A Juneau artist beads a warrior, a relative, and a record

A Tlingit artist told a Juneau audience Tuesday that the beaded robe she's creating is art — but also something far larger: a living document, a clan relative, and a message to generations she'll never meet.

Tl'aagunk Renee Culp, artist in residence at Sealaska Heritage Institute, is making a robe depicting Kahtushtu, a Chookaneidí ancestor who fought a giant octopus threatening his people near Glacier Bay. "He strapped daggers, knives, to his wrists and went in the water to fight the octopus," Culp said. "Both lost their lives. He was successful in taking out the danger to our people, but in the process, he lost his life."

Speaking in the Shuká Hít clan house, Culp argued that Tlingit art has always worked as a living system of documentation — carrying legal, historical, and social meaning across generations. She pointed to pictographs used as boundary markers, totem poles that record lineage, and, from SHI's archives, the "Mortgage of Sitka": a bundle of sticks, a rock, and a photograph documenting one clan's mortgage of Sitka lands to another after two men were accidentally killed. The debt, she noted, has never been repaid.

When it's finished, the robe becomes at.óow — clan-owned property understood to hold spirit and embody clan history. Culp drew a sharp line between that and decoration. "Different than a house that is owned by a family, clan-owned property has a spirit," she said. "It's alive. And it's a member of our family."

She dedicated the piece to her late uncle Robert Loescher, who carried the name Kahtushtu. And she said the ancestor's lesson isn't about strength: "Not power and dominance, but service, sacrifice, accountability, and love."

During questions, an audience member who identified herself as Chookaneidí gave the work its stakes. "We come from Glacier Bay, each one of us sitting here indigenous to some place, and we're wanting to bring our living cultural existence into reality because we're still here and we have a lot to say." The robe isn't finished yet.