16: Mr. President

My Grampa, Ray K'alaxéitl' Smith, ANB President Camp 13
Yakutat, AK

The Boss Man asked if I wanted to go through some Yakutat files today.  Of course, I said yes.  It was a wonderful surprise to see some family names in these files...

I am lucky enough to be an intern at Sealaska Heritage Institute.  I work to migrate old recordings of Lingít elders from cassette to digital form.  Sometimes I listen to Lingít all day, making it a pretty sweet gig.

Today, I was able to go through old ANB (Alaska Native Brotherhood) files from Yakutat from the 1930s onward.  My grampa was President in 1972.  I read his correspondence to the Grand President, and I was pleasantly surprised and pleased at how professional my grampa was :)  I'd like to think he passed that on to me.  His letter was handwritten, humble, kind, professional.  The above letter is the response from the Grand President :)  

Reading through all the minutes was a bit dry at times, but it inspired me and intrigued me enough to want and need more of it.  It brought me into an older time at the ANB Hall in Yakutat,  trying to imagine all of it happening around me.  I read names of people I've heard many stories of, or of people that I had no idea were even involved with the ANB.  I love my job.