Editor’s note: Seventeen
Years in Alaska: A Depiction of Life Among the Indians of Yakutat, a new book
by Albin Johnson and edited and translated by Mary Ehrlander, is Johnson’s account
of his service as a missionary among the Tlingit at the turn of the twentieth
century. The Swedish missionary arrived at a time when Alaska and its Native
peoples were undergoing remarkable changes. The book is published by University
of Alaska Press. Ordering info available here. Ehrlander is professor of history and director of the Northern
Studies Department at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. The following interview was conducted by e-mail.
1) Tell us briefly about
the book and how you arrived at this particular topic.
Seventeen Years in Alaska is a memoir of a Swedish
Evangelical Covenant missionary who spent 17 years among the Tlingit at Yakutat
from 1889 to 1905. It was published in 1924 in Swedish (for Swedish-American
and Swedish audiences) and had never been translated. I used it in other
research that I did on Edward Anton and Jenny Olson Rasmuson, parents of Elmer
Rasmuson, who were missionaries at Yakutat toward the end of the Johnsons' stay
there and afterwards.
I thought it was a great primary resource on the
tremendous socio-economic and cultural change that was taking place at that
time. The Tlingit still maintained many traditional ways at the same time that
so much was changing around them, and they wanted to be a part of some of those
changes. So I wanted this resource to be available to those interested in
Alaska history who do not read Swedish.
2) What brought Albin
Johnson to Alaska?
Albin Johnson was a newly ordained Swedish Evangelical Mission
Covenant pastor. He was sent on this mission by the Covenant in Sweden, which
was interested in bringing Christianity to "pagan" peoples of the
world. It's believed that the Swedish-Finnish explorer Adolf Erik Nordenskiold
had notified leaders in the Covenant in Sweden of the great needs among
Alaska's Native peoples. They also may have read some of Sheldon Jackson's
writing.
3) You write that Johnson
arrived to work among the Tlingit tribes of Yakutat but that waves of foreign
immigrants were pouring into the region and bringing tumultuous social and economic
changes. What was life like in Yakutat in the early twentieth century and what
sorts of challenges did Johnson and the Tlingit face?
Challenges the Tlingit faced related to their being
inundated by western influences, including Christianity, employment
opportunities (in particular canneries at Yakutat), alcohol, and various
diseases. The Covenanters did not aim to change the Tlingit into white people.
However, they strongly urged them to denounce their shamans, dispense with the
potlatch, give up dancing and abstain from alcohol. And of course they worked
hard to change their worldview to a Christian one. While there were many
benefits to being associated with the mission, many of the missionaries' rules
did not make sense to them. For instance why was drinking forbidden when it was
white men who had brought alcohol to the Tlingit.
From the missionaries' perspective, I think the greatest
challenges were to convince the Tlingit of the truth of Christianity and to
guide them into accepting the best of western civilization and rejecting its
"evil" aspects. The Tlingit found alcohol very enticing, and even the
most faithful in the congregation would sometimes "backslide."
Missionaries were also very frustrated that the American
government did so little to protect Alaska Natives from exploitation by white
people of bad character and from the diseases that migrants inadvertently
brought in. The needs of the people were so great and the missionaries' means
were so small in comparison.
4) Tell us about the
process of translating Johnson’s journals. Where are the original journals
located? What considerations go into producing a faithful translation?
Rasmuson Library at UAF has the book in Swedish -- Sjutton Ar i
Alaska -- (the A in the second word should have a little circle over it) --
Seventeen Years in Alaska. I did significant research to contextualize the book
and make it understandable (in English) to 21st century readers. The Covenant's
archives are at North Park University, which was established as the Covenant
Seminary in the late 1800s. Fortunately, many of their documents, including the
yearly reports of the missionaries, are available online. These early docs are
all in Swedish. They were great resources for me, because they helped me to
flesh out Johnson's story.
The main challenges I encountered in translating the book
itself were 1) the many Biblical allusions (I'm not a Biblical scholar!) and
the old Swedish. The Swedish language has changed significantly in the past 130
or so years.
Also, it was difficult to know how much liberty I should allow
myself to translate Johnson's meaning, versus his words. As time went by I felt
increasingly comfortable taking liberties, and I know in the end this was the
right thing to do. Doing so helped me achieve a more pleasing and readable
narrative in English. David Bellos' book Is That a Fish in Your Ear?
Translation and the Meaning of Everything was really helpful in that
regard.
5) You get the last
word—what else do you want folks to know about your book?
I think people will find this missionary's perspective on life
at Yakutat in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries very
interesting. It certainly "complicates the narrative" of missionary
history in Alaska. I think that many people assume that missionaries were all
of one stripe and that they merely were self-serving, ethnocentric and paternalistic
do-gooders who did much harm, especially to Alaska Native languages and that
Alaska Natives would have been better off if missionaries had never come to
Alaska. Having done fairly extensive research on some missionaries in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, it is entirely obvious to me that
without the missionaries, the impacts of western migrants and culture on Alaska
Natives would have been much more devastating.
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