A Tlingit artist crossed the border to teach Anchorage kids an ancient craft

Joanne Williams learned to make bentwood boxes from her grandmother. She's since passed the craft to some 2,000 people — and last week, a few more, as she traveled from Atlin, British Columbia, to spend two days teaching youth in an Anchorage summer leadership program to design, build, and paint their own.

The trip traced an old line. Williams is a citizen of the Taku River Tlingit First Nation, whose territory runs from the Yukon down through British Columbia and along the Taku River to the sea — crossing into Alaska. So the workshop wasn't so much bringing Tlingit knowledge to Anchorage as returning it to a corner of the same homeland.

Bentwood boxes are a feat of old engineering: a single plank is scored so it folds, steamed until it bends into a square, and doweled shut — watertight, without a seam. Coastal communities used them for centuries to carry belongings and protect ceremonial items.