led by NMNH, could create a new Sculpin Hat that would, with some select modifi- cations, mirror the design of the old one. Harold Jacobs suggested the new hat could be witnessed in ceremony and remade into at.óow for the clan. At first, Wilson was skeptical that a new
Sculpin Hat could really be replicated and serve as a traditional object. “I really didn’t think it was possible,” he says. But when he visited the original hat in 2014, “I told it what we were thinking of doing, not to be afraid of what was going on,” he says. “It started to help me bring it back to the Kiks.ádi people.” So Wilson agreed to allow the museum
to make one hat for the clan and one repli- ca of the new hat to be kept in the museum for educational purposes. But in order for a new hat to be used in ceremony and become at.óow, several important steps would have to be taken. According to Tlingit custom, clan crest objects have to be made by some- one of the opposite moiety. As the Kiks.ádi are of the Raven moiety, that meant an Ea- gle/Wolf must make the hat. Hollinger was already an adopted Dakl’aweidí clan mem- ber of the Eagle/Wolf moiety, but Smith- sonian Institution Exhibits Specialist and model maker Chris Hollshwander had to be adopted by the Kaagwaantaan clan of the Eagle/Wolf moiety before he could help cre- ate the hat. “It was an honor I didn’t expect,” says Hollshwander. After two years of consulting with the
clan, the team could finally begin. Sitka Kaagwaantaan clan leader Andrew Gamble from the Wolf moiety initiated the digital scanning of the original Sculpin Hat. The NMNH’s repatriation team made CT scans and the Smithsonian Digitization Office took 3-D images of it from every angle. Exhibit model maker Carolyn Thome then digitally “repaired” the files, filling in the gaps and cracks in the data from the orig- inal hat. With a grant from the Smithsonian’s Wom-
en’s Committee, Hollshwander was able to move forward with programming the coordi- nates of every digital slice—“a couple hundred thousand lines of code”—into the program, data that dictated the movements of cutting tools in the milling machine. Hollshwander monitored the milling machine as it carved each piece out of alder and cedar wood from Alaska that the clan had donated. As the wood was freshly cut, he would carve a bit, put the piece of wood back in a freezer to keep it mal- leable, and then the next day, bring it out to
SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 15
Above: Repatriation is done in consulta- tion with Indigenous leaders and represen- tatives. Mark Jacobs Jr., leader of the Da- kl’aweidi clan, wears the Killer Whale Hat NMNH repatriated to the clan in 2005.
Left: This replica of the original Killer Whale Hat was created using 3-D technology from 2010 to 2012. NMNH An- thropology E433020
PHOTO BY WALTER LARRIMORE, NMNH REPATRIATION OFFICE
PHOTO BY DAVID DAPCEVICH, SITKAPHOTOS
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