X’unáxi Traditional Cultural Property Description

X’unáxi or Auke Cape, known locally as Indian Point, was the first home of the Auk Tlingit in this area of Alaska, and it was the site of a significant event in Auk history during which the leader of the principal clan (L’eineidí, Dog Salmon) defended Auk ownership of the area and assumed an honorific name or title that has been passed down through the generations. Indian Point was also the site of a fort or lookout station from which the local community defended its territorial claims, and was the locale of houses, smokehouses and Indian graves. Indian Point was a highly productive locale for subsistence resources and is most noted as a source of herring and roe until the run collapsed in the 1970s. Indian burials have been documented in close proximity to four canoe runs and a midden dating to A.D. 1160-1345. It is also described by Tlingit people as a shamanic landscape due to the presence of shamans’ graves, and is considered a spiritual place and a ceremonial space used by contemporary Tlingit people. The area is a place to go for spiritual renewal, a place to acquire spirits, and where Tlingit people feed the spirits of their ancestors. The landscape, which incorporates the tidelands and near shore waters within its boundary, is largely undisturbed by Euro-American development and its environmental and cultural integrity has been determinedly and robustly defended by the local Tlingit community in 1959, 1969 and in the 1990s.

 

by Chuck Smythe

 

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