the name. They would always call it something else like chanáa or big rock or something. They wouldn’t talk about it specifically. The whole time as they went out there, they’d be talking and putting power into words like, “We’re not getting eggs. We’re just lost out here trying to catch some fish.” Saying stuff like that, put in the power in their words to throw off whatever kind of supernatural power.
GLORIA WOLFE, KHAASWÓOT: The energy that exists that we’re always aware of.
NAANG K’ADANGÁAS ERIC HAMAR: They wouldn’t say,  “We’re going to get bird eggs from Forrester Island.” Nobody would ever say that. 
GLORIA WOLFE, KHAASWÓOT: Right.
 GEORGE NIX: There would be no birds. 
NAANG K’ADANGÁAS ERIC HAMAR: There would be no birds, they’d leave. They know them, like we told them. 
GEORGE NIX: “They’re coming.”
NAANG K’ADANGÁAS ERIC HAMAR: I was just thinking about how that’s spilled out into modern culture, where like we’ll go out fishing, “Gah, I didn’t want to catch anything anyway. Gah, I didn’t want that one, it’s too small.”
GEORGE NIX: “I’m only hiking in the woods today. With a rifle.” 
NAANG K’ADANGÁAS ERIC HAMAR: It’s a derivative of what people were doing in the past. Now it’s just kind of funny, but it’s rooted in a really serious purpose.
GLORIA WOLFE, KHAASWÓOT: I think it’s just being humble and not assuming that when you go out there, it’s going to be there for you. It’s not like this assumption that you can just take. 
GEORGE NIX: Yeah. All those other things that present themselves along the journey, those are offerings. 
For me personally, I always bring something with me to replace what I’m taking, especially in a successful harvest, “Háw'aa Saláanaa, thank you for this opportunity,” and then I give it a drink of water or I leave a token of some sort because that’s important for me personally to show my respects because that’s a big deal. 
GLORIA WOLFE, KHAASWÓOT: They live there, too. It’s always this knowing, we’re going into the woods, this is a place where moose and bears live. We’re going into their backyard. 
GEORGE NIX: Their home.
GLORIA WOLFE, KHAASWÓOT: We’re going into their home. And just having that humility and that humbleness. 
GEORGE NIX: We’re a guest.
GLORIA WOLFE, KHAASWÓOT: We’re a guest. Whenever I’m out there surfing in Yakutat and there’s a sea lion, I’m like, “Whoa buddy. I know you’re the boss and I appreciate your energy. I’m going to go ahead and go into shore and you have a great day.”
NAANG K’ADANGÁAS ERIC HAMAR: Something I like to think of was something that Woody Morrison said, he was from Hydaburg but he lived in Vancouver was “Díi X̱áahlaat dei uu ḵyáagaanggang” and basically what it translates to is like, “Great Spirit, my spirit calls out, come see what I need.” 
It’s kind of like a prayer phrase, I guess, as close as you can get to that in Haida. Basically the idea is that you as a person cannot know what is good for you, because there’s bigger forces out there. So when you’re in trouble and you’re having a hard time, you don’t ask for what you want. 
So you just have to give into that and be like, “My spirit’s calling out, give me what I need at this moment,” because the universe or Saláanaa or whatever knows what’s best for you and you have to be okay with that. I say that to myself quite a bit when I’m having hard moments.
I wanted to bring that up because we were talking about being humble and we were talking about it, but we’re still using English. English isn’t the right language to convey what we’re talking about. 
So I just wanted to say that in the language that was built for it. “Díi X̱áahlaat dei uu ḵyáagaanggang.”
GEORGE NIX: Words with direction. 
GLORIA WOLFE, KHAASWÓOT: Well, thanks for having this conversation, guys. I enjoyed learning a little bit about you guys. Thanks for offering this opportunity for us.
GEORGE NIX: Yeah, thank you for the space.
GLORIA WOLFE, KHAASWÓOT: Yeah. Gunalchéesh.
NAANG K’ADANGÁAS ERIC HAMAR: Háw'aa.
GEORGE NIX: Gunalchéesh. Háw'aa.
NAANG K’ADANGÁAS ERIC HAMAR: Háw'aa.
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