Latest / Doug Has Questions / Episode 29: Harriet Brouillette; From Boarding Schools To Tribal Leadership In Southeast Alaska

Transcript

Episode 29: Harriet Brouillette; From Boarding Schools To Tribal Leadership In Southeast Alaska · Doug Has Questions

• 0:00
  Welcome to this episode of Doug Has Questions.
• 0:04
  Today, my guest is Lifelong Haynes resident and newly minted Alaska Tribal Administrator of the Year, Harriet Brulette.
• 0:12
  Welcome, Harriet.
• 0:13
  Thank you.
• 0:14
  Thanks for joining us to share your family story here in Haynes.
• 0:17
  Right.
• 0:18
  I'm happy to be here.
• 0:19
  Happy to share.
• 0:20
  Awesome.
• 0:21
  So let's let's go back pre-Harriot.
• 0:24
  Mom and Dad.
• 0:25
  Mom and Dad.
• 0:27
  What what what can you tell us about mom and dad?
• 0:30
  Um, I think that story probably starts with my dad.
• 0:33
  Um his family's been here since time immemorial.
• 0:38
  So my grandparents and great-grandparents and so on are buried here mostly at Yendisteki.
• 0:45
  And um my dad was born in the Fort Hospital.
• 0:55
  And um I should probably back up even more.
• 1:03
  Back up as far as you want.
• 1:04
  Okay.
• 1:05
  Well we we have we have plenty of memory on these cards.
• 1:08
  And they're ever a lot of people give me a bad time that these are too long.
• 1:11
  I I don't care what they say, it's however long it takes to tell your story.
• 1:15
  Yeah, yeah, Lee High Miller is telling me he took forever to tell the story, but that's that's Lee.
• 1:21
  But my um my roulette grandfather, um, we can trace his bloodline um back to Avignon in France, and he has um Joan of Arc in his family tree.
• 1:37
  Dang.
• 1:38
  I know.
• 1:39
  Luckily, um we have a cousin who um is retired and she she did all of this work, so she's got mounds and mounds of information about our family, and I haven't even scratched the surface.
• 1:52
  But I do know that um my Brulette um family landed on the east coast of the US or of Canada in the um 1700s, and they when the French and Indian Wars started, they moved down south, and a lot of our family went down to Louisiana.
• 2:15
  And there's a um there's a little township there called Brulet.
• 2:19
  Really?
• 2:20
  Yeah, and I went to visit it two years ago.
• 2:23
  It's um what part of Louisiana?
• 2:27
  Um it is right outside of Baton Rouge.
• 2:31
  Okay.
• 2:31
  So you kind of go west from Baton Rouge and find it.
• 2:36
  It's just a s it's just a sign, basically.
• 2:39
  There um is a gas station and grocery store there.
• 2:45
  Okay.
• 2:46
  And a young man who um does a lot of hunting.
• 2:53
  And he makes um he makes his own um sausage and processes meat and all, you know, that kind of stuff.
• 3:03
  And he was so much fun though when he found out what my last name was.
• 3:06
  I bet.
• 3:07
  Yeah, so every time anyone came in the store, he'd say, brulette.
• 3:14
  Yeah.
• 3:16
  Are there did you ask, are there any other are there brulettes still in the area?
• 3:19
  Yeah, yeah, there were, but we weren't there for very long.
• 3:22
  We were um I was there for work actually.
• 3:26
  And it so it just kind of worked out that um I was, you know, I like to do a little bit of research on where I'm going.
• 3:33
  And I was looking at the map and it's like, hey.
• 3:36
  That name looks familiar.
• 3:38
  Yeah.
• 3:39
  So there's a there is an old school um a park and a few other things that have our name on them, and I just kind of thought, well, I'll just do a quick drive-through and see what I can see.
• 3:53
  It was nice.
• 3:54
  It was interesting and fun, but yeah.
• 3:56
  Well it's a nice connection to back to past generations.
• 4:00
  Yeah, yeah.
• 4:01
  So but my grandfather went um west to um the area around Idaho instead of south with everyone else.
• 4:12
  And um my great-grandfather, Maximilian, his name is Maximilian, and his wife was named Evangeline, and they had uh a whole bunch of boys, I can't remember, like five or six boys and one girl.
• 4:31
  And my grandfather was the youngest, and because he was the youngest, he was supposed to enter um the monastery, because it was a Catholic family.
• 4:41
  Okay.
• 4:42
  And his brother told him, um, you don't want to do that.
• 4:48
  He's he said he's he agreed he didn't want to do it.
• 4:51
  So the way that my uncle told me is that they gave him a fast horse and sent him west, and he ended up in um coming up to Alaska as a packer for Jack Dalton.
• 5:04
  Seriously?
• 5:05
  Yeah.
• 5:06
  Dang.
• 5:07
  So um when he arrived here.
• 5:10
  So instead of the monastery, he's packing for Jack Dalton.
• 5:14
  That's it's quite a difference in vocations, I would say.
• 5:17
  Not really, because they um they the great my great-grandfather um was a horse trader.
• 5:24
  Okay.
• 5:25
  So um he traded horses back and forth across the border between Idaho and um Canada.
• 5:32
  Um he had a contract for um oh for carriage or stagecoach contract.
• 5:42
  Yep.
• 5:42
  Um he was supplying the horses for the stagecoach?
• 5:46
  Mm-hmm.
• 5:47
  Yeah, and if you look up Maximilian on the internet, um he's from oh gosh, my dad would just shoot me if he knew I couldn't remember this.
• 5:57
  Um really tiny town in Idaho.
• 6:03
  I'll shout it out if I remember it.
• 6:05
  Okay.
• 6:05
  But um he was very famous for his horses.
• 6:09
  So every year they'd have this horse race around this um somewhere in Idaho.
• 6:15
  And he was like the the dude who would bring the fast horses.
• 6:19
  He was he was the guy to beat, huh?
• 6:21
  Yeah, so that was um that was kind of where the whole horse thing came in our family.
• 6:27
  I was gonna say, you you came by your love of horses, honestly, was passed down in the genes.
• 6:32
  Yeah, yes, my grandmother always told me that too.
• 6:34
  It's in your genes.
• 6:35
  It's in your jeans.
• 6:36
  Yeah, so my dad, when he showed my grandfather, when he showed up here, met my grandmother Mary, and my grandmother Mary, um, her mother had sent her my grandmother and her brother to um Chamawa school in in Oh, down in Oregon.
• 6:58
  In Oregon, right.
• 6:59
  When she was five.
• 7:00
  They sent that.
• 7:01
  That's that school's been along around that long?
• 7:03
  Mm-hmm.
• 7:04
  It was one of the first It was one of the first ones that they were dang.
• 7:08
  I did not know that.
• 7:10
  Yeah, so she was in Oregon the majority of her um childhood until she was eighteen and graduated, and then she could come home.
• 7:22
  So I'm sure that Haynes was culture shock to her going from Portland to Haynes, Alaska.
• 7:30
  Yeah, and do you know how what age she was when they sent her to the school?
• 7:35
  Five.
• 7:37
  So she was she was gone for 13 years.
• 7:40
  Seriously.
• 7:42
  Yeah.
• 7:43
  Because now you look at we look at boarding schools now and they'll go for the semester, but I mean the travel obviously back then was much different than it is today.
• 7:50
  Yeah.
• 7:50
  But from five till eighteen, right?
• 7:53
  They're at a boarding school.
• 7:55
  And was this because you and I we'll we'll get this part later on this when we're talking the street signs and stuff in Haynes about the culture being they're they're taught to forget their native heritage or native culture.
• 8:08
  Was that something that she went through at school?
• 8:10
  Yes.
• 8:10
  So that 13 years, she was like no click at culture.
• 8:14
  Right.
• 8:14
  She um she came home and my dad said she had no idea how to cook a fish or to hunt or garden or any of those things.
• 8:27
  They um they sent her back at my my grandmother and grandfather had a grocery store here, the henchman's store.
• 8:35
  So they had a little bit of money and they could send her money for clothes and you know things like that.
• 8:40
  So she came back and uh my dad said that she came back as a high stepper, which means you know, she dressed really nice.
• 8:46
  She had the cute little leather gloves and the big, you know, the big wool-collar um jackets, and we still have some of her luggage in the three-mile house.
• 8:57
  Really?
• 8:57
  Yeah.
• 8:58
  It was yeah, so I imagine that when she stepped off the ship it was probably major culture shock.
• 9:06
  Yeah.
• 9:08
  But she somehow met my um grandfather and they married and they had two boys.
• 9:18
  And then my grandfather went um to Europe during the First World War and he was gone for a few years.
• 9:28
  And um grandmother said that um she was she was basically by herself with two little boys.
• 9:36
  Yeah.
• 9:36
  And she wasn't the only person in the world.
• 9:39
  It happened a lot during those years.
• 9:41
  Mm-hmm.
• 9:42
  Yeah, so um she was by herself for quite a while.
• 9:50
  I can't even imagine, you know, two little boys and by yourself.
• 9:54
  And when he finally came home, um my Uncle Jim said that they didn't know who he was.
• 10:03
  You know, they didn't have a memory of who he was, so they ran into the um living room and hid underneath the furniture because they were scared.
• 10:12
  They had never, you know, this man in their house.
• 10:14
  They had no idea.
• 10:16
  Yeah, you you think about the as you're telling that, the thing that strikes me about that compared to where we are now, there might have been occasional letters coming home, but just that now they go on deployment for a certain number of months, come home, might go back on another deployment.
• 10:32
  But they're they were they were over there until they till everything was over, unless they had a catastrophic injury, something like that.
• 10:41
  And yeah, for years and very I no FaceTime, no phone calls.
• 10:47
  So I you can totally see how those boys would have no, depending on how old they were when he left.
• 10:53
  Right.
• 10:54
  They yeah, they have no recollection of that.
• 10:56
  Right, they didn't, yeah, didn't know who he was.
• 11:00
  Um so my dad was the third child.
• 11:03
  Okay.
• 11:04
  So my grandparents were a little older when he was born.
• 11:07
  He was kind of late in life baby after the war, baby.
• 11:10
  Post-war baby.
• 11:11
  Yes.
• 11:12
  And he was spoiled rotten, according to my uncle.
• 11:16
  Um he was eleven years younger than his next brother.
• 11:21
  Okay.
• 11:22
  So there's Yeah, there's a significant gap there.
• 11:25
  Yeah.
• 11:26
  Yeah.
• 11:26
  So um he um basically just took care of his parents um because they were aging by then.
• 11:39
  And my grandfather had um he had rheumatoid arthritis, and he had very serious rheumatoid arthritis, so he couldn't move.
• 11:48
  And he I think he was in his forties when maybe he was a bit better than that.
• 11:55
  Trying to make the math all work out.
• 11:58
  But um my dad had a little tiny fishing boat, and he took my parents grandparents to Tanekee because he heard that soaking him in the mineral water would relieve his pain.
• 12:12
  Okay.
• 12:13
  Yeah.
• 12:14
  So um Oli Tog, who lives here now, his um father told me that his first um memory of dad in Tannekey was seeing this young teenager carrying his father.
• 12:26
  You know, he had to carry Oh, to the springs.
• 12:28
  Yeah, and then he would just soak him in the spring and holding that is dedication for a teenager to go from Haynes to Tannekey at with the travel, you know, with a small fishing boat.
• 12:45
  Yeah, I imagine it was probably a couple knots an hour chugging along.
• 12:51
  Yeah.
• 12:52
  Yeah.
• 12:53
  That totally fits what I knew of your dad from the time that I knew him.
• 12:56
  I can I can totally see him doing that.
• 12:57
  Yeah, gentle gentle soul for sure.
• 13:00
  Yep.
• 13:01
  Right.
• 13:01
  And just um he w was there for a summer and then um grandfather um ended up declining and they took him to Juneau to the hospital of St.
• 13:16
  Anne what was it, St.
• 13:17
  Anne's?
• 13:18
  It was St.
• 13:18
  Anne's hospital.
• 13:19
  St.
• 13:19
  An sound, yeah.
• 13:21
  And he passed away in Juneau, and they couldn't afford to bring him home.
• 13:26
  So they um buried him in Juneau.
• 13:30
  Which is it makes it kind of difficult for you know, for us to buried by himself in Juneau, and it seems not right.
• 13:41
  But um Can we bring him back?
• 13:45
  Probably.
• 13:46
  Uh this is another story that uh my so my grandmother, um, the grandmother that the henchman grandmother, Louise Hinchman, um when uh my I don't know that my father had any memory, he might have been around four, but she was sent to the sanitarium in Oregon.
• 14:09
  It was called Morningside.
• 14:12
  So there are there are a lot of stories about Morningside now because that's where the um folks from Alaska were sent if they had chronic illness.
• 14:25
  And they called it a sanitarium back then, but um yeah, they sent her there when um my dad was very, very young, and she was there for uh quite a few years.
• 14:38
  Um and I'm thinking it was thirteen years, which is ironic, but um she was buried there, she never did get to come back home, and my cousin, um who is an anthropologist, found her, found her her grave.
• 15:03
  Really?
• 15:04
  And he had her repatriated and brought her home.
• 15:07
  So now she is out at Yinducki.
• 15:11
  So we did that um gosh, was that before COVID?
• 15:18
  You said it was before COVID.
• 15:19
  Before COVID.
• 15:21
  Yeah, my first granddaughter was just a toddler.
• 15:25
  That's how I tell time now.
• 15:27
  Yeah, so um he um was determined to to bring her home, so he did.
• 15:36
  Good.
• 15:36
  Very, very grateful that he did.
• 15:38
  Yeah.
• 15:39
  Yeah, back with the rest of the family.
• 15:41
  Mm-hmm.
• 15:42
  Yendistu.
• 15:43
  Yeah.
• 15:44
  So I think that would be cool if we if there was a way to get your grandpa back from Juno.
• 15:48
  I think that would be too.
• 15:50
  Yeah, um I'll honestly, my grandfather brew that was prejudice.
• 15:57
  Oh, really?
• 15:57
  So Yendistu would not be the place for him.
• 16:01
  No, his spirit would be kicked out.
• 16:05
  There's closer places than Yendestucky that would be more suitable than right.
• 16:09
  Yeah, yeah, it's kind of it's interesting.
• 16:15
  Now that his granddaughter is the tribal administrator for a native corporation.
• 16:23
  I always wonder.
• 16:24
  I wonder about that.
• 16:26
  Um, yeah, dad told me some stories of um some of the things that his dad did, and I you know, I just think, oh my gosh, how did my grandmother manage that?
• 16:39
  I know she was um she was very um white skinned, so she um back then if you could pass for white, you did.
• 16:48
  Okay.
• 16:49
  So um she makes sense.
• 16:51
  Yeah.
• 16:51
  Yes.
• 16:52
  Um even when my dad was born on his birth certificate, and when it says where it says race, it says white.
• 16:59
  Really?
• 17:00
  Yeah, they thought they were doing my do them a favor.
• 17:02
  Yeah, they were doing my favor.
• 17:04
  Yeah.
• 17:05
  Yeah.
• 17:06
  Yeah, I I um I s I don't I don't remember why I was looking through his stuff, but I pulled out his birth certificate and it said white on it, and I was like, Dad, you lied to me.
• 17:19
  What's going on?
• 17:20
  So oh he just the whole life is a lie.
• 17:25
  That was about how I was feeling too.
• 17:27
  And he, you know, he was just really casual, like, oh, you know, oh, they thought they were doing my parents a favor.
• 17:34
  Yeah.
• 17:36
  And and at the time they probably were.
• 17:37
  Yeah.
• 17:38
  Yeah.
• 17:39
  Yeah.
• 17:40
  Yeah.
• 17:40
  So yeah, my grandfather wasn't exactly popular with the native crowd.
• 17:46
  Yeah.
• 17:48
  And he didn't care.
• 17:50
  I I know people like your I've not having met your grandfather, but how you're describing it right now, I know people that are probably pretty similar to him, and you're right, they usually don't care.
