TRAVEL

Photo story: a journey from Juneau to Sitka

Indigenous photographer Brian Adams shares a captivating look at Alaska’s southeast region through the lens of Alaska Native businesses and artists.

Photographs byBrian Adams

ByKathleen Rellihan

January 9, 2024

The Goldbelt Tram takes visitors on a 1,800-foot climb from Juneau's cruise ship pier to the top of Mount Roberts. The ride lasts approximately six minutes and offers expansive views of the Chilkat Mountains and Gastineau Channel. At the top, visitors can watch "Seeing Daylight," an 18-minute film on Tlingit history and culture, and hike through subalpine meadows. The tram is Alaska Native owned and operated.

In 2014, siblings Crystal and Rico Worl co-founded Trickster Company to promote innovative Indigenous design. Their products range from snowboards to apparel to home goods and incorporate Northwest Coast formline design, an Indigenous art style that originated over 2,000 years ago. Several stores throughout Alaska, including the Sealaska Heritage Store in Juneau, carry Trickster products. The Worls also sell online through their website.

In addition to running Trickster Company, Crystal and Rico (pictured above in their Juneau studios) operate independently as artists. Crystal's work includes paintings, graphic design, textiles, jewelry, glass, and public art. Rico’s work includes custom rings, product design, sculpture, and computer-aided 3D design. Both draw inspiration from their Tlingit-Athabascan heritage.

Crystal Worl stands in front of one of her murals in downtown Juneau. Her public art can be seen throughout Juneau, Anchorage, and Sitka on buildings, ambulances, a basketball court, and even an Alaska Airlines Boeing 737 plane.

Light mist rises from the ocean surface as a humpback whale lifts its tail above the water, seen from the balcony of an Allen Marine Tours whale-watching and wildlife cruise in Juneau. This family- and Alaska Native-owned business has operated in the Inside Passage for over 45 years and offers both half-day and full-day excursions from Juneau, Sitka, and Ketchikan.

Rochelle Smallwood, a Tlingit artist and visual storyteller based in Juneau, enjoys coffee at Sacred Grounds Café. The café is owned and operated by the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, and 100 percent of its staff are tribal citizens.

Smallwood looks out over Auke Lake, located approximately 10 miles (16 kilometers) from downtown Juneau. The lake's name comes from the Tlingit word *aakʼw*, which translates to “little lake."

Smallwood places her hand on a petroglyph in Juneau's Tongass National Forest located on the traditional homelands of the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian tribes. These pecked rocks are among the oldest art forms found in Southeast Alaska.

Accessible by air or sea, Sitka is a small city on Baranof Island in the Alexander Archipelago, a 40-minute flight or several-hour ferry ride from Juneau. The Tlingit people were the first inhabitants of Sitka, and today around 10 percent of the city's population is Alaska Native.

Internationally known Tlingit and Unangax̂ multi-disciplinary artist Nicholas Galanin lives and works at home in Sitka. His work spans sculpture, photography, jewelry, and music. "Culture is rooted in connection to land; like land, culture cannot be contained," Galanin says in his artist statement. "I am inspired by generations of Lingít and Unangax̂ creative production and knowledge connected to the land I belong to." He is pictured above in Sitka National Historical Park (left/top) and his private recording studio (right/bottom).

Sitka National Historical Park, located within walking distance of downtown Sitka, is home to historic and contemporary totem poles carved by Tlingit and Haida artists. Visitors can learn about 18 of these poles as well as the clans and stories they represent along the park's one-mile Totem Trail. Here, the Trader Legend Pole, a replica of a pole that originally stood in the Kaigani Haida village of Sukkwan, rises among Sitka spruce and western hemlock trees.

Sitka artist Mary Goddard designs contemporary jewelry inspired by her Tlingit heritage as well as Southeast Alaska's temperate rainforest and ocean views. She is pictured above wearing one of her custom necklaces (left/top) and in her studio engraving copper (right/bottom). Her jewelry is sold in Juneau at the Sealaska Heritage Institute and in Sitka at The Cellar, Sitka Historical Museum Gift Shop, and Xut'aa Hidi Adze House Gallery. In Yakutat, her jewelry is sold at Jennie’s Gift Shop, her mother’s store.

Smallwood and Sitka resident Nancy Neel soak up the beauty of Sitka's rocky shoreline.

About the Photographer

Iñupiaq photographer Brian Adams shot this entire photo series on film. Adams' work documenting Alaska Native communities began in 2005, when he attended his grandmother’s funeral in Kivalina, an Iñupiaq village on the northwest coast of Alaska. “It was the community feeling of making photographs in the village that made me realize I wanted to spend my career photographing Indigenous communities,” he says. Based in Anchorage, Adams is the co-founder of Indigenous Photograph and The 400 Years Project.