(SitNews) Klawock, Alaska - The National Museum of the American Indian repatriated to the Central Council Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska (Central Council) the Teel’ X’een (Dog Salmon Screen) at the request of the Teeyeeneidí. The Teeyeeneidí is the Dog Salmon Clan of Tuxekan, properly called Tax’jik Aan. Tuxekan was a Tlingit village north of present-day Klawock.

Clan member Henry Roberts (Ltaak) used to travel to Tuxekan to check on the screen and then one trip it was gone. Several turn of the 20th Century photographs show the in situ on the clan house in Tuxekan.

Dog Salmon Screen from the village of Tuxekan
Photograph: University of Washington Libraries, Special Collections Division, John N. Cobb Collection no. 418, NA2809

Central Council’s Cultural Resource Specialist Harold Jacobs was at the storage facility for the museum in 2001 and was told that the museum had just installed the screen in storage. He recognized the screen as the one from Tuxekan in the old photographs. It was clear that this was the screen on the front of the house and it was probably on the inside of a much older house before being attached to the front of a newer clan house.

Working with current Clan Leader David Jensen (Aank’í), who is also the caretaker of their clan hat that has the same image as the screen of a Dog Salmon with a dorsal fin in the shape of a raven’s head, a claim was submitted under the National Museum of the American Indian Act of 1989. This act is the law upon which the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) of 1990 was based upon. The claim was submitted in September 2002 and in January of this year the screen was approved for repatriation.

Teel’ X’een was shipped from the museum and arrived in Klawock on July 9, 2013. In the old photographs of the clan house a sign above the doorway says “Cook Jack”, a lineal name of the Teeyeeneidí clan. This is why Clan Leader Jensen has named his Uncle Dennis Demmert (Gunkasíxt), also named “Cook Jack”, to be the caretaker of the screen for the clan.

The screen will be shown publicly in the Klawock school gym at 5:30 pm on August 9, 2013.  

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