• 18:01
  Yeah.
• 18:02
  Yeah, he um I know that when my um when I was growing up, my dad did not have a a cruel word to say about him.
• 18:13
  And it wasn't until um, I think the last couple of years of dad's life that he would he finally would say, um, this happened, you know, just just because he thought we needed to know so we weren't living in ignorant bliss about our grandfather.
• 18:33
  Yeah.
• 18:34
  And he was never um cruel to his wife, which was odd because she was obviously native, and his mother-in-law.
• 18:44
  Isn't that interesting that a person can have those beliefs, but they can still love somebody that if that that's always fascinated me when you you look back at uh you know colonial United States, where you in the South you had these slave owners that were having kids with the slaves and the way that they would treat the slaves, and yeah, it's uh the just the how they compartmentalize that in their mind has always been fascinating to me.
• 19:15
  How they I don't it'd be nice to ask them how how do you reconcile this?
• 19:19
  Right.
• 19:21
  Right, yeah.
• 19:22
  I yeah.
• 19:25
  I to treat somebody so poorly in one that has that's the exact pretty the exact same racial makeup, treat them so poorly because they're this person, but another person exactly the same, love them and cherish them and create a family with them, and just that I I don't understand that.
• 19:45
  Yeah, I I don't either.
• 19:46
  I think very fascinating to me.
• 19:49
  Dad told us about the time that they did you know, baseball was a big deal around here, and his dad was a pitcher, and um Skondu was watching the game, and he said um his dad turned around and threw the ball really hard and it hit Skondu.
• 20:06
  And I just it was devastating for me to hear that.
• 20:10
  Like because my great-great uncle is somebody I cherish.
• 20:15
  Yeah.
• 20:16
  And it made my made my dad cry, which made me cry, and you know, we were all like, ha ha, you know, oh gosh, grandpa's jerk.
• 20:25
  But um, yeah, dad just said that's just uh he asked why.
• 20:31
  Um why would you, you know, why would you do that?
• 20:33
  And he said, Well, I did it because um he was putting a hex on me.
• 20:38
  Yeah, and I I I said, Do you think he really believed that he was being hexed?
• 20:43
  And or were his pitches was he just not on with his pitching?
• 20:48
  No, he said he he said that um the from what I understand, he just um spun around and threw the ball at him.
• 20:58
  Yeah, and it um I you know I asked my dad like what you know, like why?
• 21:08
  And he just said because he was a racist and that was his excuse.
• 21:14
  Yeah, that was exc you'll always find an excuse for your behavior.
• 21:17
  Mm-hmm.
• 21:18
  Yeah.
• 21:18
  Yeah, and then he married the man's niece.
• 21:24
  Yeah, I don't get you know, it's just craziness.
• 21:28
  Yep.
• 21:29
  But my moving on though, my dad um went to or he was in the Second World War.
• 21:37
  And he we always thought, oh he's such a hero, you know, tall, dark, and handsome hero.
• 21:43
  He had to be a war hero too.
• 21:45
  And we were all sitting around the table, we were probably junior high ish, and asked finally, Well, what do you tell us about your experience, Dad?
• 21:52
  And he so he told us about um, you know, getting not being sure where he was going and at first he thought he was going to be sent north.
• 22:01
  Um and they decided that he would go south, and he didn't know that.
• 22:07
  He just said he was on this train um and it just kept getting warmer, and then he realized he was heading south instead of north.
• 22:15
  Um he and he ended up in Panama.
• 22:19
  Really?
• 22:20
  So yeah, so um he ended up and and I um of course he's gonna kick me again because I cannot remember the name of the camp or what locked it.
• 22:32
  Because he would always tell me what lock he was at.
• 22:35
  And he and his friend from um Huna, um his last name was Greenwall.
• 22:41
  We used to visit him in Washington.
• 22:44
  But he and Greenwall and Dad um took a rowboat and went through the locks.
• 22:52
  Really?
• 22:52
  Yeah, just to just for something like something to do.
• 22:55
  Yeah.
• 22:56
  So they were down there guarding the locks during the war.
• 22:59
  Yeah, so um I was like, oh, that sounds so cool.
• 23:03
  And he's yeah, they found out I was from Alaska and I knew how to fish, so they put me in charge of a fishing boat and I would just take the officers out fishing.
• 23:12
  Nice.
• 23:13
  I know, but there's a there goes the whole fantasy that we had about our hero dad, you know.
• 23:19
  Well not not everybody that is a hero is facing bullets.
• 23:25
  There's many ways to support the effort that don't involve that.
• 23:29
  Right, that's true.
• 23:30
  And if he had been sent over there, the outcome might have been different.
• 23:35
  You're right.
• 23:36
  I think it's more that not necessarily what he did during the war, but the fact that he survived and came home.
• 23:41
  Right.
• 23:42
  Very grateful for that.
• 23:43
  Yep.
• 23:44
  And though like any any of our soldiers from whatever conflict that come home, uh we're always extremely lucky to have all of them.
• 23:50
  I agree.
• 23:52
  Yeah, and I think there were that um having him in Panama um shielded him from a lot of other you know, other things that could have it could have um changed his psyche in some way or another.
• 24:07
  Absolutely.
• 24:08
  Yeah, instead he came home talking about this horse that he befriended that kept biting him, and the raccoon that he'd give sugar cookies and they'd he'd washed the cookies and they'd all dissolve.
• 24:19
  So all the you know, all the story that's wait, he befriended a horse and the horse kept biting him?
• 24:23
  Yeah.
• 24:24
  I we have pictures of him standing with his horse.
• 24:26
  With the horse?
• 24:26
  Yeah.
• 24:27
  Yeah, and on the Sounds like it might have been a one-way friendship here.
• 24:31
  Probably.
• 24:31
  But he kept trying.
• 24:36
  And yet he still let you have horses later on.
• 24:39
  Yeah.
• 24:39
  Yeah, that was pretty good.
• 24:40
  I didn't have a choice.
• 24:41
  You didn't have a choice?
• 24:42
  No, I got my first horse when I was five.
• 24:44
  And it just um he came home from I don't know where he was.
• 24:49
  It was summer, so he was probably at the the boat harbor.
• 24:52
  Uh-huh.
• 24:53
  And um he said I could hear him and my mother in the kitchen and not my sisters and I were outside, and he was saying, Well, I guess I bought a horse.
• 25:04
  I guess I bought a horse.
• 25:07
  So we had to go up to Champagne to pick it up.
• 25:10
  And there, you know, back then we'd we didn't have truck or anything.
• 25:13
  That was a journey to get to Champagne.
• 25:15
  Yeah, on an unpaved road.
• 25:18
  And my dad's um fifty-something Chevy, a big boat of a car, you know, the big bubble um fenders and everything.
• 25:26
  And then he the only trailer he could find was somebody's old wood trailer.
• 25:31
  Okay.
• 25:31
  So he put sides on it and he put a um a pole on the back of his sedan and put the horse in the back of the sedan, and he kept driving it around the field just to see if he could make it home with in the back of that.
• 25:46
  In the back of that trailer.
• 25:49
  And they um Alec Van Biber was the man who owned the um champagne, the ranch there.
• 25:56
  Yeah.
• 25:56
  And he's like, no, we're just gonna drive down there.
• 26:00
  We'll they threw they threw two extra horses in along with what was supposed to be my brother's horse.
• 26:10
  And um drove down to to Haynes, and they had um cow hands with them, or horse hands, whatever they are.
• 26:20
  And they came down for the weekend and they built us a corral in like a day, cleaned out our barn, and poof.
• 26:30
  Poof, horses.
• 26:31
  Yeah.
• 26:31
  We had so he went up for one, he came back with three?
• 26:34
  Mm-hmm.
• 26:35
  Well what was your mom thinking about that?
• 26:37
  She's like, what happened to my I might have bought a horse?
• 26:40
  I don't I think that she was um see my mom's from cake.
• 26:44
  Okay.
• 26:45
  Never seen a horse.
• 26:46
  Never seen a horse.
• 26:46
  No, so what the heck did I get into?
• 26:49
  She was interested.
• 26:51
  You know, she was like, Well, let's see what these horse things so with your dad growing up in Haynes and your mom from Cake, how did they meet?
• 27:00
  Well, when my dad got back from the from the war, Panama, um he uh took advantage of the GI Bill and he went to St.
• 27:08
  Martin's College in um in Lacey, Washington, and came back to teach in um Haynes.
• 27:19
  And he taught when um Mr.
• 27:25
  John was the um principal.
• 27:28
  Bill John.
• 27:29
  Yeah, yeah.
• 27:30
  So um And my dad told me a lot of stories about hunting with Bill John.
• 27:34
  Yeah.
• 27:35
  Well he gave my dad his first teaching job.
• 27:38
  And then dad decided that he wanted to work for um BIA, and they had all these BIA schools around Alaska.
• 27:48
  So um one of the schools that he went to, um the first one he went to was Cake.
• 27:54
  Okay.
• 27:55
  And that and he um he said that um there really wasn't a way to get a vehicle there or anything or any sort of transportation.
• 28:05
  So he had a um Harley, an old, old Harley.
• 28:10
  And it it was like a oh, it was like a real or maybe it wasn't Harley, it was a German.
• 28:18
  I think maybe it was a German bike.
• 28:21
  Not sure.
• 28:22
  But all I know is that it was really noisy because there are people in Cake who still remember it.
• 28:29
  So he he said he got off um the ferry in Petersburg on his way to Cake.
• 28:38
  Took his his um motorcycle for a a rip from the ferry into town, and he said all the kids were out running after the ferry after the bike and had to take a look at that cool bike.
• 28:52
  So he got to Cake and um my mother was working at the grocery store there, and she um I think she was in her early twenties, and she was on her way to that fall, or she um it wasn't that fall, it must have been the following year, she was on her way to nursing school, and she met my dad, and um she met him because my oldest brother, Robert, was living with dad then, and he would go to the store and ask if he could put a popsicle on the charge card.
• 29:34
  So my mom just let him, she's like, he was so cute, I couldn't say no.
• 29:38
  So he would come in and give her the eyebrow.
• 29:42
  Ask it to charge a popsicle.
• 29:45
  So um dad said that he got this bill, and it was a bunch of charges for popsicles.
• 29:54
  So he said he went marching down to that grocery store with that bill, and mom was there, and it was like you know.
• 30:05
  He was intent on chewing somebody out, but it's changed topic when you saw your mom.
• 30:10
  Yes.
• 30:11
  Um yeah, they saw they started dating, and it was um that was cake in the 1960s, so I asked him, um, so what did you do on a date?
• 30:21
  What I mean, what did you do?
• 30:23
  He said that he took her on picnics on and she rode the hot rod bike.
• 30:29
  Okay.
• 30:30
  And they would go out to the end of the the road, was probably not very far back in those days.
• 30:38
  But yeah, he said he he knew how to cook one thing and it was a steak.
• 30:43
  And he just swept her off her feet with that one one meal.
• 30:50
  Yeah.
• 30:51
  Yeah, and then I thought um I think it was more than the steak.
• 30:55
  I it was probably his personality as well.
• 30:57
  Yeah.
• 30:58
  It's hard not to like your dad.
• 30:59
  I'm sure it was, but you know, he's kind of funny.
• 31:03
  He was trying to say he charmed her with his cooking and I know better.
• 31:09
  Well mom would have to when mom was traveling and dad had to look after us, we all were just like, ah, we're all gonna die.
• 31:18
  Because he would um he would make us pancakes in the morning and always burned them.
• 31:24
  And then he came home and um he's like, Well, what should we have for dinner?
• 31:28
  And we're like, and um the one memory I have is he was like, Well, you you all like mac and cheese.
• 31:36
  And we're like so he um he made some macaroni and he cubed up cheese and threw it in there, and that was our mac and cheese.
• 31:51
  My dad's go-to when my mom would travel for Sarah and I it was chili, hot dogs, eggs, and fried potatoes.
• 31:58
  Oh, yeah.
• 31:59
  That was we could pretty much count on that.
• 32:03
  Most nights, if not all nights, while my mom was gone.
• 32:06
  Yeah, that was it it was, but that was that was we knew what Sarah and I knew what we were getting when mom left.
• 32:13
  Oh, you didn't get spam?
• 32:15
  We got spam.
• 32:16
  Occasionally we got spam.
• 32:17
  Yeah, there was some fried fried spam.
• 32:20
  So you could do fried spam with fried potatoes and boom, dinner.
• 32:24
  Yeah.
• 32:24
  And couldn't cry.
• 32:26
  Ours, I think, was usually the fried spam and eggs.
• 32:29
  I don't know if we did the potatoes with it, but uh yeah, a little fried spam in there.
• 32:33
  Man, I haven't had spam for forever.
• 32:37
  I might have to I might uh I might have to pop open a can here now that we're talking about re relive those childhood memories of spam.
• 32:47
  Um spam spam is plant plentiful in Hawaii.
• 32:51
  Yes.
• 32:52
  Well yeah, you can get some spam there.
• 32:55
  So which reminds me, my dad or my mom, my mom's grandfather was from Hawaii, and he ended up in Alaska on a a whaling ship, and his last name then was Kalele.
• 33:10
  And somehow he ended up at Sheldon Jackson's College, and they changed his name to Jackson, so I I don't know.
• 33:23
  I don't some of that story uh we're missing big big pieces of it, but big chunk, but there's a lot of really cool spots in there, Harriet.
• 33:34
  Joan of Arc, yeah, town named after your family in Louisiana, your dad's in Panama, you've got uh relatives that were working for Jack London, now they're on whaling ships out of Hawaii.
• 33:45
  There's like a movie in this, Harriet.
• 33:48
  This is an amazing backstory.
• 33:51
  We haven't even gotten to you yet.
• 33:53
  Yeah, you know what?
• 33:54
  I thought everyone's life was like mine.
• 33:56
  Um yeah, just so we found out that our grandfather was from the east side of um Oahu.
• 34:05
  And that's kind of where all of I um I learned um that that's where a lot of the local people live, and it's where it's kind of rough and they don't allow or they don't like outsiders there.
• 34:18
  So I was um I I kind of want to go, but I kind of don't, you know.
• 34:26
  Have you ever when you guys have done those exchanges where they've had the Hawaiian canoes and stuff, have you talked to them about your history?
• 34:34
  Yeah.
• 34:35
  Have they filled you in kind of on maybe where your family would have been from in Hawaii?
• 34:39
  Yeah, yes, yes.
• 34:40
  You already have an inn.
• 34:42
  So we have um uh well one of the captains, because James and Ted were both on the that boat, um one of the captains told us that that he thought that we should be sending our grandkids to, or my grandkids, to um the school in Hawaii, and that we would just have to do a DNA test and you know, and then we could um prove that we have Polynesian blood and they would be able to get into the school.
• 35:10
  But I think that's a dream.
• 35:14
  The kids are getting a lot older now.
• 35:17
  They were there um when they were little before they started school, Ted and um Megan spent a lot of time in Hawaii.
• 35:26
  They had to come home though when the kids were old enough to start school.
• 35:29
  Yeah.
• 35:31
  Yeah.
• 35:33
  The good old days.
• 35:34
  Good old days, yes.
• 35:36
  Yeah.
• 35:36
  So when did your dad and mom come back to Haynes?
• 35:40
  How long were how long were they in cake?
• 35:42
  Or how long was your dad in cake and then did he marry your mom fairly quickly and then come back?
• 35:47
  Fairly quickly, yes.
• 35:49
  They came back um for the summers because dad was still fishing.
• 35:54
  And um I think it was a when I think about my mom and I think about her moving here, um, as a native woman, the adjustment for her had to be tough.
• 36:08
  You know, that um she said that um she she thought for sure that she would just slide right into the native community, she'd join the ANS and you know, just life goes on, but it didn't work out that way.
• 36:24
  She said that um some of the ladies were upset that she married my dad.
• 36:30
  Yeah, yeah.
• 36:32
  And they kind of iced her out.
