In the summer of 2023 I was Scenic Designer for the Sitka Fine Arts Camp’s 3-week Musical Theater Camp production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s Cinderella. The small scale of the program meant that I also built and decorated the set, but it was a joy to work with such an amazing crew:
CINDERELLA MOMENT — Musical Theater Camp students run through a dress rehearsal of “Rodgers & Hammerstein’s Cinderella” Wednesday night at the Performing Arts Center. The show, which features elaborate costumes, set and lighting as well as a live pit orchestra, opens 7 p.m. Friday. (Sentinel Photo by James Poulson)
Again this year we had technical theater students as part of the production: Aren Buchheit and JT Gurney were Assistant Stage Manager, Lee Orozco was Light Board Operator, Hawlet Cohen, Kade Kompkoff and Zoe Lessard operated cameras, and all were ace scenic builders and artists. The front of the castle platform was done in marble, completely done by our teen-age scenic crew.
The rest of the technical crew included the amazing Claire Shea Duncan on costumes. Look that those costumes. She built from scratch multiple “Transformation” dresses that magically before your eyes transformed from rags to a ball gown fit for a princess! She had assistants Amelia Pillifant and Rita Christianson. Lighting design was by J. D. Hopper. It was such a pleasure to be able to work with J.D. and Claire, who just graduated from the Carnegie Mellon University, and the choreographer and music director to make Magic. Technical Director was lovely Joe Burck, with Hannah Anderson-Brownlee a phenomenal Assistant TD. There is nothing she can’t do! Stage Manager was Alicia Jeffrey, the best. Drew Sherman worked with Joe Burck on Sound Design and tech, and Audio Assistant and all-around booster and supporter was Shannon Haugland, props were lovingly crafted by Anja Brooks-Schmidt, and the gorgeous and inspiring poster art was by Angie Kang. (Check out her work here, you will be glad you did!) We also could not have done it without the scenic painting and screw gun talents of Lucy Poulson and Linda Mae Kristofik. Thank you!
Documenting the Magic in his magical way: photographer Alex Hamm @alex._.hamm.
On stage, the Director was Zeke Blackwell, incredible amazing outstanding Music Director was Katy Green, and wow just wow Erin Coffey’s choreography. Vocal coaches were Rhiannon Guevin, Mina Brooks-Schmidt, and Benhur Mosazghi. Jordan Phillips was Acting Coach and Lucy Poulson was the Dance Coach.
Susan Reed and Jake Berran were the rehearsal pianists, and played keyboards in the Full Pit Orchestra! who also included Dorothy Orbison, Claire Brazeau, Julia Klein, JJ Sechan, Amy Sanchez, Abigail Webster, Brian Neal, Drew Larson, Rogher Schmidt, Dristen Klehr, Paul Cox, Franz Felkl, Elena Levi, Katie Avery, Richard Reed, Rebecca Osborn, Annika Krafcik, and Drew Dembowski.
It was fun.
Photo by Alex HammPhoto by Alex HammPhoto by Alex HammPhoto by Alex HammPhoto by Alex HammPhoto by Alex HammPhoto by Alex HammPhoto by Alex HammPhoto by Alex HammPhoto by Alex HammPhoto by Alex HammPhoto by Alex HammPhoto by Alex HammPhoto by Alex HammPhoto by Alex HammCinderella’s Cottage, Linda Mae and LucyThe CoachThe other side of the Coach, a garden and wellColumns on the other side of TreesPriceless China actually made of paper platesMaking Trees
The Sitka Fine Arts Camp did High School Musical spring 2023! With two casts and two versions, one for the middle school and up kids and one for the elementary school kids. Director was Zeke Blackwell, Choreography Melissa Hantke, Music Director Hannah Cummiskey, Vocal Coach Rhiannon Guevin, Technical Director and Lighting Design Denush Vidanapathirana. And Set Design! by Rebecca Poulson! I didn’t do a whole lot of painting, but I did make the Wildcat and cinderblocks.
A Tidal Odyssey: Ed Ricketts and the Making of Between Pacific Tides, by Richard Astro and Donald Kohrs. Oregon State University Press, Corvallis, Oregon 2021.
Between Pacific Tides, by Edward F. Ricketts and Jack Calvin, is a guide to the ecology of the Pacific coast intertidal zone, first published in 1939. This remarkable book is still in print, and A Tidal Odyssey is a well researched and richly illustrated biography of author Ed Ricketts and the story of how the bookcame to be.
A Tidal Odyssey is a fond and uncritical portrait of Ricketts, which is its weakness but also its charm. In addition to his contribution to ecology, Ricketts influenced a wide group of writers, artists, scientists, and intellectuals, especially novelist John Steinbeck. This book also aims to correct the picture of who Ricketts was beyond Steinbeck’s character Doc in Cannery Row.
Ed Ricketts crossed over between art and science. This was encouraged at the University of Chicago, which at the time he attended had a “sociological orientation to ecological investigation.” He moved to the central California coastal community of Monterey in 1923, supporting himself and his family with a biological supply business. Nearby Stanford University Hopkins Marine Station was part of Ricketts’ scientific world, while neighboring Carmel, an artist’s colony, nourished his creative side.
The co-author and photographer of Between Pacific Tides was Jack Calvin, who was to live most of his life in Sitka. Ritchie Lovejoy, who made the line drawings, was a writer and artist. Calvin’s wife Sasha Kashevaroff Calvin and her sisters, from Sitka, were also creative and intellectual. Tal Kashevaroff was married to Ritchie Lovejoy, and Xenia Kashevaroff, a book artist, sculptor and performance artist, married John Cage, who was to become famous as an avant-garde composer. Another Sitka connection is Ricketts’ talented daughter Nancy, long a Sitka resident.
