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Faces of Alaska: Rosita Worl.
Throughout her life, Dr. Rosita Worl has been a fighter, Anthropologist, and an activist.
She's made it her life's goal to preserve Southeast Alaska Native traditions,
while building a collective future for Native people throughout the state.
Her early life was full of drama. She has been kidnapped,
she has fled from an arranged marriage, and she fought her way through high school.
But Dr. Worl persevered through these hardships.
And those early memories have remained an important part of her history.
I sat down with Rosita at her home in Juneau,
to talk about her progression from being a young child,
to her current role as President of the Sealaska Heritage Institute.
Alexandra: Let's start at the beginning. Can you tell me a little about your childhood?
Rosita: Well, our family had moved down - I'm from the Chilkat area.
That's Haines and Klukwan, and we moved down to Petersburg,
for, you know, to earn some money.
So I was raised down there. And in Tlingit style, they give a child to grandparents.
It's kind of like our social security system. The child is raised by the grandparents,
and when they get older, that child will take care of the grandparents.
So that's our custom. But my grandparents didn't believe in school.
I wouldn't say school, but actually, they didn't want me to be around white people.
Or non Native people. So I didn't have to go to school.
And my brothers and sisters, who were living in Petersburg, they went to school.
But I would have so much fun, playing around, doing things.
While they were all busy going to school.
And the government welfare people didn't think that was right,
to have this little girl running around and not going to school.
So I was actually kidnapped, and brought by a welfare lady.
She had asked me, "Do you want to go visit your brother?" I didn't know what that meant.
I didn't know that I would have to get on a plane, so I was brought from Petersburg.
To Juneau. And in Juneau, I guess they had been gathering Indian children
from a number of villages, so all of us were put on the Princeton Hall,
and brought to Haines House. It's a Presbyterian mission school.
I didn't know what happened until the time I got, when I was going towards the plane,
in Petersburg, and I heard the cab driver, who knew our family, and the cab driver asked,
"Don't you think we should tell her grandparents that you're taking her?"
And the welfare lady, Mrs. McGilton said, "No, keep driving on."
And that's when I knew something was wrong. And that was when I started to fight.
But I was subdued.
Alexandra: About how old were you then? Rosita: I was six or seven years old.
So I was packed away and went to Haines House.
Alexandra: And how long were you there?
Rosita: It took my mom three years - and this would be my mother in Tlingit style.
In Tlingit style, you have sisters, and they have children,
and the children of sisters are viewed as brothers and sisters. So there are 12 of us.
And we were raised together as brothers and sisters.
So my mother was actually my biological aunt. My mother had died when I was 4 years old.
And it took my mother three years to get through the bureaucratic red tape,
to try to get me out. I mean I had family, I wasn't an orphan, but the intent at that time,
was to civilize and Christianize American Indians, Alaska Native children.
So I was put in that home. And there are a lot of sad issues, you know,
associated with growing up in Haines House, for at least those three years.
But yet, I have happy memories of my childhood.
But those things are still with me, the challenges that I had.
Alexandra: Rosita learned how to fight for Native rights from an early age.
When she was 10 years old, Rosita joined her mother, in a crusade to improve
living conditions for Southeast Alaska Natives.
Your mother had a reputation as an activist in her own right.
Can you tell me a little bit about her? How did she?
Rosita: You know, she didn't have much of an education, but she was a very smart woman.
And she saw the labor conditions. She would go through from community to community,
to organize the unions, and I used to go with her.
Like I said, she went to school, I think, through 6th or maybe 8th grade.
And so I would record the minutes.
I remember when we'd have to go on strike, and that was hard for our people,
because we wouldn't go to work, because we were trying to increase our salaries,
and our living conditions.
Alexandra: And what was it like, being a 10 year old going to these meetings?
Rosita: Well it was really interesting. Because you were meeting different people,
from the different villages. But you were hearing all the same common themes.
We weren't getting paid enough, we had to live in these houses that were really shacks.
Didn't have running water at the time, we didn't even have - our stove was wood stoves.
But you could look across the street and see the white man's bunkhouse,
you could see the Filipino bunk house, and there was a heirarchy.
The Filipinos were actually treated better than us.
And then of course the white people, they lived in the best bunk house.
So throughout our whole region, we were seeing this kind of disparity among Native people.
And others. So we were trying to say, "Okay, although maybe it's good and healthy
to chop wood, it can be a chore, and burdensome." So we wanted oil stoves.
