Wrangell Sentinel -

Dancers and speakers from several local tribal organizations re-enacted the Chief Shakes House rededication as part of what the school called Native Awareness Day, Feb. 13

The event featured traditional dress, dancing and songs, as well as a few less-than traditional songs performed by the Tlinget-Haida Headstart students. The event was aimed at commemorating the life and struggles of Elizabeth Peratrovich, a Tlinget woman from Southeast who worked to end discrimination against Alaskan Natives and pass the 1945 Anti-Discrimination Act providing for equal opportunities for housing for Alaskan Natives. The state celebrates Elizabeth Peratrovich Day every Feb. 16.

The event aimed to make students from Wrangell Schools aware of the ceremony's significance, since attendance for the original event was limited by the capacity of both the Shakes House and Shakes Island, organizers said.

The event had been in the works since the rededication, and was reinforced by Native Culture Awareness Month in November, said Virginia Oliver, Wrangell Johnson-O'Malley coordinator, who helped organize the event, and drummed for processions.

"I think it went really well," she said. "We tried to have a glimpse into the Chief Shakes dedication of 2013. We set up the ambience as well as you could here."

Lu Knapp also helped organize the event, and MC'd the event.

The ceremony reenactment and speeches were designed as an educational component of the culture, Knapp said.

"One person can't do this," she said. "It takes a team of us. We want to bring culture into the school. We try to have one (event) in December and one in February, but we kind of combined it this year."

Guest speaker Winston Davies told the story of how the original Chief Shakes became known by his moniker.

Shakes was born an orphan by a different name and raised as the adopted nephew of a prominent chief of the Wrangell tribe. The future Chief Shakes faced an incursion by Nishga'a warriors from present-day British Columbia, Davies said.

"One of the leaders was known as Wi-Shakes," he said.

The future Chief Shakes led the Naanyaa.aayi against a much larger force of invading Nishga'a, then took the name of Wi-Shakes as a sign of his complete victory. It was later shortened to Chief Shakes, Davies said.

Speaker Ken Hoyt delivered an impassioned address about the connection between Wrangell values and native culture.

Brian O'Connor

Winston Davies delivers a speech to students at Wrangell High School Feb. 13. Local tribal organizations re-enacted the rededication of the Chief Shakes house for students of Wrangell schools.

"If you can hear my voice right now, you are a child of Wrangell," he said. "We would call you the children of this town, the children of that great river."

"This land has nourished you and become part of your body and part of your DNA," he added. "If you are from Wrangell, you are from a native place. You are from a town with totem poles, a town with a clan house."

He briefly related part of the oral history of the Tlinget people, in which various clans moved to the tops of nearby mountains to avoid rising floodwaters after the Great Flood.

"Wrangell is a very important place in the story of the struggle for equality," he said.

He described a society divided into two large cultural groups (moieties), Raven and Eagle, but dependent on each other for cooperation, kinship, and survival.

"That value of unity is still a Wrangell value," he said.