Harriman Alaskan Expedition--Retraced and sacred objects returned home!

[grladams at teleport.com]

http://tiny.cc/qEPGI 


 The Harriman Alaska Expedition Retraced: A Century of Change, 

1899-2001 - Page 31 - 39
Chapter 3 Standing with Spirits, Waiting / Rosita Worl
     Historical accounts of the 1899 Harriman Expedition tell us that 

some of its members justified the questionable taking of Saanya Kwaan 

property by choosing to believe that Cape Fox village was abandoned and 

that they were acting on behalf of science. Without thought as to whom 

the owners might be, they took what they perceived to be merely 

inanimate objects or scientific specimens. Other members of the 

expedition, like John Muir, watched the taking in disgust. The ship was 

loaded with the magnificent works of art, including totem poles, house 

screens, and masks, that would ultimately come to rest in major museums 

around the United States. 
     A hundred and two years later, three Tlingit women dressed in 

ceremonial regalia stood silently on the beach, their eyes rivited on 

the small fire that they had just finished building. The fire was 

necessary to transport their offerings to the Spirit World and to their 

ancestors. They had come to the ancient Saanya Kwaan village site of 

Cape Fox as part of the 2001 Harriman Alaska Expedition Retraced. Two 

of the women, Eleanor Hadden and Irene Shields Dundas, had direct ties 

to the Saanya Kwaan, the Tlingit clan that originally inhabited the 

southern coastal region of the Tlingit homeland in Southeast Alaska.
    I was the third, joining them not in my capacity as a Harriman 

Scholar but as a Chilkat Tlingit from our homeland's northern region.  

All of us were familiar with the history of the history of the 

expedition of 1899, and we struggled with our embittered emotions about 

its removal of sacred clan objects owned by the Saanya Kwaan. However 

we knew that we could not be overcome by these hostile feelings because 

we had a greater task at hand. 

(Figure 6 Clan objects await loading onto the Elder at Cape Fox 

Village. Credit: Edward S Curtis, Source Harriman Family Collection.

   Not one word was spoken but tears streamed down our faces as we 

thought about our ancestors whose spirits resided in the sacred clan 

objects that we identify as [cyrillic font of the pronunciation of the 

items not possible to type] in our own language. Sorrow and grief 

overcame us as we travelled back in time to 1899, imagining the flurry 

of activity that resulted in the removal of the clan objects. To the 

Tlingit, clan objects are not mere works of art; they are sacred and 

tangible links to their ancestors and clan histories. They embody the 

essence of who the Tlingit are and mark their path into the future. 

Slowly the youngest woman began to beat the drum she was carrying. It 

was time for us to make offerings and to apologize to the ancestors for 

allowing the clan object to be removed from their homeland and 

transported to foreign places.

   Based on their ancient believe of Haa Shagoon, present day Tlingits 

acknowledge their role, their complicity, in the loss of the Saanya 

Kwaan [items] The teaching of Haa Shagoon tell the present generation 

of Tlingits they are one with their ancestors, just as they--the 

present generation--will be united with future generations of Tlingits. 

Thus they are just as responsible for the actions of one hundred years 

ago as were their ancestors, who allowed the removal of clan objects. 

As we three women reflected on the significance of the returning Saanya 

Kwaan [items] and finished the ancestral offering, we felt our grief 

disbursing and a somber mood transformed into joy. We welcomed the 

ancestors back to their homeland with a song.

(2 pages unavailable for viewing) [skipping page 36 as it is filled 

with details of land reclaim laws from congress and how the Native 

Americans had to form corporations, like Sealaska Corporation of the 

Tlingits. But p.36 does state the date of the Harriman Alaskan 

Expedition _Retraced_ "These efforts set us on the Historic Path to 

Cape Fox Village on July 23, 2001. According to anthropologist Douglas 

Cole, the zenith of anthropological collection of the Northwest Coast 

occurred within a 50 year period beginning in 1875. In _Captured 

Heritage_ Cole wrote about the enormous outpouring of capitalist 

philanthropy that supported the expansion of museums devoted to 

collecting and exhibiting scientific and artistic objects. He could 

have been describing the 1899 expedition's visit to Cape Fox when he 

described the process of acquisition. "A Staggering quantity, both 

secular and sacred--from spindle whorls to soul-catchers--left the 

hands of their native creators for the private and public collections 

of the European world. The scramble for skulls and skeletons, poles and 

paddles, for baskets and bowls, for masks and mummies, was pursued 

sometimes with respect, occasionally with rapacity, often with 

avarice."

  To help undo a century of Westerners' collecting of Native objects, 

Native Americans were successful in convincing congress to pass the 

Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act of 1990 

(NAGPRA). One of the only Federal laws that provides enforceable 

protections for Native American cultures, NAGPRA enabled the Tlingit to 

seek the return of human remains and certain cultural objects held by 

museums. Soon after its passage, clan leaders and elders assembled to 

learn about the mechanics of the law. They learned to pronounce 

"repatriation" and assessed how "cultural patrimony" compared with 

their concept of [cyrillic word again!]. Ironically, as one Tlingit 

elder quoted by Cole lamented, "They ridiculed us in saying we were 

pagans and worshiped idols, yet they took these idols that they called 

our sins, and brought them to their great museums!"

     The Tlingit began to file repatriation claims for their sacred 

[items]. The Saanya Kwaan, the descendants of the inhabitants who lived 

at Cape Fox, or Gaash, as it is also called, were among the first to 

submit claims. Their village corporation, the Cape Fox Corporation, 

submitted claims to several museums including the Smithsonian National 

Museum of the American Indian, the Harvard Peabody Museum of 

Archaeology and Ethnology, the Burke Museum of Natural History and 

Culture at the University of Washington, Cornell University, and the 

Chicago Field Museum.