So it was really working for basic utilities, running water, oil, even toilets in our house.
Alexandra: As a young Native woman, Rosita faced discrimination everywhere she went.
From the primarily white high school in Juneau,
to the male-dominated fishing boat in Petersburg. She quickly learned to fight back.
Did you get into any scuffles as a kid? Rosita: Oh yeah.
Well actually, I remember one fight here in Juneau.
My sister and I were walking by a restaurant, and there were three non-native girls,
sitting in the restaurant. And the girls came out, and I remember this so distinctly.
They said, "Smile when you look at us."
And my sisters and I said, "Smile? Okay we'll show you what a smile is."
So we got in a big scuffle. And we were going to be thrown in jail.
And at that time, Frank Peratrovich, who was a Native stage legislator, came by,
and he saw what was going on. And he told the police,
"If you're going to throw the Native girls in jail,
then you're going to have to throw the non Native girls in jail as well."
So you know, fighting was a way of life, unfortunately.
I went to the Juneau High School here, and we had a lot of scuffles.
I didn't get to go to the Native school, Mt. Edgecumbe, where all the other Natives went.
Because my mother said, "You are gonna have to learn how to get along with non Natives."
"And so you need to go to the white school."
And going to the white school was, you had to learn how to fight, so I did.
Alexandra: Can you tell me more about what it was like going to the high school here?
Rosita: It was hard, but I was fortunate in that I was smart.
So I think that gave me some stature. But I was very isolated.
Not a lot of Native kids went to our school. So I was by myself a lot.
And end up in fights. But the other girls, they tolerated me I guess.
Again, some of them are my closest friends today. But at the time, there was the distance,
the separate worlds that we had.
And then of course, I began to realize that we were poor, and that was apparent
in our clothing, and I'd have to work after school. I used to pick shrimps here in Juneau.
I'd have to go down there, and you come back, and my sister would sometimes be hiding
from some of our school mates that we'd run into.
Alexandra: How was the transition from living kind of this village life,
to being in Haines House, to being in Juneau, which,
while it's not the biggest city in the world, I imagine it was a little
more bustling at the time. Is that accurate, or what was that like?
Rosita: Well, we definitely thought Juneau was a city.
Most of us who had come from smaller communities, smaller villages,
thought it was a bustling city. But it was also a separate community.
Natives and non Natives. And this is where you see the non Natives
in a larger number, than in the villages.
And it was difficult, there were hard times.
We weren't allowed in certain areas, or we weren't welcome in certain areas.
I recall going in to a library, and the librarian put paper towels across the desk,
and didn't want the Native children to come too close, because she thought we were dirty.
Alexandra: And this was in the 1950s, right?
Before Statehood and also before the Civil Rights Movement.
Rosita: I was commercial fishing, and when you're 14 years old, at that time,
women weren't allowed on boats.
But again, my mother let me go and fish with my uncle, Homer.
And I went down to fish in Petersburg and in Cake.
Alexandra: Can you tell me a little bit about what it was like,
with the expectation to not be able to go out on a boat?
How did you learn how to fish?
Rosita: It was just our cultural customs.
Because women have certain powers at certain times.
But I was just fortunate, in that I was able to get through that barrier.
Alexandra: Were people, after a while, did they accept that you were doing this?
Or was there skepticism about your being -
Rosita: No, no. I think they began to accept it. It was unusual,
but they got used to seeing me around.
Alexandra: Her personal crusade for Native Alaskan rights
has taken her halfway around the world.
But Rosita's life would have been completely different,
had she not run away from an arranged marriage, forced against her will.
When was the first time you really left Alaska for a significant period of time?
Rosita: Well, actually that brings us to another episode in my life.
I did have an arranged marriage. And I remember when it happened.
I was 13 years old, and my mother called me out, I was actually fighting
with some guys, and I had tied them up in a net underneath the house.
And my mother called me out, and I crawled out from underneath the house.
And she said, "This person and I had made this arrangement,
that you're going to get married to Paul."
And I said, "But Mom, I'm just a kid."
And she said, "Well no, we've decided to let you finish high school,
before you have to get married."
So as soon as I graduated from high school, I ran away, and I went to school.
That was where I went into Fairbanks. And then my sister had a baby.
And so I went, to go and help my sister out.
And at the time I met someone, and I ran away with that person,
and ran outside of Alaska, to Seattle.
Alexandra: Did you ever get to know the person you were supposed to marry?
