Tlingit scholar to speak in Juneau on Tlingit knowledge and climate change

Tlingit scholar Dr. Aandax̱joon Sabena Allen will give a free lecture Tuesday at Sealaska Heritage Institute in Juneau on Tlingit adaptation to climate change.

Allen, an assistant professor of Indigenous studies at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, studies Tlingit oral history and climate change. Her talk is titled "The Temporality of Haa Shuká: A Scalar Perspective on Climate Change, Lingít Knowledge, and Alaskan Identity." Haa Shuká refers to past, present and future generations, according to SHI.

She will look at how Alaska is framed as a site of climate change in American public consciousness, and at the Raven Cycle as a foundation of Tlingit knowledge and values, SHI said. Her three case studies cover tourism, research by non-Indigenous scientists and Transformative Scenario Planning, a method meant to help people change a situation rather than adapt to it.

Allen is Gaanax̱teidí, a child of the Kaagwaantaan clan, and an enrolled citizen of the Sitka Tribe of Alaska and the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska. She holds a Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Chicago.

The talk runs from noon to 1 pm in Shuká Hít, the clan house in SHI's Walter Soboleff Building, and will stream on SHI's YouTube channel. It is one of five in SHI's Native American Heritage Month lecture series.

SHI is a nonprofit tribal organization founded in 1980 to perpetuate and enhance the Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian cultures of Southeast Alaska.