Evelyn Myers
Evelyn Myers at Douglas Indian Association offices, Sept 2019.
My name is Evelyn Elizabeth Myers. I'm Tlingit; my clan is Yanyeidí, and I'm Eagle wolf. I grew up in Juneau, in what was then and still is the Juneau Indian Village. I left home for a while and returned, and am pleased to see this: there was a revitalization of our culture. And the community, specifically the Juneau City & Borough, wanting to acknowledge that we are people of the land, and we are the voices of the people.
“I am, frankly, quite amazed at the testimony and the courage of the chiefs, because in the 1900s they went to Washington, D.C. There is a Chief Johnson print I have in my house. He said, ‘The canoe still rocks.’ Meaning, we’re not through. We’re not through yet. And you can only go forward… It’s really traumatic for our ancestors to have endured [all they did], and so we want to make sure that we honestly depict the history… Part of the legacy is the strength of saying, ‘We’re here.’ We’re not going anywhere; we are here. I think that’s important to the history, and how we face the tomorrows we need to.”
don’t go to the beach
Percy’s cafe
Bounty
Waterfront
Note: These are two historical letters which Evelyn preserved regarding the efforts of the “white City of Juneau” to take the tidelands from the Áakʼw Village/Juneau Indian Village:
The June 10, 1910 letter from Richard A. Ballinger, Secretary of the Department of the Interior, to the Commissioner of Education, giving notice to Juneau schools that the filling in of tidelands in front of the Native village is prohibited.
Áakʼw Village residents’ January 28, 1914 letter to the Congress of the United States requesting “protection from encroachment of the white man,” and asking that Congress give, in “definite terms,” the tidelands which the Native people “have used for nearly a century.”