0:43

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
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.

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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.

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Juneau, Alaska
Cover image for article: Tsimshian carver tells Juneau audience his people predate the Duncan mission in Alaska