• 36:34
  So she's like, Well, she went home and she was really upset and told dad that um they were not very kind to her.
• 36:44
  And his solution was, Well, let's go join the American Legion.
• 36:49
  So they did.
• 36:51
  Because they had to do some, you know, they had to volunteer somewhere.
• 36:54
  So that's that's what they did is they they ended up um playing a big part in the local American Legion.
• 37:02
  So I think it kind of in a way it worked out.
• 37:05
  She found her people.
• 37:07
  Mm-hmm.
• 37:08
  And that's where they both wanted their services to be held when they passed.
• 37:15
  Yeah.
• 37:17
  Now were you and your siblings were your parents living in Hanes when you guys were born, or were some of you guys in Cake and some in Haynes?
• 37:23
  Um, good question.
• 37:25
  So after um after Cake, my parents went to um Metla Catla.
• 37:32
  Okay.
• 37:33
  And I was born while they were I was born in Ketchukan while they were in Metla Catla.
• 37:38
  And my brother told me that um he remembers watching because the weather was so bad, it was in November, he remember what he remembers watching the float plane come in for a landing to pick my mom up.
• 37:50
  And he said that that the weather was so bad he couldn't go to the dock.
• 37:55
  Mm-hmm.
• 37:56
  He had to pull up as close as he could to the beach.
• 37:59
  And then Dad carried my mom to the plane, and then they flew to Ketchikan.
• 38:06
  And Dad saw that he said, I remember coming into Ketchikan for a landing, the wind hit us, and you know that big pink building on the waterfront?
• 38:14
  And I was like, Yeah, and he goes, I made eye contact with a few people.
• 38:21
  So um I w that's where I was born.
• 38:24
  And then uh my older brother, Harry, was born in Juneau.
• 38:29
  Um, and they were oh goodness, I missed something.
• 38:33
  They were in Tanneechie.
• 38:35
  So that's where um he went after cake.
• 38:38
  They went to Tannekey.
• 38:39
  And my brother Harry was born while they were there.
• 38:42
  And he was born in Juneau.
• 38:44
  And then my younger sister Mary was also born in Juneau.
• 38:50
  They were um I think Harry was born in Juneau because they were in Teneke, and my sister was born in Juneau because it was during the fishing season.
• 39:02
  Fishing season.
• 39:03
  Okay.
• 39:05
  Yeah, so um so after Metla Catla did they come back to Haynes then?
• 39:10
  After they went to Ten they went to Belkowski on the Aleutian Islands.
• 39:14
  Really?
• 39:15
  Yeah.
• 39:16
  So mom said that the school out there was really nice.
• 39:19
  They had it was freshly built and they had a teacherage there.
• 39:23
  Um that was very nice, and they lived in the teacherage, and she said the people were wonderful to them and they really enjoyed it.
• 39:31
  So with with your dad being a BIA teacher, was that something that you're only in a spot for a certain amount of time, or was it his choice that, hey, if you got something open, I'd like to go to another spot?
• 39:40
  Or they they're like Hey, you need to go here, you need to go here.
• 39:44
  Yeah, they moved him around.
• 39:46
  Yeah, so I think that he said the longest that he spent in one spot was ten was Tannekey.
• 39:53
  And he was there for a few years, and he was nominated for Teacher of the Year, and he said that when the lady came out to um she flew into Alaska, went out to watch him, observe him at the school, and he said that um he was like, Well, you know, I'm the oil man, I'm the health aid, and you know, he was naming all these things that he had to do, and he said he didn't have time to entertain somebody.
• 40:24
  And then while she was there, the furnace broke.
• 40:26
  So he was repairing the stove the whole entire time, and he had one of his seniors teaching, flossy um flossy tog.
• 40:38
  Really?
• 40:38
  Was teaching.
• 40:39
  Was doing the teaching?
• 40:40
  Yeah.
• 40:41
  Yeah, because he he said I he spent his whole day with his head in the furnace trying to get it fixed.
• 40:47
  Uh-huh.
• 40:48
  And he said that while he was there, he had my older sister um was also born in Juno.
• 40:55
  She um was in kindergarten, and he didn't he there was no way that he could manage kindergarten and then um all of the other grades as well.
• 41:05
  So he had flossy teaching kindergarten.
• 41:08
  But it wasn't, you know, it wasn't five days a week, it was just a few times a week, a few hours a day.
• 41:14
  But he said he had to convert an old outhouse into the kindergarten.
• 41:18
  So and then he told us about this bear that it that came in and was um trying to bust down the door at the school, so he shot it, and he said, uh he's like, uh, I was trying to throw it into the bay.
• 41:32
  I didn't want anyone to know that I shot it.
• 41:34
  It was embarrassing that I had to do this, and he goes, I threw it into the bay and it filled up with air.
• 41:40
  Every time the tide would change, the bear would come in and throw it around.
• 41:44
  So I was like, I don't know.
• 41:48
  He's like rubbing his nose, and I'm not going away until you fess up.
• 41:52
  It's like, what'd you do?
• 41:53
  He goes, I went out there and shot it a few more times.
• 41:59
  Well I was um do you have memories of the Aleutians in that?
• 42:06
  No, I don't.
• 42:07
  Um I think I was just um two or three.
• 42:11
  Okay.
• 42:12
  I remember cake.
• 42:14
  And that was um I think I was two in the Aleutian, so um I was learning to talk and you know got into trouble.
• 42:27
  Um my mom said that she went into Anchorage to have a prenatal checkup and I left my dad babysitting.
• 42:34
  And she came back and I had learned how to say kangy.
• 42:37
  Daddy, cangy, and she's she was upset with him.
• 42:41
  And she's like, You we don't have kangy.
• 42:44
  What what were you doing?
• 42:45
  And he said every time I'd start fussing, he would give me a chocolate chip.
• 42:54
  Yeah, so um typical dad move.
• 42:56
  Mm-hmm.
• 42:57
  Yeah.
• 42:58
  Yeah, whatever's easiest.
• 43:00
  Yeah.
• 43:01
  Path of least resistance.
• 43:03
  Give the kid a candy.
• 43:05
  So I had learned I learned candy and I learned shut up while uh my mom was gone.
• 43:12
  But my brother taught me shut up.
• 43:15
  Um it was a kind of a family joke after that because Harry said, You didn't even know how to say it right.
• 43:22
  You said dud up.
• 43:26
  And then I think yet even as adults, whenever he'd he was irritated with me, he'd I can see Harry doing that.
• 43:37
  Yeah, and put me in my place really fast when I knew I was being foolish in some way or another.
• 43:45
  So what do you remember what year it was that everybody moved back to Haynes?
• 43:49
  Um it was the year Harry started kindergarten.
• 43:53
  So I think it was probably sixty-eight or sixty-nine Around in there I'm guessing it must have been sixty nine.
• 44:03
  Um my brother my oldest brother graduated in in seventy two and I started kindergarten the same year that he graduated.
• 44:12
  So um yeah, it must late sixties.
• 44:17
  Yeah, and his first friend was uh Roger Seeley.
• 44:20
  Okay.
• 44:21
  Uh figures.
• 44:22
  Mm-hmm.
• 44:23
  Yeah, he came home and drug Roger home and we were living in the henchman house.
• 44:29
  My Uncle Jim's house now.
• 44:31
  And I remember him bringing Roger home and thinking that they were such big boys.
• 44:37
  You know, they were five.
• 44:39
  Yeah.
• 44:39
  Big boys.
• 44:40
  And they were in school.
• 44:45
  So I he was um yeah, he was always always around.
• 44:53
  When when did you guys move to Three Mile?
• 44:57
  Um, I I think probably that fall.
• 45:03
  Um I remember going out there the first time we went out, the house was empty, and um we went out to clean it up and start my parents started the stove and that kind of stuff.
• 45:15
  And my youngest sister was a baby, and Harry was riding a trike, and he told me we were playing King Arthur.
• 45:26
  So I stood on a box and I was the person that was going, doo, here comes the you know, here comes charge.
• 45:32
  And he and he was King Arthur.
• 45:34
  Yes, here comes King Arthur.
• 45:36
  But and I always felt like I was the chubby kid after this too.
• 45:39
  And the box collapsed with me standing on it, and I was using a curtain rod as my trumpet, and the curtain rod went down my throat and jabbed my tonsil out.
• 45:51
  And I yeah, I I went um went to um the clinic, and the clinic is down um the old preschool in the green.
• 46:06
  Yeah, it was there, and I I remember going there.
• 46:09
  I remember being wrapped in my um my Binky and heading that way, and Dr.
• 46:16
  Jones saying, Well, looks like she swallowed her tonsil.
• 46:20
  Not much you could do.
• 46:21
  So um not gonna have to take it out later.
• 46:24
  She did that for you.
• 46:25
  Yeah, so I've I've had a couple of times when doctors have looked in my, you know, let's check your tonsil.
• 46:30
  Ooh, you only have one.
• 46:32
  And like, yeah.
• 46:33
  Long story.
• 46:34
  Yeah.
• 46:35
  Kind of took care of that myself.
• 46:38
  I'm not I'm not gonna take care of the other one.
• 46:41
  First one is painful enough.
• 46:42
  Right.
• 46:43
  Yeah.
• 46:45
  Yeah, so we we uh um lived out there without electricity or a phone for uh probably a year.
• 46:52
  And we had an outhouse that first summer.
• 46:55
  And now when I think about it, I think, oh my gosh, my poor mom, that was really rough.
• 47:01
  You know, having to haul water and having um gas lamps for a whole winter.
• 47:09
  And then she had um a wood cook stove.
• 47:14
  I remember that wood cook stove too.
• 47:16
  It's a lot of work.
• 47:18
  Uh-huh.
• 47:19
  Yeah.
• 47:20
  And then having to haul water to bathe us.
• 47:23
  Yeah.
• 47:23
  Oh my goodness.
• 47:24
  I couldn't even imagine.
• 47:25
  So did they cause there's that's there's that creek right next to uh were you able to get water out of that?
• 47:29
  Is that what was that the main water source then?
• 47:31
  Yeah.
• 47:32
  Okay.
• 47:32
  Yeah, so um dad had uh um we we had plumbing in the house.
• 47:39
  It just didn't it wasn't working, I guess.
• 47:41
  I don't know, but um he um just built a line or buried a pipe or s I he dug a trench, buried a pipe, and brought water into the house.
• 47:53
  Okay.
• 47:54
  And it always froze.
• 47:57
  It's always frozen.
• 47:58
  Well if well if he was hand-digging it, he probably didn't get it down deep enough because it doesn't take very long.
• 48:03
  I mean you gotta be down pretty deep to keep anything from freezing around here in the wintertime.
• 48:07
  Right.
• 48:07
  Uh yeah, he hand dug it.
• 48:10
  I remember that.
• 48:10
  And I rem the pipe was not very big either.
• 48:14
  So I always remember as a kid just the huge gardens.
• 48:20
  Mm-hmm.
• 48:21
  Is that was that from right at the start that that's or was it a few years in before they started the garden?
• 48:26
  No, that that was right from the start.
• 48:28
  My um you might not have as fond of memories.
• 48:31
  I just would drive by and just always be an amazement of all the stuff growing.
• 48:34
  You're probably weeding it on Daniel.
• 48:36
  Um it was just part of life.
• 48:39
  But my um grandparents had a um a really good sized garden and up on the the Up on the bench up above.
• 48:47
  Yeah, so they had a garden up there and down, um, and it was quite a bit bigger than what it looks like now because the road wasn't there.
• 48:55
  Um so they they had um cows and goats and chickens and pigs and a huge garden.
• 49:05
  And a distillery.
• 49:07
  Wait, what?
• 49:08
  Let's go over that again.
• 49:10
  Cows, chickens, pigs, goats, goats, and a distillery.
• 49:14
  And horses and horses and a distillery and a distillery.
• 49:18
  Yeah.
• 49:19
  That's a lot of work just with those.
• 49:21
  Mm-hmm.
• 49:23
  Yeah, but they that the way they survived was um bootlegging.
• 49:27
  Bootlegging moonshine.
• 49:28
  Mm-hmm.
• 49:29
  What were they using for their for their base on that?
• 49:33
  Because there's not a lot of like potatoes.
• 49:35
  Oh, okay.
• 49:36
  Yeah.
• 49:38
  Yeah, um, my dad said that um well actually it was my uncle Jim.
• 49:43
  He said that um there was a an agent who would come, you know, it's during prohibition, he would come out and um arrest people for various little infractions, and he'd heard that there was somebody out by Wells Bridge who had a bottle hidden in a tree.
• 50:01
  And so he stops by three miles and starts chatting at my grandpa.
• 50:07
  And our distillery was up, our distillery, their distillery was up in um probably 50 yards up in the woods, kind of along the creek, because they needed water.
• 50:17
  Okay, up behind the house down the hill.
• 50:19
  Yeah, so um Uncle Jim said that a um big of um smoke came up and while grandpa was standing there talking to the agent, and he tells the agent, Oh, these damn boys must have thrown green wood under the distillery.
• 50:40
  And the guy just laughs, thinking he's kidding.
• 50:44
  But that's actually what happened.
• 50:48
  Yeah, he didn't, as far as I know it, they didn't get caught.
• 50:51
  It's crazy the number of times I've had heard people tell stories like that where they're just they're telling flat out truth, and people are like, well, yeah, they would never just open up and admit it like that.
• 51:02
  Just keep on walking.
• 51:04
  Yeah.
• 51:05
  Yeah, so he said he the guy drove all the way out to Wells Bridge or out to Wells to check on the one bottle that was stuck in a tree.
• 51:14
  And he missed the still at three mile.
• 51:18
  So did you ever I mean did you ever dad ever talk about?
• 51:21
  I mean, is this like 30 cases a year, 10 cases, was they putting in court bottles?
• 51:26
  How are they you know what I never really asked that question?
• 51:30
  Um he said that they ship any of that across the border into Canada too, or is it just sold in locally?
• 51:36
  Locally to the fort.
• 51:37
  To the fort, okay.
• 51:38
  Yeah, he said they had a uh well well-walked path between the fort and their house.
• 51:43
  And their house.
• 51:44
  Yeah.
• 51:45
  Yeah.
• 51:45
  Soldiers looking for something to pass the time.
• 51:48
  Absolutely.
• 51:48
  And they had money.
• 51:49
  Mm-hmm.
• 51:50
  Yeah.
• 51:51
  They were paid regularly by the US government.
• 51:54
  Right?
• 51:54
  Yeah.
• 51:56
  Entrepreneurship, I guess you just um meeting a need.
• 52:00
  Yeah.
• 52:02
  Yeah.
• 52:02
  Yeah.
• 52:04
  I guess his cover was that he was a farmer.
• 52:06
  Farmer?
• 52:08
  Yeah.
• 52:09
  That was a great place to grow potatoes, and so you grow your own fuel uh your your own growing your own base for your distillery and keep going.
• 52:16
  Mm-hmm.
• 52:17
  Yeah, the potatoes were always up on that.
• 52:20
  On that top bench.
• 52:21
  Yeah.
• 52:21
  Yeah.
• 52:21
  Several years ago you guys did something with CIA and she tried to do a commercial.
• 52:25
  Yeah, we just ha did an experiment with potatoes.
• 52:28
  Yeah.
• 52:29
  On yeah, I just it actually turned out really well.
• 52:32
  We had an an amazing amount of potatoes, but we just didn't do it again the following year.
• 52:37
  I wish we had would have, but it is a lot of work.
• 52:41
  Yes.
• 52:41
  We could probably do it again now, but I don't think people really understand how much work it is.
• 52:46
  It sounds so glamorous, you know.
• 52:48
  It's that little garden.
• 52:50
  Yeah, and just be beyond that, you know, talking about your mom hauling water and stuff, and I am so thankful that I live in the day and age that I do, that we do.
• 53:02
  Because looking listening to my grandpa's stories, my mom's stories of when they were young and all the extra stuff they had to do, and then you take that back another generation, it's like no wonder they didn't live very long.
• 53:13
  Right.
