All images and text © Kevin Moloney


Tlingit girl Shiann Braley, 11, scrambles rocks along the beachfront of Angoon, Alaska. A bear clan totem disappeared from the village in 1908, and reappeared as a gift to the University of Northern Colorado in 1914. In 2003 the tribe reclaimed the long-lost totem under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act and returned it to the village.



A village dog steps off a decorated grave, bearing a symbol of the Tligit bear clan, in the forest above Angoon. The Tlingit village of Angoon was leveled by the U.S. Navy in 1882 after an alleged cultural misunderstanding.



Fisherman George B. Johnson, left, and Bobby Demmert wait for gas in a flooded boat carburetor to evaporate before leaving on a fishing excursion in the bays around Angoon.



A child stands in the doorway of a home along the beachfront road of Angoon, the site of the village when bombarded by the U.S. Navy more than 100 years earlier. Clan houses, inhabited by appointed caretakers, line the strip.



Tlingit residents chat along the waterfront of Angoon, below the ceremonially decorated killer whale clan house, as another resident passes in a pickup.



The sun rises over the prow of a small fishing boat in Angoon, Alaska.


All images and text © Kevin Moloney

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