Rosita: Oh yes, he was wonderful to me. He was older -
Alexandra: How much older? Rosita: Oh gosh, I don't know, 10, 12 years.
He was like an adult. But he would take care of me, in terms of,
he would buy me school clothes, and I remember once he bought me a dresser set.
With a mirror, and hair brush, and all my sisters were so envious.
And I put it out on the table, and we'd all look at ourselves in the mirror.
And I remember it was gold, with red on top.
So he bought me things that we couldn't afford in our family, bought me clothes.
And he'd also send in food, Native food, from - he lived in Angoon at the time.
And he was always really good to me.
I met him years later, and he told me that, he says "I'm glad we didn't get married."
He said, "I'm glad, because you were able to go on, and go to school,
and do things for our people." He was good to me about that.
But his mom used to tell me, "You should have married my son."
When I started getting into our Native political office,
he would help me run for the board. He supported me, got his family to support me.
He kind of like campaigned for me. And we became good friends.
I never was formally introduced to his wife, but I met her later on.
Alexandra: I bet she was happy that it worked out the way it did, hopefully.
Rosita: Yeah, I think we established a bond.
When he became ill, and he was dying, and he told my sister,
my sister went to visit him, and he said, "Could you ask Rosita to call me?"
So I called him, and she answered the phone.
It was actually the first time I'd ever talked to her.
And I had said, "Could you just tell him that Rosita called?"
And she said, "Wait, wait, let's see if he's awake."
So I was able to talk to him for a few minutes,
and say just how much I had appreciated our friendship, and his support of myself.
I mean, life is very strange. One of my girlfriends found this bracelet,
and she's into jewelery, and she found this bracelet in a pawn shop.
And she said, "I think you're supposed to have this bracelet."
And I bought it from her, and we looked on the inside,
and it had her name in it, the wife.
And so in the ceremony that they had for him -
In Tlingit culture we have a number of different ceremonies,
and one of them is held a year later. And so I went over to Angoon
to participate in that ceremony. And I was able to return this bracelet,
that she had lost. So it's kind of a neat story, I thought.
Alexandra: In the time period from when your mother told you,
when you were 13, that this was going to happen, to when you finished school,
and you decided it wasn't . . . was there any point that you were sort of resigned,
that you thought, Ok, this is my life, this is what I'm going to do?
Rosita: Oh, you mean to be married? To have the arranged marriage?
Nope, I never thought that. I mean, life was to exciting.
There were lots of new adventures. At the time, to me, they were adventures.
I remember, he had told me, "I'm going to build you the biggest house in Angoon."
And I couldn't see myself living in, just staying at home. I wanted to explore.
Alexandra: After receiving Masters and Doctorate degrees from Harvard University,
Rosita focused her Anthropology work on preserving Tlingit and Haida cultural traditions.
But she soon realized how difficult it was to stand back, and study Alaska Native history,
when her true desire was to step in, and help her people build a sustainable future.
Rosita: I always say that it was an exciting time for me.
I always describe it as someone opening up a curtain.
And I was looking into a whole new world.
I would go to law school, I went to business school, I was enrolled in Social Sciences.
And I was majoring in Anthropology. Because I wanted to understand
how the world worked. I wanted to understand how institutions worked.
And I wanted to be able to figure out how you change those institutions,
so they are more compatible with Native American lifestyles and values.
Alexandra: And was that always with the idea of coming back to Alaska?
Rosita: Yes, always with the idea of coming back, and working to change
those institutions, so that we would be allowed to live as Native People.
To continue our cultural practices, our cultural values.
I also, one of the things that I did was, I looked at the exhibits.
And I said, "Oh my God, how come they have us all
looking like these stereotypes of Indian people?
And of course there were no exhibits at that time on Southeast Alaska.
So I said, I'm going to do an exhibit. And I had no idea what it meant.
But I had a great department, great professors, who were supporting me.
So I was allowed to do an exhibit, and I did an exhibit called,
"Tlingit Aenee: Enter the Tlingit World."
And what I did was, I did a traditional ceremony, and a potlach.
So I used myself as the mannequin, and my son.
And I had three children when I went back to school.
So I had mannequins made of myself. That proved to be really good,
because I finished my three years of graduate school,
and then I went and did my field work in Barrow.
Alexandra: Your work has always kind of been at the intersection,
of Anthropology and activism. How did you wrestle with that?
There's the debate over, are you going to study a culture and be impartial?
Or are you going to be advocate on behalf of that culture?