Stanford University Press accepted Between Pacific Tides in 1931 but it was not until 1939 that the book appeared in print. The main obstacles were that a similar guide was already in print, and that the Great Depression was under way. After 1935, the delays were related to the massive effort required to compile and edit the book, especially the detailed list of species, complete with an up-to-date bibliography on each. In November 1936 Ricketts lost his lab, which was also his home, in a fire. It was a huge emotional setback and took a lot of his time and energy to rebuild.
Some authorities on Ricketts and his times attributed the publishing delay to resistance by Walter K. Fisher, the head of Stanford’s Hopkins Marine Station, because Ricketts was not an academically qualified biologist. However, Astro and Kohrs show that Fisher always respected Ricketts as a “collector of considerable experience,” and that his concern was over who the audience would be, and whether they’d be more interested in a straight identification guide to marine life.
A Tidal Odyssey discusses the battle over whether or not to “popularize” science, but the examples given, such as the description, by Ricketts and Calvin, of hermit crabs as the “the clowns of the sea shore” haven’t aged well and are not what help connect the reader to the magic of nature. Between Pacific Tides was to have been one part of a comprehensive guide to the coastal ecology of the entire Pacific Coast, but Ricketts did not live to see this project accomplished. He died in 1948 when his car was hit by a train.
Ricketts was passionately interested in meaning, and in bringing art, literature, nature, and experience together into a “unified theory” of existence, but his philosophical writings are hard going and were consistently rejected for publication. His friend Joseph Campbell did manage to bring world myth into a single framework, but he had to pick and choose myths to fit his theory. Maybe that’s why Ricketts’s letters and other writings are still interesting today, because his approach did not allow simplifying his ideas into one theory.
Between Pacific Tides is famous for its ecological approach, unusual for its time, in which creatures and their evolution are an integral part of the environment, and of communities of other creatures. Astro and Kohrs quote Ricketts that “everything is an index of everything else . . . and that to understand nature means to discern the relationship of its constituent parts.” But reading it today, what stands out is how Ricketts and Calvin didn’t talk down to their readers. It isn’t dry and hard to read, like many scientific papers, but it isn’t dumbed down or oversimplified, either. Ricketts and Calvin invited readers to make their own connections to nature and to life, not just to get new information, but to generate insights and to experience joy.
A Tidal Odyssey is a portrait of perseverance and curiosity, and an engaging view into a time and place when people wrote novels with insights from biology and studied biology with insights from philosophy. This is relevant today because then, as now, scientists sometimes lose sight of the interconnections of nature as they pursue ever more specialized work and technical methods.
Scientists can forget that science is inherently cultural. Humanities scholars, too, can lose sight of the way human societies depend on the non-human world. By taking us into the world where Between Pacific Tides was created, A Tidal Odyssey reminds us that rigorous science is essential for understanding society, and that the humanities are a necessary foundation for the practice of science.
This approach could be wonderfully productive for us now, as the humanities continue to lose ground in education, and the sciences are the lesser for it.
Indigenous Peoples and Languages of Alaska by Alaska Native Languages Center
By Rebecca Poulson
I’d like to acknowledge the Tlingit people, the owners and stewards of this land from time immemorial. Also, all of this is a work in progress and I would be grateful for any comments or corrections.
First, who was Alexandre Andreevich Baranov and what was his role in Alaska’s history?
Documents from his time were written from a certain perspective, and Baranov’s own writings were meant to put himself in a good light to his superiors. His 28-year career in Alaska was filled with complicated conflicts and what led up to them, and the motivations of the various parties, are impossible to fully know. That said, thanks to the quantity and variety of recorded observations, and scholarship based on them, we do have a good general idea of the man and his life in Alaska.
Alexander Baranov came out to Alaska in 1790 at age 44 to work as a manager for the Golikov-Shelikov fur trading company. This was in the second phase of Russian colonization. The first phase, from the 1740s into the 1780s was unregulated and violent, primarily of the Aleutian Islands and mainly for sea otter, by multiple independent fur companies. Unangan people fought back but Russians were all armed men, while the Unangan were defending elders and children and had no where to go. This had a devastating impact on the Native people of the Aleutians.
By the time Baranov came out, it was the next phase of colonization. Only a few companies were left and they relied on the forced labor of Unangan, Chugiak and Sugpiak men, who hunted sea mammals from baidarkas or kayaks. The Russians compelled others to provide food and gear for the Russian enterprise.
The Golikov-Shelikov company’s leader, Grigorii Shelikov, who hired Baranov, had a vision of permanent colonization of North America as a New Russia. Shelikov and his company brutally conquered Kodiak Island, with the idea of using the Native inhabitants as his forced labor work force. In 1799, this company was the basis of the Russian American Company, with a monopoly on trade and authorization to colonize North America on behalf of the Russian government.
In the 1790s Baranov’s projects were to consolidate control of Prince William Sound and Cook Inlet, build some ships, and send out fleets of Native hunters for sea otter. This period was full of conflict, which included struggles with a competing company and with Native people on the mainland, but also within the company – between and among leadership and employees, both Native and Russian, with clergy and with Russian naval officers sent out to assist the enterprise. Shipwrecks were constant, which caused deaths directly and through starvation and scurvy when supplies did not arrive.
In 1796 Baranov negotiated with the Yakutat leaders to build a fur hunting base and an agricultural colony at Yakutat. His goal was to claim the North American coast down to Nootka on Vancouver Island. Behind this effort to claim territory was the goal of sustaining profit – they were running out of sea otter in western Alaska. In the later 1790s he sent fleets of hunters into southeastern Alaska, returning with thousands of pelts.
It is important to remember that North America was entirely owned and defended by Indigenous civilizations; southeast Alaska was Tlingit America. Also, the international maritime fur trade had started in the 1780s and by this time, the 1790s, was at its peak, and Sitka was a popular port, where maritime traders, mainly from the United State and England, participated in the preexisting Northwest Coast Indigenous trade which moved goods throughout Northwest America.