• 53:14
  They were working their butts off from dawn to dusk every single day just for the necessities.
• 53:20
  That was a lot of effort into that.
• 53:22
  Stay alive.
• 53:24
  Yeah.
• 53:24
  And you can you can make it easier now if you have acres and acres and acres of land where you can you're doing enough where you've got the automation and stuff.
• 53:33
  But for something in Haynes, like up there, the majority of that's still gonna be done by hand.
• 53:40
  It's a lot of work to garden that much space.
• 53:43
  Yeah, it is.
• 53:44
  Um we got I think it would be if you guys did it, I think it would be cool because after we've as we found out during COVID with the food security and people trying to have as much as we can locally grown in as many areas, like having that as an option is uh I think I think you guys would sell sell the potatoes.
• 54:02
  I think so too.
• 54:03
  I don't know if it'd be profitable, it'd be the hard part about probably not, but one of the wonderful things about being a tribal government is that you can leverage what what we receive um to govern.
• 54:15
  Um and when we leverage funding, it um allows us a little more freedom to do what we want to achieve.
• 54:26
  Yeah, so that basically what you're seeing right now um with the growth of our tribe is um a lot of leveraging.
• 54:32
  Okay.
• 54:33
  A lot of creative use of um of the funds.
• 54:37
  And I think you know, we right now we're um on the verge of um signing an agreement with uh with the Department of Interior to le to lease our buildings, the buildings that we we um use to provide um programs.
• 54:54
  So we will be leasing those to the Department of Interior, and then that will bring even more funding into the community.
• 55:00
  Okay.
• 55:01
  So And what's the Department of Interior gonna use those buildings for?
• 55:05
  Um they will uh um how do you explain this?
• 55:13
  Uh I'm not very good at explanations, but um a 105 el lease allows us, the tribe, to lease our facilities to um the federal government so that we can provide our tribal citizens with programs.
• 55:30
  Okay.
• 55:31
  So that's a way to fund the I I see what you're saying.
• 55:34
  Right.
• 55:35
  Yeah.
• 55:35
  We've not really we've not done that before.
• 55:37
  That's something that um IHS has always done.
• 55:41
  Um but there was a IHS Indian Health Service.
• 55:44
  Right, yeah.
• 55:46
  Um so they they started um lease leasing back to the federal government.
• 55:56
  And um then um CIA has been really proactive in making sure that the government stands up for uh delivers what they promise.
• 56:08
  You know, they have the they have uh um fiduciary responsibilities and we want to make sure that um they're providing us with what legally they're supposed to be providing us with.
• 56:20
  So there have been a few lawsuits that allow us to do things like put land into trust and um leasing our buildings to the government and there are just a few other things that that we've had to do in order to just basically to stand up for ourselves.
• 56:39
  Yep.
• 56:40
  We're gonna get back into CIA, but I want to back up a little bit.
• 56:43
  Sure.
• 56:45
  So you're you're growing up at three mile, coming to school in town.
• 56:50
  What was what was your childhood like besides horses and art?
• 56:55
  Because you you you I know your name is on several if anybody goes into the gym and looks at the different uh panels at the ends for the school mascots for all the different communities, your name is on several of those.
• 57:07
  Right.
• 57:07
  Um what what what was your childhood like in Haynes?
• 57:12
  Um well there were good things and bad things about it.
• 57:17
  Um my dad was a teacher, which made things a lot easier.
• 57:21
  Okay.
• 57:22
  Um I think that because he was a he was a teacher and um it m kind of cleared the way for my siblings and I to have a better school experience than we probably would have being native.
• 57:40
  And um the difference even between my older siblings and the younger set is um the difference is huge.
• 57:50
  My sister um had a really rough time being a native girl.
• 57:57
  She's very pretty, and I think that um this is a terrible thing to say, but it probably helped her a lot.
• 58:04
  Um but it also caused a lot of problems and it brought on attention that um she didn't want.
• 58:13
  And it caused um it caused some some issues that I'd rather not talk about, but don't have to.
• 58:21
  Yeah.
• 58:22
  Don't have to.
• 58:23
  Um but for the most part um I have very clear memories of good teachers who probably um made my experience all um in Haynes good.
• 58:43
  And Carol Flagle is one of them.
• 58:46
  Yeah, yeah.
• 58:47
  Um Carlisle Stewart was another one, um, Richard Buck was another one, Bob Adkins, um Meryl Parker.
• 59:01
  I didn't I didn't have Meryl for a teacher.
• 59:04
  She was pretty old at that time.
• 59:06
  She was my teacher, but she um she actually knew my dad before uh he started teaching, and she knew my mother.
• 59:17
  Okay.
• 59:18
  She was um she was a a teacher in cake when my mom was a child.
• 59:24
  Really?
• 59:25
  Yeah, yeah.
• 59:26
  Dang! Yeah, isn't that that connections all over?
• 59:30
  Yeah.
• 59:31
  Yeah, so she was my second grade teacher, and she was a oh my goodness, going from um a rough first grade into a wonderful second grade.
• 59:44
  And then in second grade is when I met Jessie.
• 59:47
  So um Jesse's my lifelong friend.
• 59:50
  You say your lifelong running mate there.
• 59:52
  Right, yeah.
• 59:53
  Yeah, so she um allowed us to do things like um we started a granny club and she would let us stay in um the classroom, and we would just do well, she showed us how to do some basic yoga and you know, exit cycles.
• 1:00:10
  In second grade, you guys are doing that.
• 1:00:12
  Oh, that's awesome.
• 1:00:13
  Yeah, it was fun, and um it was a good experience.
• 1:00:17
  And then my next teacher in third grade was June Haas, and she was wonderful.
• 1:00:24
  And she I remember that I just had a really good memory of being in her class, and then she pulled me aside one day and said, Harriet, you're gonna have to you're gonna have to go over to the other class.
• 1:00:35
  And I was just devastated, like, why?
• 1:00:38
  And she said, Because I we're we can't meet your needs here, we have to put you in um Mrs.
• 1:00:45
  Wolf's class.
• 1:00:47
  And I was like, and we had like A, B, C, D, E, F back then.
• 1:00:52
  So sh they pushed me up a grade and I didn't I didn't want to.
• 1:00:57
  I didn't want to.
• 1:00:59
  I want to be with my people.
• 1:01:01
  Right.
• 1:01:02
  Yeah, so it actually um worked out really well.
• 1:01:05
  Mrs.
• 1:01:06
  Wolf um brought with her Mr.
• 1:01:10
  Wolf.
• 1:01:10
  Okay.
• 1:01:11
  He was our janitor, and they were wonderful, they were just really wonderful people.
• 1:01:16
  So that was a really good experience.
• 1:01:18
  And then the following year in fourth grade, I had Mr.
• 1:01:21
  Carter.
• 1:01:22
  He was only here for one year.
• 1:01:24
  Okay.
• 1:01:24
  And he was a wonderful teacher too, and then he happened to be really good friends with my dad.
• 1:01:30
  So, um, and Mr.
• 1:01:31
  Car Cotter was um, you know, he was our teacher during the time when, you know, people were watching Welcome Back Cotters.
• 1:01:40
  Oh jeez.
• 1:01:42
  Yeah, it made it really fun.
• 1:01:44
  We used to do crazy things like um coming in for re from recess.
• 1:01:48
  I was like, hey everybody, let's run in before he gets there, put our heads down, and then as soon as he walks in, we lift our heads up and go, Welcome back, Mr.
• 1:01:56
  Cotter.
• 1:01:57
  We're some I can't remember what this thing was.
• 1:02:00
  Well, we're all in our places with bright, shiny faces.
• 1:02:03
  Okay, yeah.
• 1:02:04
  So he just thought it was hilarious, but it was so much fun just to tease him, and he was a good teacher.
• 1:02:10
  And then the following year I had uh Miss Jensen.
• 1:02:14
  And do you remember her at all?
• 1:02:16
  Oh my gosh, she was um another wonderful human being.
• 1:02:23
  She just she wore wacky clothes, and she would do things like she taught us crazy poems, like The Walrus and the Carpenter, and um this other poem that she taught us, we were all like in anticipation because Walrus and the Carpenter was really long, and it took us a long time to learn it.
• 1:02:42
  And then the next poem, she said, This this one is it's called Adam.
• 1:02:49
  And we were like, or no, it's called, I'm sorry, it's called Fleas.
• 1:02:53
  Fleas.
• 1:02:53
  Fleas.
• 1:02:54
  And we were all like, oh gosh, you know, after spending so much time learning this long poem, we're so ready for the next one.
• 1:03:01
  And she goes, it's called Fleas, and then she goes, she flips this card around, and the poem was Adam Hadam.
• 1:03:14
  Oh she was Yeah, yeah.
• 1:03:16
  And then she would do things like extra credit.
• 1:03:19
  What color were the tights I was wearing yesterday?
• 1:03:22
  And they were usually something exotically wild, like crazy patterns or purple or something like that.
• 1:03:30
  But she was a really good teacher.
• 1:03:31
  I would have been hosed on that.
• 1:03:33
  I was always color deficient, so I don't see the same colors as everybody else.
• 1:03:37
  I would have gotten zero extra credit for the whole year.
• 1:03:42
  She would not have been on my top list of teachers pulling that stuff.
• 1:03:47
  Well, the girls liked it.
• 1:03:48
  Well, I'm sure.
• 1:03:50
  Yeah, probably none of the boys even paid attention.
• 1:03:52
  No, it's not a lot of people.
• 1:03:54
  No.
• 1:03:55
  No, and then I think that junior high was another really good period because I had that that suite of really good teachers in junior high.
• 1:04:05
  Yeah.
• 1:04:06
  Yeah.
• 1:04:07
  So where did where did the art come into?
• 1:04:10
  Was that with Mrs.
• 1:04:10
  Fleggle?
• 1:04:12
  Um, actually, I think it was probably Mrs.
• 1:04:15
  Parker.
• 1:04:16
  Mrs.
• 1:04:16
  Parker kind of got the art bug into you.
• 1:04:18
  Yeah.
• 1:04:19
  So um And that was something you and Jesse kind of shared too.
• 1:04:23
  So it was that kind of a joint, hey, this is something we're both good at and like doing it.
• 1:04:28
  That and horses, yeah.
• 1:04:29
  Right.
• 1:04:29
  Yeah, so um, yeah, and Mrs.
• 1:04:33
  Fleigel just put up with us.
• 1:04:35
  So um she just kind of um she was a wonderful teacher, wonderful guide.
• 1:04:41
  She'd show us how to do something and then just let us go.
• 1:04:46
  And then I knew I was um by the time I was in high school, I was um probably 16 when my parents were um more retired and they were well actually they weren't really retired.
• 1:05:01
  They went to school in Bellingham.
• 1:05:03
  Okay.
• 1:05:04
  So my dad was a teacher at the um Northwest Tribal College, and he taught English, math, and history.
• 1:05:16
  My mom was a student, and so we spent a lot of time in Bellingham when I was growing up, between junior high and high school.
• 1:05:25
  Oh, I didn't know that.
• 1:05:26
  Yeah, so it was it was not easy.
• 1:05:29
  It was um we lived in Bellingham and well the first time we were there though, my dad was working on his master's degree when we were really little.
• 1:05:39
  Um, so we started going there when we were really young, and we would go during the summer so he could take his classes.
• 1:05:47
  And then when he retired from teaching, we started going when he started teaching at the tribal college.
• 1:05:55
  And we lived in Bellingham and he drove out to the reservation to teach.
• 1:06:01
  So I went to um middle middle school and high school.
• 1:06:06
  Not the entire time.
• 1:06:07
  Yeah, but part of it down in Bellingham.
• 1:06:10
  Yeah.
• 1:06:10
  Totally different experience.
• 1:06:12
  Oh my gosh.
• 1:06:13
  Yeah.
• 1:06:14
  Yeah, it was because I wasn't um protected in the same way that we were here.
• 1:06:22
  Do you think that gave you a better did you did you know how much nicer it was in Haynes before you went down there?
• 1:06:28
  Or was that just an that was a reaffirmation that these teachers are doing a really good job taking care of me?
• 1:06:34
  Or was that like an eye-opener like, dang, I had a good in Haynes?
• 1:06:38
  I think it was probably a reaffirmation because I I knew I knew You had enough other friends and what they were going through and seeing it.
• 1:06:46
  Yeah.
• 1:06:47
  Yeah.
• 1:06:48
  Um and then but then getting down there and um I think it was a junior in high school.
• 1:06:54
  I had to go talk to the counselor about next steps.
• 1:06:58
  And he was looking at my um my grades, my you know, all my information, and he's sitting there looking at him when I walked in and he goes, you know, and he's um he said, Tell me a little bit about your grades and about your experience in school.
• 1:07:24
  I said, Oh, you know, I have a hard time with science because I had um I had I guess C plus in science, and this was in junior high.
• 1:07:38
  And he said he started laughing and he's like, a C plus, you think that's bad?
• 1:07:44
  And I and I was like, Yeah, you don't know my dad.
• 1:07:47
  Yeah.
• 1:07:48
  When I bring a C plus home, it doesn't get a positive reaction.
• 1:07:53
  No, it it doesn't.
• 1:07:54
  And so he he just thought it was really funny, and I didn't know what um, you know, I was a little offended by that.
• 1:08:01
  And he just thought I, you know, I was just another dumb native kid.
• 1:08:06
  And his so he just expected to, you know, just to oh, you know, be he was gonna be dismissive until he he saw what my grades looked like, and then he started talking about, well, where do you want to go, you know, for higher education?
• 1:08:20
  And I just said, I don't even don't even worry about it, I already had it figured out.
• 1:08:24
  I'm just here because I'm so you know, somebody told me I had to be here.
• 1:08:27
  So yeah, I don't need your help.
• 1:08:32
  But you know, at even in I mean at that age, kids know when somebody's genuinely going to you know, going to give them a hand or if they're just kind of gonna blow you off.
• 1:08:43
  Going through the motions because they're paid to do it.
• 1:08:46
  Figured out pretty quick.
• 1:08:48
  Right.
• 1:08:48
  Yeah.
• 1:08:50
  Yeah.
• 1:08:50
  So I had to go back home and tell my parents, well, this was the experience I had today.
• 1:08:55
  And and we all just sort of understood that I already knew what I was gonna do.
• 1:09:00
  It's you know, it's okay.
• 1:09:01
  It just So what was the plan after school?
• 1:09:04
  Um I went to St.
• 1:09:05
  Martin's, it's the same college my dad did.
• 1:09:07
  Yeah.
• 1:09:08
  Yeah, it's a nice little quiet Catholic school, so it was it was a great school.
• 1:09:13
  Really good transition for me, I think, to what did you study?
• 1:09:17
  Um secondary education.
• 1:09:19
  Okay.
• 1:09:20
  I wanted to be a teacher until I realized I didn't.
• 1:09:24
  Wait, what what was the uh defining moment where you realized you didn't want to be a teacher?
• 1:09:29
  Because um I realized that when you work in the school, people are just watching you.
• 1:09:37
  And uh I decided that I you know that if I want to do something crazy, I'm gonna do something crazy without it jeopardizing my career.
• 1:09:49
  So um I just decided I was that wasn't I wasn't cut out.
• 1:09:56
  Did you did you quit school then and or did you switch over to something else?
• 1:10:01
  I just switched.
• 1:10:02
  What did you switch to?
• 1:10:03
  Um tribal and public administration.
• 1:10:06
  So it started out as um like a civics, you know, just taking civics classes and then looking for ways that that um can, you know, just how can I make this work for me?
• 1:10:18
  And the best thing for me at that time was um tribal and public administration.
• 1:10:25
  It was just when um tribal administration was becoming the thing.
• 1:10:31
  Yeah, yeah.
• 1:10:33
  Yeah, so it was um it was interesting because some of the instructors that I had are um you know, they're they're big names in tribal politics.
• 1:10:44
  And um I feel I felt really lucky to have had um had them as mentors and teachers, yeah.
• 1:10:54
  Yeah.
