Allison Mills manually drilled into the base of a huge yellow cedar tree, Prince of Wales Island in Southeast Alaska. It was a drizzly August afternoon, and the metal scraping against wood was a constant sound. She reached the core of the tree and gently lifted the sample to her face. The wood’s mildly spicy, medicinal smell was intoxicating. She said, “I love the smell so very much.”
Mills, 16 years old, is Lingit Haida and Haida and has enthusiastically volunteered to do the job. She is part of Prince of Wales Island’s chapter of Alaskan Youth Stewards. This collaborative program provides job experience, leadership skills, and rural youth the opportunity to support their communities. Her crew worked for 10 weeks on projects that supported their community in natural resource and cultural stewardship. The four-day session culminated with a camping trip in remote forest where crew members sought out trees that could be used to make dugout canoes or totem poles. This program and the search are part of a regional revitalization of carving and cultural wood practices.
The crew was visiting the Tongass National Forest in the United States, which is the largest and most intact temperate forest in the world. It covers 16.7 million acres and includes 32 communities in Southeast Alaska. It stores carbon, provides water and hydropower to thousands of people and supports large numbers of fish and wildlife. It is the area’s foundation, culture, and way of life for Lingit, Haida, and Tsimshian who have lived there for millennia.
Over the past several centuries, Americans, Europeans, and Russians colonized the area. Between 1902 and 1909 the U.S. government established a national forest on Lingit and Haida homelands. A few decades later, the logging industry boomed with the construction of the first large-scale mills in the 1950s. The region’s timber was a hot topic at all levels: national, international, and state interest grew. This peak occurred in the 1990s when thousands of loggers cleared more than 1,000,000 acres of forest, removing half of its old-growth trees. Clear-cutting is still a problem, as federal forest management changes with each administration. Local residents and tribal nations have sought greater involvement in forest management, while tribal governments feel that federal agencies sometimes ignore or disregard their expertise.
This could be changing with the help of the AYS program. It was established in 2017 as a partnership between tribal governments, tribal corporations and conservation groups, federal agencies and nonprofits, and community organizations.
Mills then let her crewmates smell the core and carefully packed it into a container for shipment to the College of Wooster Tree Ring Lab in Ohio. It will be analysed by scientists to understand how climate change has contributed to the decline in yellow cedars in Alaska and Canada.
Four other crew members began to assess the tree while they waited. The crew measured the trunk’s circumference, height and width. They were looking for a minimum 34 inch diameter and a maximum height of 36 feet. To observe the twist and number of limbs, knots and obstructing its face, they climbed on fallen moss-covered logs. This can hinder carving. Another crew member was assigned to record data on a U.S. Forest Service tablet. They shouted out the numbers to the other crew member. This information will be added to a database of trees with the appropriate characteristics for cultural purposes.
It is not known how many monument trees, the rare forest giants, are still around. This inventory is part a wider effort to move away from unsustainable logging and towards long-term management that supports new growth and cultural needs. Mills stated that she loves learning about the forest and how to protect it. Mills said, “So that even when I’m older I can show my grandkids and kids everything and be able just to keep this beautiful place alive.”
Charlene Wolfe (Haida Name: Jaat Giigangaa), Haida/Lingit carver from Craig joined the hunt for totem trees. She shared her knowledge about trees that are suitable for carving on the final day of the campout. Wolfe shared stories about her childhood on the island, as well as about her art. She also spoke about the hope that local youth inspire. Wolfe stated, “It’s quite amazing to see these children out here learning the things they’re doing.” They are the future. “We lost a lot of these because our culture, our indigenous language, was taken from us.” Federal bans on cultural practices were part of forced assimilation. But we are coming back stronger now. These children are already two steps ahead of us back in the day.
The crew left camp and went to Klawock to meet Jon Rowan Jr. (Lingit Name: Tooyeek), a Pueblo/Lingit carver and teacher to learn more about the fate of the trees they had cataloged. They gathered in their muddy camp clothes and sat around a half-carved log within Rowan’s carpentry shed. It was a large shop brimming with loud rock music, cedar scent, and piles upon piles of wood shavings. Rowan spoke about the feeling of excitement he felt when he first saw a Klawock totem pole being carved in the 1990s. Carving was a rare practice in that area at the time. He said, “Now it is happening all around the place.” It’s really cool.
This recent revival is part of a wider push for community and cultural healing. Healing takes place in the woods, where AYS crews are involved in rehabilitation projects and cataloging cultural-use trees. It also happens in the carving sheds, where doors are always open. And at the pole-raising events, which bring people together to celebrate.
Mills stated that she feels it was a cool thing to be able “to look at all the cedars and make decisions about which ones will be good for the future.” Although they may not be used, it is still cool to have the trees recognized so that carvers can one day say, “Oh, yeah, that’s a good tree span>
Carving the Tongass National Forest originally published July 20, 2021 by High Country News.
Editor’s Note: Bethany Sonsini Goodrich, an employee of Sitka Conservation Society is a member the Sustainable Southeast Partnership. This collaborative includes community organizations, tribal governments and native corporations, as well as land managers, that support the Alaskan Youth Stewards program.
Bethany Sonsini Goodrich, a Southeast Alaskan photographer and writer, is passionate about the power and potential of stories to create positive social and environmental change. She can be found outdoors, hunting, foraging, surfing and sharing delicious wild foods in the Tongass National Forest, where she calls home.
Victoria Petersen, a freelance journalist, lives in Anchorage. She was previously a reporter fellow at The New York Times, and an intern for High Country News. Follow her @vgpetersen