In 1799 Baranov negotiated with Kiks.adi leader Shk’awulyeil for a site for a fur hunting base at Gajaa Heen, north of Sitka. In 1802 a multi-clan Tlingit alliance destroyed this fort, and killed most of the hunters, over an accumulation of insults and crimes. It took until 1804, two years later, for Baranov and other employees on a few small ships, and some 800 Native hunters, in baidarkas, to meet up in Sitka Sound with the Russian frigate Neva.
The Kiks.adi, the primary clan of Sitka, meanwhile moved from their main fort at Noow Tlein (now also called Castle Hill) and built a fort called Shiskinoow at the mouth of Kaasdaa Heen or Indian River. This fort was nearly impenetrable, but, in a firefight between a canoe and a boat from the Neva. the Kiks.adi lost a canoe of gunpowder, and its crew of young leaders, There was a standoff with neither side able to inflict damage on the other, then finally the Kiks.adi evacuated Shiskinoow in what is called the Kiksadi Survival March and built a fort at Point Craven. The following year, 1805, Tlingit leaders made peace with the Russians, which included allowing the Russians to stay at Noow Tlein.
From 1804 until 1867 the Russians maintained a colony at Sitka, which grew to around 900 residents. From 1808 Sitka was the Russian American Company’s headquarters. Alexander Baranov was chief manager of the company until he was relieved from duty in 1818. He died at sea on his way back to Russia.
The Tlingit clans were always in control of all of their lands. Clans built immediately adjacent to the Russian town in 1829 into one consolidated settlement, but they had never left the area. Russians had no choice but to maintain good relations with Tlingit leaders. In 1855 a dispute led to an attack on the fort in which several Russians were killed, but the Russians instead of retaliating, blamed their manager and worked to make peace.
The Russian settlement at Sitka worked for both Tlingit and Russians. Even though their profits came mostly from southwestern Alaska, and they did not control southeastern Alaska, what mattered to the Russian American Company was to establish a claim to the coast in regards to other European nations and the United States. Tlingit clans benefited by having another market for furs, in addition to Americans and English. (Regional clans soon forced Russians to stop doing their own hunting.) Clan leaders also gained by supplying food and other products and sometimes working for the Russians. Very few Tlingit people converted to Russian Orthodoxy. There were some marriages between Russian men and Tlingit women.
Most of the people living in the Russian settlement were of mixed Russian and Unangan or Sugpiaq heritage. The Russian American Company was about resource extraction, not settlement, due to government policy as well as the Company’s need for profits. There were fewer than 1000 ethnic Russians in Alaska, total, over the entire period of Russians in Alaska.
From the historical documents, which include his own letters, it seems Baranov completely identified with his employer’s goals of profit and empire, and was absolutely focused in their pursuit, not sparing himself or anyone else. He does not seem to have been the kind of leader who took care of his people, judging by the various rebellions including murder plots, including one in Sitka in 1809. Instead, he led with force and charisma. Chaotic and potentially deadly confrontations in 1815 (when he was 68 years old) between Baranov, an American and a British trading ship and a Russian navy commander, that culminated in Baranov giving orders to fire at a departing Russian ship, hint that even later in life he was less diplomatic than most people.
His achievement was to hold Alaska against other European nations, and to bring in profit to the company. This came at a high cost in lives, and the colonies turned out to be expensive to maintain and impossible to defend, and were transferred to the United States in 1867. While he was certainly an unusual person, the myth had to be created.
The myth started early on, with Baranov himself, in letters to or that he knew would be read by his superiors, defending himself against accusations of cruelty to the Native people of the Aleutians and Kodiak, and blaming others for the many conflicts and adverse events. One example was when 115 hunters, on their way back to Kodiak from Sitka in 1799, died after eating paralytic shellfish poisoning-tainted mussels at Poison Cove in Peril Strait. He claimed in a letter that they had had plenty of provisions with them (for a journey of hundreds of miles, this is hard to believe) and so had no need to be eating mussels, making it seem like it was their own fault.i
His first biographer, Kiril Khlebnikov, was a long-time employee of the company who met Baranov at the end of his career and did his part to establish the myth of Baranov as a noble character who overcame great odds, including opposition by lesser individuals, giving a positive spin on actual events and laying the blame for everything on someone other than Baranov. One example is Baranov’s disastrous assault on the Tlingit fort in 1804, against the advice of the experienced Captain Lisianski of the Neva; in Khlebnikov’s account the failure of the assault was the fault of everyone but Baranov.ii
In Baranov’s era, the company’s profits, its very existence, relied on forced labor by Alaska Native men, who were Unangan, Chugiak and Sugpiak, from the Aleutians, the coastal mainland and Kodiak Island, hunting sea mammals from slender skin boats. Scores of hunters died on the expeditions, which extended into southern southeast Alaska, and the operation resulted in extreme hardship and starvation for those left at home. Those who couldn’t hunt also had to work for the benefit of the company, by getting food and making gear. The Russian Orthodox spiritual mission that first arrived at Kodiak in 1794 took the part of these Native workers, in a prolonged conflict between the church workers, certain employees, and a naval officer, against Baranov and his top assistants. In 1800-1801, some of the Kodiak villages refused to go on that season’s hunt. Baranov and his second in command put it down ruthlessly, beating and threatening to kill those who refused.
Foreign expeditions and traders, as well as some Russian observers, consistently described the exploitative treatment of Native people by the Russians in the Aleutians and Kodiak, that went to the point of starvation. That the company relied on forced labor, that this took an enormous toll on the Native population of Kodiak and other places, and that Baranov was ruthless in crushing rebellion are an inconvenient, and yet fundamental, aspect of his career that his biographers smooth over, justify, or ignore (and still do, in at least two biographies published this century).
According to Khlebnikov, Baranov “took wise and decisive action to put down the mutiny,” which would have spread and led to the loss of “everything they had achieved.”iii
This aspect of the myth was elaborated in H. H. Bancroft’s History of Alaska, published in 1886. At every point, Baranov is depicted as being in the right, bold and wise. The accusations of mistreatment of Native people and Russian workers are dismissed as “unfounded,”iv or “exaggerated.”v The authors assert that “As for the natives his influence over them was unbounded, chiefly through the respect with which his indomitable courage and constant presence of mind impressed them.”
