Tlingit in association with Amazon

In this haunting debut, Garth Stein brilliantly invokes his Native American heritage and its folklore to create an electrifying supernatural thriller. When a grieving mother returns to the remote Alaskan town where her young son drowned, she discovers that the truth about her son's death is shrouded in legend—and buried in a terrifying wrinkle between life and death.

When Jenna Rosen abandons her comfortable Seattle life to return to Wrangell, Alaska, it's a wrenching return to her past. Long ago the home of her Native American grandmother, Wrangell is located near the Thunder Bay resort, where Jenna's young son, Bobby, disappeared two years before. His body was never recovered, and Jenna is determined to lay to rest the aching mysterey of his death. But the spectacular town provides little comfort beyond the steady and tender affections of Eddie, a local fisherman. And then whispers of ancient legends begin to suggest a frightening new possibility about Bobby's fate. Soon, Jenna must sift thourgh the beliefs of her ancestors, the Tlingit— who still tell of powerful, menacing forces at work in the Alaskan wilderness.

There beliefs are shared by Dr. David Livingstone, a practicing shaman who had been hired to "cleanse" Thunder Bay of its resless spirits. The experience alsmost cost him his life, and he warns Jenna about the danger of disturbing the legendary kushtaka—soul-stealing predators that stalk a netherworld between land and sea, the living and the dead. But Jenna is desperate for answers, and she appeals to both Livingstone and Eddie to help her sort fact from myth, and face the unthinkable possibilities head-on. Armed with nothing but a mother's ferocious protective instincts, Jenna's quest for the truth about her son—and the strength of her beliefs—is about to pull her into a terrifying and life-changing abyss...

Coloring powerful legend with universal emotions, Garth Stein masterfully evokes our most primal dreams and fears. Remarkably vivid and relentlessly suspensful, Raven Stole the Moon marks the arrival of a stunningly imaginative new talent..
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In "Being and Place among the Tlingit", anthropologist Thomas F. Thornton examines the concept of place in the language, social structure, economy, and ritual of southeast Alaska's Tlingit Indians. Place signifies not only a specific geographical location but also reveals the ways in which individuals and social groups define themselves. The notion of place consists of three dimensions - space, time, and experience - which are culturally and environmentally structured. Thornton examines each in detail to show how individual and collective Tlingit notions of place, being, and identity are formed. As he observes, despite cultural and environmental changes over time, particularly in the post-contact era since the late eighteenth century, Tlingits continue to bind themselves and their culture to places and landscapes in distinctive ways. He offers insight into how Tlingits in particular, and humans in general, conceptualize their relationship to the lands they inhabit, arguing for a study of place that considers all aspects of human interaction with landscape. In Tlingit, it is difficult even to introduce oneself without referencing places in Lingit Aani (Tlingit Country). Geographic references are embedded in personal names, clan names, house names, and, most obviously, in k-waan names, which define regions of dwelling. To say one is Sheet'ka K-waan defines one as a member of the Tlingit community that inhabits Sheet'ka (Sitka). "Being and Place among the Tlingit" makes a substantive contribution to the literature on the Tlingit, the Northwest Coast cultural area, Native American and indigenous studies, and to the growing social scientific and humanistic literature on space, place, and landscape..
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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 would 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..
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No aspect of this harrowing journey was more difficult--or deadly--than the trek over the Chilkoot Trail: a fifty-three kilometre journey over the coastal mountains from the tidewaters of Alaska, through British Columbia to the headwaters of the Yukon River. But even before the gold rush, the trail was an important First Nations trade and travel route, joining the Tlingit of the coast with the First Nations of the interior. Today the Chilkoot Trail draws hikers from around the world who want to experience the area's natural beauty and soak up its rich history. In "Chilkoot Trail: Heritage Route to the Klondike," two historians--one from each side of the border--give readers the feeling of what life was like on the trail before, during and after the great Klondike gold rush..
Price: $18.21 [Notify me when price goes down.]

