Baranof Elementary School in Sitka has a new name. The Sitka School Board voted unanimously on Thursday (3-6-24) to make the change, culminating a lengthy discussion on a different-yet-related topic: The need to make cultural education a more immersive experience in Sitka for everyone.

Nine years after the issue was first brought before the Sitka School Board, the time to change the name of Baranof Elementary came at just after 10 p.m.

“It has been moved and seconded to select Xóots Elementary School as the new name for Baranof Elementary School,” said school board president Tristan Guevin putting the question on the table, where it was adopted unanimously with little discussion from either the board, or the ten or so members of the public who waited out the long meeting at the Sheetka Kwaan Naa Kahidi – Sitka’s tribal community house.

Applause…

Xóots, by the way, means “brown bear,” and the raspy “h” sound at the beginning of the word is represented with an “X.”

The person who spearheaded the committee meetings and community surveys that led to the name change was former board president Blossom Teal-Olsen. Teal-Olsen left the school board ten months ago, but stayed engaged with this project, because she may have been the only person who could bring the name change about. Alaska Native, yet not Lingít, Teal-Olsen steered past the cultural conflict that led to the defeat of a previous name change two years ago.

She complimented everyone who helped, and their bravery for moving forward, when it may have been easier to stop.

“It hasn’t been an easy road,” said Teal-Olsen, “and I think there was a point where you’re thinking maybe we should table it and keep it on the table.” 

The soft landing for the school name change was in part because of the lengthy discussion that preceded it. Every year, the Sitka School District reviews an Impact Report from the Cultural Department, plus holds a public hearing on its federally-funded cultural education program (Title VI Indian Education Act and Impact Aid hearing), called SNEP, or the Sitka Native Education Program.

SNEP is widely recognized as having been critical to incorporating traditional culture into Sitka’s school curricula, but there was a distinct change in tone at this year’s hearing, that the district – the community – was not going far enough. Lingít cultural education still feels like an adjunct to conventional, western education. And the language itself remains in decline.

Roby Littlefield has taught Lingit in Sitka since 1985. She quoted a paper from Dr. Lance Twitchell arguing that the Lingít language needs to become more central to the experience of living in Sitka. More normal.

“Normalizing means that the language is seen and it’s heard by everybody,” said Littlefield, “so that seeing and hearing the language is commonplace. One of the things that tends to happen with indigenous languages, after generations of language suppression is that the language becomes foreign in its own place. And even to its own people. The result is a distorted sense of what was normal, so that it seems normal to expect to hear only English everywhere.”

Littlefield was seconded by David Kanosh, a Sitka resident and one of thirty fluent speakers of Lingít in Southeast Alaska. Kanosh was educated in the Sitka school system, learned French, Japanese, Spanish, and studied the classics. He would not replace any of this – but supplement it. 

“What I say is that we should incorporate more of our language, our culture, into the system,” said Kanosh. “Just as my life was enriched by the works of William Shakespeare, by the epic sagas of the Scandinavians, the ancient Greeks and Romans their myths – they enriched my life. Now learn of us. We are still here.”

Kanosh was not necessarily arguing for a radical change. A frequent traveler to Hawaii, he remembers visiting that state when there were only a couple of hundred Native speakers remaining. Hawaii has made the effort to normalize language, and Kanosh said it was evident on his last trip.

“I went to the airport and over the intercom in the airport you could hear announcements being made into Hawaiian language,” said Kanosh, “and the tourist industry has said that they get more people that come there because they feel like they’re leaving and visiting a foreign country without having to get a passport, thus enriching their economy. Why can we not normalize the Lingít language here as well? Give us that chance and we’ll show you what we as a people can do.”

The kind of immersion suggested by Kanosh and Littlefield is not untested. Pauline Duncan, a retired first grade teacher at the elementary school formerly known as Baranof, had a popular dual-education program in her classroom incorporating lessons in both Lingit and English. She told the board about one of her students, a boy named Ben.

“One day he came to school and he said to me, ‘Mrs. Duncan, do you know that I am Lingít now?’ And I said, ‘No,  when did that happen?’ He said,’ I don’t know. It just happened. And I told my mom last night, “Mom, come here, I just turned Lingít.” And she said, ‘Oh, that’s nice!’ This is  just to show you that at that level, how a teacher can make an impact on a student.”

The school board took no official action on the hearing, but the discussion certainly cleared the path for renaming Baranof Elementary. Board member Phil Burdick said that Sitka was poised to embrace a richer and more immersive cultural experience. “What’s stopping us,” he asked, “from incorporating all of the knowledge that we have together?”