Most of the section of Bancroft’s book on the Russian period was written by Ivan Petroff, a remarkable translator and writer, but also, as revealed in a 1968 article by Russian America scholar Richard Pierce, a serial fabricator. Pierce says that Petroff generally stayed close to the Russian sources, but did include a completely fabricated journal of a Russian Orthodox missionary, Father Juvenal. Most of the account of Baranov’s activities follows Khlebnikov and the official History of the Russian American Company by P. A. Tiknmenev. But the most vivid scenes are new. Father Juvenal’s fabricated journal describes Baranov joining in singing hymns “in the same hoarse voice with which he was shouting obscene songs the night before, when I saw him in the midst of a drunken carousal with a woman seated in his lap.” The section on Baranov ends with a passage from Washington Irving’s book Astoria, a quote supposed to come from the American trader who was involved in (and partly instigated) the chaotic events at Sitka in 1815, taking Baranov’s drinking and his irascibility to a heroic scale: “if you do not drink raw rum, and boiling punch as strong as sulfur, he will insult you as soon as he gets drunk, which will be very shortly after sitting down to table.”vi
Bancroft’s book was the main reference for Alaska’s Russian history for the next 90 years, until Limestone Press and others started publishing translations of original documents from the Russian era. Bancroft’s history was copied and freely embellished by writers throughout that period, further establishing the myth of Alexander Baranov.
C. L. Andrews published his book Sitka in 1922 and slightly revised it in 1944. It is aimed at the visitor to Sitka. While his portrayal of Baranov is clearly based on Bancroft’s, he adds incidents and detail that do not seem to have any basis in anything but his own imagination, or perhaps was lore handed down among the Russian descendants at Sitka.
The material he adds is about the relationship of Tlingit people to Baranov. Andrews exaggerates the hostility of these “strange, warlike, shrewd people”vii and portrays Baranov and other Russians as staying at Sitka only with their superior ability: “the Tlingits who howled at Sitka’s gates were utterly without conscience. Some of them came nearly every day to search for some unguarded and accessible means of attack, but Baranov was never off his guard.”viii“The Tlingits who slunk down through the tall spruce timber that surrounded the stockade hated him, but they feared and respected him. They felt he had superhuman power. They never caught him napping. They had destroyed Old Sitka, and butchered the people; they came to his portcullised gate and asked to come in. Baranov looked at them with level eyes.” He showed them his defenses, and “Not one of them dared to plot an attack while Baranov ruled at Sitka.”ix
This portrayal is an important change from previous accounts: In reality, Russians never had enough military force to not have to work to maintain diplomatic and trade relations with Tlingit leaders. If Tlingit leaders had wanted them out, they probably could have, but there was no reason to. Tlingit leaders did force out three, different Hudson’s Bay Company posts on the mainland that infringed on interior trade. The character of the relationship between the Russian American Company and Tlingit clans is clear in their letters to and from Sitka, published as A Construction History of Sitka, Alaska as Documented in the Records of the Russian American Company.x This is an important part of the myth: that Baranov was so superior to the Native people that he could hold them off with a much smaller force in spite of the Native people being extremely dangerous and unremittingly hostile, a worthy adversary.
Andrews enlarges the difference between the Russians and the Tlingit people. In the Russian documents of the period, Indigenous people are portrayed in their relationship to the goals of the company, as workers or as “hostile” and obstacles to expansion. But, in order to achieve their goals, Baranov and others on the ground had to have some understanding of their adversaries’ motivations and goals.
In Andrews’ portrayal, however, Tlingit people are reduced to a cartoon. Sometimes the “savagery in their blood would boil,”xi although the “Aleut” Native people were “gentle and indolent,”xii another stereotype.
While not directly to do with Baranov, Andrews paints a picture of the success of Russian occupation at Sitka that survives to this day. Russian captain Fyodor Litke described Russian Sitka in the late 1820s in detail, describing the hospitality of the governor, the gardens, food, and workshops. But Litke also told about the precarious nature of supply for the colony, and the shortage of manpower.xiii Andrews leaves that part out, giving the impression that Russian Sitka was better off than it was. He elaborates on the grand social life in the “castle,” and quotes a ghost story from travel writer Eliza Scidmore.xiv
Scidmore, in her Alaska, its Southern Coast and the Sitkan Archipelago of 1885, also used Litke, and also exaggerated his portrayal. From Litke’s telling that Sitka foundry cast some bells for California, she writes that “the bells of half the California mission churches were cast at the Sitka foundry.” She also tells of the courtly life in the “castle.” Litke wrote how firearms were a popular item of trade by the Russians to the Tlingit at this time. That certainly does not fit the myth, and so also gets left out of Andrews’ and Scidmore’s narrative.
Travel writers and tourism promoters brought the myth to a polish, none more than Barrett Willoughby in her Sitka, Portal to Romance published in 1930. “Here from his stockaded log castle on the Keekor, Alexandr Baranov, dare-devil little Iron Governor of the fur colonies, once ruled the North Pacific, and spun a web of power and commerce that reached to every corner of the world.” “Death lurked every moment outside the stockade where hordes of murderous Thlingets prowled, watching for any slackening of vigilance on the part of the Russian sentinels; but within that new world castle flowed wine of regal vintage, silks and velvets billowed in the candlelight, jeweled swords and gold-laced uniforms glittered, while the merry company, scorning danger, danced their minuets to the tinkling music of the clavichord!”xv
We can’t talk about the myth of Baranov without mentioning Hector Chevigny, and his Lord of Alaska, published in 1942. It is fantasy, elaborating the myth of Baranov as a Western action hero, fighting his inferiors, bad priests, resentful officers, as well as the Natives, his faults the heroic ones of drinking hard and of having a common law wife. Chevigny freely invents incidents, dialogue and descriptions, the most outrageous of which are too offensive to repeat.