The Battles of Sitka (1802 and 1804) were seminal events in the history of the Tlingit people, the multicultural history of Alaska, and, ultimately, in the history of America. Anooshi Lingit Aani Ka / Russians in Tlingit America covers the period from the first arrival of European and American fur traders in Tlingit territory to the establishment of a permanent Russian presence in the Pacific Northwest, presenting transcriptions and English translations of Tlingit oral traditions recorded almost fifty years ago and translations of newly available Russian historical documents. Although independent in origin and transmission, these accounts support one another to a remarkable degree on the main historical points.The Tlingit-Russian conflict is usually presented as a confrontation between "whites," with superior arms, and brave but outnumbered and poorly armed natives. Nothing could be further from the truth. The Tlingits saw themselves as victors even as they formally ceded to the Russians the site of their village and fort, now known as Sitka. Setting aside ancient rules of story ownership, a new generation of Tlingit clan leaders have decided to publish the stories told by their ancestors so that the Tlingit point of view would be known and succeeding generations would not forget their people's history.Including Russian historical documents, travellers' accounts of informal interactions between the formerly warring parties after the battles, and Dr. W. Schuhmacher's work on the role played by British and American skippers, Anooshi Lingit Aani Ka inquires into and provides some answers to the fundamental question, who owns history? Photographs of objects now in Russian and American museums - from the favorite battle hammer of Tlingit war chief Katlian to the metal ceremonial hat Baranov commissioned for the peace ceremony - enrich the book, along with portraits of key historical figures and eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century charts of Tlingit territory. Also included is the journal of Dmitrii Tarkhanov, a gazetteer, glossary, Tlingit and Russian name lists, and an index..
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In the spring, the bear returns to the forest, the glacier returns to its source, and the salmon returns to the fresh water where it was spawned. Drawing on the special relationship that the Native people of southeastern Alaska have always had with nature, Blonde Indian is a story about returning. Told in eloquent layers that blend Native stories and metaphor with social and spiritual journeys, this enchanting memoir traces the author’s life from her difficult childhood growing up in the Tlingit community, through her adulthood, during which she lived for some time in Seattle and San Francisco, and eventually to her return home. Neither fully Native American nor Euro-American, Hayes encounters a unique sense of alienation from both her Native community and the dominant culture. We witness her struggles alongside other Tlingit men and women—many of whom never left their Native community but wrestle with their own challenges, including unemployment, prejudice, alcoholism, and poverty. The author’s personal journey, the symbolic stories of contemporary Natives, and the tales and legends that have circulated among the Tlingit people for centuries are all woven together, making Blonde Indian much more than the story of one woman’s life. Filled with anecdotes, descriptions, and histories that are unique to the Tlingit community, this book is a document of cultural heritage, a tribute to the Alaskan landscape, and a moving testament to how going back—in nature and in life—allows movement forward..
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In "The Fishermen's Frontier", David Arnold examines the economic, social, cultural, and political context in which salmon have been harvested in southeast Alaska over the past 250 years. The book is about Native and Euro-American fishermen, local fishing communities, industrialists, and resource managers and the ways in which these various groups have imagined, shaped, exploited, and managed the salmon fishery and its resources, arranging it to conform to understandable patterns of social organization and endowing it with cultural meaning. The transformation of the salmon fishery in south-eastern Alaska from an aboriginal resource to an industrial commodity was fraught with historical ironies. Tribal peoples-usually considered egalitarian and communal in nature-managed their fisheries with a strict notion of property rights, while Euro-Americans-so vested in the notion of property and ownership-established a "common-property" fishery when they arrived in the late nineteenth century.In the twentieth century, federal conservation officials tried to rationalize the fishery by "improving" upon nature and promoting economic efficiency, but their uncritical embrace of scientific planning and their disregard for local knowledge degraded salmon habitat and encouraged a backlash from small-boat fishermen, who clung to their "irrational" ways. Meanwhile, Indian and white commercial fishermen engaged in identical labours, but established vastly different work cultures and identities based on competing notions of "work" and "nature". Arnold concludes with a sobering analysis of the threats to present-day fishing cultures by forces beyond their control. However, the salmon fishery in south-eastern Alaska is still very much alive, entangling salmon, fishermen, industrialists, scientists, and consumers in a living web of biological and human activity that has continued for thousands of years. David F. Arnold is professor of history at Columbia Basin College, Pasco, Washington..
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