aneghneghqelleq | inspire
Title of article
Young Tlingit artists in the
national spotlight
By Penny Gage (Tlingit)
Lettter T
he past year of uprisings and demands for a racial reckoning across the country has been challenging for many people of color. As someone who has always embraced multiculturalism due to my own Tlingit, Japanese, and Caucasian background, it’s been difficult to see so much divisiveness in our state and country. Examining historical wrongs and inequities is necessary and overdue, but these hard conversations, organizing, and policy reforms bring with them the draining effects of (often) thankless emotional labor. That might be the fatigue and disappointment of having to explain what feel like basic, intimate truths over and over again to poorly informed friends. Or anger at seeing well-intentioned gestures from institutions that lack substantive follow through: talking the talk without walking the walk.

For our people, there is a familiar pattern of Indigenous culture being appropriated by outsiders, for example, by slapping designs from Native art onto their products. Although some may believe they are honoring or paying homage to our culture, Indigenous artists may feel used and looked over when their art is co-opted by large brands to promote an agenda or make promises that aren’t kept.

But, pause with me for a moment. It can be easy to focus on the bad actors and miss signs of progress. And when it comes to a constellation of young Alaska Native artists getting their work out into the world on their own terms, I’ve observed a trend-line moving in the right direction.

Rico Lanáat’ Worl and his sister, Crystal Worl, own the Indigenous design business Trickster Company. “Both of us are very ambitious and have high hopes for our work and what the representation of Native artwork could look like in the future.”
PHOTO courtesy of Rico Worl (Tlingit/Athabascan)
Title of article
Portrait of Rico Lanáat’ Worl
Rico Lanáat’ Worl and his sister, Crystal Worl, own the Indigenous design business Trickster Company. “Both of us are very ambitious and have high hopes for our work and what the representation of Native artwork could look like in the future.”
PHOTO courtesy of Rico Worl (Tlingit/Athabascan)
Young Tlingit artists in the national spotlight
By Penny Gage (Tlingit)
Lettter T
he past year of uprisings and demands for a racial reckoning across the country has been challenging for many people of color. As someone who has always embraced multiculturalism due to my own Tlingit, Japanese, and Caucasian background, it’s been difficult to see so much divisiveness in our state and country. Examining historical wrongs and inequities is necessary and overdue, but these hard conversations, organizing, and policy reforms bring with them the draining effects of (often) thankless emotional labor. That might be the fatigue and disappointment of having to explain what feel like basic, intimate truths over and over again to poorly informed friends. Or anger at seeing well-intentioned gestures from institutions that lack substantive follow through: talking the talk without walking the walk.

For our people, there is a familiar pattern of Indigenous culture being appropriated by outsiders, for example, by slapping designs from Native art onto their products. Although some may believe they are honoring or paying homage to our culture, Indigenous artists may feel used and looked over when their art is co-opted by large brands to promote an agenda or make promises that aren’t kept.

But, pause with me for a moment. It can be easy to focus on the bad actors and miss signs of progress. And when it comes to a constellation of young Alaska Native artists getting their work out into the world on their own terms, I’ve observed a trend-line moving in the right direction.

Let’s do a quick thought experiment. Imagine that you’re opening a bank account at a major financial institution. On your new debit card is a colorful formline design, created by a Tlingit artist. Later, you take that card out in a bookstore to buy a copy of an award-winning children’s book filled with images created by a Tlingit illustrator. The book is a gift for your sister, who lives on the other side of the state, so you search for the nearest post office online, and there, on the largest search engine in the world’s homepage, is an illustration of the late Tlingit civil rights leader Elizabeth Peratrovich. Once you arrive at the post office and select stamps for the package, you notice new ones featuring a design from a traditional Tlingit story, conceived of and created by yet another prominent young Tlingit artist. Pretty impressive, right?

Actually, all of these constituent ingredients —these national works of usable art — are already realities. And I know more are to come. Even as our country grapples with its troubled history and the work left to do, there are simultaneous embers of hope in how our Native cultural works are being appreciated, consumed, compensated, and respected by national organizations, companies, and governments. It’s up to us to stoke those embers into a warming, shining blaze.

These high-profile examples mark a shift from appropriation to true appreciation and empowerment of Indigenous artists.
Michaela Goade is the aforementioned illustrator. A resident of Sitka, her Tlingit name is Sheit.een and she is of the Kiks.ádi (Raven Frog) clan. Goade has had a whirlwind few months. She created the “Google Doodle” of Peratrovich that spent the day of December 30, 2020 on the search engine’s homepage where it was viewed by millions of visitors from across North America. The Google Doodle was accompanied by a story about the leader’s life, and interviews with Goade and one of Peratrovich’s granddaughters, betsy. A month later, a book featuring her illustrations, We are Water Protectors, won the Randolph Caldecott Medal for best children’s picture story, one of the most prestigious awards in children’s literature. The book focuses on recent Indigenous advocacy and participation in condemning the Dakota Access Pipeline, which especially affected the Standing Rock Sioux and their territory.