The myth of Baranov is that he was a hero, conquering and bringing “civilization” to dangerous Native people in spite of the obstacles of the many inferior people he had to deal with, from debauched promyshlenniki (the Russian equivalent of Voyageurs) to “meddling priests.” The essential elements include the savagery and hostility of the Tlingit people; Baranov’s ability to subdue them with superior courage and intelligence; and the glory and romance of the “castle” and the industry and sophistication of Russian Sitka.
How does this myth survive today? I see it continuing in two main strands: one is the notion of essential difference between European and Indigenous people. This stereotype, that Native people are mysterious and savage, not thinking or analytical, survives as the stereotype they are in harmony with nature, their culture timeless and natural, so that Native people are vulnerable to harm simply by “contact” with “modern” “Western” culture – a “clash of cultures” rather than what it was, a clash of economics and power. Also, the notion that Tlingit culture thrived because of abundant natural resources, just depending on nature to provide, rather than a recognition that Tlingit success is due to technology and organization, just like Russians or any other successful civilization.
The second strand, related to the supposed superiority of the European, is in the notion that Baranov and the Russians conquered the Tlingit against the odds, and that they held all of what is now Alaska.
Documents from before and after 1867 show that the Russian hold on southeast Alaska was weak. By contrast, the occupation of the United States in 1867 was much stronger.
Americans in 1867 believed that Native Americans were fundamentally different and weaker, “savage,” the racial bias behind Manifest Destiny, the Indian Wars and the forced removal of nearly every single Native American onto reservations. In the later 19th century they saw the condition of Native people, after they had been removed from their lands, and after suffering high mortality in relation to this, as due not to their treatment but due to something inherent to being Native. (This aspect of the myth, that the negative consequences of colonization (social disruption, stress, high death rates, lack of wealth) are due to the Natives themselves and their fragile culture, that it was inevitable they would die out from “contact” unless missionaries intervened to save them from their own culture, is the foundation of US government and missionary beliefs about Native people in the 19th and 20th centuries.)
In 1867 the Americans denied Alaska Native people citizenship, and pushed them out of the economy, and demonstrated their power by destroying the Kake̱ villages in 1869. Then when the economy picked up in the 1870s, canneries and mines seized resources with impunity. The Transfer of Alaska to the United States was a catastrophe for Alaska Native people. (That’s not to villainize or valorize anyone, but to state what happened.)
The irony is that with growing awareness of the impact of racial bias of the American era, the myth of Baranov is strengthened and even added on to: the strength of the United States government is mapped back in time onto the person of Baranov, who becomes a one-man colonialist oppressor of the Tlingit. The Russians were oppressors of Native people in western Alaska, with overwhelming force over many decades of the 1700s, but that is not as glamorous as supposedly conquering the “warlike” Tlingit, with a tiny force, in a single battle. The stereotype is that the mechanism for Baranov’s supposed victory is the inherent difference between Europeans and Indigenous people.
This narrative, or myth, is everywhere in Sitka, in signs at our parks, in our museums, on websites, and emerged, of course, in the 2020 debate over removal of the statue of Alexander Baranov in the center of town.
One sign in Sitka tells how “Local Tlingit fished, hunted, gathered food, and traded salmon, seal oil, and herring eggs with other Native Americans. But this peaceful place was once at the heart of a fierce conflict.” It goes on to say that Europeans and Russians came after sea otter and that the Russian American Company established outposts. This gives the impression that Tlingit culture was what was in conflict with the European trade in sea otter, rather than being a conflict over power and resources. It does not mention the substantial trade Tlingit leaders conducted, before Russians ever arrived, with Europeans and American traders, on Tlingit terms.
On a park website, the story of Tlingit people begins with how they relied on the ocean for their food, and ends with “In 1821, the Russians invited the Tlingit back to Sitka. They intended to profit from the Tlingits’ hunting expertise and, more importantly, to put an end to the occasional Tlingit raiding. For the duration of Russian occupation, the Kiks.ádi lived in the village, an area just outside the stockaded town. They supplied the colonists with furs and food while the Russians introduced them to their culture through education and religion. But cannons were always trained on the village, and the Russian stockade was closely guarded. The 1804 Battle of Sitka was the end of open Tlingit resistance, but the Russians were safe only so long as they were vigilant.” This could have come directly from C. L. Andrews.
This distorts the actual relationship between two groups equally engaged in trade, in an ever evolving push and pull over power and economic benefit. It reinforces the stereotype of Tlingit people as unchanging and natural, and the power and benevolence of the Russians. Again, very few Tlingit people converted to Orthodox Christianity in the Russian period, and, the only school for Tlingit people was in the very last days of the Russian outpost, and was located outside the stockade.
On another sign, at a different park, the cause of the Battle of 1802 is laid to “clashing cultures:” “the RAC and the Tlingit held contrasting beliefs about land and resource ownership. As RAC employees settled here, tensions escalated between these disparate cultures, setting the stage for conflict.”
In 2020 Sitkans debated the removal of a statue of Baranov in front of Sitka’s Centennial Hall. The statue was a gift to the town by a local family. Just before its dedication in 1989, someone sawed the nose off (it was later repaired). The statue displaced the Tlingit canoe that was originally in front of the building in 1967. Many in Sitka saw the statue as inappropriate, in such a prominent place, because it does not reflect Sitka’s history or identity, and offensive in ignoring Sitka’s long Tlingit history. (The statue was moved into the museum, with the blessing of the family of the donor.)
The myth of Baranov came up in statements by people wanting to keep the statue, who claimed that Baranov brought civilization to the Native people. But some supporters of the removal also relied on the myth, stating that Baranof stayed through force, against the will of Tlingit leaders and oppressing local people. Baranof thus goes from being an epic hero to becoming an epic villain, when what we need is to put this fellow back into the context of history, and to bring Tlingit history to the fore.
