When the 32-foot- long painting that once was on a Teeye- neidi clan house was repatriated in 2013, it had to be carefully dislodged from the wall at NMAI’s Cultur- al Resources Center in Suitland, Maryland, before being driven across the country and put on a barge to Prince of Wales Island. It was returned to clan members in the village of Klawock, where residents celebrat- ed its return with a ceremony at the local Salvation Army Hall (below).
Dog Salmon Screen, cedar boards with red and black paint, 135.5” x 385 “, 18/1566
For each object, NMAI staff tailor a box, tube or other container to steady it on its cross-country journey from NMAI’s Cultur- al Resources Center in Suitland, Maryland, to Alaska. Some items have required an army of NMAI staff and community volunteers as well as a combination of “trains, planes and barges,” says Swift, to get them home. This included a 54-foot-tall cedar totem pole that railroad baron Edward Harriman took from Cape Fox clan in 1899. It was eventually re- turned via barge. Then there was the part of a house. The “Teel’ Xeen,” or Dog Salmon Screen,
was one of many objects the Emmons ex- pedition took from a village called Tuxekan on Prince of Wales Island. The 32-foot-long painting on 23 vertical cedar planks that once stretched above a house’s windows shows a dog salmon with a raven fin above and near its tail. The villagers had moved for the season south to the village of Klawock when Emmons and his crew arrived some- time between 1922 and 1932. So he took the screen and sold it to the Museum of the American Indian, the predecessor of NMAI in New York. In 2003, the house screen was installed
on a wall at the museum’s Cultural Resourc- es Center. When the claim for the screen to be repatriated to the Dog Salmon (Teeye- neidi) clan was approved, the museum was faced with the problem of how to dislodge it safely from the wall. Ironically, an earthquake in 2011 helped expedite the process, as plans for repairing the wall were al- ready underway. In 2013, each plank was carefully dislodged and the screen was crated, put into a truck, driven across the country and put on a barge to Prince of Wales Island. Once there, it had to be again trucked to Klawock, where residents celebrated its return with a ceremony at the local Salvation Army Hall. NMAI Repatriation Coor-
dinator Terry Snowball (Prairie Band Potawatomi/Wisconsin Ho-Chunk) has helped see objects safely home to clans and tribes for the past two de- cades, including the Dog Salm- on Screen. A Teeyeneidi clan
12 AMERICAN INDIAN WINTER 2020
PHOTO COURTESY OF HAROLD JACOBS
PHOTO BY NMAI STAFF
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