Today’s Postcard From Alaska takes us to the small town of Haines in the southeast panhandle.  We'll be visiting one of the state's earliest and most successful programs designed to preserve the traditions of Alaska's indigenous people.

Alaska Indian Arts is housed in a cavernous, century old army barrack building on the hill rising up behind downtown Haines. Inside, visitors can meet and talk with craftsmen at work in several native artistic disciplines: painting, weaving, dancing, drumming, engraving and carving.

"Alaska Indian Arts was originally called Alaska Youth Incorporated, and that was basically a work project, keep busy program for youngsters that involved scouting and wood smithing out in the woods," says Lee Heinmiller, Alaska Indian Arts’ current director. His father, Carl Heinmiller, founded the program in the mid-1950’s.

Lee Heinmiller notes, "My father was a primitive arts specialist and a sculptor and had worked before World War II for the city of Cleveland in parks and rec’s (recreation) there. So he was used to working with kids in scouting and trying to come up with keep busy projects for the youth. So that’s what he started here cause there wasn’t a lot going on."

In 1957 Mr. Heinmiller’s boys planned to travel all the way to the U. S. East Coast for a national scouting event held that year in the State of Pennsylvania. Made up largely of native children, the troop decided they would perform a traditional Indian dance for their fellow scouts at the annual meeting. But by the middle of the twentieth century very few southeast Alaska natives were still living a traditional lifestyle. When the boys turned to their tribal elders for help with the dances and costumes, they ran into surprising resistance.

Lee Heinmiller recalls "They didn’t really want to help the kids. They were saying, ‘You know, we really shouldn’t be doing this, the old ways are dead, forget about’em, pretty much things are changing.’ And then the kids started doing it anyhow. And the minute you start doing it your grandparents go, ‘Oh, you’re not doing it right! I’ve gotta’ show you how tah do it.’"

In spite of any adult misgivings, the dancing was well received in Pennsylvania, so much so that the boys were invited to perform at a similar event in Alaska the next year and in New Mexico the year after that. Girls were added to the dance troupe in the early 1960’s and the group began performing for the tourists visiting Haines each summer.

The success of the dancers inspired a kind of cultural renaissance among local Alaska natives. Carl Heinmillers’ original scouting troupe eventually evolved into a native art school attracting students from tribes all over the state.

One of Alaska Indian Art’s most successful ventures is totem carving. For a culture without a written language, Indian totems preserve clan history, honor the dead, tell traditional stories, commemorate important events, and serve as a kind of family crest.

Wayne Patterson is a second-generation carver. He learned the craft from his father, one of AIA’s original artists.

Mr. Patterson remembers, "I used to watch him carve and say, "I wanna learn how to do that.’ That was truly my original inspiration and I stuck with it. Now that I’ve got twenty five years in I’ve got five canoes and I’ve got thirty three totems. You know, I’ve been choppin’ on wood a long time."

Despite the name, a number of the artists working and learning at Alaska Indian Arts are not Alaska natives. Greg Horner is one of several Caucasians to graduate from the program and he has devoted his career largely to native art.

Mr. Horner points out, "I think because people in Haines have always gotten along really well - I mean there’s not a real racial divide here – that they did bring a fair amount of Caucasians into the program here. I’m sort of a product of that. So, you know, definitely, I look at native art in a different way. I don’t have the same, say spiritual, inherited connection to the art. But I think that there’s also a way of looking at the art as a form or decorative that’s sort of independent, different than the spiritual aspects of it."

As Alaska Indian Arts graduates like Greg Horner and Wayne Price begin to apprentice a third generation of craftsmen, the indigenous art of America’s last frontier is moving into still wider circles. This past summer Wayne Price taught Indian art to a group of young apprentice carvers from all over the world. A tuft of hair donated by each student now adorns his latest creation, a war staff that he will carry in tribal dances.