It is hard to get away from a narrative we grew up with and accepted as fact. We need a new narrative, based on historical scholarship, that includes Tlingit history. (A part of the myth, that survives today, is that Native people have no history. Bancroft wrote, “what a land is this of which to write a history? Bleak, swampy, fog-begirt, and almost untenanted except by savages – can a country without a people furnish material for a history?”xvii) We can all question language, concepts and assumptions. We need a new, more complete narrative, that does not glorify the mythical, conquering European.
Dauenhauer, Nora Marks, Richard Dauenhauer, and Lydia T. Black, editors. Anóoshi Lingít Aaní Ká / Russians in Tlingit America: The Battles of Sitka, 1802 and 1804. (Seattle and London: University of Alaska Press and Juneau, Alaska: Sealaska Heritage Institute, 2008), 138
Hubert Howe Bancroft, Alfred Bates, Ivan Petroff and William Nemos, History of Alaska 1730-1886, volume XXXIII of The Works of Hubert How Bancroft. (San Francisco: A. I. Bancroft & Company, Publishers, 1886) , 361
xKatherine L. Arndt and Richard A. Pierce, A Construction History of Sitka, Alaska, as Documented in the Records of the Russian-American Company, 2nd Edition (Sitka, Alaska: Sitka National Historical Park, National Park Service under Cooperative Agreement with the Department of Anthropology, University of Alaska Fairbanks, 2003)
Frederic Litke, A Voyage Around the World, 1826-1829: Volume I, To Russian America and Siberia, trans. from French edition by Renee Marshall, with a parallel account by E. H. Baron von Kittlitz, trans. from the German and with an introduction by Joan Moessner, ed. Richard Pierce, Alaska History Series no. 29 (Kingston, Ontario: Limestone Press, 1987), 43-69
xviNPS interpretation being out of date: a 2011 study “Imperiled Promise” by the Organization of American Historians found that historians are mainly employed in cultural resource management, and are not included in the process of developing exhibits. Museum and Visitor Center Exhibit Planning, Design, and Fabrication Process flow chart at https://www.nps.gov/subjects/hfc/upload/EX-PD-Prod-Charts-R.pdf
In addition to translations of accounts from the time, I’m relying on Petr Aleksandrovich Tikhmenev, A History of the Russian American Company, trans. and ed. Richard A. Pierce and Alton S. Donnelly (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1978), and Andrei Val’terovich Grinëv, Russian Colonization of Alaska: Preconditions, Discovery, and Initial Development, 1741-1799 trans. Richard L. Bland (Lincoln, Nebraska and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2018) and volume two, Russian Colonization of Alaska: Baranov’s Era, 1799-1818, trans. Richard L. Bland (Lincoln, Nebraska and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2020).
In the summer of 2022 I was Scenic Designer for the Sitka Fine Arts Camp 3-week Musical Theater Camp production of Mamma Mia. The small scale of the program meant that I was also Scenic Charge, Master Carpenter, and, along with the other six technical theater adults, an instructor for the seven Fine Arts Camp Technical Theater-track students.
Mamma Mia set designed (and built, and decorated) by Rebecca Poulson
This year that expanded staff meant I did not have to put in so many hours working alone! and, the students had the benefit of a one-to-one ratio of instructors to students. That was really fun, seeing the students just eat it up, the excitement of getting to do real things, in a beautifully-equipped theater.
For me, also, it was glorious to have a lighting designer as artistic and skilled as Terry Eikleberry. Elle Campbell, the Technical Director, is an incredible teacher, creating a space where students are valued and can grow as they get real skills. The Videographer and Audio Tech, Andrew Rutledge and Joe Burke, are also skilled and willing carpenters and a joy to work with. Sharon Morgan, our Costume Designer (and, being a tiny program, also the creator of the costumes) is absolutely phenomenal. She not only nailed each character and the era (1990s, y’all) but created beautiful compositions of color and form. The technical crew is rounded out with Lauren Petrocelli, our Sound Designer.
On stage, the incredibly talented Josh Euten, who also is a mean set dresser, was Stage Manager, Zeke Blackwell Director, Chris Coffey was Music Director, and Erin Coffey the Choreographer for a cast of 23 young performers. The technical theater students, Amelia DeSentis is a natural at carpentry and a joy to work with, Campbell Pillifant operated the light board, Hal Sufrin helped with sound, Kade Kompkoff, Lee Orozco, Téa Neilson and Aren Bucheit did it all but specialized in scenic painting, with a shout out to Téa for finishing the courtyard “rocks” and washing a lot of brushes! I really enjoyed working with these young people, seeing them grow, and enjoyed their spark and willingness to interact. For decorating the stage deck, I gave them paint and tools and techniques and had them try it out, they chose the treatment they wanted, and they did it, going up to the balcony as they worked to see what they liked. I helped with the “Beach” because it was a trickier technique, but that was it. They and a community volunteer painted the dock, beautifully, again all I did was show them some techniques and give them the paints.
More crew: Susan Reed and Misaki Saito rehearsal pianists, Shannon Haugland Audio Assistant, Haley Aronow was Props Master (and Master of Bougainvillea!), Rhiannon Guevin Vocal Coach, Jordan Phillips Acting Coach, Diane Cervelli Assistant Choreographer, and volunteers Reese Gasque, Noatak Post, Julien Riviere, Linda Mae Kristofik and Christina Van Den Hoogen helped out the scenic crew (and that was fun too, seeing these folks stretch), and Isla Morgan, Carole Knuth and Lisa Moore were Costume Assistants. In the Pit Band in addition to Susan and Mikaski, Alicia Jeffrey and a young man from Anchorage were on keyboards, Chris Coffey played drums, Abe Landa and Austin Patterson were on Guitar, Julien Riviere played Bass and Ethan Zawodny did the Percussion.
