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.