On a recent Sunday, about a dozen parishioners sit on wooden pews at the Klukwan church listening to a sermon.
With a grand piano accompanying them, they sing along to “Count your blessings” and “These are the days of Elijah.” And, as they listen, a few parishioners sew animal hide.
On the surface, little has changed about the church services in years. The community staple – originally known as the Klukwan Presbyterian Church – has been holding regular Sunday services for nearly a century.
But one thing about the church has changed: its owner.
Last November, a national denomination of the Presbyterian Church transferred the deed to the Klukwan tribe, as part of the denomination’s effort to reconcile past abuses by clergy members and teachers against Alaska Native people.
Tribal and church leaders said it was an important step towards self-determination for the Chilkat Indian Village, the federally recognized tribe in Klukwan.
“It just kinda hits you dead center – the church is ours,” said Jones Hotch, a longtime church member and a member of the Klukwan tribal council.
The idea was first floated years ago under then-pastor Jami Campbell after she witnessed a statewide apology made by the Presbyterian Church at the Alaska Federation of Natives conference in 2016.
Campbell has since moved away from Klukwan but returned for the Oct. 8 ceremony.
“Being part of healing is a pretty amazing thing,” she said in a phone interview from Washington state, where she now lives. “They’ve gained some of their power back.”
Starting with an apology
Lani Hotch, another longtime church member and culture bearer in Klukwan, said some of her earliest memories are with the church. While she spent her early years in Haines, Hotch remembered coming to services with her grandmother, Jennie Warren, who wore a navy blue dress with white polka dots on Sundays. They walked over the wooden sidewalks to the wooden building, Warren in her black leather shoes with modest heels, keeping a strict eye on the rambunctious children.
Hotch said she loved the services and the connection it brought to her family and the history of the region. Her great grandfather James Katchkanuk had purchased the cast iron bell in 1903. She continued to attend church through adulthood.
Campbell said she quickly felt the importance of the church after she was recruited as pastor of Klukwan Church at the end of 2017. She served a brief volunteer stint cleaning the Jilkaat Kwaan Heritage Center earlier in the year and some church members asked if she would be interested in the pastorship. She decided to make the move with her partner in September of 2017.
Campbell tried to integrate into the community as quickly as she could, but the darker sides of the church’s history in Alaska gnawed at her. She remembered seeing a document at the Jilkaat Kwaan Heritage Center to prove they were no longer Indigenous. It required a signature from five non-Native Alaskans to prove they were “civilized.”
The Presbyterian Church was a major force in several regions in Alaska, including in the Chilkat Valley. The church was particularly active in missionary boarding schools, taking Alaska Native children away from their families to boarding school and prohibiting local languages as part of a “civilizing” mission. Among the most prominent Presbyterians was Rev. Sheldon Jackson, who established a system of boarding schools across the state.
Shortly after taking up the ministry in Klukwan, Campbell stumbled across a YouTube video of an apology from the Presbyterian USA denomination of the church for abuses at boarding schools in Alaska. The speech was delivered by Rev. Curtis Karns at the Alaska Federation of Natives conference in Fairbanks in 2016.
“To those individuals who were physically, sexually and emotionally abused as students of the Indian boarding schools in which the (Presbyterian Church USA) was involved, we offer you our most sincere apology. You did nothing wrong; you were and are the victims of evil acts that cannot under any circumstances be justified or excused,” Karns told the AFN convention, according to an Anchorage Daily News account at the time.
The discovery had a deep effect on Campbell, who decided the Klukwan church should make its own apology. In May of 2019, she gave a speech to the congregants at the Klukwan heritage center based on the Presbyterian USA apology from 2016.
“To those individuals who were physically, sexually, and emotionally abused and mistreated as a result of assimilation practices, we apologize,” Campbell told congregants.
The ceremony wasn’t publicized at the time.
“They decided they wanted it to be intimate,” said Campbell. “They decided not to inform local media at the time so it could be a personal, genuine moment.”
Jones Hotch remembers being moved by the speech.