Building the setA lighting lessonTables I designed and crew builtA vanity I designed and built in a day, the Director’s idea to have “mirror” emptyPhoto by Alex HammA moment Photo by Alex HammPhoto by Alex HammThe streetlamp, involving a tin can, tape, foam and wood Photo by Alex HammPhoto by Alex HammPhoto by Alex HammDonna’s bedroom Photo by Alex HammPhoto by Alex HammPhoto by Alex HammPhoto by Alex HammPhoto by Alex HammPhoto by Alex HammPhoto by Alex HammPhoto by Alex HammPhoto by Alex HammPhoto by Alex HammPhoto by Alex HammPhoto by Alex HammPhoto by Alex Hamm
Earlier this year I volunteered to design and build sets for the Sitka Community Theater production of Clue and the Young Performers Theater (an after school theater program run by the Sitka Fine Arts Camp) production of Matilda the Musical. It is really fun to design sets and utter bliss to work with and collaborate with other people, tho tbh next year we need more volunteers in the program! In this post-pandemic year we are still figuring out how to get the word out!
Those doors got a work out! So many rooms! It was very fun, the actors really did it up. I designed and built and decorated the set (all those doors . . . ) with assistance from the students in the after-school Young Performers Theater technical theater class and community volunteers, Shannon Haugland produced, Sotera Perez directed, Elle Campbell did lights and was Technical Director, and the YPT tech students did tech! We also had a gajillion really cool props by Jack Peterson.
Matilda the Musical was the play done by the high school students in the Young Performers Theater program in April 2022, directed by Zeke Blackwell. I volunteered to design and build and decorate the set, with assistance from parents, Technical Director Elle Campbell, and the technical theater students in the after school Young Performers Theater program! Elle Campbell did the lights, we had a pit orchestra which sounded amazing, with Music Director Hannah Cummiskey conducting, and Choreography was by Melissa Hantke. Since it was such a small workforce (and cast), I combined the students’ desks with the alphabet cubes they use for one of the songs, the set consists of just three platforms and four mobile flats, three of which reverse to show a corridor of “Chokeys.” I didn’t get a picture of one of the flats, that had Matilda’s bedroom on one side and Miss Honey’s shed interior on the other.
Available for sale, and in select stores! starting mid June 2022. $16 each, discounts start at two at: The Outer Coast.com
Produced by Rebecca Poulson in Sitka Alaska
Printed in Juneau, Alaska U.S.A.
Printed on heavy, vellum surface Natural color paper
Three original wood engraving prints, a scratchboard drawing, rubber cuts of ravens, and seven original watercolors by Rebecca Poulson
Poetry and Quotes by Alaskan poets John Straley, Caroline Goodwin, Robert Davis Hoffman, and Rhonda Bowen, and a quote from John Muir, on the theme of humans
These come from several sources: the main one is the annual Merchant Vessels list, published by the government of every registered vessel in the United States. Vessels over 5 net tons (capacity) have to be registered, that’s something like 30 feet for a motorized vessel. That list has the use, the size, the material, the power, the owner, how many crew, and the place and year it was built.
Individual records, which used to be in Juneau, have more information like the name of the builder. I found cards for many boats there.
Other boats that were too small to require documentation were called Number Boats, because they had their commercial fishing number on them instead of a name. That would be the original old time trollers. A lot of the old wooden trollers now were built as seiners or long liners.
Another source was newspapers, but Sitka didn’t have a newspaper for all the years when boat building was happening, especially the late teens.
A main source was interviews I did with fishermen and boatbuilders and their relatives, in 1988 and the early 1990s. Herman Kitka had an incredible memory. Of everyone I talked to, his information was corroborated completely by other sources.
Dreadnaught 1915 34.5 Simpson for Geo. T. Myers Co., for James Kuenz
Necker Bay 1915 35.5 John Young Sr. and Frank Kitka sank 1964
Nicholai 1915 32
Active 1917 44 Andrew Hope, George Howard for themselves and sons
Albatross 1917 39 Simpson for John Cameron sank Necker Bay 1930 or 31
Alms 1917 36.2
Billy G. 1917 36.2 owned Bill Grant
Baranoff 1918 37.5 Simpson for Ralph Young, Sr.
Dora B.H. 1918 33.8
Elsie 1918 34.4
Esther 1918 38
John D. 1918 35
Moonlight 1918 41 Simpson for Deep Sea, Edward Grant bought boat still fishing
Olympic 1918 37.6 Frank Kitka for self
Zingo 1918 35.1 Frank Kitka for John Joseph, Deep Sea Salmon Co. burned 1954
Busy Bee 1919 35.5 Frank Kitka for George T. Myers (cannery)
Dermott I 1919 29.6 William Grossman for self
Eagle 1919 34 Simpson for Frank Joseph, Pyramid Packing abandoned 1965
Katharine 1919 39.6 Simpson for Deep Sea Salmon Co., Dick Harris
Louise 1919 37
Mary Ward 1919 37 Simpson for Deep Sea Salmon Co, George Ward
U and I 1919 36.2 George Howard for George Davis rebuilt 1947 still fishing?
Margaret P. 1919 36.2
Hudson 1929 40
Smiles 1929 32 Simpson for Ralph Young, Sr.
Atlas 1922 39.7 Frank Kitka for self, only big boat
Carrie 1922 31.9 Kris Norholm for George Rice (plumber)
Mary J 1922 36
Lituya 1922 30
Lornty 1923 33.3
Progress 1923 43.2 Hope, Howards for themselves still around?
Janice 1924 32.3
Laeso 1924 30 owned George Banvard (store owner)
Comet 1926 37 Peter Kitka rebuilt (original from Puget Sound) abandoned 1957
Optimist 1926 37.1
Biorka 1927 42 Hope built for Rudolph Walton, Pyramid Packing
Persevearance 1927 39 Johnnie? Lawson, owned Thomas Sanders, burned 1944
Valo 1927 33.9 burned 1949
Starlight 1927 39.2 Hope for Peter John, Pyramid Packing wrecked 1955
OK 1929 40 Johnnie Lawson for David Davis sank 1966
Pyramid 1929 38 Hope for Pyramid Packing
Trosky 1929 34 Hope
Chatham 1929 38 Hope?
