The room was filled with the native art of southeast Alaska, the art of the Tlingit tribe. Wicker tableware, jewelry, and tiny replicas of warrior shields covered the table next to yarns of all colors. A loom hung nearby with a bright red shawl half woven, and in another, even larger one that dominated the room, a blanket was being constructed, with cedar bark integrated into the fabric to give it a stiff structure.

In the midst of it all was Helen McNeil. A tiny woman whose once-raven hair has greyed with age. Her diminutive structure a result of osteoporosis, she wore braces over her blue jeans to keep her frail form from breaking. She wore a mask in hopes of keeping the Covid-19 virus at bay. Behind horn-rimmed glasses, there was wisdom in her eyes, the kind of wisdom and understanding you’re able to gain, not only from age, but from a life well-lived. She had always been a bit sickly, especially at a young age, not going out until she was twelve years old due to a variety of conditions that stemmed from a troubled birth.

She was very excited today, happy to talk about her craft, the secret weaving of the Tlingit tribe. She warned that it was not something to be taught to outsiders. Many would want to steal the technique to create knockoffs to sell, diminishing the value of their art. She pulled out a ball of yarn, hand spun, with a natural color, and offered a look closer. Something wound its way through the yarn, from the top down to the base. Cedar. It gives the fabric strength and rigidity, yet is flexible. You can bend it, and it will naturally come back to its original state. It was soft to the touch, comfortable, with the subtle beauty of nature.

She began to weave by hand. No shuttlecock, no real tools of any kind, save for a long nail on her thumb she used in the process. She stated how important it was to have a long thumbnail, but she wove too quickly to see exactly how it was used. The loom itself was just two wooden rods that held up a cross rod.

As she wove, she talked about her clan, “In southeast Alaska, we have such a vast food supply that we’ve had a lot of spare time for our art, and we put our clan symbols on everything. It’s not just a crest, but it’s an identity, a language, a whole life’s perspective. It’s impossible to describe one art without describing the whole culture that it fits into.

She turned around to proudly show off the back of her vest, beaming with pride. In the center of her back was a crimson totem of an eagle in profile surrounded by glistening white seashells that shimmered in the light of the room. “It’s an eagle,” she explained methodically, “and in the abdomen is the figure of a female face, because women are the foundation of our culture.” Then an epiphany came to her, “Oh! I should have brought my eagle leg. I own the leg of an eagle.”

Helen eagerly explained, then moved over to a headdress covered with an animal pelt. “A friend of mine, Rick Boothe, carved the eagle face on the front from spruce. I broke the beak.” She chuckles at the memory, “The eagles beak should have jutted out and pointed down. The fur is sea otter.”

She began to model the headdress, woven of the same fabric as the blanket on the loom, adorned with abalone shell. It had the air of a crown, “It gets rather hot when you’re dancing,” she said from experience.

She pulled the headdress off and began to point out the very fine details of it. “If you look, you can tell the weave here is tighter than the weave here, which is loose.”

You could think, seeing all these items and the gracious way she presented them, that you should feel like it is some sort of great honor, but for her it was just nice to talk about it. “Thank you for asking about all of this.” She said as she began to pack all the amazing trinkets back into a large bag, “Not many people are interested, very few ask about it. It was fun to show it off.”

                                                                  
COREY COOLIIDGE pursued a degree in Journalism & Public Communications and received his degree in 2022.