“Pastor Jami was very real. I stood up and I said ‘I accept it.'” he said. “It was really something to hear and see in person.”
Campbell said she felt like it was a milestone for the church’s role in the community. She said she’s had people who weren’t even at the ceremony come up to her and recite portions of it word for word.
Still, she said there were members who weren’t supportive and who argued the church shouldn’t be apologizing for sharing the word of God.
Lani Hotch, a longtime church member and culture bearer, said it was bittersweet for her.
“It was great there was an apology after the fact, but in my heart, I had already moved on,” she said.
Hotch had completed a Klukwan Healing Robe, a Chilkat weaving project in 2001 that marked a focal point in throwing off cultural oppression and embracing Tlingit heritage for the community.
The text of Campbell’s apology to Klukwan still hangs on the wall of the church.
Words and deeds
Shortly after the apology, Campbell started hearing about a movement within the Presbyterian USA denomination of returning church lands to Indigenous peoples. She wondered if the church would be willing to do the same for Klukwan church.
The property where it sat, about halfway between the banks of the Chilkat River and the Haines Highway, was the sole piece of land still owned by non-tribal members in Klukwan. Campbell reached out to Presbyterian USA over email.
“Would you please consider gifting the Klukwan, Alaska church building to the Chilkat Tlingit people of Klukwan?” she wrote. “This transaction can easily be done by donating, gifting or selling for $1 to the Chilkat Indian Village.”
Within a week, she had a phone call.
“I didn’t even know there was a church there,” said Dean Strong, the clerk for the Northwest Presbytery at the time.
Strong combed through records Presbyterian USA kept in New York state to find the property. It was hardly a question of whether to return the property, Strong said.
“Once we found out about it, we were happy to have the Native American tribe own it. It was their property, their community center,” he said. “We’ve been trying to do this with all our churches on all our native properties and reservations.”
Getting it through the tribal council took a bit longer, but not for lack of support. Jones Hotch said there were minor technical issues and one of the tribal council members, Tony Strong, died.
“Just normal paperwork, I think the biggest problem was formatting the letter for the borough,” he said.
By 2022, the council had approved the transfer and the church became part of the tribal land.
Unfortunately, COVID concerns were still present in the village, and the tribe decided to delay a formal ceremony until Oct. 8 of this year.
The event was held at the church. Congregants brought local foods and heard speeches.
“Not too many empty seats that day,” said Pat Warren, a church elder. “There was fish and side dishes – it was a festive time.”
A series of people spoke about the meaning of the deed transfer, for the tribe and the church.
Campbell spoke as well, emphasizing that it allows the people of Klukwan to choose how they honor their faith.
Klukwan tribal administrator Brian Willard and tribal council president Kim Strong spoke about the history of the church and the significance of the transfer.
“It was just very warm, very celebratory and very reflective and an excitement of moving forward,” said Al Giddings, who was also welcomed as the new pastor of the church during the ceremony.
Former pastor Campbell said it was a celebration “but not necessarily people jumping around hooping and hollering,” said Campbell. “It’s the kind of celebration of recognizing broken things coming back together.”
Campbell said making the trip back to see the culmination of years of effort was emotional.
“Being part of healing is a pretty amazing thing,” she said. “The village worked so hard for healing to sustain their culture and their way of life. Now the church isn’t standing in the way, it’s an ally for them.”
Church members like Lani Hotch echoed the sentiment.
“I think it’s made a difference to take ownership and to have that autonomy that we should have always had – it’s just natural,” she said.
Practically, there are small but significant differences. Hotch said the church can now choose which denomination to have preaching.
Right now, Giddings’ services are non-denominational. And, the tribe has been able to take over insurance and has paid for some repairs to the building.
Hotch pointed to a silver lining of history that despite the abuses by the church, many of the most influential Alaska Native leaders have come from it, including civil rights leader Elizabeth Peratrovich, influential pastor and elder Rev. Walter Soboleff, and William Paul, the first Alaska Native legislator.
Now that the Klukwan church is back in tribal hands, she said, the village will keep growing new leaders, and hopefully put the abuses behind.