    [next paragraph highlights the fact that there had been a smallpox 

epidemic in 1892, villagers believed evil spirits responsible, and 

christian presbyterian missionaries began to "help" the remaining 

members who'd joined with Tongass Tlingits, and were not far from the 

objects. By their beliefs, the objects are not abandoned but always 

with the clan.]
Then the Harriman Expedition arrived and departed with the sacred 

objects. That day, and the emotions surrounding it, were remembered for 

generations. Remarkably, a new law, changing attitudes, and a new 

expedition brought together on Cape Fox beach the descendants of the 

Saanya Kwaan and of Harriman. Later in the day, a potlach and 

repatriation ceremony were held in Katchikan. Waiting on Ketchikan's 

dock were several hundred Tlingit and Haida, there to welcome the 

_Clipper Odyssey_ and the sacred clan objects brought on its desk. I 

found myself at that moment between two societies, in the role of 

cultural broker. I was a member of the 2001 expedition, and, according 

to tradition, I shouted my greetings from the ship to the hundreds of 

Tlingit standing on the dock as if I were a stranger. As a 

Tlingit--knowing and sharing their mixed feelings--Is shouted to them, 

"Take courage, Noble People of the Land!" As....

Soon after we docked the Saanya Kwaan leaders and representatives 

boarded the ship to inspect their clan treasures. Next they wanted to 

meet with the great-great-granddaughter of Edward Harriman [Margaret 

Northrop Friedman as stated on page 43] and with the organizer of the 2001
expedition. 

     Emotions were high. Slowly, one after another, the leaders spoke, 

directing their remarkes to the young woman who stood straight and tall 

holding her son. Perhaps she was somewhat nervous, judging by the way 

she grasped her husband's hand. The leaders spoke of their joy in the 

return of their [items]. Some spoke in low, deliberate tones of their 

anger over the loss and absence of clan property but then expressed 

gratefulness that it had been preserved. They thanked the great-great 

granddaughter for caring for their sacred objects. They expressed their 

gratitude to the leader fof the expedition for his role in transporting 

their objects home...





Original Message:
-----------------
From: Michael Bailey michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com
Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2008 03:04:50 -0600
To: pynchon-l at waste.org
Subject: Re: Harriman Alaskan Expedition


I had it in the back of my mind to read up on Harriman.
Thanks for sharing that.  Lots of correspondences, or at
least eigenvalues, with the Vormance expedition.

On 1/9/08, grladams at teleport.com <grladams at teleport.com> wrote:
> Some interesting side reading is a chapter from _The Life and Legend of E.
> H. Harriman_ / Maury Klein. There are better books I'm sure on this but..
> It is Chapter 12 entitled Going North. I think that since the the errily
> exponential wealth-generating exploits of capitalism in ATD occur after a
> the fictional Vormance expedition, it can't be too far off from some kind
> of reality. The Harriman Expedition was in a ship called _The Elder_ .
Even
> the name of the ship eerily takes one to the funhouse of Lovecraft and
> mixes it with the Visitors who have come to harvest innocence... (jolly
> bringers of old world Rot, slaughterers of seals and cubs, civilizing
> Indians to clean fish at canneries!)
>
> E H Harriman was a railroad magnate famous and wealthy because he held the
> Union Pacific spearheading it's major improvement program. He was almost
> unknown to the public at the time. He suffered from ill health and left
his
> success on hold at the height of his ambition to stop and attain his
desire
> from Alaska, which was (this book claims) to (and he did) hunt a Kodiak
> bear (a mother and cub..)  For around two months his invited team of
> scientists included John Burroughs, John Muir, George Bird Grinnell,
> Clinton Hart Merriam, Edward S. Curtis, William Healey Dall, and William
> Emerson Ritter. They shipped tons of supplies and cameras, a grammophone..
> Among 50 colorful passengers, animals, there's a Scottish missionary
> civilizing the natives in free enterprise, there's deafening roar of
> explosions from the Treadwell Mine, there's a stray dog that is treated
> well onboard, there's ghastly horrors, there's an expression of seeing
> "granite ribs of the earth,"
>
>
> The preamble to the chapter: (and maybe more of that mechanism of
> evolution? just as arbitrary??)
> "hardly less important than the actual fruit of the expedition is its
value
> as a sign-post to our multi-millionaires. A little while a go a Western
man
> of vast wealth was heard to complain to a friend that he did not know how
> to spend his money satisfactorily. ... Mr Harriman's Alaska Expedition and
> its magnificent results seem to indicate one true solution to the
problem...
> --Will Dall, "Discoveries in Our Arctic Region"
>
>
> Snippets
> "Now he had caged himself up with a cargo of academics and artists, wooly
> thinkers and sensitive souls who had never cut a deal or met a payroll.
> They were men who liked to ruminate and contemplate, who understood every
> aspect of an egg except how to cook it."
>
> ...
>
> "Drawing the launches up on a smooth white beach north of Cape Fox, the
> group found an entire village of abandoned cabins fronted by a row of
> nineteen beautifully carved totem poles. There were no signs of life; no
> one knew why the inhabitants had fled. Decorations, crockery, even
clothing
> could be found inside the cabins, but the poles were the prize.
> While the scientists ransacked the cabins for artifacts, Harriman brought
> deck hands ashore to dig out several of the totem poles.... Some of the
> scientists claimed poles for their institutions; Harriman helped himself
to
> a pair of large carved bears adorning graves. It took an entire day to
> gather the treasures and fload them back to the Elder..."
>
> ....
> Jill
>
>
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