During a ceremony Saturday afternoon, the U.S. Navy apologized for shelling and burning the Alaska Native village of Kake in 1869.
Adm. Mark B. Scato delivered the military’s statement of regret in the gymnasium at Kake Elementary and High School, surrounded by Chilkat textiles, historical photographs and other Lingit art. It was the first of two apologies by the military for the bombing of Alaska Native communities in the late 1800s.
“This has been 155 years in the making,” Kake Village Chairman Joel Jackson said of the apology to the Linggit (also known as Tlingit) people. “We’ve never talked about this, and now it’s becoming a reality.”
The event also featured remarks from other tribal leaders and elders, blessings from tribal and Navy chaplains and performances by local Native American Hex Juan dancers and the Navy Band.
A second ceremony is scheduled for Oct. 26, 142 years after the Navy bombarded the nearby village of Angoon in 1882.
The bombardment of Kake and Angoon Islands occurred just a few years after the United States purchased the Alaskan territory from Russia in 1867. During those early years, the U.S. Army and Navy had patrolled the region, including at a fort in Sitka where a sentry had killed two Lingit men in 1869. To resolve the ensuing conflict, an Army general dispatched the warship USS Saginaw to Kake Island, “took several chiefs hostage until they were delivered up” and “burned the village.”
“They burned everything: shelters, food stores, canoes, everything,” Jackson told The Washington Post. No one was killed in the winter bombings, but the destruction of the community, its supplies and canoes claimed many lives, Jackson said.
Thirteen years later, the military bombed a second village after another conflict, this time over the death of a Linggit medicine man. Although the elder’s death on a whaling ship was an accident, the tribe demanded 200 blankets as customary compensation. Edgar Merriman, then naval commander for the District of Alaska, rejected the request, instead demanding 400 blankets from the tribe. When the Linggit only partially met their demands, Merriman ordered U.S. forces to bomb the hamlet of Angoon.
Federal officials later praised Merriman’s raids: “As long as the natives do not feel the power of the Government, and are not punished with gross outrages, they will become the more dangerous,” William Morris, the federal revenue collector for the region, wrote in an 1882 letter.
Recently, U.S. troops have been deployed to the remote island in response to a surge in Russian military activity nearby.
“It would mean a lot” if the Navy apologized this fall, said Garfield George, known as “Kacsoucci,” housemaster of Angoon’s Dash Hit (End of the Trail) House, who will help lead a ceremony there in October. The Angoon community received a $90,000 settlement from the Department of the Interior in 1973 but has long called for a formal apology.
Jackson said he hopes the Navy’s apology on Kake Island on Saturday will help further heal the intergenerational trauma caused by military violence. “A lot of our people don’t even talk about this. We need to start having conversations about this, because we need to start healing,” he said.