In November of 2020, Crystal Worl was one of five Indigenous designers chosen from across the country to design a Wells Fargo credit/debit card. Crystal lives in Juneau and is Tlingit from the Raven moiety, Sockeye Clan, from the Raven House. On her mother’s side, she is Deg Hit’an Athabascan from Fairbanks. The card’s neon pink and blue formline design evokes the theme of balance, which underpins Tlingit kinship and life.

USA Stamp
The new U.S. Postal Service Forever stamp “Raven Story,” designed by Rico Lanáat’ Worl.
Crystal’s brother is Rico Lanáat’ Worl, a Tlingit and Athabascan social designer and artist. Rico designed a U.S. Postal Service (USPS) Forever stamp entitled “Raven Story,” which was unveiled last November and will be released in 2021. The stamp depicts a moment in the traditional Tlingit story “Raven and the Box of Daylight,” when young Raven steals the stars, freeing them from his grandfather’s box. Having seen Rico’s designs on items for sale at the National Museum of the American Indian gift shop in Washington, DC, in 2018 a USPS art director approached Rico directly and asked him to create a stamp design. While the USPS has featured Northwest Coast art on stamps in the past, this is the first time it is thought that one has been illustrated by a Tlingit artist.
Together, Rico and Crystal own Trickster Company, an innovative Indigenous design company focused on Northwest Coast art, as well as themes and issues in Native culture. Part of the Worls’ work is generating broad appeal for Native art. Trickster Company’s products are often nontraditional objects rendered with brightly colored Indigenous designs and themes: basketballs, skateboards, crop tops, and playing cards, to name a few. Rico and Crystal are often in the news for public art commissions, partnerships with other businesses, and national projects they are a part of.

“We’re constantly on the verge of over-extending ourselves,” Rico admitted with pride. “Both of us are very ambitious and have high hopes for our work and what the representation of Native artwork could look like in the future.”

Woman working art
PHOTOS Courtesy of Michaela Goade (Tlingit)
Michaela Goade, who recently won the Caldecott Medal for her illustrations in the book We are Water Protectors, works in her studio in Sitka.
illustration
illustration
PHOTO Courtesy of Michaela Goade (Tlingit)
Michaela Goade, who recently won the Caldecott Medal for her illustrations in the book We are Water Protectors, works in her studio in Sitka.
Artwork for We are Water Protectors.

PHOTO COURTESY OF MICHAELA GOADE (TLINGIT)

You may have heard about some of these impressive achievements in news stories or on social media. But taken as a whole, a promising pattern begins taking shape. These high-profile examples all occurred in the span of just a couple of months. They mark a shift from appropriation to true appreciation and empowerment of Indigenous artists that is accelerating not just in Alaska, but across the country. What feels profoundly different about these recent accolades is their intended role as items for mass consumption, not as items in a fine art or history museum. Our Tlingit art is not only being shown in traditionally more formal institutions or galleries, but in everyday life: on Google, at the post office, in Barnes & Noble — places where plenty of Americans who remain unfamiliar with our role in the country are encountering it. As a Tlingit person, I grew up knowing that our art forms are some of the most beautiful and refined in the world; our artists, some of the most innovative. What feels new is that places and people far beyond Alaska are now also seeing that, wanting it, and paying for it.

All three of these artists emphasize that starting with local partners was key to their expansion to a national audience. Goade did a lot of graphic design early on in her career, but wanted “more art in my life, all the time.” Sealaska Heritage Institute’s Baby Raven Reads program, which promotes early-literacy, language development, and school readiness for Native children, helped catapult Goade toward more work in children’s book illustration. One of them was Salmon Boy, which she illustrated, and which won an American Indian Youth Literature Best Picture Book Award in 2018. Goade describes that award as the “first domino that got me into this competitive, national industry.”

While she has a book agent, Google proactively reached out to Goade “out of the blue” last summer to do the Peratrovich Google Doodle. She says Google was looking for Tlingit illustrators and had seen her work with picture books. The company didn’t give her much direction; she was able to let her creativity shine through with watercolor. But it was no small feat. Goade painted separate color layers and textures one by one — the water and sky, fabric of Peratrovich’s shirt, her skin color, etc. — then scanned all of those pieces and collaged them together digitally. The Caldecott award and the Google Doodle were announced just one month apart. “It has been a wonderful and intense month,” Goade reflected at the time.

Michaela Goade smiling for photo
Michaela Goade.
PHOTO Courtesy of Michaela Goade (Tlingit)
“It’s hard to mesh capitalistic culture with Indigenous culture. How do you do good for the community and also grow your career and pay your bills?”
— Michaela Goade
Being asked to create art for nationwide distribution is no small thing. These three artists all recognized the responsibility of representation required in what they create, who they create it with, and how it is ultimately used.

