Tlingit Raven stories get due attention at UAS symposium

Tlingit elder Paul Marks discusses the Raven story with a packed audience at the UAS Egan Lecture Hall Friday night. (Photo by Lisa Phu/KTOO)
Tlingit elder Paul Marks discusses the Raven story with a packed audience at the UAS Egan Lecture Hall Friday night. (Photo by Lisa Phu/KTOO)

Ravens are ubiquitous in Southeast Alaska, and Tlingit stories about Raven the creator are often told as folklore. But at the University of Alaska Southeast, Raven got his story told in an academic setting.

Native leaders and writers shared and discussed the Tlingit creation story on Friday to a full audience at UAS’s Egan Lecture Hall during the university’s spring honors symposium.

Tlingit teacher and mentor Paul Marks explains how Raven created daylight. He switches between English and Tlingit.

“From the beginning, you couldn’t see him. He was invisible,” Marks says.

I’m not going to retell the story, because Marks says a person shouldn’t share the Raven story without studying it. His telling takes about 35 minutes and toward the end, Raven opens a box of daylight.

“Some of our people got scared of the daylight, ran into the forest. Some of our people hid behind the trees. Some of our people went into the water,” Marks says.

That’s where the bear, wolf, beaver, fish, whale and other animals came from. He says details of the origin story help us understand who we are as human beings.

Marks is from the Raven House of the Lukáax.adi clan. He says he learned the Raven story from clan leader Austin Hammond Sr., but he’s heard other versions as well.

Marks says it’s important to tell the story properly because Tlingit people steer their lives with words and stories.

“Learn the story very well before you tell it to somebody else. The reason is because if you change it, it’s like turning your compass to another direction and you’re going to end up somewhere where you don’t want to be,” Marks says.

But he admits the story has likely changed over time. Someone in the audience asks about similarities with stories in the Bible and Marks says there are parallels.

“I believe they are ancient stories. I look at it as we all come from the same place and each story being passed on verbally from generation-to-generation changes. It’s like a lot of the stories we tell are going to change 30 years from now. But that’s the way life is,” Marks says.

UAS Assistant English Professor Ernestine Hayes is from the Wolf House of the Kaagwaantaan clan. Growing up in the Juneau Indian Village, Hayes says she learned about Raven stories and the world from her grandmother.

She reads from her forthcoming book of prose, “The Tao of Raven.”

“Remember that all things begin and end in water just as rivers flow into and begin in the sea. When forces oppose, victory will be kind to the one who crafts herself like water, to the one whose powers allow her to yield.”

She reads on.

“Take Raven. When he wanted the box of daylight, he didn’t invade a village, he didn’t storm a house. He found the easy way. He used water. He made himself small so he could get close to daylight with the least effort. This is what Raven did to achieve his goal,” Hayes says.

Hayes plans to continue working on “The Tao of Raven” this summer at an artist residency program in California through a Rasmuson Foundation grant.

Lance Twitchell encourages the UAS campus to continue exploring Raven stories. Twitchell is an assistant professor of Alaska Native Languages at UAS. He challenges the university to begin each academic year with a Raven story.

“It’s a great statement to say the university didn’t start with Plato and Socrates, not that they’re not great, but because we’re on Tlingit country, we can start with Tlingit thinking and just see what happens. See how we can open the doors for people – not just Tlingit people but all kinds of people – to say, ‘There’s all these different things here. Let’s share something that comes from long ago, right from this place,'” Twitchell says.

The UAS event was dedicated to Yup’ik elder and cultural leader Paul John, who was supposed to take part in the symposium, but passed away March 6.


Editor’s Note: The story has been updated to correct Paul Marks’ clan. A previous version of this story stated Marks is from the Raven House of the Chookaneidí clan while he is actually from the Raven House of the Lukáax.adi clan.

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