For generations, locals have grown a tuber called the Tlingit potato that thrives in Sitka’s otherwise challenging gardening environment.
Sitka Tribe of Alaska and the U.S. Forest Service will partner in an effort to genetically isolate and identify the Tlingit potato — and incorporate it into Sitka’s food-security strategy.
The long, thin Tlingit potatoes are covered in eyes, and resemble a fingerling more than a russet. They are often called Maria’s potato, named after weaver and artist Maria Miller who grew them for years in Haines.
They grow well in Southeast Alaska, according to Michelle Putz of the Forest Service.
“It’s a very well adapted plant,” Putz said. “It does much better in our gardens than your typical European potato. The slugs don’t even hardly eat it.”
Two years ago, the Forest Service and Sitka Tribe of Alaska joined forces to plant a potato garden full of this local, ancient variety. the project came from a desire to educate and make traditional food more accessible to the community, said Tammy Young, tribal cultural resources coordinator.
“We have ongoing issues here in the community of Sitka, one of the issues being food security,” Young said. “We hope to be able to teach people how to grow this resource that’s been in this part of the world for over 200 years.”
They started with seedlings a Sitka family had been passing down for generations.
Community volunteers and Pacific High students planted the potatoes. As word got around about the garden, more spuds started showing up at Putz’s doorstep.
“Someone else in town said ‘You know I have this potato from Tenakee that’s supposed to be a Tlingit Potato. I’d like to give it to you so you can grow it,” Putz said. “It was huge, it was easily over a pound. It had to be 12 inches long by 4 inches across.”
When Putz planted it, that potato yielded 17 pounds of new spuds.
“That’s huge production,” she said . “When you plant European potatoes, I’ve been told that 5 or 6 pounds from one potato is really good production. So 17 pounds is kind of ridiculous.”
But it didn’t look like the other Tlingit potatoes. It was so big. Was it from the same strain as the others?
“It seemed really valuable to try and see ‘Is this a Tlingit potato. If yes, then I better start sharing these really widely. If not, then what is it?”
Enter the “potato lady” Elizabeth Kunibe, a wildlife and decoy woodcarver in Juneau working on her Ph.D.
In her studies she’s specialized in potatoes and ancient gardening practices in Alaska.
“I didn’t realize there were so many gardens,” Kunibe said. “When anthropologists asked questions for land designations in the ’40s, people would talk about fishing and hunting and berry patches, but nobody would ask them if they gardened.”
Oral history and detailed captains logs from the 1700s told a different story.
The potatoes didn’t arrive with Europeans. The tubers were brought back with the Tlingit people from South America.
When Kunibe wanted to learn more when she received some of Maria’s potatoes.
“I looked at the potato and I said, “That would be interesting if we could analyze its DNA and find out anything about it,” she said.
She reached out to the Potato Genome Project, research being done through the USDA, and began to learn more about potato genetics.
“When you analyze the DNA of a potato, they have the continual genetic line of the same potato that arrived,” Kunibe said. “They’re planted vegetatively, so they’re actually clones. The geneticists looked at Maria’s Tlingit potato and said ‘Oh this has never grown in Europe.’ Prior to this research everybody that was talking about potatoes or was interested in them thought they were brought over by settlers.”
Three potatoes with similar characteristics grow in Southeast Alaska, she said. Makah Nation potatoes from the Olympic Peninsula and Haida potatoes each are comparable to Tlingit potatoes.
The question Kunibe wants to answer: are all of these potatoes the same or is each one its own variety?
Kunibe is collecting samples of all the potatoes, including the potatoes from Sitka’s garden and the “Tenakee giant,” to be tested in Washington later this year.
Potato DNA tests aren’t as simple as extracting the chromosomes.
“The technique is you grow out the potato,” Kunibe said. “Then you get the leaves and extract the DNA from the leaves from the potato. It takes a while, maybe a year in process to get this investigation done.”
The time is worth it to many. Young saidit’s important to get some answers.
“It’s a part of our history,” she said. “Documenting our history from our own vantage point is always important to us and facilitating the opportunity for our young tribal members to learn a new skill.”