Though Crystal has been a Wells Fargo customer for years, she took seriously her responsibility to vet the debit card design opportunity just like she would any other project.

“At first, I wasn’t 100 percent on board,” she recalled. “I wanted to do research to find out if I was doing the right thing. Wells Fargo has conflicting histories with Indigenous peoples. I looked at ‘what are they doing now?’ ‘who are they hiring now?’”

She was happy to see they had made progress on several fronts, including dedicating $50 million in recent years to tribal advocacy and community outreach in Native communities. Crystal noted that for Indigenous artists there is often a lot of research required. “I’m not going to blindly walk into an agreement,” she said. “I’ll investigate whether it aligns with my goals, beliefs, ethics, and morals.”

Goade shares those feelings. When she considers illustrating a book, she begins by reading the manuscript and thinking a lot before responding. And not just because of the time required: she can work on a book for two years sometimes. Goade reads up on history and becomes knowledgeable on the subject she’s illustrating, making sure she’s not doing harm. Beyond the world of book publishing, she notes that the ethical calculations get even more complicated, particularly working with large for-profit corporations.

Crystal Worl in the snow
Crystal Worl. PHOTO COURTESY OF CRYSTAL WORL.
“I’m not going to blindly walk into an agreement. I’ll investigate whether it aligns with my goals, beliefs, ethics, and morals.”
— Crystal Worl
“It’s hard to mesh capitalistic culture with Indigenous culture,” Goade said. “How do you do good for the community and also grow your career and pay your bills?”

Along with elevating Indigenous art, making longer term and monetary commitments to communities of color is important. As an effort toward this, the Peratrovich Google Doodle was announced alongside a $1.25 million donation that Google.org made to the National Congress of American Indians, the oldest and most representative American Indian and Alaska Native organization serving tribal governments and communities. The funding provided direct cash grants and business training to hundreds of Indigenous-owned small businesses in the U.S. that have been impacted by COVID-19. While $1.25 million is a fraction of Google’s annual profits, it’s a start.

The Black Lives Matter movement and uprising against racial injustice over the last year has demanded that many large companies, governments, and national organizations examine their relationships to creators of color. Goade sees that happening in the publishing industry too, which has traditionally been very white. She’s seen strides in recent years in the industry’s work on inclusivity and diversity, which she hopes continues to grow.

“I’m fortunate to enter the industry now,” she said. “It was different five or 10 years ago. You weren’t seeing this energy to lift up diverse voices…it was common to get publisher pushback, like ‘these stories won’t sell’ or ‘we don’t have a market for this, we’ve already published a Native book.’”

Goade hopes the Caldecott recognition will show publishers that these stories have an audience and need to be elevated.

“There’s a national trend for supporting stories from people of color and letting people from those communities tell them,” Rico said. He points out the release of the 2018 movie Black Panther as a watershed moment. The film was created and largely controlled by Black people, and showcased an inspirational African utopia in the fictional nation of Wakanda. The movie was not only an artistic triumph, but it was a smashing blockbuster success that proved there was an audience hungry for compelling Black cinema. Subsequently, there have been more successes in creators of color telling stories on their own terms, and that art gaining traction in popular culture.

Closer to home, the PBS Kids show Molly of Denali, which features an Alaska Native as its main character, has engaged significantly with Native culture bearers, Elders, writers, and artists along its development, paving the way for new depictions of Native people on screen.

Rico noted, “People and places who are making decisions to feature these stories [from communities of color] are realizing it’s a lot easier to do than previously thought — they go to a community and ask how they want to be represented. It’s exciting.

“At this point in time, any appropriation or art theft is just lazy business and the weakest demonstration of creativity,” Rico continued. “BIPOC [Black, Indigenous and Peoples of Color] artists are putting themselves out there. We’re on Instagram and Facebook, and we’re hustling. We’re available to work with.”

“It’s becoming a trend to not culturally appropriate, and instead work with Indigenous and Black artists to do designs and public art,” Crystal noted. She points out that people across the world seek out Native art because of the powerful stories and designs they’re encoded with.

“[Our art] is visually stunning and beautiful, and the rest of the world values those things,” she stated. “But there are values in our art that are also shared. When we’re collecting materials for weaving a blanket or carving a totem pole, we’re making sure we’re leaving enough for the next generation; being aware of what we keep and take…those are important to be shared with the world.”

When asked what advice she has for other Indigenous artists who aspire to national work, Crystal offered this: “Do your research — take the time to look into what it takes. Be patient with others who haven’t worked with artists before; it’s a learning curve for them, too. And value your time. You spend years mastering a technique; don’t undervalue yourself.”

Penny Gage (Tlingit) has a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and a Master of Science in Foreign Service from Georgetown University.