• 1:10:55
  So um some of the the textbooks that were being written were being written at that time, and you know there were no there were no real textbooks for for tribal administration.
• 1:11:07
  Public, yes, but tribal They're just kind of bringing it that was right at the beginning of that, so they're just kind of creating it as they went along with the courses.
• 1:11:17
  Right.
• 1:11:18
  Yeah, so when I started working for the Chilcoot Indian Association, I just told staff there is no textbook, there's no no formula for us to follow.
• 1:11:29
  Success is gonna need to depend on what we do with the with what we have.
• 1:11:33
  So a after college, did you come right back to Haynes after that?
• 1:11:37
  Um I think I had my oldest son really young.
• 1:11:41
  So um I did.
• 1:11:43
  Yeah.
• 1:11:43
  I came back and um kept I just kept taking more classes.
• 1:11:51
  Just um that at that time too, um online classes were becoming um something that was viable.
• 1:12:00
  So I just kept taking classes and um started working for the tribe.
• 1:12:10
  It had to be because at one point you were weren't you working for Klekwan Inc.
• 1:12:13
  too?
• 1:12:14
  Was that be did you work for the tribe first and then Klukwan Inc.?
• 1:12:17
  I did.
• 1:12:17
  Okay.
• 1:12:18
  Yeah, I worked for the tribe first, got some of some of the programs going, and then was offered a job in in Juneau and moved my little family to Juneau and they were very unhappy there.
• 1:12:33
  I it was great for me.
• 1:12:36
  The boys did not like school in Juneau.
• 1:12:40
  Because it's not, you know, it's the prejudice there is as outrageous as it can be.
• 1:12:48
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:12:48
  Yeah, so that that's kind of crazy for me, I think, because the number of there is a distinctively large native population in Juneau, and to have that kind of prejudice in Juneau when so much of Juneau is related to Haynes, Huna, Angoon, Cake, all these native communities coming into Juno.
• 1:13:11
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:13:13
  Yeah, it's crazy.
• 1:13:14
  I knew there were some.
• 1:13:15
  I didn't know it was to the extent that you're describing.
• 1:13:19
  Right.
• 1:13:19
  Yeah.
• 1:13:20
  That's unsettling.
• 1:13:21
  Ted refused to go to school.
• 1:13:23
  Okay.
• 1:13:24
  Yeah, and so I ended up having to um homeschool him, and so he would just go to work with me and had a little a desk set up for him and you know, sometimes who are you working for at Juno?
• 1:13:37
  For Clinkett and Haida.
• 1:13:38
  That was for Clinton Hyda?
• 1:13:39
  Yeah, I um was running their um regional environmental program.
• 1:13:44
  Okay.
• 1:13:45
  So um was just basically environmental programs from Anchorage down um to southern tip of southeast Alaska, just kind of monitored and managed them.
• 1:14:00
  It was it was fun.
• 1:14:01
  I really liked it.
• 1:14:02
  So as we start talking about CIA and Klukwan Inc.
• 1:14:05
  and Klinket and Hyda, I know some of this, but I for people that aren't aware of it, what is what is the difference between Klukwan Inc.
• 1:14:17
  CIA?
• 1:14:18
  Klukwon Inc.
• 1:14:19
  is a corporation, CIA is a sovereign tribal government, but how when was Chilkut Indian Association recognized as a tribal sort sovereign government?
• 1:14:29
  How far back does that go?
• 1:14:32
  Federal recognition came in the 30s.
• 1:14:36
  Okay.
• 1:14:37
  And it was during the Indian reorganization, you know, because each there are like periods in history where um tribes are are either um supported and um given, you know, people talk about giving them sovereignty and um and self-governance and that sort of thing.
• 1:14:58
  And then the and then the next um time period it might be um we you've got to become integrated into the the bigger society, you've got to become like everyone else.
• 1:15:11
  So um Indian Reorganization Act was a time when um tribes were being allowed to reorganize themselves and to actually become governments.
• 1:15:24
  And it's a little bit uh different than like a a traditional tribal government or tribal um like a organization, I guess, is the organization is very Western.
• 1:15:38
  So um the wonderful thing though about an IRA is that we can make it what we want.
• 1:15:45
  We do have a constitution that we do have to follow, and if we want to change it, um we have to go through um the Department of Interior to it to change it.
• 1:15:55
  Um and probably 10 or 15 years ago that would have been just great, it would have happened right away, but in we're going through another time period where um organizations like BIA and the Department of Interior are being cut back.
• 1:16:13
  So um, if we try to change anything in our IRE right now, it'd probably take us a decade.
• 1:16:19
  Long time to do it.
• 1:16:21
  Uh the reason I asked that, because as as a kid growing up, when because it was correct me if I'm wrong on this, it was Alaska Native Lames, an at an Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act that created Klukwan Inc.
• 1:16:36
  And that was what I always knew Klukwan Inc., but it wasn't until you guys started your building your office space, all of a sudden people talk about Chilkut Indian Association.
• 1:16:45
  I was like, okay, what is Chilcut Indian Association?
• 1:16:47
  And so growing up here, I'd never knew about a sovereign tribal government.
• 1:16:52
  So that's either shows you my head was buried in the sand or I was painted, but it just really wasn't out there.
• 1:16:58
  And so both Chilkat Indian Village and Chilkut Indian Association, both sovereign tribal governments back to the 30s for the same IRAs when both of those were created, and so they'd been there that whole time.
• 1:17:10
  Right.
• 1:17:10
  And they're just um for lack of a better word, dormant.
• 1:17:16
  Um and excuse me.
• 1:17:22
  Um Cluck One Inc.
• 1:17:25
  is a a village corporation that um is kind of housed underneath C.
• 1:17:30
  Alaska.
• 1:17:31
  So C.
• 1:17:32
  Alaska is our regional corporation, and then there are X number of village corporations.
• 1:17:37
  Village corporations.
• 1:17:38
  So Cluck One was was lucky enough to get their their um village corporation and and we weren't.
• 1:17:45
  Haynes was not.
• 1:17:46
  So we didn't realize that um we were not going to get our settlement until um everyone else was getting theirs, and we were kind of lucking around, like, you know, what's what's going on?
• 1:18:02
  You forgot somebody.
• 1:18:04
  Yeah, and um they actually there were there were more more communities or more tribes that were left out than the five that were left out in um Southeast Alaska, but the way that they had written the um legislation, they allowed tribes from up north to um contest the um final bill, but they didn't allow Southeast tribes to contest, which is weird.
• 1:18:33
  That is very weird.
• 1:18:36
  Has anybody looked into what what were the politics behind that?
• 1:18:38
  Do you think?
• 1:18:39
  Were there um do you really want to know?
• 1:18:42
  If you feel comfortable saying it on the Yeah, I will.
• 1:18:45
  Um yes, I would want to know.
• 1:18:48
  So we've had um a number of studies done, and one of them was done by the University of Alaska, Anchorage, and we have um what's called the ICE, of course, of course now I'm gonna forget to um ICER report or something like that.
• 1:19:07
  I should I'll look it up and let you know later.
• 1:19:11
  Okay.
• 1:19:11
  But um it was done by the University of Alaska, and in this huge document, the basically what they say is um there is no real reason for the tribes to be left out.
• 1:19:25
  There's speculation.
• 1:19:27
  And if you um take a look at what was happening in each of the five communities that in Southeast Alaska that were left out, they were all logging communities.
• 1:19:36
  And at that time, um the logging communities thought that if the land was um returned to the tribes that they wouldn't allow logging.
• 1:19:48
  And then what ended up happening though is that after the land claim settlement came through, um those corporations were told you have X number of years to make a profit, or we're gonna close the doors and you will no longer have a corporation.
• 1:20:09
  So um, you know, you talk about being set up for failure.
• 1:20:14
  Yeah.
• 1:20:14
  So um my dad told me that, you know what they did was they took fishermen, stripped them out of their um their rein gear, put them in suits, and then told them to succeed.
• 1:20:26
  And how what do you expect?
• 1:20:29
  A fisherman's not gonna, you know, be able to run a corporation just because he changed his clothes.
• 1:20:35
  So um what they ended up doing is uh is hiring a lot of um attorneys to come in and help them set up corporations and give them advice.
• 1:20:46
  And uh a lot of that was well, you need to make money now.
• 1:20:50
  What are what can we do to make money now?
• 1:20:52
  And the fastest way at that time to make money was to sell resources.
• 1:20:57
  Yeah.
• 1:20:58
  So there was a lot of in a lot of ways, it's still the fastest way to make money is selling resources.
• 1:21:04
  Right.
• 1:21:05
  So that uh became um sort of like a a stamp on on Southeast Alaska Inks Corporations because everyone was logging.
• 1:21:18
  So um when um I became involved in trying to write the wrong for landless to to to get our recognition, um the the um uh all of the I'm I'm trying really hard to say this nicely.
• 1:21:45
  There was a movement in um in Southeast Alaska and in the lower 48 that um really put a kibosh on us just quietly settling.
• 1:22:01
  Um they thought that um we would not know how to manage our own lands, that we would just do the same thing that the other um Yangstes did, and we would just uh mow down all of the timber.
• 1:22:15
  Um I think that could have happened if we had um if we'd been recognized uh 50 years ago, it could have very well happened because it happened to all of the other organizations.
• 1:22:29
  Well, and and like you said, and this this thing that frustrates me with when when you look back that there's a lot of programs that are set up with good intentions and that we need to protect public resources, we need to do this and this, but the way that it's set up, like you said, just you got a bunch of fishermen or loggers, what whatever that okay, now you're gonna be able to run this multimillion dollar corporation without setting up the proper support and training to it's it's not that the people can't do it, they just don't have the experience, that life experience has been totally different, and they haven't learned the skill set necessary to do it.
• 1:23:06
  Right.
• 1:23:07
  And where is the support to help get to that point instead of just like here you go, good luck.
• 1:23:15
  Yeah, yeah, anybody else, regardless of race, under those same parameters, log it.
• 1:23:22
  That's that was the alternative going forward to meet the mission, the to meet the goals that they set out for you.
• 1:23:30
  And then to hold it against them later.
• 1:23:31
  It's like, wait, what?
• 1:23:33
  Right.
• 1:23:33
  That's crazy.
• 1:23:34
  We're we're we're kind of following your rules here.
• 1:23:37
  Right.
• 1:23:38
  Yeah, um, yeah, it's uh it's it's a very imperfect bill.
• 1:23:44
  Um I think that um what we've seen in my lifetime is a very um very fast change, you know.
• 1:23:54
  If you really okay, so I'm I'm older now, and time feels like it's going by really fast.
• 1:24:00
  And maybe it is, maybe it isn't.
• 1:24:02
  But it feels like in my lifetime we've gone from um this really insecure, you know, being insecure about um understanding Western ways of living and doing, and now we've um we have this next generation of leaders who are coming up behind me who are very um very strong um leaders, native leaders, and they they are not being they're they're not allowing outside forces to tell them what's best for them.
• 1:24:35
  And I love to see that.
• 1:24:36
  It's just amazing to me to listen to and to watch, and even you know, in my in my own family, I see that and I hear it.
• 1:24:44
  And I think um, okay, so I stood on the shoulders of my grandparents and they paid a price so that I would be able to go to school and I would be able to get an education, and um, you know, and then I'm the placeholder for my kids and they're the placeholders for theirs, and so on.
• 1:25:06
  So with each generation, um, I think there that um there is an understanding of who we are that's coming back, and it's coming back in a really beautiful way.
• 1:25:20
  I can um it just I I sometimes think about um how easy I think, gosh, these kids have it so easy now because you know, grandparents have paid the price, parents have paid the price to make this life for you um a lot easier.
• 1:25:36
  And that um sometimes I have to tell my kids, you know, it is um you're very lucky that you get to have this opinion.
• 1:25:44
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:25:45
  Yeah, and if um and it's almost um oh it's almost as if they they've never felt the the same kind of pain that I felt, and I've never really felt the same kind of pain my grandparents felt.
• 1:26:02
  So But but then they've they've probably felt a different pain.
• 1:26:07
  It's it's just it's it's it's a different it's a different one.
• 1:26:10
  You know, it's you were kind of protected at school, they were having the the prejudice and bullying or whatever when they were in Juno with that, you know, it's different different stages, and and it one of the things my I I got a love of reading from my mom.
• 1:26:27
  She she taught me she kind of instilled in that me at a young age, and I've I've always loved reading.
• 1:26:32
  But just for me, it's every culture has good points and bad points.
• 1:26:40
  And the people that can't appreciate the good points of another culture, but just point out the bad as if they're it's and it's humans in general, right?
• 1:26:49
  We always like okay, we do this, this, this, good, but we kind of like bad stuff, we kind of push to the side.
• 1:26:54
  Right.
• 1:26:55
  But looking around, most of us like, well, you don't do that well, you all we always point out the negatives of the others like why can't we embrace the positives of the different cultures and and and learn from the positives and and maybe we can have uh we can eliminate some of the negative ones if we learn more of the positives from other people.
• 1:27:14
  Well, I think um you probably took ethics in college.
• 1:27:18
  Nope.
• 1:27:18
  You didn't?
• 1:27:19
  Nope.
• 1:27:21
  Took it from my dad.
• 1:27:23
  It was kind of a daily thing with him.
• 1:27:26
  Uh I had um I had a really good um ethics professor, and one of the one thing that always stuck in my my mind after that class was that um the just looking looking at culture different cultures um through the eyes of that person's experiences.
• 1:27:49
  You know, because if you're not experiencing the same um the same issues or the same physical happenings or you know, that sort of thing, then you don't know.
• 1:28:00
  Where they're coming from when they make a decision.
• 1:28:02
  Absolutely.
• 1:28:03
  So I think that that um has helped me a lot with empathy.
• 1:28:11
  You know, just to realize that if somebody is is rude to me because of who I am, or rude to my children because of who they are, it's because of their um where wherever they're coming from is um maybe not the healthiest place.
• 1:28:29
  So in and part of that too is maybe not the healthiest place, but they also might not have learned, they might not have been exposed to certain things at a at an age that would understand more about the culture, or they might have had wherever they grew up, they might have experienced something that gave them a negative connotation.
• 1:28:54
  And so that and that's part of the reason I started this is to have conversations with people and hopefully let get people a better understanding of the people who are around because so much of it we keep getting siloed with social media.
• 1:29:07
  It's like you like this, you like this, we got a narrow and narrower focus, and we're not learning about the other people.
• 1:29:14
  We're judging them on really small fractions of who they are instead of looking at the whole picture, and even with that, I will never be able to relate to what you've gone through as Harriet Brulette.
• 1:29:27
  Totally different experience, white male, yeah, it's just with those two, totally different.
• 1:29:34
  But the circumstances you grew up in and I grew up in totally different.
• 1:29:39
  We grew up in the same town, but it's different time periods, and and so I think at least being willing to listen to what somebody else has gone through, I'm never gonna 100% know, but I can have hopefully have a better understanding.
• 1:29:53
  Right.
• 1:29:54
  And it's it's not gonna be perfect, we'll be closer to what you went through rather than not having a conversation with you at all.
• 1:30:01
  Right.
• 1:30:02
  I like that.
• 1:30:04
  So I I I think that's what I'm hoping is more people have conversations with people and longer con and that's why that's why I don't cut these.
• 1:30:11
  I don't want to have it just 20 minutes, 30 minutes watching.
• 1:30:16
  Sit sit and sit and sit and sit and get to know somebody.
• 1:30:20
  Dig a little deeper and just because I I think that's how we build a stronger community, a stronger state, stronger country, world is understanding the other people that share it with us.
• 1:30:32
  So yeah.
• 1:30:34
  Not bending to or I I find myself bending though to um try to make um someone more comfortable around me.
• 1:30:45
  You know, they're um I think that's a human thing, isn't it?
• 1:30:50
  Yeah.
• 1:30:50
  We want to be liked, we want the people around us to be comfortable.
• 1:30:53
  Yeah.
• 1:30:55
  Yeah, and and it's not necessarily that I want to be liked because I don't care.
