Sitka’s “Indian Village” was once home to over forty Lingít clan houses. Today, only eight of those are still standing, and even fewer serve as active clan houses. Now, the area has been recognized as one of 11 endangered historic places in the US. Organizers are hoping that the attention will inspire efforts to creatively conserve – and rebuild – a cultural hub that has fallen into disrepair.
Katlian Street stretches along the waterfront just north of downtown Sitka. Today, it’s a bustling commercial hub. Workers unload fish totes at the seafood processor, and cars whiz by on their way to the harbors. Dotted between the shops and restaurants are houses – some standing, others collapsed – that tell the story of this street’s past.
“Just this short little walk, there’s multiple clan houses here,” says Chuck Miller, gesturing to lots now occupied by metal shops and parking lots. He’s pointing out sites that once served as cultural centers for Lingít people – places where members of a clan gathered for meetings, ceremonies, and even wakes.
“I remember there were a few here by this parking lot,” Miller says. “The Whale House, the Sea Lion house used to stand here, and a few more Kaagwaantaan houses here.”
Miller is the caretaker for the Kayaash ka hít, or Porch House, one of the few standing clan houses in Sitka. He inherited that responsibility in the 90’s from his late maternal uncle. Under traditional law, that’s how clan houses are passed down. Under the western legal system, though, properties often go to a spouse or children, who aren’t in the same clan. In other cases, multiple clan members are on the deed, making it hard to rebuild or demolish.
“You have to have everybody’s signature on it,” Miller says. “So you can’t demolish something without having everybody’s permission. Sometimes people die, and then you can’t track down the descendants or they didn’t have any. So that’s the debacle we run into nowadays. That’s the clash of the worlds — you have the Western world law, and you have our traditional law.”
In the case of the Point House, a Kiks.ádi clan house that fell out of clan ownership when it was transferred in a will, the house was eventually demolished. Jerrick Hope-Lang, a member of the Kiks.ádi clan, worked with the legal owners to repatriate the land in 2022. He’s been the caretaker since then – and now he’s eager to tackle what he sees as a broader problem.
“We see the collapsed houses, and we see things falling into disrepair, so I wanted to shed light on what’s happening next to me, too,” Hope-Lang says. “Because it’s not just problematic for me, it’s problematic for other people.”
That’s why he asked the National Trust for Historic Preservation to recognize Sitka’s Indian Village as an endangered historic place. He worked with Sitka historian and adopted Kiks.ádi clan member James Poulson to submit the nomination.
“This nomination, although it’s about Sitka’s Indian Village and clan houses, isn’t situational to only Sitka,” Hope-Lang says. “Broadly speaking, Klukwan, Haines, Angoon, all of them are having similar issues.”
The National Trust recognizes 11 endangered historic places each year, prioritizing sites that highlight unique or underrepresented parts of American history. Sitka’s Odess Theater, formerly Richard Allen Memorial Hall, on the Sheldon-Jackson campus, made the 1999 list. In a statement announcing Sitka Indian Village on the 2024 list, National Trust president Carol Quillen said, “the Sitka Tlingit Clan Houses are a critically important part of both the history and the future of Tlingit culture. We hope that broader recognition of their significance will encourage rehabilitation and return of the houses to clan ownership.”
While the nomination doesn’t come with funding, it does come with a lot of publicity. Hope-Lang is hoping that attention will draw support for the neighborhood’s preservation.
“We don’t know what the implications of this nomination will give us but attention,” Hope-Lang says. “And how do we utilize that attention now?”
Figuring out what preservation looks like, though, will require creativity. Outside of tangled questions of ownership, Hope-Lang says that clan houses don’t fit neatly into western historic preservation systems, like the National Parks Service’s National Register of Historic Places.
“The Secretary of Interior has standards for preservation, and they’re often trying to preserve a section in time,” Hope-Lang says. “But those standards don’t really align with Indigenous standards. You know, clan houses can be rebuilt.”
In this case, he says, the actual structure of the house isn’t the most important part.
“It goes beyond just the structure of the building,” he says. “We’re saying, first of all, the land underneath is sacred. The Point House exists whether the building does or not.”
And because most clan houses are privately-owned, he says, it’s harder to get funding to maintain or rebuild them. Hope-Lang says he’s working to start a nonprofit to bypass those challenges and streamline ownership.
“We’re looking at legal structures of how to leave this plot in a way that is for more public-based use, not an individual landowner,” he says. “So sharing those mechanisms of success with other clans and other tribes, we’re navigating Western constructs.”
Those aren’t problems that can be easily solved, but Hope-Lang says the National Trust nomination makes an important statement.
“Our history is worth saving, you know, and that part of town is intrinsically valuable to us. We need to figure out a way to preserve it.”
In the meantime, both Miller and Hope-Lang are working to provide space that reflects what their clans need today. Miller often hosts events for other clans who don’t have active clan houses, and he hopes one of his nephews will become the caretaker someday.
“I’m very proud to take on the role of caretaker as I did,” Miller says. “I did it out of respect and honor for my uncles, you know, and one of these days, hopefully one of my nephews will take up that honor, take the torch up and keep this house going.”
Hope-Lang is working with a Lingít architect to design a 21st-century clan house on the Point House site. He wants it to be a space that not only preserves history, but that allows the clan to flourish today.
“We’re trying to preserve this cultural lifestyle for perpetuity, so this is an opportunity to do so,” Hope-Lang says.
He hopes that with innovative thinking and collaboration, clan houses around the region can flourish as centers for Lingít identity, ceremony, and tradition.
