NAAXEIN • NAAXIIN • GWISHALAAYT • CHILKAT WEAVING

Gaat Naaxéin (Sockeye Chilkat Blanket)

Raven House, Lukaax.ádi Clan, Chilkoot Tlingit, Haines by Saantaas’, Chilkat Tlingit, Klukwan, late 19th century
Loan Courtesy Lukaax.ádi Clan LC. 489

Saantaas (left) and her daughter Mary Willard display their work.
ASLHC PCA-57 (SITK 3854)

The design features the sockeye salmon swimming in Chilkoot Lake at Sockeye Point. At the top, two sockeyes face each other, with a humanoid face in between. The yellow dots in the round lake probably represent eggs.

The image commemorates the clan’s acquisition of the sockeye crest. Long ago, a young clan member went swimming and was eaten by a giant sockeye. Thus, the clan acquired the crest by giving up the life of a member, and the emblem became its at.óow (sacred property), and forever binding the clan to the lake and the surrounding area.

Woven by Saantaas’, the mother of Mary Willard, and great-great grandmother to contemporary weaver Lani Hotch, this robe may be a newer version of an even older weaving bearing the Lukaax.ádi crest, the sockeye salmon.

Chilkat weavings such as the Sockeye Robe carry both clan history, as well as the collective energy of the weaver and the ancestors who wove and wore them in the past. Chief Daanawaak of the Lukaax.ádi clan conveyed how his uncles advised him to wear the Sockeye Blanket to show their clan history: “Anytime something comes up you have to wear that Sockeye Blanket. Someday we are all gonna be gone, but this blanket is gonna be with you. When you use it, we’re gonna be with you,” he related.

Following their advice himself, Daanawaak wore the Sockeye Robe to a court hearing to prove his clan’s ownership to the land in a dispute case centering on the location of his smokehouse. Daanawaak, and all his ancestors, must have made a very persuasive impression that day in court as the judge ultimately ruled in his favor. Later, he compared his showing the robe to “white man’s papers” showing legal title: “Anytime they want to change it, they change it. But ours never changes--over 200 years we still got it...”, Daanawaak concluded.