• 1:30:59
  But I want people to be comfortable.
• 1:31:01
  Yeah.
• 1:31:01
  You know, I just um I want to feel like feel approachable.
• 1:31:06
  Um because I I can't help people if I don't know what their issues are and they if they don't tell me what their issue will be, then I can't help, you know.
• 1:31:15
  I agree with that, yeah.
• 1:31:17
  Yeah.
• 1:31:18
  So how do you think so w what age were you when you because you went you were with CIA, you were Klinkett and Haida.
• 1:31:28
  Did after Clinkett and Haida, was that when you worked for Cluck One Inc.
• 1:31:31
  or was it Kluck One Inc.
• 1:31:32
  and then Clinkett and Haida?
• 1:31:33
  Well, actually I I came back um Charlie, Jimmy, and Lee Clayton called me at home when I was living in Juno.
• 1:31:42
  And I um Lee put Charlie on and Charlie says, Harriet, it's time to come home.
• 1:31:48
  It's time for you to come home.
• 1:31:51
  What do you mean?
• 1:31:53
  And he said, We need you.
• 1:31:54
  You it's time for you to come home.
• 1:31:56
  And I thought that was the meanest thing that Lee could ever do to me because how how could you say no to an elder?
• 1:32:02
  You know, he's he's a he is telling me, heartfelt telling me it's time for you to come home.
• 1:32:08
  And so I did, and um I asked Clinkett and Haida if I could have um a leave of absence.
• 1:32:16
  Can I please take um a few months off and and go help my tribe?
• 1:32:22
  Well, when I got back here, we were in rougher shape than I thought.
• 1:32:26
  And the time went by, time you know, my time went by, and I called them again and I said, Can I take a year's leave of absence?
• 1:32:35
  And they said, Yes, okay, you know, okay, you can take a year.
• 1:32:41
  And so I did, and then the year passed and And when was when was this?
• 1:32:46
  Um 2002 or 2004, around in there.
• 1:32:52
  Yeah.
• 1:32:53
  So um I had a friend who came um to to he was uh he was a CPA and he came in and said that you know, okay, I'll take a look at your books and let's see what we can do to you know to help you get back in line.
• 1:33:12
  And um he was here for a few days and then he goes, Harriet, can I talk to you for a minute?
• 1:33:17
  And I said, No, sure, what's up?
• 1:33:21
  And he said, you know, as your friend, I'm going to tell you to jump ship and go back to Juno.
• 1:33:30
  Because right now, if you stay here, you're gonna go down with this ship.
• 1:33:34
  If you go back to Juneau, you can build your career.
• 1:33:37
  And I it didn't take me long to say, I'm not gonna abandon this.
• 1:33:43
  I'm not gonna abandon the the tribe because if I abandon them, what's going to happen?
• 1:33:49
  You know, then we'll surely disappear.
• 1:33:53
  So I hung in there and um ended up getting fired.
• 1:34:05
  And um it was it was almost it was just laughable.
• 1:34:09
  The whole thing was just so it was so out of control.
• 1:34:13
  Um the um person who fired me was somebody who didn't live here, and um she just I'm not even I'm not sure how she ended up in in the president's chair.
• 1:34:31
  Well, she wasn't elected, so um she just came in and uh told me she was now the president, and I was wondering how could that be?
• 1:34:40
  There was no election.
• 1:34:42
  So at anyway, it just turned out to be the best the best thing for me because um uh we had gotten the tribe semi back on track, you know, that we didn't lose all our money to um all of the contracts and compact stuff that we had going on with BIA.
• 1:35:00
  I had gone through the torture of of meeting with BIA and you know it we had a plan to you know to to make sure the tribe stayed on track.
• 1:35:08
  Anyway, when I walked away, I felt like it was okay.
• 1:35:12
  You know, it's it was okay.
• 1:35:14
  Um and I had something else to do.
• 1:35:16
  And I wanted the experience with an A and C because you know, I still um A and C is Um uh Klukwan Inc.
• 1:35:26
  Okay.
• 1:35:26
  Yeah.
• 1:35:27
  And so um I wanted that experience.
• 1:35:31
  Uh I wanted to I wanted to be able to I wanted to understand how they worked because it was so different than tribes.
• 1:35:38
  So I spent eight years with Klukwan Inc.
• 1:35:41
  and I really enjoyed it.
• 1:35:43
  Um it was good people, um they had they had um down sized quite a bit by the time I came on board.
• 1:35:51
  Um but the the good thing about that is that because our our team was so small, we had to do everything.
• 1:36:01
  So um I learned a bit of everything by working there.
• 1:36:05
  Yeah.
• 1:36:06
  And then when they just when they closed the door and moved their office to Anchorage, um I went back to work for CIA.
• 1:36:14
  And what was your role when you went back to CIA?
• 1:36:17
  I went back as um oh, I was running a uh another environmental project.
• 1:36:26
  So it was just part-time.
• 1:36:28
  But it was okay because at that time my father had passed away and my mother had um Alzheimer's, so I needed to spend more time with her.
• 1:36:37
  And so working part-time um really wasn't covering the bills, but it uh allowed me time to spend with mom.
• 1:36:48
  Yeah.
• 1:36:49
  Yeah.
• 1:36:49
  And that I think was the most important thing I could have done.
• 1:36:53
  Yeah, we could have sent her away to a home, but we we just kept her.
• 1:36:57
  Keeping her here.
• 1:36:58
  She by the end she didn't know who we were.
• 1:37:01
  And she ran away a lot.
• 1:37:03
  Yeah.
• 1:37:04
  But even just I I think some people it's easy for them to say she doesn't know who we are, we can put her in a home and it won't matter.
• 1:37:12
  Right.
• 1:37:12
  It but it does.
• 1:37:13
  It does, yeah.
• 1:37:14
  They still feel, you know, they it's not like there's no one.
• 1:37:17
  And still having that family, not everybody's in a position to be able to do that.
• 1:37:22
  But I think the people that are and can do that, that's always the right choice.
• 1:37:27
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:37:28
  No, I agree a hundred percent.
• 1:37:30
  Yeah, I think and and I think too that um I am grateful for the time that we did get with her.
• 1:37:37
  Um but before, you know, before uh you know, before that last year of her really not knowing who we were, she um was uh speaking in Sringat to my boys.
• 1:37:50
  Oh awesome.
• 1:37:51
  And she yeah, it was kind of funny though, because um James was telling me the story about he was making her lunch one day, and he was in the kitchen and he um had put her in her favorite chair and she was facing out the window outside, and you know, she said it was her TV.
• 1:38:09
  So she was um watching, you know, watching nature, and then he asked her in Shinget if she was ready for lunch, and he said she shot up out of her chair and she's like, Oh, where's that?
• 1:38:22
  Who's there?
• 1:38:23
  Who's there?
• 1:38:24
  Because she hadn't heard the language spoken in so long.
• 1:38:29
  She was thinking she was being, you know, she thought maybe there's ghosts.
• 1:38:33
  Ghost in the house.
• 1:38:34
  Yeah.
• 1:38:34
  Oh wow.
• 1:38:36
  And then he had to just say, Um, grandma, it's me.
• 1:38:39
  It's James, it's me.
• 1:38:41
  And she started laughing, and and then he was started talking to her again, and then you know, she was comfortable.
• 1:38:47
  Uh-huh.
• 1:38:48
  But well, that has to be an amazing memory for James to have that connection with his grandmother.
• 1:38:53
  Yeah.
• 1:38:53
  Uh-huh.
• 1:38:54
  Yeah, he used to drive her around a lot and tease her and you know, just and then ask her how to say certain words in flingette, and um, and he would mispronounce them and because she was a she was a um she spoke flingette as her first language.
• 1:39:10
  And so English was her second language, and she was always asking us to correct her English, and it's like, Mom, your English is better than that.
• 1:39:17
  But um she um she had a a uh deeper understanding of the language than um a lot of people than anyone actually that I've met to date.
• 1:39:31
  I think the only person that I could think of that comes close is Evans Willard.
• 1:39:35
  Because those two could talk.
• 1:39:37
  Yeah and it was so much fun to listen to them.
• 1:39:40
  But she refused to talk to other people and I asked her why.
• 1:39:43
  And she said, because they speak like babies.
• 1:39:46
  And it took me a minute to realize what she meant, and it's like, ow, okay.
• 1:39:53
  Not all speakers can speak a language clearly.
• 1:39:56
  Clearly, yeah.
• 1:39:58
  Yeah, and I just didn't, you know, having only spoke English, I had no clue.
• 1:40:03
  So yeah, it was it was pretty interesting that I think that um Evans and my dad were really good friends, so having him around was that was a good thing.
• 1:40:19
  I think um another person that she liked to to talk to was um George Stevens.
• 1:40:26
  Yeah.
• 1:40:26
  Yeah, so George uh Stevens is from um Stakine area.
• 1:40:33
  Um where is that?
• 1:40:38
  Stakine's done by Wrangle.
• 1:40:40
  Okay, no, it's not Stakine.
• 1:40:42
  I'm wrong, then Taku, yeah.
• 1:40:43
  Taku.
• 1:40:44
  Yeah, so he's his family came down the Taku.
• 1:40:48
  And so he's somehow related to us, and I don't I'm sure I'm not sure how, but I just sure loved him.
• 1:40:56
  He was just a good man.
• 1:40:58
  And he was so funny because his you know his wife was a head taller than he was, and she was really sassy and very bossy.
• 1:41:06
  And he they'd come into the the Klukwan Inc.
• 1:41:10
  office, and she always came in first, and she was always bossing him, and just and he he would be behind her make you know, making faces and all and so Jamie Katzick and I were in the front and we'd just crack up and she probably thought we were we were rude.
• 1:41:28
  Rude laughing at her.
• 1:41:30
  Yeah, but we were we were laughing at the things that he would do, and then one time he dropped his wallet, and boy, she just tore into him about dropping his wallet.
• 1:41:39
  And that oh my gosh, the expression, you know, that as soon as she turned around, he was like so.
• 1:41:48
  I just I enjoyed the heck out of that guy.
• 1:41:51
  I think most people did.
• 1:41:52
  Yeah, it was pretty cool to be around.
• 1:41:54
  Yeah, yeah, definitely old school.
• 1:41:57
  Yes, very, very old school.
• 1:41:59
  Yeah.
• 1:42:01
  So as you when you came back after your mom passed, did you start taking on more responsibility at CIA?
• 1:42:09
  Did you say was that kind of right away, or were you still in the environmental program for a while longer?
• 1:42:14
  Um actually was on the tribal council.
• 1:42:16
  Okay.
• 1:42:16
  And I worked I was um elected president at that time.
• 1:42:20
  And then we had gone through um a few tribal administrators, and you know, I had I'd spent eight years away from the tribe.
• 1:42:30
  You know, I hadn't um spent any time at all.
• 1:42:32
  And then uh they'd asked me if I would be interested in spending, you know, to and running for the council, and it's like, gosh or well, I found out that they had gone through this cycle where um all of a sudden they were, you know, they were back, not all of a sudden, over time they became blackballed again by the federal government.
• 1:42:53
  So um I found out that that we were at risk of losing all of our funding.
• 1:43:02
  And that um you know, if I didn't and we were way behind on audits, and if I didn't do something like fast, it the doors were going to close.
• 1:43:14
  Here we are again.
• 1:43:16
  And it having um actually what we had spoken to a couple people about taking on the responsibility as a tribal administrator, and people were like, No, I'm not gonna touch this mess.
• 1:43:30
  Or they come in and look and then say, uh no.
• 1:43:34
  And so um I had worked before with John Um oh, he was a tribal administrator in Cluckwon for a while.
• 1:43:44
  Yes.
• 1:43:45
  He um actually was a mentor of mine years before, and so I asked him if he'd be interested in coming in and doing some part-time work for us.
• 1:43:55
  And he came in and he looked at it and he's like, No.
• 1:44:00
  Peace out, yeah, basically, and he goes, Well, why don't you do it?
• 1:44:05
  And I was like, you know, because everybody else is saying no.
• 1:44:09
  I yeah, why come on?
• 1:44:12
  So he he just said, you know what, I I think you can do this, I believe you can do this.
• 1:44:18
  So um the tribal council uh ran out of options and I was at the bottom of the barrel.
• 1:44:24
  So they said, Um, will you please take this job?
• 1:44:30
  And so I said, Okay, I'll I I will try.
• 1:44:34
  I'll try.
• 1:44:35
  But I I went through probably a couple of years without sleeping and being anxious all of the time.
• 1:44:41
  And so did you when they asked you that, and because you knew they'd run out of options, what were you kind of like, what the heck?
• 1:44:50
  I've been here the whole time.
• 1:44:51
  How didn't how come you didn't ask me sooner?
• 1:44:54
  It's like now you're now you're coming to me when you could have come to me before.
• 1:44:57
  Right.
• 1:44:57
  So a little bit of chip on your shoulder when you started off?
• 1:45:00
  Yeah.
• 1:45:00
  Yeah.
• 1:45:00
  Yeah.
• 1:45:01
  And it's it it just brings me to this point where um even I got this award and um went to this gathering in Anchorage, people were, you know, I got standing ovation and people were always, you know, I quoted me in some of their the um classes that they were offering, and I was like, they're quoting me.
• 1:45:23
  You know, wow.
• 1:45:24
  And you know, it's just this big deal there.
• 1:45:28
  And I get Well it should be.
• 1:45:29
  Well, yeah, yeah.
• 1:45:30
  It should be here too.
• 1:45:31
  Well, you get home and know, you know, it's like, oh, cool, but you know that's so give me give me your give me your take on this, but I think that's something that's an issue with Haynes.
• 1:45:47
  We do not celebrate the people that do really well that come out of Haynes.
• 1:45:53
  We'll we'll we'll acknowledge people from outside of the community that do well, but the people that grew up in Haynes, been in Haynes a long time, if they succeed, there's usually a lot more people wanting to tear them down than acknowledge them.
• 1:46:08
  Right.
• 1:46:09
  And I think that applies in this case as well.
• 1:46:12
  You go up to Anchorage, you've got a whole bunch of people like, man, this is awesome.
• 1:46:16
  You come back, crickets.
• 1:46:18
  Like we as a community, we need to work on that.
• 1:46:22
  I think so too.
• 1:46:23
  I think so too.
• 1:46:24
  I had an interesting conversation with James um about that because you know, of course, he he is very supportive of me and just he's he's my boss, but he's probably the most um not difficult, but the um oh the most stringent boss that I've ever had.
• 1:46:43
  Okay.
• 1:46:43
  You know, just you tow the line because um because you're my mother, and you know, people are just they're already they they already have a written ex or a built-in excuse to blame the relationship there.
• 1:46:58
  Right.
• 1:46:58
  Nepotism.
• 1:46:58
  And so yeah, the nepotism, the whole thing.
• 1:47:00
  So you yeah.
• 1:47:02
  He's right, you gotta go that's that step above and how you guys interact, and it's probably better for both of you.
• 1:47:08
  I think it is too.
• 1:47:09
  It's I think he's done a really good job of uh making sure that we are um, you know, we're we're as transparent as possible.
• 1:47:18
  When there were kids, I'd always tell them, you know, the light of day, you do everything in the light of day.
• 1:47:22
  If you're gonna do if you're not if you're gonna be a little shit, then you might just as well let me know because I'm gonna find out.
• 1:47:30
  So um I think it's we're kind of using the same um you know, we're just trying to do things the same way.
• 1:47:39
  Mom, you better do it.
• 1:47:40
  Yeah, the transparency thing and um and the optics of something.
• 1:47:45
  He's always telling me the optics of something, you know, and I he's right.
• 1:47:49
  Um so Yeah, because it's not always what's actually happened, it's what people perceive to be happening.
• 1:47:54
  Exactly.
• 1:47:55
  It doesn't have to be what's actually happening, but if they perceive that, and so you have to go above and beyond, and that's that's that's nice that he's he recognizes that as well.
