This is Tongass Voices, a series from KTOO sharing weekly perspectives from the homelands of the Áak’w Kwáan and beyond.
Sakoon Donedin Jackson is a Chilkat weaver from Alberta, Canada who began her practice during the COVID-19 pandemic when she took classes online with Juneau’s Lily Hope. Now, Jackson is the featured resident artist at Wooshkindein Da.áat Lily Hope Weaver studio, where she has been working on a woolen button robe and teaching weaving classes for the first time.
KTOO caught up with Jackson before she finished teaching her first weaving class the day before Celebration 2024 began.
Listen:
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity.
My name is Sakoon. In English, I’m known as Donedin Jackson, and I am a child of the eagle moiety. And my father’s mother is Kukhittan from inland Deisleen, and my mother’s father is German.
So, we are at Wooshkindein Da.áat Lily Hope Weaver studio, and I am currently the featured resident artist in the studio, for the time being. And I have been honored with the opportunity to work on a button robe, which is a very rare opportunity, since Lily doesn’t specialize in our woolen button robe.
So this is the Emergence Robe, and it was commissioned first by the SEARHC medical organization 30 years ago from Lily’s mother, Clarissa Rizal. So, SEARHC organization uses this robe for patients who are transitioning from this world to the next. And so the families can request the use of this robe up to a week before they expect their family to pass, and it gets laid on their bed to aid with their transition. I am lucky enough to be here in the studio as Lily’s apprentice and working on getting that completed.
I actually, this is my very first opportunity to work on a full size button robe for Lily, and so I get to really do some true apprentice work. But I actually came to the weaving through Lily when she went online during the pandemic. I got laid off from my government job due to said pandemic and I decided to re-indigenize my life. And I began learning Lingít, our traditional language. And the language led me to the weaving, and I have been doing nothing else ever since.
So the Goldbelt Heritage Foundation and CCHITA, Tlingit and Haida Council, has partnered together to bring me to the traditional territories to offer some weaving workshops. Because two years ago, Lily decided I was going to teach, even though I was like, “I’m not ready!” She said, “Yes, you are.” And she gave me the boot.
And so this is now, officially, I have been teaching workshops starting this last year. And so we are going to be completing my very first weaving workshop with Goldbelt. And we’re weaving the side border of a child-sized Chilkat robe to be turned into a piece of regalia for a headdress.
Oh, it has been just absolutely delightful. And it’s been really quite a teaching experience, or a learning experience, doing the teaching, just identifying people’s understanding, who has taught them before, where they’re at and how to meet them there and bring them all together forward, collectively. And so it’s been a wonderful reconnecting opportunity to be here in Lingít Aaní and Áak’w Kwáan territory.