SHI's 2025 report: new building, totem pole, and Army apology highlight a year of milestones

Sealaska Heritage Institute closed 2025 with three developments that moved beyond programming into permanent infrastructure and official record: a new science building on its Juneau campus, a 14th totem pole on the waterfront trail, and a U.S. Army apology for the 1869 bombardment of a Tlingit village.

The Indigenous Science Building opened as a hub for education grounded in Indigenous knowledge, languages, and values, with a traditional food kitchen and labs covering digital media, fabrication, and research. SHI's education programs reached more than 12,000 people from 115 communities during the year.

On the Juneau waterfront, SHI dedicated its 14th pole for the Kutia Dei Totem Pole Trail. The pole was carved by Ketchikan Haida artist Lee Wallace and five apprentices and features the Sooktineidi clan crest: a dog salmon swimming in tall grass at the mouth of a creek before entering to spawn. The trail is planned to hold 30 poles total.

The Army Apology

The Army apology addressed the 1869 bombardment of the Tlingit village of Wrangell, known in Tlingit as Kachinok or Kachanak. The formal statement acknowledged that "wrongful and undeserved military action resulted in injury, death, and destruction" and committed to "fostering a positive relationship with all Lingit peoples for the benefit of current and future generations." The Army said it "regrets the long delay in issuing this formal apology."

Tlingit artist Renee Culp offered a frame for what these institutional steps mean in practice. She described SHI as dedicated to displaying and providing a home for living culture, and characterized the Army apology as a trail marker for accountability. Acknowledging a wrong out loud and honoring those harmed by verbalizing it, she said, is a trail marker that teaches a lot.

SHI was founded in 1980 by Sealaska, the ANCSA regional corporation for Southeast Alaska. Its mission is to perpetuate and enhance Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian cultures.

The 2025 annual report also documented SHI's art programs serving more than 6,600 people from 69 communities, the launch of the Cultural Warriors mentorship program in seven Southeast communities, the release of the first instructional videos on the Tlingit gesture system, a new Raven exhibit, a partnership with the Übersee Museum Bremen, the digitization of more than 20,000 photographs by the late Tlingit scholar Cyril George Sr., and the publication of "Yeex Kunda Yeyi: Adventures of Raven, Volume 5" in the institute's Classics of Tlingit Oral Literature series.