On a calm, sunny day off the coast of Kuiu Island, Mike Jackson’s 13-year-old nephew, Larry, shook as he stood on the deck of the boat with his uncle.  He raised his gun, aimed it at the harbor seal 75 yards away, and pulled the trigger.  The shot found its target, and the seal rolled lifeless on the next wave.  They quickly pulled alongside the animal and hauled it into the boat by its flipper.

“He was all excited, but very nervous when he shot the seal,” says Mike, who went through the same experience with his father when he was eleven.  “You get a feeling when you take a life that’s kind of unexplainable, but you’re able to cope with it because the animal is part of your sustenance.”

After Mike and Larry explained to the seal’s spirit why its life was needed, they returned home to Kake, a Tlingit village of 700 on Kupreanof Island.  There, some 70 local children were waiting to help clean and prepare the seal as part of a town culture camp.  Within a few hours, the seal’s meat and intestines were cleaned, cut up, and in the smokehouse, its liver and heart were eaten, and a group of children were busily rendering its fat. “When he got to camp, you could tell the self-confidence he had, because he experienced something that not many people can.”  However, humility is a byword for any Tlingit youth, especially after his first successful hunt.  “He couldn’t be exulting or bragging about it,” says Mike.  As tradition dictates, Larry gave the meat to friends and elders in the community rather than keeping it for his family.  “It’s a way of showing respect,” Mike explains.  “That way, everybody knows he’s a hunter.” 

Mike was born and raised in Kake, and his extended family is by far the largest in town.  With one daughter of his own and more than 35 nephews and nieces, Mike has taken on the responsibility of teaching many of them the hunting and gathering practices of their clan.  He has guided nearly a dozen nephews through their first deer or seal hunts, and takes countless others out to collect shellfish.  “The kids really enjoy it.  They come back at ten in the evening with rosy cheeks and rosy noses, all excited because they got their first clams or first sea urchins, and they take them to their elders excited at what they have to share.”
 
Kuiu Island is at the center of the Keex Kwaan tribe’s traditional lifestyle.  From the island’s eastern shore, tribesmen have watched the sun rise over the mainland mountains for millennia.  Its significance is such that Keex Kwaan tribe members were traditionally known as the People of the Dawn.  Mike’s ancestors called the island “the stomach,” a name that reflects the shape of Kuiu as well as its importance as a food source for the Keex Kwaan. 

Kuiu and its waters continue to provide today.  The people of Kake, including Mike’s family, still fish, gather, and hunt for Sitka black-tailed deer and seal there.  Once a year in the spring, twenty or so of Mike’s close friends take boats out to the east shore of the island to troll for early salmon together.  They also gather red and black seaweed, which they dry and eat with boiled fish, eggs, and in soups.  At night, the boats anchor at a favorite beach and everyone comes ashore for a bonfire.

“We’re part of the land,” Mike says.  “We’re never separated from it.”  This connection to the land is part of the sense of balance that he maintains by consciously staying in touch with the ways of his ancestors.  Passing these traditions on to the next generation is an undertaking with uncertain success, but Mike persists, one nephew, one seal hunt, and one sea urchin at a time.  He tells his five-year-old grandson, Shawaan, the same stories that his father told him, trusting that even if the boy does not use the knowledge now, “he’ll have it as a seed in him.”