• 1:48:04
  Right.
• 1:48:05
  Yeah, he's way more mature than I was at that age.
• 1:48:09
  A little old man.
• 1:48:10
  A little old man.
• 1:48:11
  But um what he he said to me too that you know, Mom, this um I would I'm going to celebrate you, um, but we're going to do it quietly because I think this is just putting a larger target on your back.
• 1:48:26
  This is so it will.
• 1:48:28
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:48:29
  He he's correct in that as well.
• 1:48:31
  Yeah, so I But I but I I still think and and I think part of that gets back to its Haynes.
• 1:48:37
  You get recognized for something and people are gonna try and undercut it.
• 1:48:40
  Right.
• 1:48:41
  Yeah.
• 1:48:41
  Instead of just celebrating it for what it is, and just why do we have to try and undercut your success?
• 1:48:49
  You've been recognized by the whole state for doing a great job.
• 1:48:53
  But yeah, there's gonna be people in the community, in s there is gonna be tribal members that are gonna be trying to undercut that.
• 1:49:01
  Whether it's I I don't know if it's j I have no idea what it is, jealousy, whatever.
• 1:49:05
  But I does this happen other places?
• 1:49:08
  I don't know.
• 1:49:09
  Is this a Haynes thing?
• 1:49:12
  It's always driven me crazy.
• 1:49:14
  Yeah, yeah, me too.
• 1:49:15
  One of the things when when um my sister in high school, she was an excellent basketball player, the number of things I would hear from people trying to tear her down, it was it was just like, seriously, why?
• 1:49:31
  Yeah.
• 1:49:32
  It's and I just seen that at and even even my dad, the number of times people would be attacking him and everything, it's like he's he's trying to do good things.
• 1:49:43
  And it that those are just two family examples.
• 1:49:45
  I can I can give you lots of examples you see in the community.
• 1:49:49
  It's like, why can't we just say thank you for doing a great job?
• 1:49:53
  Congratulations on doing a great job.
• 1:49:55
  We're proud of you and not have the petty jealousy or whatever it else.
• 1:50:04
  I agree.
• 1:50:04
  100%.
• 1:50:06
  So tell James if we got people picking on you.
• 1:50:08
  Let me know.
• 1:50:09
  We can go beat them up together.
• 1:50:11
  I'm old, Frail, he'll have to do the beating, but I'll watch to make sure nobody's coming to break it up.
• 1:50:17
  Yeah, I could just see that.
• 1:50:19
  I can visualize that.
• 1:50:21
  Yeah.
• 1:50:23
  I don't know.
• 1:50:24
  Sometimes they're um they're definitely hard times.
• 1:50:28
  So um I've always tried with CIA to surround myself with good people.
• 1:50:36
  So very carefully choosing who who's hired into the organization because they have to be somebody who can stand the heat.
• 1:50:44
  And um really um it's not, you know, it's not easy.
• 1:50:52
  You you become a target, but what you drive is going to be observed.
• 1:50:55
  People will actually come in and say, Why are there so many nice cars in the driveway?
• 1:50:59
  Well, because these people work.
• 1:51:02
  Um anyway, that just that's and once we pay them, we have no control of what they decide to do with the money.
• 1:51:08
  Maybe they live in a town, but they drive a nice car, okay.
• 1:51:10
  Well, and you never know.
• 1:51:12
  It could be that's one of the things I I learned several years ago, many years ago, because I was I was having that conversation with somebody at the at the sports shop when we were in the older buildings, I think I was high school, college, or something like that, and I was talking about what somebody was driving.
• 1:51:27
  And an older older gentleman that was in the store, he goes, Doug, you don't know the whole story.
• 1:51:33
  I goes, Well, what is a story?
• 1:51:35
  He goes, I don't know it either.
• 1:51:37
  But he says, Maybe he paid cash for that.
• 1:51:40
  Maybe he's leveraged to the hilt and he's barely making the payments.
• 1:51:45
  You have no just because there's something shiny doesn't mean it's paid for.
• 1:51:49
  Doesn't mean there isn't something behind it.
• 1:51:51
  And I was like, uh that puts a whole different look on it.
• 1:51:56
  Right.
• 1:51:57
  Yeah.
• 1:52:01
  When I bought my vehicle, I've always had black or gray.
• 1:52:04
  Because they don't, they're not shiny and they don't bring a lot of attention.
• 1:52:08
  And then during COVID, when um I decided I needed a new car, um the only one they have is bright red.
• 1:52:20
  So I came, you know, I drove it off a ferry and was like, oh yeah.
• 1:52:25
  No, but don't pay attention, nothing happening over here.
• 1:52:28
  We drove it through a puddle a few times.
• 1:52:32
  You know, it's just tough being in, you know, and anywhere else you'd um it it, you know, it would just be so different.
• 1:52:41
  I don't know.
• 1:52:42
  I don't I don't know what it is about Haynes and the way that we love each other.
• 1:52:48
  I don't know.
• 1:52:49
  So looking at your you've been tribal administrator for how many years now?
• 1:52:54
  13.
• 1:52:54
  This is my 13th year.
• 1:52:55
  This is your 13th year.
• 1:52:58
  Top three, five accomplishments during those thirteen years.
• 1:53:02
  Oh my gosh, survival?
• 1:53:04
  Okay, that's a good one.
• 1:53:05
  That's a good one to start with.
• 1:53:06
  Um I think um when I started on as a tribal administrator, life um the lifetime expectancy for a tribal administrator was two years.
• 1:53:19
  So Dang, you're crushing it.
• 1:53:20
  Six and a half times the Yeah, yeah.
• 1:53:23
  So people don't last in these positions because they're political.
• 1:53:27
  Yeah.
• 1:53:27
  So I think same as borough managers.
• 1:53:29
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:53:30
  Yeah, same thing.
• 1:53:31
  Yeah.
• 1:53:32
  Yeah.
• 1:53:32
  So um I think that just basic I think surrounding myself with good people was a win.
• 1:53:41
  And um and making sure that every um employee was set up to succeed.
• 1:53:51
  If they didn't succeed, it wasn't because they weren't they weren't given what they needed to succeed.
• 1:53:58
  So um I think that retaining employees is uh um an accomplishment.
• 1:54:10
  Um getting um or building relationships within the borough.
• 1:54:16
  I actually um was surprised when like when you came over to the office and said, let's do some things together.
• 1:54:24
  I just thought, wow, you know, no one's ever approached us and asked us if we'd be interested in, you know, well I think you I think you started that.
• 1:54:34
  Well because you were in the borough.
• 1:54:36
  I can't remember if I came over first or because when you came over and were talking, you I think you came to see Jesse.
• 1:54:42
  Probably uh or something, and you brought up the street signs.
• 1:54:46
  You're like, hey, I've got this idea.
• 1:54:48
  I'm like, yeah, let's let's see what we can do with that.
• 1:54:51
  Oh, that's right.
• 1:54:51
  And now we've got a bunch of street signs that language around town.
• 1:54:56
  That's true.
• 1:54:56
  It was one of my um one of my original s um s strategies and our first strategic plan was having more um visibility.
• 1:55:06
  Yeah.
• 1:55:07
  Yeah.
• 1:55:08
  I was glad to see they had some more up.
• 1:55:10
  Mm-hmm.
• 1:55:11
  Yeah.
• 1:55:12
  I was hoping that wouldn't when I when I left, I was hoping that wouldn't die off and would keep going.
• 1:55:16
  And so it was it was cool to see more coming up.
• 1:55:19
  Yeah, and hopefully we'll have more.
• 1:55:21
  Yeah.
• 1:55:22
  Yeah.
• 1:55:22
  So uh um we're the issue we run into is uh finding the correct spelling.
• 1:55:28
  Spelling and stuff, yeah.
• 1:55:30
  And translation.
• 1:55:31
  It's another one of those things that um with language where you say, Well, how do you say this or that?
• 1:55:37
  And they you know the speaker says, Well, there's no direct translation for that.
• 1:55:44
  So, you know.
• 1:55:45
  Get something close.
• 1:55:47
  Right, you get something close, and then somebody's gonna argue with you.
• 1:55:50
  But I think we have a um we have Marsha Hot, she's wonderful.
• 1:55:55
  She's very talented.
• 1:55:56
  Yep, she's uh um English is a second language for her, so she understands, she's got a very good understanding of language.
• 1:56:06
  There's a there's a lot of in a in a lot of ways, if you look around Haynes, there's some pretty remarkable talent in this community.
• 1:56:14
  If you know where to look, some of it's kind of hidden, it's not you gotta ask.
• 1:56:18
  Right.
• 1:56:19
  There's some amazing talent in this community.
• 1:56:21
  Yeah, some of the bartenders are amazing.
• 1:56:23
  Uh-huh.
• 1:56:24
  We have one I know that's some amazing computer skills.
• 1:56:28
  And I'm wondering, well, why don't you just come to work for us?
• 1:56:33
  Um, yeah.
• 1:56:35
  It's fun when you start talking to people and you figure out that they have these wonderful skills that you just you know, like why didn't why didn't we know about this?
• 1:56:46
  But you know, so looking ahead, what's what's the next big thing that you can talk about that you want to see happen with CIA?
• 1:56:56
  What would be like, man, if I could do this in the next five years, that would be awesome.
• 1:57:01
  I think completing the tank farm project.
• 1:57:04
  If if there's one thing that I want to do before I die is um making sure that um the tank farm's cleaned up and it's transferred back to the tribe.
• 1:57:15
  I have been working on that for um like off and on for the last 13 years.
• 1:57:22
  Um and the effort predates that even.
• 1:57:25
  Yeah.
• 1:57:26
  Yeah.
• 1:57:27
  Yes, so um, whenever I would go to DC and um walk into Don Young's office, he'd go, Oh, Haynes, tank farm.
• 1:57:41
  Well, at least he knows who I am.
• 1:57:43
  Yeah.
• 1:57:43
  What what our issues are.
• 1:57:45
  So yeah, I had that's one thing.
• 1:57:48
  And and then having the the landless legislation pass is another one of those things that I really would like to see happen.
• 1:57:55
  It's just um Does it seem like that's getting any closer?
• 1:57:58
  Yes.
• 1:57:59
  Good.
• 1:57:59
  Yeah, so we are um we have a couple of appointments next week with um some of our um opposition.
• 1:58:11
  And it we we are just like two senators away from a clean ride through.
• 1:58:18
  Okay.
• 1:58:19
  And one of them, one is Heinrich and I uh we're meeting with him his staff next um Tuesday or Wednesday.
• 1:58:28
  And I'm really looking forward to meeting with his staff because I think hearing um hearing our story really and how how the land claim settlement will affect our community um hopefully will make a difference in how he feels about the legislation.
• 1:58:46
  I think um that a lot of people really um a lot of people who who claim opposition also understand um they understand that it's a social issue, it's a social justice issue, but it involves the Tongas.
• 1:59:03
  But you know, if if we had received our um settlement prior, we could have had land closer.
• 1:59:10
  You know, but the land's being taken up by um the borough, the state, um, it's being sold off.
• 1:59:17
  So that just leaves us with very limited choices.
• 1:59:21
  Yeah, there's not much available.
• 1:59:23
  And then we have to take federal lands.
• 1:59:25
  So what are our federal lands options?
• 1:59:28
  Uh the Tongas, unfortunately.
• 1:59:31
  So um we have um Senator Heinrich and then Senator Cantwell from Washington State, who is um not supportive.
• 1:59:43
  And I don't know that we could ever reach her at the end of the day.
• 1:59:46
  Really?
• 1:59:46
  That kind of surprises me that she would be in opposition to that.
• 1:59:50
  It surprised me too, because it um I've uh taken the time to really look at what she's accomplished for the state of Washington and what she's accomplished for the tribes in Washington.
• 2:00:04
  So um I have sent her little messages like okay, so you believe this, but you don't support our issue?
• 2:00:16
  Yeah.
• 2:00:17
  No, that just um that's why it was a surprise to me, because I, you know, after my time in Seattle, I still still follow the news down there pretty much every morning.
• 2:00:26
  That's one of the first things to read Seattle Times on my phone.
• 2:00:29
  Um, but yeah, she's very much into the supporting that in Washington, and it that'd be interesting to under to understand why Alaska is different for her.
• 2:00:39
  I I don't know if we have um I I won't name names, but there's this guy who um funds um a large um conservation group um through selling things like snowboards and skateboards.
• 2:00:59
  And he um is not from Alaska, he's from Washington State, but at one point he stepped foot in the Tongas National Forest and had an spiritual experience there.
• 2:01:14
  And he said that the Tongas National Forest needs to stay out of private hand ownership because he had a spiritual experience when he stepped into the Tongas.
• 2:01:24
  So my thought is, well, you know, every day I step into the forest, it's it's my entire life has been a spiritual experience in the in in my homelands and my parents and my grandparents and so on.
• 2:01:40
  You know, that's our roots are so deep here that you cannot move us.
• 2:01:45
  And I can't even imagine calling somewhere else home.
• 2:01:48
  And I can't, you know, I have spiritual experiences when I live visit the Galapagos, but I'm not gonna say no one can live there.
• 2:01:55
  The people who live there can't practice.
• 2:01:59
  And again, it comes back to what you're talking about before.
• 2:02:02
  If they hadn't screwed this up at the beginning, the lands you would have selected would have been closer to the community and they wouldn't have been where they're where you're being forced to.
• 2:02:13
  So it's you're not the one at fault for why you're having to select there.
• 2:02:20
  Right.
• 2:02:21
  So figure something out here on yeah, it's you're being blamed for something that was caused by other people.
• 2:02:27
  Exactly.
• 2:02:29
  Yeah, and unfortunately, I mean our Angst is not perfect.
• 2:02:32
  Um and it it's no legislation is.
• 2:02:36
  Oh.
• 2:02:37
  If if if I could do if I could go back in time and I had had some say in the way that this um this whole settlement was um how it all played out, um it would be so much different.
• 2:02:53
  It would, you know, that I'm not sure why corporations were chosen.
• 2:02:58
  It's just crazy to me.
• 2:03:00
  Um the land should have gone to the tribes and it should have been in and held in trust.
• 2:03:06
  Um but that's not the way it is, and that um because of that, um we are not allowed to request a um settlement anything different than what anybody else has received.
• 2:03:23
  So we're stuck.
• 2:03:25
  Okay.
• 2:03:25
  We're stuck with Inks uh and and all of the things that are wrong with it.
• 2:03:30
  As as you well know, the reason there's no perfect legislation is every part of it's compromised.
• 2:03:36
  There's so much that goes into that just to get enough votes to pass it.
• 2:03:40
  Exactly.
• 2:03:41
  And so somewhere on the line at the start it might have been perfect, right?
• 2:03:45
  But by in order to get enough people to vote for it, gotta change this, gotta change this, and it's because there's however many special interests that well that might affect this, this might affect that.
• 2:03:57
  Right.
• 2:03:58
  Yeah, and it's it's interesting to me too that people that this is such a huge issue.
• 2:04:04
  And there are people who um uh have moved into the state, um, haven't been here even, you know, just they're they're young and I I want to laugh at them but have to take them seriously.
• 2:04:18
  And you know, they're saying, well, you know, you're going to affect where I go um kayaking or you know, I go camping up there, and I don't you know, it's these crazy things, like, oh my gosh, are you serious?
• 2:04:33
  I actually ran into somebody in in Tannekey because I was I was trying to help with um help um organize uh a meeting in Taneke so that we could sit down like uh humans and talk about what's happening.
• 2:04:47
  But they there was just people there were people there who were new newbies to the area and they just don't want to hear about it.
• 2:04:53
  Like they don't want to know we don't want to hear about it at all.
• 2:04:57
  But you know um be because it it if you point out something that's obvious to maybe to you or um they don't you know they don't want to hear that don't want to be wrong.
• 2:05:12
  Yeah.
• 2:05:15
  Well most humans don't want to be told that they're wrong.
• 2:05:18
  Yeah.
• 2:05:19
  Human nature.
