'Through the Colonial Lens: Images of Alaska Native People in the 18th and 19th Centuries', Maria Shaa Tláa Williams

In the late 20th Century Alaska Native people became politically involved in a major land claims movement, leading to a renaissance in traditional music and dance practices. Today in the 21st century, there are two strong revitalization movements - Indigenous languages and body art. As Alaska Native people shed the western neoliberal and neocolonial vestiges of the past, the use of body art and regalia are central to the indigenist postcolonial 21st century lived experience. As Indigenous scholars revisit 18th and 19th century documents written during the colonial period it is evident that major changes took place due to colonization. In particular, examining the collection of paintings, engravings and etchings of Indigenous peoples made by Russian artists such as Mikhail Tikhanov (1789-1862) illustrate the body art, clothing, and hairstyles from this period. After the 1867 Treaty of Cession, in which Russia 'sold' its Alaskan holdingd to the United States, the arrival of American Christian Missionaries and epidemic diseases and boarding schools began to further erase language(s), body art, and ceremony. The colonial portraits made by Mikhail Tikhanov provide a window into the 18th and 19th century visual images of several different Alaska Native communities. The paper incorparates critical epistemological methods that reflect themes of resilience, colonialism, and Indigenous resistance. 

Maria Shaa Tláa Williams was born in Tikahtnu - or Anchorage, Alaska and is Tlingit. She is of the Raven Moiety. She received he M.A. and PhD in Music, specializing in Ethnomusicology from UCLA. The title of her M.A. thesis is: Clan Identification and Social Structure in Tlingit Music (1989) and the titale of her dissertation is Alaska Native Music: The Spirit of Survival (1996). She taught at the Institute for American Indian Arts from 1993-1995, and at the University of New Mexico from 1999-2011 with a joint appointment in the department of Native American Studies and Music, She has been teaching at the Univeristy of Alaska Anchorage since 2011 in the dpeartments of Alaska Native Studies and Music. Her publications include The Alaska Native Reader: History, Culture & Politics (2009); a documentary film on Athabascan Basker Maker, Daisy Stridzatze Demientieff (A Beautiful Journey, 2009), and various articles on Alaska Native cultural revitalization. Research interests include contemporary Alaska Native music and dance practices; Alaska Native cultural revitalization. She worked with the King Island IRA (an Alaskan Inupiaq community) on a heritage preservation project in conjunction with the National Park Service in 2000 and 2004, in which their entire music and dance repertoire were recorded.