During a friend’s slideshow more than 20 years ago, Bernadette Price, an executive assistant from Portland, Ore., saw photos of the Whale House artifacts.

Price became captivated, researching newspaper accounts and books about Northwest Coast Indian art, including the pieces.

“They just grabbed me like nothing ever has. They have so much power and beauty, not just the art, but in the legends behind the house posts. That’s what makes them special,” Price said in an interview this week. “I never thought I would see them because they were kept under wraps, literally.”

When Price found out the Whale House carvings would be displayed at Klukwan’s new cultural center, she booked travel to Haines.

Price and hundreds of others gathered in temperatures nearing 90 degrees Saturday to celebrate the opening of the Jilkaat Kwaan Cultural Heritage Center and Bald Eagle Preserve Visitor Center.

Ceremonies included a ribbon-cutting, speeches, dancing and a ceremonial anointing of the building’s corners with eulachon oil.

Harold Jacobs, a repatriation official with Tlingit Haida Central Council, presented a shark headdress returned from the National Museum of the American Indian, and a Chilkat blanket with an “emerging frog” design.

Jacobs spoke to the importance of Klukwan village laws protecting cultural heritage and prohibiting sale or removal of artifacts.

The day was emotional for Dave Svenson, 63, whose wood and glass figure hangs from the center’s ceiling and recreates the Ever Present Spirit in the Glaciers. Svenson was commissioned to make the piece, patterned after the same figure etched into the floorboards of the historic Whale House.

Svenson arrived in Haines 47 years ago to work for Alaska Indian Arts and carved alongside Native artist Ed Kasko. “I came up here at 16 years old, a kid not knowing anything, and got to spend time with the old carvers,” Svenson said. “I was so honored they asked me.”

Seeing the Whale House post brought tears, he said. His last view of them came in 1980, when he was asked to photograph them for an elder.

The artifacts “hold the power of the past,” Svenson said, providing a link between the village and an era when Chilkat art improved with every potlatch or special occasion for bringing out crest pieces. “They’re greater than great.”

Ganaxteidi clan member Smith “Smitty” Katzeek was one of about a half-dozen speakers representing clans or houses at the event. He spoke for the Looking Out, Land Otter and Salmon Hole houses.

Two of the houses no longer stand, but keeping the memory of them is important, Katzeek said after the event. “It’s important to the young people that they remember that house. They have to remember the clan they belong to.”

Caretakers of houses are taught to remember ancestors, he said. “Sometimes you do something and it reflects on the ancestors, then you’re in the world of doghouse. Since they put me in charge of the Salmon Hole House, I’ve watched where I’ve stepped.”

Other speakers included Joe Hotch, Brown Bear house; Ed Warren, Wolf house; John Katzeek, Killer Whale Fin house; Jones Hotch Jr., Whale and Raven houses; Rosita Worl, Thunderbird house; and Sally Burratin, Frog clan.

Former state Sen. Albert Kookesh, who helped secure funding for the center, also spoke.

Villager Evelyn Hotch, 80, left an Anchorage hospital where she had been a patient for eight days to make the trip early Saturday morning and see the opening from a wheelchair. “They didn’t want to let us go. My daughter told them, ‘There’s something big going on and she has to go.’”

Hotch said she wasn’t sure she’d live to see the center’s opening. “There are so many things wrong with me, I thought one of them would get me,” she joked.

The trip was worth it, she said. “(The center) is beautiful. It’s better than I imagined from when they were working there.”

Retired Kluane National Park warden Ron Chambers, 72, came from Haines Junction, Y.T. for the opening. A former Chilkat Dancer, he learned to carve at Alaska Indian Arts.

“It’s come a long ways. When the Chilkat Dancers started, it was the only dance group in Southeast Alaska. Now, when you go to potlatches in Juneau, I can’t believe how many (dance groups) there are. And they’re not all copying each other, either. They’re writing their own songs, or they’re finding old, family songs.”

Chambers said the village center was long overdue. “Klukwan was one of the most powerful villages on the West Coast, and it took this long. Circumstances, I guess, is kind of how it works.”

Attorney Linn Asper and villager Gene Strong were in Saturday’s crowd. In 1976, Asper helped draft the village ordinance prohibiting removal of artifacts and Strong and others blocked village roads when a moving truck was heading to Klukwan to remove artifacts. “It’s an amazing history and an amazing turn-around of events,” Asper said.

About a third of the space in the center is for collection storage, offices and work space. A $2 million system of ducts and air-handling units located upstairs in the building provides state-of-the-art temperature and climate controls.

The Whale House pieces are displayed in a replica tribal house, away from other objects and interpretive panels.

In an interview early this week, culture center executive director Lani Hotch said room was deliberately left around the artifacts so Ganaxteidi clan members would have space to use them in ceremonies there.

“This is a culture center, not a museum, because our culture is alive. This building is designed to be used,” Hotch said.

Alaska Indian Arts president Lee Heinmiller said the center is an investment that should bolster future efforts at repatriation of artifacts from museums and other collections. “They’re not going to give (artifacts) back to you, if you’re just going to leave it on a shelf.”

On Monday, Portland visitor Price was planning to make a second tour of the center Wednesday with cruise passengers, saying she was desperate for another view of the Whale House.

The town should do more to promote the pieces, including providing information around town and in hotel rooms, she said.

“It would kill me if I was here on vacation and didn’t know anything about them and then went home and found out about them,” she said.

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