Oldest known Native robes return to Alaska for The Spirit Wraps You exhibit at Alaska State Museum

Some of the oldest known ceremonial robes of the Tsimshian, Haida, and Tlingit people have returned to Alaska to tell the story of these sacred textiles and the world-renown innovations of Indigenous weavers.

The Spirit Wraps Around You display at the Alaska State Museum features 24 robes and illustrates the transformation from an older style of weaving known as Ravenstail to the newer technique known as Chilkat.

Ravenstail robes are made of mountain goat wool and are adorned with geometric patterns. Steve Henrikson, Curator of Collections at the Alaska State Museum, says this weaving technique died out in the early 1800s. Around that time, an innovation in weaving technique allowed weavers to create curved stitching. With this new technique, weavers could create robes replicating the design on totemic carvings and painting now called formline. The new technique also used both mountain goat wool and cedar bark to make the warp and featured a much longer fringe.

“Chilkat robes are probably the most familiar to people because they are still owned by Native families and they come out for ceremonies,” Henrikson said. “But this earlier form is less known because it died out so long ago that no one in living memory is around that was around when they were. This is the kind of robe that when the first Europeans that came here, Captain Cook and George Vancouver and others, they saw the Native leaders wearing these robes and described them in their journals."

There are only 12 known original Ravenstail robes in existence. Of those, only one is permanently in Alaska, and that robe is in fragments. Two original Ravenstail robes are featured in the exhibit.

The one that is permanently in Alaska was discovered on an archaeological dig in Sitka and was buried around 1830 for an unknown reason. The exhibit features a complete Ravenstail robe from a Nisga’a village in northern British Columbia on loan from the Royal Ontario Museum in Toronto.

Though the two Ravenstail robes are historically significant by themselves, the exhibit also features a robe believed to mark the turning point in Native weaving.

“To be able to talk about the history of this transition from Ravenstail to Chilkat, we thought we would try to find the earliest possible Chilkat robe, and we did get a loan from the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts of the earliest documented Chilkat robe that was collected sometime before 1832,” Henrikson said. “And not only is it the earliest, but it is also by many people’s opinion the greatest as far as the quality of the work and the fineness of the weaving. It’s a true masterpiece and it’s jaw-droppingly cool.”

The idea for the exhibit was originally born three decades ago when a group of contemporary weavers who were taking a class at the University of Alaska Southeast with Cheryl Weaver set out to make a modern-day Ravenstail robe. Over 14 months, the weavers created a new Ravenstail robe, which is also included in the exhibit, allowing the new robes to meet the old robes.

While there is little known about the weavers who created the oldest robes, Henrikson says there are at least 15 weavers whose names and lineage are known whose work is featured in the display.

“For the Chilkat weaving, it’s such a technically difficult type of weaving it’s really kind of an endangered art,” Henrikson said. “There are fewer than a dozen weavers in the world who can weave an entire robe… And that was one of the things that we thought about in putting this exhibit up and including rarer items like the Raventail robe from Toronto and the old Chilkat robe, the masterpiece – we wanted to inspire young weavers to consider taking up the art and help continue it into the future.”

In addition to the display, the Spirit Wraps Around You exhibit will include lectures, youth activities, and artist demonstrations by Juneau-based Tlingit weaver Lily Hope.

You can find more about the exhibit and programing here.