Neptune 1930 36 Hope and William Pavloff
Buddy 1931 28 Hope – his troller
Two Brothers 1934 35 Simpson for grandsons
New England 1935 38.3 George Howard Jr. for George Ward burned 1963
Sophia 1936 36 Adolph Thomsen for self
SJS 1937 42.8 Peter Simpson and Rudy James later called Miss Linda
Admiralty 1938 44.1 Hope for George James
Eros 1938 38.6 Adolph Thomsen for self
Fin Fin 1938 30.8
Betty K. 1940 34.2 George Howard started
Roamer 1940 33.9 Louis Johanson at Goddard
GGK 1941 33.
Sisu 1941 32.4
Laverne 1942 31.4 Hope?
Neva 1942 40.6 Hope with Herman Kitka, for Todd, later his boat
Princeton-Hall 1942 61.7 Hope, Kitka, Howards, SJ students
Tamara San 1942 49.8 Hope for Hans Peterson
Hope 1944 41.5 Hope for Henry Yrjana
Martha K
(North Cape) 1944 43.3 Kitka
Sally 1944 38
SJS II 1944 49.4 Hope for Presbyterian Board of Home Missions
Allanah 1945 51.1 Hope, Richard Peters, Al Rotluff for Fred Brandes
Denny Jo 1945 50 George Howard started, finished Stanley Sutton for John Townsend
June K 1945 43.4 George Howard for Charles Bennett, Hood Bay
Minnie R 1945 34 A.F.Rowley and sons
Polaris 1945 37
Her-Highnes 1946 32 Earl MacDonald, at his home
Junior 1946 38.1 Sitka Marine Railway for Emil Taug
Laverne II 1946 39 Richard Peters
Martha K
(Empress) 1946 45.7 Hope for New England Fish Co.
Mom 1946 37
Myrth 1946 37 Sitka Marine Railway for Rudy and Myrth Sarvela
Pop Rowe 1946 31.1 (Pop Rowe sold salvaged sawmill to SJ and ran it a year)
Shirley M 1946 37 Sitka Marine Railway
Skeeter 1946 37 Dave Hallock on Baranof Street
WRJ 1946 37 Sitka Marine Railway for Wally and Earl Johnson
Alrita 1947 38.7 Sitka Marine Railway for Albert Wallace
Jenny 1947 33.4 George Howard and Andrew Hope
Patricia Mae 1947 45.1 Hope for John Young
Pt. Cravens 1947 38.1 Sitka Marine Railway for Jimmy Walton
Sharon-Ann 1947 35.9 Rowley?
Sonja 1947 45.1
Gota 1950 36.6 Hope, George Howard, Richard Peters for Pete Anselm, then Oscar Isaacson
Satchem 1952 30.9 Hope, Herman Kitka for Cap Anderson
Chuck A Nan 1955 35.8 Sitka Marine Railway (Al Rottleff and Herman Kitka) for Earl MacDonald (originally the Stephanie)
Vali 1961 31.2 Hope, Herb Hope, David Howard for Roger Lang (Hope=s son-in-law)
C-Rae 1962 45? Paul Morgan
Wendy 1965 33.9 Howard Brothers
Peril Strait 1967 32 Harry Jimmy for self
Chancy 197? 45 Gary Erb
Annette Harry Jimmy
Amanda Rose Gary Erb and Jack Rheinwaller
Andrew Hope (center) poses at the bandsaw, probably in the shop of Scotty Jennings just north of the ANB Founders Hall in Sitka. Jennings’ shop was a former hand-pack cannery. Image from a glass slide in the collection of the Sitka Historical Society.
I hadn’t taught the high school camp for years, and it was incredible how fast they caught on and were just so hungry to learn. It was very rewarding, intense, and heartbreaking to understand that even in normal times, they are not getting what they need, as far as being seen, being able to make things and respond to the world – and how much they have lost, the past couple years now, how mature they seemed, they have had to grow up fast.
We all need to support our young people, give them space and permission to be young people.
At Sitka Fine Arts Camp you don’t have to have ever done any art. In Alaska and probably other places art classes, if they have any in school in the first place, don’t teach drawing from observation. Fine Arts Camp classes are basically college classes, except in an hour a day for a couple weeks! these kids worked so hard.
Drawing and Watercolor
We worked outdoors, from the model, drew still lifes, and copied master watercolor landscape paintings as we learned the conventions of landscape and how to manipulate watercolor.
We had some very challenging exercises, like drawing a model, in a landscape, using water media or marker.
Printmaking
We did drypoint etchings, rubber cuts, wood cut, stencils and monoprints, and even wood engraving:
In 2021 the Sitka Fine Arts Camp held a very special camp, at half capacity, with amazing students starved for art and being together. It was intense, rewarding, and heartbreaking what our kids have lost the past years. We all need to love our kids!
The classes I taught were Printmaking, Drawing and Watercolor, and Graphic Novel. At some point I’ll try to scan and upload some of the comics but for now, some of the prints and drawings:
Printmaking
The camp runs two weeks, so days to work is about 11 1́/2. Woodcut is a lot of work, we also did rubber cuts, monoprints, stencils, collagraphs, and etching on both metal and plexiglass. Creativity is never a problem.
Drawing and Watercolor
We focused on what students wanted to work on, and did a lot of work outdoors, from a model, and finally of flowers. These kids worked so hard and were so focused. One day we were at the beach drawing, and a young deer, whose habit it apparently was to cut through the beach at that tide, came right up to our group, and after hesitating, made his way through the group. Of middle schoolers. Who were absolutely calm and thrilled. Not a typical group of young people!
Sitka Art Blog 