Voices on the Land
Voices on the Land provides literacy-based, artist residencies in 4th and 5th grade classrooms, with Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian languages and cultural values forming the basis of instruction. The program integrates visual, performing, and digital arts with traditional knowledge. Through the experience, students use storytelling to create stop motion animation videos; learn the elements of Northwest Coast formline design, while keeping an artist’s journal and making a traditional drum; and use the skills of the actor’s toolbox and reader’s theater to explore and perform Raven Stories handed down through the ages. Voices on the Land also provides an in-person summer and winter arts intensive program for students in grades 4-8, as well as a virtual summer intensive program for students in grades 4-8 who live outside of Juneau.
Atnané Northwest Coast Arts Academy
SHI sponsors Atnané Northwest Coast Arts Academy, a culturally integrated college and career readiness program for Alaska Native/American Indian high school students. Northwest Coast arts classes, team building activities, entrepreneurship training, and culturally affirming artistic lesson plans help students enter a career pathway in Northwest Coast arts. Open to all Sealaska shareholders regardless of residency. SHI will pay travel and lodging costs. In addition, SHI has partnered with the Juneau, Sitka, and Klawock school districts to offer Northwest Coast arts courses to high school students in six high schools. Students have the option to earn college credit as well as high school credits, and the program supports the courses with accessible, authentic cultural resources.
Northwest Coast Arts Degree Program
SHI has partnered with the University of Alaska Southeast (UAS) to develop and offer an Associate of Arts (AA) degree with an emphasis on Northwest Coast arts. The undergraduate program includes a wide spectrum of classes—from tool making to design, basketry and weaving among others. The program, which will be offered this fall at the university’s Juneau, Ketchikan and Sitka campuses, is part of a larger effort to establish a four-year degree track through UAS and the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Thanks to an MOA between SHI, UAS, and IAIA, students who earn an AA degree with a NWC Arts emphasis have the option to transfer credits and pursue a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from IAIA. Students can also work toward a bachelor’s degree in arts and sciences or education at UAS or the broader University of Alaska system. In addition to art classes, the program requires students to complete courses in Alaska Native studies, Indigenous performing arts and a language class on beginning Tlingit, Haida or Tsimshian, as well as Northwest Coast design, art history and culture, art theory and practice, and career development for artists.
Museum Studies
SHI offers summer internships to undergraduate and graduate students at SHI in Juneau and the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Interns gain hands-on experience with cataloging museum collections, object storage management, and exhibition planning, research, and installation.
Art Studies
SHI offers summer internships to art students who are pursuing an arts and science degree, preferably with a focus on Northwest Coast or Alaska Native arts through studio arts, performing arts and technology, or creative writing.
Art and Museum Studies
SHI offers scholarships to undergraduate or graduate students who are pursuing: - Arts and science degrees with a focus in studio arts, performing arts, cinematic arts and technology, or creative writing, and which incorporate Northwest Coast Arts studies in their degree; or, - A degree with a concentration in museum studies Art students must be enrolled in NWC arts courses at the University of Alaska Southeast or arts courses at the Institute of American Indian Arts. Museum studies students must be enrolled full-time at a US college.