"A Chilkat Weaver Carries on the Tradition at 94"
Jennie Thlunaut teaches a Chilkat weaving class at Raven House
by Bob Schwalbach (Photos by Ellen Starr)
Chilkat Valley News, Haines, Alaska
March 7, 1985
(Last two photos courtesy of Larry McNeil)

Jennie Thlunaut demonstrates her swift Chilkat fingering technique to Ida Kadashan (R) and Clara Matson during the 1985 Chilkat weaving class taught by Jennie at Raven House in Haines. Photo by Ellen Starr

"There's so many strands...to keep in mind;...there's so many that you can be discouraged by them."

Nora Dauenhauer is sitting at the window in Raven House. Before her on a simple frame is the yellow and white border of a Chilkat weaving. The warp of twisted cedar bark and goat wool hangs down about her knees waiting to hold a traditional design of bear or wolf or raven.

Ten women weavers gathered at Raven House this week and last for a workshop funded in part by the National Endowment for hte Arts and taught by 94-year-old Jenny Thlunaut, last of the Chilkat weavers. Mrs. Thlunaut, with Dauenhauer and Austin hammond, selected the participants on the basis of their experience with the weaving technique and their willingness to pass on what they learn. Dauenhauer says she always wnated to know how to weavve; "but to be able to weave with Jenny and her helping me out is just beyond my dream. It's something that I never thought I'd do."

All of the women do have experience with the painstaking weaving, but Jenny Thlunaut received her knowledge from her father's sister. It was passed to her as part of the traditional cultural pattern -- one to one. But that pattern has not worked effectively to continue the art of weaving beyond Mrs. Thlunaut's generation.

And so to preserve a tradition, tradition is broken. Mrs. Thlunaut through this workshop is spreading her knowledge beyond the proprietary compass of the Chilkat and teaching a group, not one apprentice.

The Chilkat weaving workshop taught by Jennie Thlunaut at the Raven House in Haines, 1985. In the foreground at their looms are: (L) Anna Brown-Ehlers and (R) Ida Kadashan. In the background are Clarissa Hudson, Maria Miller, Nora Dauenhauer, MaryAnne Porter and Ernestine Hanlon. Photo by Ellen Starr

Dauenhauer says that before the funding for the workshop came through, the nonagenarian didn't want to teach anymore. "She didn't have the strength to do it...and 'nobody has ever tried to teach ten; how am I going to do it?' But she's been fantastic. She's a very good teacher."

Thlunaut's students learned the weaving technique they bring to the workshop by trial and error, from books, or by helping each other puzzle out the intricate weaving. The original Chilkat weavers are said to have learned in much the same way -- unraveling the work of the Tsimpshian of British Columbia.

Maria Miller of Haines , who is among the weavers began her learning with Dorica Jackson, wife of noted carver Nathan Jackson. Miller was exhibiting her needlework at an Anchorage museum where Jackson worked as a secruity guard and they struck up a mutual apprenticeship. Miller describes her further reasearches of weavings in the museum vaults:

"...so the thing I did is I went to the museum and they had the blankets in the vault and I would practically undo them. And I used magnifying glasses and counted and measured...Finally...after three or four weeks of that they gave me pictures they took of the lbanket. So I had them enlarged..."

Nora Dauenhauer in turn learned what she knows of weaving from Miller. "You can never get started on your own," she sayd. "Sombedoy has to show you...what you're going to do, what the stitches are, how you're going to hold your hands and all that. How you can move. Because it's so slow you've got to figure out ways of shortcuts. And she (Thlunaut) has all that. She's moving slow for us, but when she moves slow it's really fast for me."

Crowding around Irene Jimmy's loom as Jennie Thlunaut demonstrates Chilkat weaving techniques are (L to R): Rachel "Dixie" Johnson, Kennedy, Tanis Seiltan-Hiny, Vesta Johnson, Clarissa Hudson and Irene. 1985. Photo by Larry McNeil (www.larrymcneil.com)

The tremendous effort exerted by Jenny Thlunaut to teach -- she sleeps on the living room couch ready to begin as soon as the new day dawns -- and the emotional intensity present at Raven House as the women work at the looms pressed elbow to elbow, are not simply signs of a passion for art. The blanket, as much and more than all the artifcts of Tlingit cutlure, binds the people together and to the place from which they come. When Austin Hammond went to Juneu recently to explain his concerns about the Department of Natural Resources Forest Management Plan, he used his blanket to explain to Commissioner Esther Wunnicke his people's connection to the Chilkoot.

"It's like a deed," explains Dauenhauer, "land, people, resources are all tied in that blanket."

Besides learning the ins and outs of weaving the Chilkat Blanket, the women at Raven House are also using their time together to talk about the past and prepare for the future. When the forests that contain the cedar from which the warp are largely in the hands of the government, when govenment says the goat is out of season when its wool is right for spinning, then the weavers' concerns enlarge beyond their looms.

"What we want to see is Tlingit women and Haida women keep it going within the two cultures." Dauenhauer explains her wish for the future: "Hopefully, it's going to last another one hundred years, another two hundred years among the people. That would be lovely. I think that would be very good."

Jennie Thlunaut teaches Chilkat weaving techniques to student Clarissa Hudson during the Chilkat weaving workshop taught by Jennie at the Raven House in Haines, in 1985. Photo by Larry McNeil (www.larrymcneil.com)

The Origin of Chilkat Weaving According to the
People of the Nass River, the Nisga'a

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