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L i t e r a t u r e • T l i n g i t R e n a i s s a n c eTlingit RenaissanceAn Excerpt from Life Woven with Song, 2000By Nora Marks DauenhauerIn 1968 my uncle Jim Marks passed away, leaving Auntie Jennie a widow. Sheset aside this retirement stage of her life to teach us Tlingit dancing, and we formed theMarks Trail Dancers in 1968. She taught us our Lukaax.ádi clan songs and we danced tothem. We became a popular group. As far as I know, we were the first such organizeddance group, with membership from different clans, that traveled and performed oninvitation. If not the first, we were certainly one of the first. Up to that time, songs anddances were mostly performed in ceremonial contexts only and by members of a singleclan, or at non-Tlingit civic events such as the dedication of libraries and such. Now,twenty-five years later, more than a thousand dancers gather every other year in Juneaufor a Tlingit folk festival called Celebration.I often think back to our first public performance, at an annual Tlingit and Haidaconvention. We had only one song in our repertoire, which we called in English “Go forBroke.” Composed by a clansman named K’astook Eesh (who lived before the arrival ofEnglish family names), the song describes the disruption and dysfunction of culturalcontact and changing times, and urges people to band together in love and mutualsupport.Pop got excited and made me a tattle. Mom was also excited and made us dancejewelry and tunics. I made button robes for friends and fund-raisers. Our brother John andMom made ear yarns for dancing our special dances. My father and mother, with the helpof my brother, made a set of Raven wings and headdress in which my daughter Leperformed the Raven dance. Mom made me a dance tunic that I still wear. My father latermade me a headdress called Geesán Shakee.át and sent it to me for Christmas. I unveiledit at Auntie Jennie’s memorial.I taught Tlingit in the Juneau high school for a semester in the early 1970s, butwas not rehired. The official district plan was, because of the demands of accreditation, toreplace me with a Tlingit teacher with certification. Now, almost a quarter of a centurylater, they still have not located a certified Tlingit instructor, nor have they found anyother way to teach the Tlingit language on a regular basis. [Note: Since this was written,today there are certified Tlingit instructors working in the school system.]By this time we were splitting off into education institutions. My daughter Lewent off to Harvard. After my children were out of school, I completed my GED andwent off to college at Alaska Methodist University in Anchorage, where I receivedformal training in linguistics and folklore. I graduated in 1976 with a B.A. inanthropology with a concentration in Tlingit literature. At the university I began theliterary work that is now finding its way into publication some twenty years later.While I was at the university I read Beowulf and Njal’s Saga. They seemed soTlingit to me in their concern with funerals and family trees. I read Homer, Ferlinghetti,E. E. Cummings, Basho, John Haines, Gary Snyder, Dennis Tedlock, and Han Shan.They became some of my teachers. I transcribed and translated Jessie Dalton and the restof the oratory delivered at my uncle Jim Marks’s memorial as a direct study with R.L.Dauenhauer, who would later become my husband. I realized later that these Tlingitorators had become my instructors in Tlingit literature.274
S e a l a s k a H e r i t a g e I n s t i t u t eAs younger Native American writers began to appear in print, I became excitedand inspired initially by their work and subsequently by meeting in person Simon Ortiz,James Welch, Joy Harjo, Luci Tapahonso, and others. (I still get excited by the work ofnew generations of Native American writers.) I also began to discover the work of earlierNative writers such as D’Arcy McNickle.Following my first year at the university, I was hired by Dr. Michael Krauss ofthe University of Alaska-Fairbanks to do field work with Tlingit elders in southeastAlaska as a project of the Alaska Native Language Center (ANLC). These elders alsobecame my instructors as I worked with them. Some of them gave me advice when Iworked with them; others told me off and declined to have their traditions documented.Working with the ANLC helped me to be in the right place at the right time and to taperecordmany elders who have since passed on. We are still working with the backlog.This work gives rise to mixed emotions. On the one hand, it gives me great delight torestore and polish these priceless gems of Tlingit oral literature, composed by the greatmasters of the tradition. On the other hand, it can be stressful always to be dealing withdeath, dying, and grief.275
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