Elders and Youth Conference opens in Anchorage with focus on healing through culture

Hundreds packed the Dena’ina Civic and Convention Center in Anchorage on Sunday to watch Alaska Native dance performances and hear stories of healing.

The day kicked off the 40th Elders and Youth Conference, which runs through Wednesday and is presented by First Alaskans Institute. Dance groups from Chevak and Nelson Island took the stage throughout the afternoon, and organizers welcomed the participants and introduced upcoming workshops and events, said K̲aaswóot Gloria Wolfe, Indigenous leadership continuum director at First Alaskans Institute.

“We brought our songs, people brought their regalia, and it just gave an opportunity to get excited about the work that we’re about to do,” Wolfe said.

This week, attendees will join for more performances and conversations about education, storytelling, leadership and civil rights. Keynote speakers of this year are a longtime Haida weaver Ilskyalas Delores Churchill and a climate justice activist and fashion model Quannah ChasingHorse.

During salmon cutting workshops on Monday and Tuesday, participants will be able to process fish — an experience especially valuable during the time when the salmon is depleted in many areas of Alaska, Wolfe said.

“There are some people who are going to be able to touch and harvest salmon for the first time in their lives,” Wolfe said. “And there’re going to be other opportunities for Elders who haven’t been able to harvest in three to five years to be able to, side by side with youth, put up fish and talk about what it means to them.”

The opening day of the conference was focused on this year’s theme — Woosht Guganéix, which in Tlingit means “Let it be that we heal each other.” Speakers at the Sunday Panel of Healers discussed issues facing Indigenous people and practical ways to cope with hardship, Wolfe said.

“We’ve got historical trauma. .. Our salmon are being depleted in population,” she said. “We have just so many really heavy issues but we have so much beauty: We have our dancing, we have our language, we have our culture, we have our protocols and our regalia. We have our ways of laughing really loud together.

“Just being in the space with other Indigenous people is healing.”

Haida and Tlingit Elder Della Jackson Cheney, whose Indigenous name is Sdaahlk’awaas Kaatssaawaa, shared that her mother was a boarding school survivor. Growing up with parents and grandparents who were sent away from their families and culture is something that affects all Indigenous people, she said.

“It was a traumatic big loss, bigger than they even knew. ... It’s still coming through us,” she said. “Our shame, guilt, anger, hurt — all these things are filtered through us from our past intergenerational trauma. But we didn’t know, why am I so angry? Why am I so hurt? Why am I so ashamed?”

“As we watch the residential schools being searched, the bodies found, that is just horrendous,” she said.

Cheney said that after people in power tried to erase the identity of Indigenous peoples, reclaiming it and learning through culture are some of the paths to healing.

“All the people in this area, we’re learning our songs and our ways of life to heal us,” she said. “We are learning again accepting ourselves and not looking for saviors anymore. We are saviors.”