Artifact of the Month: November 2024

Southeast Alaska Heritage Reuseable Bag

Incorporating Native language into everyday life helps promote language usage as shown in this month's featured artifact, a reuseable grocery bag. Tsimshian artist Kevin Clevenger created the bag design for Alaskan & Proud Markets, a locally owned and operated grocery store with locations in Ketchikan and Thorne Bay on Prince of Wales Island. In recent years, the store has offered reuseable grocery bags to encourage its patrons to reduce their plastic usage.

Named, "Southeast Alaska Heritage Reuseable Bag," the bag mimics a traditional bentwood box with formline design on the front and back. Bentwood boxes were used throughout the Northwest Coast for transporting and storing goods, food, and sacred items. The design depicts a human body and within the center of the body is Mouse Woman, an elderly wise woman known for offering advice.

The store's motto, "Taste Masters," is featured on both sides of the bag, one side with our area's three Indigenous languages and the English version on the other. Since there are no direct translations for the store's motto, modern interpretations of 'tasty' words or phrases were used: K'ujgad kilganggang (Taste is important) in LingÍt (Tlingit), Ap luk'wil ts'imaatga su da goto (Taste is in the heart) in Xaad Kil (Haida), and Eitsk (Yummy) in Sm'algyack (Tsimshian). The project required close collaboration with language experts Delores Churchill of Ketchikan and Harold Jacobs of Juneau for the translations in partnership with Alaskan & Proud Markets' office manager, Michelle Eackman, who is also a Haida culture bearer and linguist.

All proceeds from the bag sales were donated to local high school sports programs in Ketchikan, Metlakatla, Thorne Bay, Klawock, Craig, and Hydaburg.


Object ID #: KM 2024.2.17.1