Glacier Bay wilderness as the Huna Tlingit homeland: a place shaped by people

The Wilderness Act prizes places with little evidence of human change. An NPS article on Glacier Bay argues that the Huna Tlingit's continuing relationship with the bay is as much a part of its wilderness character as the glaciers, the bears and the chance of an unconstrained experience. Keeping the physical and spiritual connections between traditional people and their Homeland, the article says, keeps the wilderness a living community.

The moon over Mount Fairweather and Bartlett Cove. Image from the National Park Service's page.

Shaped, and shaping

Since time immemorial, the article says, Huna Tlingit clans have embraced and been embraced by the Glacier Bay Homeland. They did not simply occupy or settle it: they shaped it, and were shaped by an environment that surged and retreated. Their ancestors changed the ecology by harvesting berries and harbor seals, building clan houses from nearby trees and clearing rocky shorelines for canoe landings.

Stories of balance

The article retells Tlingit stories in which human acts shaped the land. A young girl called down a distant glacier, erasing the braided river channels near Bartlett Cove. A clan's sacrifice halted a glacier's advance at Point Adolphus just before ice would have cut the clans off from the productive waters of the Outer Coast. In a far-off village, young men's disrespect brought an avalanche and a tsunami in Lituya Bay, and shamanic powers made Mount Fairweather tremble and split. These stories teach that a single intentional act, or one moment of disrespect, can direct geological events.

Living relationship

The article says that today glaciers calve, icebergs slide away and turbulent waters settle when the Huna Tlingit offer food and tobacco to the spirits of living and non-living beings. The Homeland is not free of human influence but in an intimate, balanced relationship with it, and for the Tlingit the land has meaning as a place of ongoing connection among those long past, those alive now and those yet to come. The Huna Tlingit travel on Journey to Homeland trips to the face of Margerie Glacier to sing to and ritually feed the spirits of their departed ancestors. The article concludes that the bay's land, air and sea are ordered and sustained by those who co-created it.

Sources

• National Park Service, Glacier Bay National Park & Preserve, "Glacier Bay Wilderness as Homeland" (https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/glacier-bay-wilderness-as-homeland.htm); photographs of clan members, a carved headdress and a formline design, and a children's song, are left out; rewritten in hubnx's own words.