My Chilkat Weaving Apprenticeship With Jennie, Part Three
text and photos by Clarissa Hudson
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Read Part One | Read Part Two

Clarissa and Jennie with their matched set of Chilkat leggings.

When I heard of Jennie's death, I felt abandoned, lost, afraid. I felt that my apprenticeship was not yet complete; I had so much more to learn. After Jennie's memorial service , Agnes explained to me what her mother had meant when she had taken me by the shoulders and said, "You are it!"  Agnes told me Jennie's only other apprentice, who had woven a piece from start to finish with her, had been Jennie's own daughter — but the daughter had died many years ago.  So it seemed that I was now the primary bearer of Jennie's knowledge, even though I had spent only six weeks working beside her. 

I was "it."

Yet I had woven only two small weavings prior to the leggings with Jennie.  I felt totally incompetent to be Jennie's messenger, to pass on what I had learned.  On top of that, I was dealing with the grief.  I couldn't even look at my loom without breaking down.

A year later after Jennie passed away, my husband and I moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico.  I had finally escaped from Juneau, and I loved being in Santa Fe, in the warm, red-earth country.  I enrolled at the Institute of American Indian Art, specializing in Fabric Design and Metalsmithing.  But I did no Chilkat weaving at all.

After two years, my husband told me he wanted to return to Juneau; he was getting very depressed living in Santa Fe.  I dreaded the thought of returning to Juneau.  What good could ever come of returning to that dreary place? I wondered.  It rained too much, my life was chaotic there, it was too dark in the winters. But, for my husband's sake, I began packing and, a few months later, we were back in Juneau — in July 1989.

I found my spirits starting to sink just a few weeks after returning.  I asked myself why I even returned... realizing that I had returned for all the other members of my family who wanted to return, except myself.  I knew that there had to be something to tide me over, help me through living there, until I could return to the Southwest.  I must be in Juneau for some reason!  I asked what that thing would be, that would help me through my duration there.  A voice answered me, loud and clear: Chilkat weaving.

I laughed.  Ha!  What a joke!  I hadn't been able to weave a stitch since Jennie's passing and that was over three years ago.   How could this possibly be the thing that would tide me over until my return to the Southwest?  I scoffed at the voice, at the answer, and went to bed.  It was midnight.

Jennie's great-granddaughter Diane Young works on her first Chilkat weaving...

Exactly eight hours later, the phone rang.  It was Elizabeth Hackinnen, owner of the Sheldon Museum in Haines.  Apparently, Jennie had received a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, just days before her passing (in July 1986), and it had been Jennie's intention to use the funds to teach her granddaughters Chilkat weaving.  The money had been sitting there for three years.  Then one of the granddaughters had heard of my return to Juneau, and thought that I might be willing to teach them, since I had studied with Jennie just before her passing.  When Elizabeth told me this, just eight hours after my request to know what I was meant to do in Juneau, the synchronicity was so overwhelming that I burst into tears.  My question had been answered, squarely and solidly.  I had no doubt about whather I would teach Jennie's granddaughters: the answer was yes! 

That night I sat at the loom for the first time in over three years, planning to weave a copy of the project that I would later teach to Jennie's granddaughters.  The warp hung loose before me.  How would I ever remember all that Jennie had taught me?  How would I teach her amazing fingering technique, when I had never really learned it myself? I panicked. I called Agnes for advice and assistance. In her compassionate sense of humor, Agnes replied: "Clarissa, I cannot help you, I don't know how to weave...but, you can always call on my mother like she suggested. And maybe she will come to you in a dream...."

After the phone call to Agnes, with nervous hesitation, I began to weave.   Silently, I called to Jennie to help me.  I told Jennie that if there was ever a time I needed her, that this was "it!" I told her I was chosen to teach her granddaughters and I had to know her fingering. The whole time I made my request to Jennie, my fingers fumbled through the warp. Then.....as if by magic, my fingers began to move through the warp as they had never done before, and I cried out in surprise.  All by themselves, my hands were doing Jennie's fingering!

Read about Jennie Thlunaut teaching Chilkat weaving
workshop at Raven House in 1985

Read Jennie Thlunaut's Biography

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