Disclosure: Roby Littlefield hold a seat on the KCAW Board of Directors.

Back Bay Botanicals products include devil’s club soothing rub and healing ointment. Photo by Ed Schoenfeld.

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Devil’s club is probably best known as a plant to avoid at all costs. But several small Southeast Alaska companies have a different take. They’re turning the roots, stems and bark of the plant into rubs and salves to treat sore joints and damaged skin.

Sitka is the center of the growing industry.

Sitka’s Ruth McMaster stands behind the counter at the store she runs with her husband Gary. The phone rings, and she’s soon taking an order for the company’s devil’s club salves.

Wintersong owners Ruth and Gary McMasters hold their devil’s club salve, lip balm and soap at their Sitka store. Photo by Ed Schoenfeld.

Wintersong makes a variety of handcrafted products, including lotions and soaps. But its devil’s club salve and soap are among the most popular – and demand is expanding, “Because it works.”

Devil’s club is a common shrub in the wet, cold forests of Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. Sometimes called Alaska ginseng, its bright red berries, tall stalks and large leaves make it easy to spot.

But it’s best known for its spiky spines, which cause great pain when they scratch or puncture skin. Jean Longstreth runs Back Bay Botanicals with her husband Dennis.

“Out in the woods, deer-hunting and such, collecting and harvesting other plants, you always saw that ominous-looking plant and you didn’t want to grab onto it,” Longstreth says.

The company, run out of the Longstreth’s home, makes devil’s club salves, balms and bath oil.

Back Bay and Wintersong are among at least 10 Alaska businesses making devil’s club products. (Scroll down for a list of other manufacturers and their websites.)

Those two, and a third, make Sitka a center of the industry.

“I have the Devil’s Club oil, the lip balm, the ointment and the menthol ointment,” says Pauline Duncan, a Tlingit author and one of the first Native teachers certified in Alaska.

She grew up knowing the plant is a traditional remedy. She followed her interests and built her skills through a class led by a fellow Sitka teacher.

Pauline Duncan displays her devil’s club products at the Celebration Native Artists’ Market in June of 2010 in Juneau. Photo by Ed Schoenfeld.

“From there I just started researching and started trying to bring back a lot of the old medicinal plants that were used and mix that in with the devil’s club,” Duncan says.

She and the others collect from their own property, or that of family and friends.

Wintersong’s Gary McMaster says it‘s careful work, because it’s so prickly and stingy.

His advice?: “Wear good gloves, you know, wear good gloves.”

Then it has to be processed. Back Bay’s Longstreth says she uses the same technique for devil’s club and other medicinal plants.

“We us an organic olive-oil base, and we simmer the devil’s club at a certain temperature for a number of days until we get as much of the medicine out of it as we can,” she says.

Each follow their own recipe, mixing in spruce pitch, tea tree oil, red clover, beeswax or other ingredients.

The resulting products are used to treat sore joints and muscles, and skin irritations such as diaper rash.

But none of those remedies have been

The Wintersong store in Sitka displays devil’s club and other homemade products.

evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. So Duncan and Sitka’s other manufacturers are careful about what they say.

“I try to get as many of my buyers to give me a little blurb about how it has helped them or why they are ordering more. That’s basically how I advertise the product,” Duncan says.

Those testimonials are used on company websites or in brochures.

Back Bay Botanicals’ Dennis Longstreth enjoys hearing from the customers.

“Every so often there will be a little envelope in the mail, with a tight little handwritten address and we open it up and there’ll be a letter saying somebody gave her this product and it did wonders for her,” he says.

So why is Sitka a center of devil’s club products?

Wintersong’s Ruth McMaster says it’s all about attitudes.

“There’s a lot of independent people here who are seeking out ways to make money besides working for someone else. There’s a lot of entrepreneurs and crafters and artists. I think it goes along with the type of people who live here.”

A few years ago, some Tlingit leaders were concerned large-scale operations could lead to overharvesting of the traditional plant. So far, that doesn’t appear to have happened.

Access websites of some of Alaska devil’s club product producers:

• Back Bay Botanicals, Sitka
  Wintersong, Sitka
  Pauline Duncan, Sitka (scroll down to see products)
• Gut‘ Shu wu Inc., Hoonah
  Alaska Botanicals, Hoonah
  Laughing Berry Botanicals, Metlakatla
  Maiden Alaska Herbs, Skagway
  Birch Grove, Eagle River
  Alaska Ginseng, Chugiak
  Alaska Rod’s, Haines