Hoonah City Schools

Culture
& the Arts

Building a Collaborative Approach for Art Integration

Arts for Alaska Community/Family Survey

This 6-question survey is to help us evaluate our current activities and find out what we need to consider in the next year.

Thank you for taking your time to fill this out!
Gunalche'esh!

Program Highlights

Ḵu.éexʼ

Mark Your Calendars for our 32st Annual Hoonah Schools Heritage Celebration Ḵu.éexʼ

Dates and times will be posted soon. Check back.
‍This year the Eagle students will be the hosts.

Hope to see you there!

Highlighted Work

Funded Art Projects

Art Under the Microscope

Bradford Jackson Films

Students were able to interview and work with Bradford Jackson, an actor and film-maker from Alaska, who has also worked in Hollywood.

Dance Aprons

Synopsis creating felt dance aprons for Huha students cut out and appliqued their chosen design onto felt and then added abalone buttons and deer hooves for enhancing movement and noise.

Dance Fans

The 7th graders designed and made dance fans that each student created using their own formline salmon trout head and then appliqueing the design on felt and adding feathers at the end.

Devil's Club Necklaces

Students are able to interact with a vital resources and traditional material to better understand science, culture, and even economics and business.

DigiFo

A class where students explore creative ways to use technology. Students explore multiple facets of creative technologies and self-select areas of interest to dive deeper.

Drum Making

Students learned how to make Tlingit Drums and paint original formline designs on the drum to gift to clan leaders and then make one for themselves. It is important in the culture to gift your first one.

Field Sketching Projects

Fish Dissection

Formline

A native form of design originated by carvers using light and shadow to complete designs using 3 simple shapes: Ovoid, split U, and S shape. The purest form of design to communicate a concept or idea.

Formline - Year 2

Jeff Skaflestad, local Tlingit classical Formline artist, continues to work with students to hone their skills in the traditional art of Formline.

Historical Photos

Students explore Hoonah history through the storytelling art of photography and through interviewing local specialists about their knowledge and contributions to the Huna Heritage Foundation's digital archives.

Inventors Workshop

Students possess so much creativity and imagination, but how can they harness that into something of purpose, meaning, or simply of fun? New technologies of design and fabrication give anyone the tools and techniques to go from an idea to a digital design, then to objects made of plastic, rubber, chocolate, resin, metal, and even animated ‘bots.

Luau

Music Program

Robotics

Our season wouldn’t have been the same without the generous support from the Hoonah Community. The City’s 1% Student Extracurricular Activities Fund makes our participation possible.

Silk painting

Dying of fabric through color allowing for color play to express the desired image of the creator on silk. Often hung as wall hangings that give way to movement and flow or worn around the neck as fashion.

Staff Headbands

Staff created Headbands styled after the Tlingit tradition. Headbands are often worn during ku.éex’s or potlatches as a name tag that shows cultural heritage.

Still Lifes in Tlingit Language

Totem Stories

Students spent a week learning about the history and carvers of some of the totems in Hoonah. Special guests included Gordon Greenwald and Jeff Skafelsted.

Traditional Tlingit Vest

Wayne Price

Wayne Price, a preeminent Tlingit carver, presented to Hoonah middle and high school students about the art of carving dugout boats.

About the program

Assistance for Arts

This 5-year grant-funded project supports opportunities for students and staff at Hoonah City Schools to interact with art through targeted initiatives that incorporate local ways of knowing, artists in residence, professional development, and special events.

Learn more about

Our regional partners
Artists in Residence
Grant Goals & Guidelines
Our Advisory Board

Community Support

Art Instructors

With funding from the Assistance for the Arts grant, and with further support from volunteers and programming partners, students benefit from a wide range of instructional support and real-world opportunities for learning. Below is not an exhaustive listing of our instructors, and as time goes, we will be able to highlight more and more. Thank you to our partners in instruction and in programming for supporting Hoonah City School's students and staff.

Bradford Jackson

Chris Greenwald

Gordon Greenwald

Jeff Skaflestad

Stephanie Harold

Thanks to our

Partners in Programming

Sealaska Heritage Institute

Huna Heritage Foundation

Tidelines Institute

National Park Service Alaska

Hoonah Indian Association

Bradford Jackson Films

U.S. Forest Service

Discovery by Sketch