A three-tiered raven hat. A life-sized wooden beaver bowl. A blanket with designs representing important locations like Basket Bay. These are a few of the items displayed on stage during a Sealaska Heritage Institute lecture on the history of the Angoon Tlingit beaver crest on Wednesday (2-18-25).
Speaker Dan Johnson Jr, hails from the Deisheetaan (Beaver) clan in Angoon, and is one of the tribe’s Kaashaaduhaani, or leader who is not the head of the tribe. Through numerous anecdotes, including the traditional Tlingit story of how a beaver destroyed the village of Basket Bay, Johnson highlighted how crests can serve a role in comforting those experiencing hardship by evoking the memory of their ancestors.
“When we’ve lost a loved one…we can use that as an example that our hearts are as broken and as shattered as the rock in Basket Bay,” said Johnson. “When it comes time for us to talk to each other, we bring [crests] out and we use the what we know of that artifact to relay to these people, to encourage them that they will survive what they’re going through, and to let them know that we all have gone through that.”
For Johnson, the displayed artifacts are family relics that were a part of his childhood. He remembered helping his brothers move crests like the Raven hat around for one of their grandfathers during a pay-off party, which is a ceremony held a year after a clan-member dies to end the mourning period. He recalled an interaction between his grandfathers where he learned why he and his brothers were tasked with carrying the artifacts.
“You’re showing to the world and to the Creator who your treasures are. It’s not just the artifacts that are being brought out. It’s your grandchildren. It’s the way you’re showing your love and your respect for the grandchildren you have,” said Johnson.
In addition to sharing stories, crests’ designs can also impart generational wisdom onto youth. Sealaska Heritage Institute’s Indigenous Program Specialist Joe Zuboff, also of the Angoon Deisheetaan clan and is the house master of the Raven House in Angoon, joined Johnson throughout his talk. He said the design of a crest can demonstrate important cultural values to descendants.
“When you see a mark on a crest, it’s because of words, and in order to take that mark off of the crest, [it] costs money, so as a reminder to everyone [that] what we say becomes a part of our identity,” said Zuboff. “This is what we’re here to teach our young ones: to be respectful.”
To preserve intergenerational knowledge, Johnson advocated for the importance of not merely passing down traditions via oral storytelling, but also through technological archiving, which he says is a huge shift from previous attitudes on documenting Tlingit cultural practices.
“‘We don’t want you to take pictures.’ ‘We don’t want you to record what we say.’ We were protective of the culture,” said Johnson. “It’s important now that that information gets recorded in a way that in 50 years from now, the children that are not even born yet are going to have some idea of how this is supposed to work.”
Johnson’s lecture was part of Sealaska Heritage Institute’s larger oral history project to identify and document 12 crests in order to better educate the public on crests and their cultural significance to Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian clan. The findings will eventually be published in a book and online. You can view Johnson’s full presentation here.