Rosita: I had really good professors, and that's something that we were taught.
It was taught: objectivity. And in fact, one of my colleagues,
who was studying Anthropology, one of my very good friends,
he was studying Anthropology, and he went to, I can't remember, Indonesia?
But he got engaged in the politics. And he was immediately thrown out of school.
So that was a stark lesson for me. But we were actually taught objectivity.
I remember my first experience going to Barrow.
I went into one of their feasts, and I started looking around, and I said,
"Where are their clan leaders? Why aren't they -?" And I caught myself.
That I was being, I was looking at that society through my own lenses.
I had learned a lesson early, where I had brought someone home with me.
I brought one of my classmates here to Juneau, and up to Chilkat area.
And I was missing a lot of things, because I was so immersed in my own culture.
That I wasn't able to see what was happening.
And my colleague kept asking me questions,
and I found out I wasn't seeing everything, because I was living it.
So it was a lesson of objectivity that I learned.
But I did live in Barrow for two years, and I did field work up there for about 10 years.
And it was when I realized that I was becoming friends with people,
where it was becoming very personal, that I decided it was time for me to leave.
Because I couldn't do good Anthropology.
But at the same time, I had also adopted my own ethical statement,
where I have said that, the knowledge that I gain from wherever I study,
the community that I study, has to benefit that community.
Because I had already seen so many Anthropologists
who had gone into Indigenous communities, had left those Indigenous communities,
and had achieved a very succesful career, and never looked back
at those communities that they had studied.
So I had said that my knowledge has to benefit that community.
At this point in time, I don't know that I understood Applied Anthropology,
or Public Policy Anthropology. I just started doing it.
Where the knowledge that you have is used to benefit that community.
So I continued to do that, and then that kind of -
I started to move into the political realm, the advocacy or activism.
And that was when I started to get onto different boards.
And there's where I left my Anthropology behind.
But I had also learned the valuable lesson of knowledge,
and how knowledge can be used to change things.
Alexandra: Throughout her career, Rosita has served on many committees,
boards of directors, and political commissions.
Her early experiences as an Anthropologist and Activist and a Fighter
have helped Rosita every step of the way.
And her fight continues to this day, as she works to preserve cultural traditions
and subsistence ways of life for the next generations of Alaska Natives.
What have been the biggest political fights in your life so far?
Rosita: It's probably subsistence.
I've served as the chair of the Alaska Federation of Natives Subsistence Committee,
probably going on 15 years now, and I think it's where Native people
are really trying to, saying, this is their last stand, for their cultural survival.
I thought that decision in the Yupiq case,
where they recognized the spirituality of Native people, is a significant statement.
It reaffirms an earlier decision, but nevertheless, in today, in 2013,
we have a judge that says Native religion exists.
And I started off my story with talking about where I was brought, I was kidnapped,
and taken to a mission school to have that Nativeness wiped out of me,
and to be transformed into a civil, civilized Christianized girl.
And then here today, to say that, having the courts recognize that.
Alexandra: So are you seeing diversity being promoted in a spirit of the law,
but there's still work on the letter of the law?
Rosita: I see that in almost every domain. I see it in education.
Where, we've said, all the pictures in the books, all the curriculum,
reflects white society. But now our work at Sealaska Heritage Institute,
we're trying to teach teachers about diversity,
and we're developing cultural materials, curriculum materials,
to try to get that integrated into the classroom.
So the cultural diversity issues run the full spectrum, from the political arena,
to the educational arena, to the economic arena, and on.
I think the Walter Soboleff Center, the construction of it,
I think it signifies an important time in our state, in our city,
where we say Native people, cultural diversity exists. And that's a good thing.
I received a note from a friend today, and she said,
"How different this is from the time when we were growing up,
where Native people weren't recognized, where we didn't have a presence,
where they were trying to change us from being Native people,
to here where the Governor of Alaska is celebrating cultural diversity,
the Mayor of Juneau is celebrating cultural diversity,
state legislators were there." I think that's a good statement for Alaska.
We still have a lot of work to do, but I'm optimistic that we've made at least that turn.
Alexandra: And what's your biggest hope for Alaska, moving forward?
Rosita: I want to see Native people survive.
I want to see them survive as distinct cultural entities.
I want to see the non Native people have an appreciation,
a true appreciation for cultural diversity.
We have lived on this land for 10,000 years.
And it is our dream, our hope, and our purpose that we are going to be here
for another 10,000 years. (Applause).