Chilkat weavers who learned online during the pandemic see their robes come to life

Sakoon Donedin Jackson showing her robe to language nest students. Chilkat robe weaving on Jan. 30, 2023 in preparation for First Dance & upcoming art show. Jan. 30, 2023. (Photo by Tasha Elizarde/KTOO)

There are about a dozen Chilkat weavers in Juneau this week. They’re meeting at a makeshift workshop set up at Generations Southeast Community Learning Center and weaving five or more hours a day, trying to finish up intricate, child-sized robes that will be worn by local children while they dance a ceremonial dance. 

The weavers are apprentices of Lily Hope. During the pandemic, she offered classes virtually, so students outside of Southeast Alaska could learn from her. 

Now, they’re getting together in person to level up and finish their projects. The children’s robes are detailed and time consuming, but less so than the two or more years it takes to make an adult-sized robe. 

Lily Hope and weaving mentor Ricky Tagaban working on a robe. Jan. 30, 2023. (Photo by Tasha Elizarde/KTOO)

Growing the number of Chilkat weavers is important to Hope. 

“Over the last 120 years, fewer than a dozen Chilkat blanket makers or robe weavers existed at any given point. We are changing that story this week,” she said on Juneau Afternoon last week.

Sakoon Donedin Jackson is here from Alberta, Canada. Through Hope’s virtual teaching, she spun her yarn for the robe, hung it on the loom and began weaving. But on a road trip last summer, she got in an accident and the blanket — as well as everything in her camper van — burned in the wreck.

“The only reason I was able to participate at all is because [a community member] gifted me her auntie’s yarns, who had passed,” Jackson said. “So all of the yarns in this blanket, except for the mask color and the yellow, are ancestral aunties’ that had been donated to me from this group to make this happen. So it is absolutely a project of love and support of this entire community.”

Jackson walked away from the wreck with a severe concussion but was able to restart the robe, and thinks she’ll finish in time for Wednesday’s dance.

“It’s not like joining a crochet group, right? It’s a lot more,” Jackson said. “There’s culture and there’s the spiritual aspect of it. I think it’s what changes it from art to a living being.” 

The design is from Hope’s late mother Clarissa Rizal. It was the last child-sized robe she designed. It doesn’t have clan affiliations, Jackson said. She said they wanted to use a design that was “open source,” so that children with any clan affiliation could dance in them. 

Weaving on Jan. 30, 2023 in preparation for First Dance & upcoming art show. (Photo by Tasha Elizarde/KTOO)

Gunaa Shaa Karen Taug started weaving in 1984, but she put it on hold after having five children. She started learning again from Rizal over a decade ago. The child robe she’s working on in Juneau is her first big weaving piece, she said.

“When you get stuck, like on a circle, there’s so many people to ask,” Taug said. “Plus Lily does the videos, but still, it’s nice to interact with all the ladies. Because you learn little tricks of the trade like this thing here, that’s a magnet,” she said, pointing to a magnet holding her needle to the loom.

Ksm L’x Sg̱a̱a Ruth Hallows shows children her Chilkat robe. Jan. 30, 2023. (Photo by Tasha Elizarde/KTOO).

She plans to have her grandson dance in the robe, which shows the face of a fisherman and his two grandchildren in profile, turned towards him in the center, Taug said.

“My goal really is to let the world know that we’re still making sure Chilkat robes are still weaving our history. We’re still telling our stories. We’re still here, alive, and well,” Hope said.

The First Dance, where a dance group made of children will wear these robes for the first time, is Wednesday. It will be live-streamed on Sealaska Heritage Institute’s YouTube page. On Friday, the robes will be displayed at the Juneau Douglas City Museum.

Yvonne Krumrey

Local News Reporter, KTOO

Juneau is built on hidden and assumed layers of power and access, influencing how we interact with identity, with the law and with each other. I bring you stories of the gaps in access to power, and those who are working to close those gaps.

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