• 2:05:20
  We all have we all have an issue with that.
• 2:05:22
  Right.
• 2:05:24
  But that's another thing you asked about um you asked about uh top five things.
• 2:05:31
  I think learning to say, I made that mistake, I'm going to be held accountable for that.
• 2:05:37
  That's that to me was a big accomplishment.
• 2:05:40
  Learning to say I yeah, that was me, I screwed up.
• 2:05:45
  Yeah.
• 2:05:45
  Um that was that was something my dad always told us when we're kids.
• 2:05:51
  That he says, you've got a lot of rights, but you got rid of a lot of responsibilities.
• 2:05:57
  And with those, you know, with those rights, there's there's stuff that comes with it.
• 2:06:02
  And he said one of those things is that you when you do something wrong, you need to admit it.
• 2:06:09
  And I I remember one of the hardest things we're in um Bel Choir down at the Presbyterian Church, and I forget, I I think it was a Sunday night, and we had to practice.
• 2:06:21
  I was sixth, seventh grade, maybe, and it was in the winter, and we thought we'd have we're waiting for our rides, and there's four or five of us waiting there, and we thought we should have a snowball fight.
• 2:06:35
  Well, instead of a snowball fight, we decided to have a couple people in front of the doors to the church, and the rest of us would be throwing snowballs at them, which isn't a problem, except there was windows in the door of the church, and we broke one of the windows.
• 2:06:51
  And I remember Jeanette Heinrich picking us up, and by the time I got home, I walked in the house, I'll just have tears, I'll just cry and mom and dad like, what happened?
• 2:06:59
  Because I was so nervous about having to tell them I broke a church window at the church, I'm going to hell.
• 2:07:05
  This is all bad.
• 2:07:06
  This is not a good thing.
• 2:07:07
  And they're like, Okay, Jeanette's gonna go down, she got some cardboard covered up after school tomorrow.
• 2:07:13
  You got boys are gonna go down there, you're gonna meet Reverend Cameron.
• 2:07:16
  He's they they had it all figured out.
• 2:07:18
  This is this is how we can take it.
• 2:07:19
  And so the next and there was no big deal.
• 2:07:21
  It's just like I punished myself more than I think my mom and dad looked at us like, there's nothing we can do to punish you more than this already is.
• 2:07:29
  But the next day we went down and and met Reverend Cameron, and he taught us.
• 2:07:33
  We pulled the pulled the trim off of the window, went and measured it, went up to Heisters, got a new pane, we glazed it, put everything back together, and he's like, Thanks for admitting it and helping me fix it.
• 2:07:43
  And I think we pitched in and paid for it or whatever, but it was one of those like you own up to it.
• 2:07:49
  In most cases, it's gonna be better than if you try and hide it.
• 2:07:52
  Right.
• 2:07:52
  Yeah, it feels better.
• 2:07:53
  Feels a lot feels telling my parents did not feel good, but their response is like, oh, okay, yeah, this this can work.
• 2:08:00
  Yeah, yeah.
• 2:08:01
  And I learned how to replace a window.
• 2:08:03
  Thankfully, that's the last window I've had to replace.
• 2:08:06
  You know, I I have a funny story.
• 2:08:08
  When Ted was little, we had a a little Subaru, and he was outside playing by himself.
• 2:08:14
  It was before James was born, and he was throwing rocks.
• 2:08:18
  You know, he was a little boy, he always had rocks in his pocket, throwing rocks, and he comes back in and he's just crying, like, ah like we were, oh my gosh! Count the fingers and toes.
• 2:08:30
  And he's like, Mom, you're going to need to get a new car.
• 2:08:34
  He's like, Why?
• 2:08:35
  No, no, I don't need a new car.
• 2:08:37
  Yeah, you need a new car.
• 2:08:39
  So he took us all outside, and it was um, you know, it was my brother who was there with all of his guy friends, and um they we all went outside to figure out why I needed a new car.
• 2:08:50
  And it was because he'd thrown a rock and he hit the headlight and it cracked.
• 2:08:55
  Cracked the headlight?
• 2:08:56
  Yeah.
• 2:08:56
  Yeah.
• 2:08:56
  So of course I needed a new car.
• 2:08:59
  Yeah.
• 2:08:59
  So can't just replace the head.
• 2:09:01
  He doesn't know you can just replace a headlight.
• 2:09:02
  Right.
• 2:09:03
  Yeah, it was devastating.
• 2:09:04
  He was just too cut.
• 2:09:06
  But it was so funny though, because yeah.
• 2:09:09
  I wish I could have gotten a new car because the headlight cracked.
• 2:09:16
  Yeah.
• 2:09:17
  Not in that, not in that tax bracket.
• 2:09:19
  Nope.
• 2:09:19
  Yep.
• 2:09:20
  Well, I think I probably paid a thousand dollars for that car still.
• 2:09:25
  So now if kind of a morbid thought, but at your funeral, what do you if people say this about Harriet, what would you be like, I did I did what I wanted to do?
• 2:09:40
  How do you want people to remember Harriet?
• 2:09:43
  I think I um And it can be different between the community as a whole or the tribe or your family.
• 2:09:53
  I would hope that um my grandkids remember me.
• 2:09:59
  Um I I hope that I am remembered for the fun things like um horses.
• 2:10:12
  And um oh, remember her 60th birthday.
• 2:10:18
  We went on a girls tour and listened to we went to see all these bands from the 80s and 90s who actually did this.
• 2:10:27
  And I guess that I was happy.
• 2:10:32
  That's a good goal.
• 2:10:33
  Yeah.
• 2:10:34
  Yeah, I think that happiness is probably the most important, you know, it's most it's most important because if you're happy and you feel good about yourself then you're probably doing something right.
• 2:10:50
  What what haven't I asked you that I should have asked you?
• 2:10:55
  Oh heck.
• 2:10:56
  What what stories in there that we haven't gotten to that you want to share?
• 2:11:01
  I'll probably think of something in um.
• 2:11:07
  Everybody does.
• 2:11:07
  Everybody uh after this, just about everybody's coming, I should have said this, I should have said this, and it's all right.
• 2:11:12
  Yeah.
• 2:11:13
  You don't you don't have to come up with it now, but I don't know if there's anything that is like, how come he hasn't asked me about this?
• 2:11:19
  Uh I don't know.
• 2:11:20
  I think that you you have been fairly thorough.
• 2:11:24
  Um I have five grandkids.
• 2:11:32
  Five now?
• 2:11:33
  Yeah.
• 2:11:34
  Congratulations.
• 2:11:36
  Well, that's just like this accomplishment to me.
• 2:11:38
  Like I I thought I'd never have 'em.
• 2:11:40
  Yeah, now you got five.
• 2:11:41
  Now I've got five.
• 2:11:42
  Yeah, and I'll probably not have any more, but well, five's a good number.
• 2:11:46
  That'll that'll keep grandma busy.
• 2:11:48
  Yeah, my oldest is twelve.
• 2:11:50
  Yeah.
• 2:11:51
  Enza's twelve, um ads is ten, carver's ten, Lolana is eight, and Azita is five.
• 2:12:00
  She just turned five.
• 2:12:02
  Nice.
• 2:12:03
  Yeah.
• 2:12:03
  And I have um my three three of them are donor babies.
• 2:12:10
  They have the same same-sex moms.
• 2:12:13
  Or they have same uh they have two moms.
• 2:12:16
  Okay.
• 2:12:17
  And I think that to me is a point of pride because I feel like um raised some really good boys because they were willing to do that.
• 2:12:26
  And then they brought um they gave me two daughters-in-law that I'd absolutely love.
• 2:12:34
  And of course I, you know, it their um bonus.
• 2:12:40
  And Ted's married and I absolutely love my daughter-in-law, so I really, you know, life is good when you kid don't have to worry about things like that.
• 2:12:50
  You know, like I I'm never gonna have to take care of my grandkids because they have wonderful parents.
• 2:12:55
  Success.
• 2:12:55
  There we go.
• 2:12:56
  There we go.
• 2:12:56
  Success.
• 2:12:57
  Success.
• 2:12:58
  Yeah.
• 2:12:58
  Happy grandkids, happy big kids.
• 2:13:03
  Good job, Mom.
• 2:13:04
  Thank you.
• 2:13:05
  And that's what's important.
• 2:13:08
  I think with you, if you if you lead with family, that's a good place to lead.
• 2:13:13
  The rest the rest is ancillary to having a good family.
• 2:13:17
  Right.
• 2:13:19
  Yeah.
• 2:13:20
  The rest pays the bills, but family still where it's out.
• 2:13:23
  Right.
• 2:13:24
  Family first.
• 2:13:25
  That's our motto at CIA too, is a family first.
• 2:13:28
  We're family friendly, kid friendly, dog friendly.
• 2:13:32
  Um, yeah.
• 2:13:35
  Well, thank you for joining me, Harriet.
• 2:13:37
  Thank you for asking me.
• 2:13:39
  This was painless.
• 2:13:41
  Well, I I hope it's I I I like to keep it painless.
• 2:13:44
  Yeah.
• 2:13:44
  I I just I've I I enjoy these.
• 2:13:46
  It's it's fun to get to know people that I pretty much everybody I've had on here I've known for decades.
• 2:13:52
  Uh-huh.
• 2:13:53
  And everyone, every time I find out, I learn more about them that I haven't known besides knowing people for decades.
• 2:14:00
  There's some people that I didn't know for decades.
• 2:14:03
  You know, it's funny how you know I've known you for decades, but you know somebody else that I don't know and you've known them for decades?
• 2:14:10
  I'm suspicious.
• 2:14:11
  Yep.
• 2:14:11
  Yeah, so I'll have to ask you about a couple of the people that you had.
• 2:14:15
  I can I can I can give there there's a couple that I haven't known for decades, but most of them it's been for a long, long time.
• 2:14:21
  Yeah.
• 2:14:21
  Yeah.
• 2:14:21
  This is a good thing.
• 2:14:23
  You're doing a good thing.
• 2:14:24
  Thank you.
• 2:14:24
  Thanks, Sam.
• 2:14:25
  Yeah, and Sam Sam Sam's doing the video and stuff today, but him, I there's no way I could do this without Sam and Marty.
• 2:14:31
  Yeah.
• 2:14:31
  There's absolutely no way this would have gotten off the ground without their help.
• 2:14:34
  Teamwork.
• 2:14:35
  And Chris, Chris LeBert, too.
• 2:14:37
  Sam knows the story.
• 2:14:38
  The first one I tried to do, um, we ended up with no audio.
• 2:14:41
  We had video, but no audio.
• 2:14:42
  I tried to do it all by myself because that was that's the original plan, just lean, mean.
• 2:14:47
  And uh, so I texted Sam and he's like, Are you at home?
• 2:14:51
  Like, yep, I'm on my way.
• 2:14:55
  And then I saw Chris LeBert in the store, and and I I told him, because he's a professional sound guy.
• 2:15:00
  I was like, Chris, is let me know the next time you're doing one.
• 2:15:02
  And he said, Oh, so him and Sam both were there.
• 2:15:04
  I had very highly trained staff on that one, and everything went very, very well, and it's gone very well since then.
• 2:15:10
  So I realized my limitations and bring in professional help to cover that for me.
• 2:15:15
  And we're lucky to have people like that.
• 2:15:17
  We're lucky to have people like that, yeah.
• 2:15:20
  And that they keep showing up.
• 2:15:22
  Yeah, I'm extremely grateful for that and very lucky to have people like that that are willing to indulge me in my crazy ideas like this.
• 2:15:30
  Are you two the same age?
• 2:15:32
  I was uh his sister was my age.
• 2:15:34
  He was a couple years behind in school, but we went to we were scouts and everything together.
• 2:15:38
  His his dad uh was our scout master when we went to national jamboree in 1985.
• 2:15:43
  Oh wow.
• 2:15:44
  And that year, so I that was that that was I think the year that I finished up everything for because I got my Eagle Scout in '86, and I remember when that winter, between '85 and '86, Steve called me into the office at school, and he said, Doug, I'm taking this other job in Juneau, and he says, We need you need to finish everything for your Eagle Scout badge, because you need to have your badge before I leave for Juno.
• 2:16:13
  I think it was July 6th, we had the court of honor in the tribal house at uh because uh um uh Carl Heinmiller.
• 2:16:23
  So in the parade grounds, there we had it in the tribal house.
• 2:16:26
  First time I ever had a like an Eagle, we had the headdress, blanket, and everything for me.
• 2:16:31
  It was a very clinket, probably I might be the only clinket-themed court of honor for an Eagle Scout.
• 2:16:38
  Oh wow.
• 2:16:39
  I still got the pictures, but it was I was like, I have no idea what all this stuff was about, but it was really it felt it felt amazing just you just anytime you put on a clinket blanket.
• 2:16:49
  It's like but McFeeders got on the ferry the next day, and Steve was giving me bad times.
• 2:16:54
  You cut this awful close, Doug.
• 2:16:56
  You cut this awful close.
• 2:16:58
  But that but that was kind of a when um so fast forward, so that was July of 86, and then early 2000s, after I'd been going to gold medal for a few years, Charlie Williams calls me up.
• 2:17:12
  He goes, Doug, I'm having a party for my brother, and he says, I need the team needs to have clickett names.
• 2:17:19
  We need to give them all names, you included.
• 2:17:22
  And he says, I'm having a party for my brother this fall.
• 2:17:26
  Give me everybody's so I gave him contact info.
• 2:17:28
  So, okay.
• 2:17:29
  Later that day, the next day, John Katzett comes in, and I I tell him what uh Charlie just told me.
• 2:17:40
  No, not acceptable.
• 2:17:42
  That's not happening.
• 2:17:45
  I just told him that I was gonna do this, it's gonna be his brother.
• 2:17:48
  He goes, you're not getting a HUNA name.
• 2:17:50
  You're getting a my dad's adopting you.
• 2:17:52
  I said, I didn't he go, no, my dad's gonna adopt you.
• 2:17:55
  I said, well, he hasn't told me that, John.
• 2:17:57
  He goes, he's told me.
• 2:17:58
  He says, this time, meet me up at their house.
• 2:18:02
  As you go up there and talk to Tom Cat.
• 2:18:05
  And he laid out, he goes, nope, we're gonna do it.
• 2:18:07
  So I called Charlie.
• 2:18:08
  He said, Charlie, I can't have you give me a name.
• 2:18:11
  He goes, why not?
• 2:18:13
  I said, Tomcat, not a problem, Doug.
• 2:18:15
  I'd be very happy if Tom wants to give you your name at my brother's party.
• 2:18:19
  And so wonderful.
• 2:18:21
  So I was a raven, but having that first experience with the blankets and that, and then when Tom gave me a uh um sealskin vest that had the embroidered raven on the back and everything, that was it was like okay, this kind of a full circle moment here and right kind of foreshadowing a little bit with what Carl Heinmiller was doing with doing the chill having us do the chill cat dancing at Jamboree and stuff like that.
• 2:18:48
  So but that was a that was a very um proud day when Tom gave me my name.
• 2:18:55
  I'll bet, yeah.
• 2:18:56
  So especially with there's there's a lot of Clinkett elders that I looked up to when I was a kid.
• 2:19:04
  But Tom's one that really stood out just I don't know, it's cause pro it might have been just because he was at the store all the time and then when I moved back, the number of things I was doing with with his kids and uh hanging out at his house and Ruth's house and Klukwan and stuff, like that probably played a part in that as well.
• 2:19:21
  But yeah, Tom Tom was a special guy.
• 2:19:24
  I agree.
• 2:19:25
  Yeah, his his dad was as well.
• 2:19:28
  Um I don't remember his dad, but I hear s I heard stories from my dad about his his dad, and I think that there's um there's definitely a ribbon of good that went through the family.
• 2:19:41
  Yes.
• 2:19:44
  So with that we'll call it an evening.
• 2:19:47
  Thanks again, Harold.
• 2:19:48
  I appreciate it.
• 2:19:48
  Thank you.
• 2:19:49
  Yeah.