
David Boxley
15:09 - 15:53
"when we went with Duncan and when you know, whether it was because we'd become Christians or whether it was because, uh, it was safe there, he had medicine that could help us from smallpox, whatever it was, um, we voluntarily gave up our chief system, which is how our house system runs."
“when we went with Duncan and when you know, whether it was because we'd become Christians or whether it was because, uh, it was safe there, he had medicine that could help us from smallpox, whatever it was, um, we voluntarily gave up our chief system, which is how our house system runs.”
- Speaker
- David Boxley
- Timestamp
- 15:09 – 15:53
- Community
- Alaska News
- Location
- Juneau
- Captured at
- August 12, 2026
From the transcript
Again, that's— there's a miscommunication happening in the English we're using to talk about ourselves. Clans, for sense, we say that we're talking about what Tlingits and Haidas would call voyages. Yeah, yeah. Um, for us it's frey'atxu because there's 4, but it's that level of things. And when we went with Duncan and when you know, whether it was because we'd become Christians or whether it was because, uh, it was safe there, he had medicine that could help us from smallpox, whatever it was, um, we voluntarily gave up our chief system, which is how our house system runs.
Related Coverage
Tsimshian carver tells Juneau audience his people predate the Duncan mission in Alaska
Tsimshian carver David Boxley traced the Laxgyibuu clan's migration from interior British Columbia down the Stikine at a Sealaska Heritage Institute lecture in Juneau, saying the history he is reconstructing is older than the William Duncan mission that dominates accounts of Tsimshian settlement.
