Kan, Sergei Professor of Anthropology, Dartmouth College
“Tlinkity” – the New Catalog of the St. Petersburg Museum of Anthropology and Ethnology’s Tlingit Collection With Steve Henrikson Recently the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (MAE) in St.Petersburg, Russia published a complete catalog of its Tlingit collection. Beautifully illustrated, it features over 300 artifacts, including such treasures as carved wooden bowls, spruce root hats, shakee.at(s), masks, Chilkat and Raven’s tail robes, armor, ceremonial headgear, daggers, tools, and shamans’ regalia. What makes this collection particularly valuable is the fact that many of its objects had been collected prior to 1867. Since the catalog has only been published in Russian, Sergei Kan will present the highlights from the text and comment on some of the pieces and their collectors, and Steve Henrikson will review a selection of the most important objects.
(moderator) Historical Photographs-a Window on Native History and Culture With Jim Simard, Harold Jacobs, Steve Henrikson, Bill Holm, Ron Klein Historical photographs represent a major source of information on the culture of the Native people of southeastern Alaska. Although some of these images have already been studied and published by researchers, they have only rarely been analyzed in collaboration with the members of the native communities. Previous researchers have also rarely provided detailed biographical information on the photographers themselves. Our session attempts to remedy this deficiency by examining the biographies and the cultural background of Vincent Soboleff (an amateurphotographer and a long-time resident of Killisnoo and Angoon of Russian-German- American extraction), and several others. Our goal is not only to acquaint our audience with the various photographic collections pertaining to the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian peoples (e.g., those preserved in the Alaska State Library’s Historical Collections) but also encourage them to preserve their own family photographs and engage their local elders and tradition bearers in identifying the people, the places, and the other subjects depicted by them.
Vincent Ivanovich Soboleff–Russian-American Photographer in Tlingit Country The paper examines the work of an amateur photographer, Vincent (Vitalii, Vita) Soboleff, whose father served as a Russian Orthodox priest in Killisnoo and Angoon from 1893 until his death in 1908. While Angoon was one of the most culturally traditionalist Tlingit communities, Killisnoo owed its existence to a factory producing whale oil and guano fertilizer. Employing Euro-American, Russian-American and Native workers, the factory and the surrounding settlement were the site of intercultural interaction. Thanks to his family’s close ties with the Tlingit, the young photographer was able to document the work, the religious life and the leisure activities of the local multiethnic population between the 1890s and the 1910s. Examined in conjunction with the written records of the Russian Church clergy and accounts by the various American residents and visitors, these photographers represent a rich source of information on the sociocultural history of this part of the Alaska frontier. Additional valuable information on the people and places depicted by “Vita” Soboleff has been obtained from the interviews I have been conducting since 1980 with Tlingit elders and other tradition bearers, including his nephew Dr. Walter Soboleff. My presentation will highlight not only some of the well-known Soboleff photographs but also the lesser known but equally valuable images.
