People have lived in the area around modern-day Glacier Bay National Park, along Alaska’s rugged southern coastline, for at least around 3,000 years. Nearby, in Groundhog Bay, evidence of human habitation extends back a mindboggling 9,000-or-more years.
In the mid-18th century, advancing glaciers forced ancestral Huna Tlingit people to abandon their homes. While they could visit certain areas occasionally to hunt and fish, the evolving conditions and ice prevented them from living there. And when the area was designated a national monument in 1925, it seemed possible the displacement would be permanent.
“I never, ever thought that I would ever see the day, in my lifetime, that Tlingits could return to the Homeland,” says local resident Jeff Skaflestad in the opening of the National Park Service’s short film, “.” But in 2016, thanks to many years’ work and a collaboration between the National Park Service and the Hoonah Indian Association—the tribal government of the Huna Tlingit clans—Xunaa Shuká Hít marked a momentous homecoming.
Both a space for tribal ceremonies and a nexus of living history, the house is a sacred place for the Indigenous community that also provides visitors the opportunity to learn about Huna Tlingit culture, history, and oral traditions.
Xunaa Shuká Hít, which roughly translates to “Huna Ancestors’ House,” was brought to life by three Tlingit craftsmen: Gordon Greenwald, Owen James, and Herb Sheakley, Sr., who spent countless hours carving their ancestors’ stories into meticulously selected trees and wooden panels.
In a large carving shed in nearby Hoonah, Alaska, the artisans, along with occasional help from friends and neighbors, worked on totem poles, boats, oars, and architectural details. “Having Elders come in and talk with us, just to share with us, that was a highlight of my days,” James says. Sheakley adds that as they began carving, it was an obvious decision to make their own tools, too, as a way of connecting to time-honored traditions.
“It was a collaboration between the clans,” says tribal administrator Bob Starbard. “We had to get the Elders to talk about what stories could be told, what crests should be on, in which order… where everything should be located.”
Popular culture often misrepresents the purpose and subject matter of totem poles, erroneously attributing the figures to gods or mythical creatures. While aesthetically remarkable and complex, ancestral Tlingits didn’t really even consider the motifs to be art. Instead, they are “chapter titles to oral history,” Greenwald says, often based on real things that have happened as opposed to mythical stories.
In Xunaa Shuká Hít, the totems serve as structural supports, literally holding up the house and framing an elaborately carved wall, or screen, which portrays a geographical representation of different clans’ histories.
Following the dedication in 2016, additional Raven and Eagle Totems were raised in front of the house in 2017, and Yaa Naa Néx Kootéeyaa, the Healing Pole, was raised a little ways away, along the Tlingit Trail, in 2018. Plan your visit to Xunaa Shuká Hít and learn more about the Huna Tlingit Homeland on the park’s .
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