“We’re Still Here”: An Interview with Lily Hope

An interview with Chilkat and Ravenstail weaver Lily Hope that focuses on her Chilkat Protector mask series and her experience as an artist living, producing, and teaching during the Covid-19 global pandemic.

Citation: McClain, Heather.  ““We’re Still Here”: An Interview with Lily Hope.” The Jugaad Project, 24 Feb. 2021, thejugaadproject.pub/lily-hope [date of access]

Lily Hope modeling her work, Chilkat Protector (2020). Photo by Sydney Akagi.

Lily Hope is a Chilkat and Ravenstail weaver based in Juneau, Alaska. Her Tlingit name is Wooshkhindeinda.aat. She is Raven T’aḵdeintaan from the Snail House in Hoonah. Hope learned Chilkat and Ravenstail weaving from her mother, the late Clarissa Rizal, and from weaver Kay Parker. For hundreds of years, weavers have created intricately woven hand-twined textiles that document and communicate the history, clan migrations, and stories of the Indigenous peoples of the Northwest Coast. Each piece is imbued with the knowledge that is held and shared with generations of weavers. Hope describes Chilkat and Raventail weavings as a veil between worlds [1] and that they are part of the cultural health and wealth of the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian peoples. although the number of weavers has declined due to pressures of Western colonization, the knowledge of how to harvest, prepare the materials, and the spiritual aspects and care needed for weavers to produce is still very much alive as artists continue to teach and create works that reflect the world they experience. Today, weavers are creating vibrant and unique pieces that pull from studying old pieces, but also play with tradition and standard forms as they flex their knowledge of the artforms to reflect and express their individual talents and identities. Hope’s Chilkat Protector (2020) masks continue this legacy and serve as records of this time of upheaval and uncertainty, speaking to the importance of lifting up and taking care of each other, both physically and spiritually.

A heartfelt gunalchéesh to Lily Hope for sharing her time and knowledge for this interview, and photographer Sydney Akagi for taking such beautiful photos.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

HM: Lily, thank you so much for talking with me for The Jugaad Project. To start I have to say how honored I am to be speaking with you. I was lucky to be able to interact with you in Juneau while working at Sealaska Heritage Institute both as a Chilkat weaver and phenomenal storyteller, and am always in awe of your eloquence and ability to speak poignantly about your weaving practice. The past year has been quite eventful and I know you’ve been very busy especially with the Chilkat Protector series and the ‘Mask Up’ project. Can you talk about how that work was inspired and how it’s going?

LH: Previous to the call from the First American Art Magazine, I had tossed the idea back and forth with my weaving colleague Ricky [Tagaban] and my sister, Ursula [Hudson], and was like “It would be kind of fun to weave a mask, but it’s probably a lot of hours.”

But then this call [for mask submissions from First American Art Magazine for an online exhibition came up and not one or two or three, but seven people sent me the link, so I thought that was enough people knocking on my door that I should probably do it. I wove the mask and submitted images, and the same day, the Burke Museum curator, Katie Bunn-Marcuse, messaged me and said, “Don’t let anyone else buy that. We, the Burke, want that mask. Please don’t let anyone have it.” So that was awesome. I don’t know that I had the idea that I could have sold it. I mean, I wasn’t making it with the intention of selling it. Which is funny to think I didn’t have a buyer in mind, and since then I have woven ten of those masks. I really wasn’t looking for something else to do but it came up and there was enough interest that I was like, “Oh, I should probably keep doing this.”

Video created by Lily Hope for Chilkat Protector 2020.

HM: And perfect timing with 2020 and everything going on.

LH: Yeah. I also came to the realization that a huge piece that’s missing in my support network is spinners and dyers who will spin all of this warp. We need a thousand yards of warp to make a Chilkat blanket, and it’s either six to eight weeks of work for us [to spin] or we pay up to $3,000 for someone else to do it. And if you think about an artists’ career or someone working a full-time job, $3,000 over six to eight weeks is half of what an artist could make. I could generate more money by making finished art pieces or earrings in that case for eight weeks than it would cost me to pay someone to do it.

That conversation came up with Sealaska Heritage Institute and we started talking about how do we get this knowledge into the hands of many? Particularly into the hands of rural Alaskans who don’t have a whole lot of alternate income options. I said, “Well what if someone in rural Alaska takes over some of these jobs and we , the artists, could pay them?” They could probably make $10,000 a year just spinning warp for the weavers who don’t want to spin.

Screenshot from the artist’s Instagram showing Chilkat weaving materials: cedar bark, mountain goat (or merino wool), and a strand of thigh-spun warp. Photo courtesy of the artist. Original image posted by Sydney Akagi.

And that is a traditional thing in that we’ve always had outside support. There’s [documentation] in some of the ethnographic records that we would trade for wolf moss to dye our stuff or we’d go inland and get our warp. We’d bring our mountain goat inland and say, “Hey, here’s these seven hides. I’ll come back in three months and pick up my warp.”

Sealaska [Heritage] and I partnered with The CIRI Foundation and put together this series of six videos on spinning and dying, and they went live on Sealaska Heritage Institute’s YouTube channel.

HM: And they are fantastic.

LH: They’re really fun.

HM: How did doing Chilkat Protector feed into doing the Mask Up project?

LH: This is a long story. Just kidding. Ryan Chernikoff, [he] works for the Cook Inlet Housing Authority, reached out to me and said, “Hey, my wife brought your work to my attention, and I’m wondering if you would allow us to use images of your masks and/or creating a mask based on life stories of some of our residents at Cook Inlet Housing Authority?” And I said, “You know, I don’t feel like I should be your poster child for this Mask Up campaign because I’m not of your tribal region. I appreciate that you’re excited about my work but I don’t feel right being the person to do the work for you.”
So, we parted ways amicably and it put me on the road to, “well even if they can’t do it, this needs to happen.” I started soliciting Sealaska Corporation and my studio support person, Crystal Cudworth, and I started emailing all the housing authorities, all the corporations, anyone we could think of that might have CARES Act funding to spend, to say, “Hey, we want to make this an all Alaska Native Mask Up campaign.” So right now, due to many factors, I have not raised more money or followed up on a couple different pieces, but we have raised almost $10,000, secured or committed, and we have four artists who have applied to be part of this thing, all from Southeast. I want to continue doing it, but all [grant awarded] money needs to be spent by [December] 30. So, I’m not sure where that’s going to go or how it’s going to go. Maybe it is only going to be Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian masks and that will be okay.

Screenshot from the artist’s Instagram promoting the Mask Up Project. Photo courtesy of the artist.

HM:  I saw that you got your first international commission from the Museum of Nature and Man in Freiburg, Germany for Chilkat Protector, which is amazing! Do you think it’s a step forward in recognition for weavers in the art form? I have heard you talk about elevating the status of weavers, especially related to weavings in museum collections being seen as static and past. Not that contemporary weavers are still with us and teaching and the artform is …

LH: Alive.

HM: Yes! Alive and reflective, like with Chilkat Protector, of times that we live in.

LH: Yes, I think that having my work in an international museum does speak to, and actually this movement of having multiple Chilkat Protector masks going out is speaking volumes about the relevance and importance of these textiles in that we’re not stuck in only making Chilkat blankets. There’s a piece I think in Washington that looks like a bullet case. It was actually woven in Ravenstail technique in geometric shapes and some people are saying that this was an accident or cut up from another piece. And we went into the pictures and we were like the weaver intended to make an actual pocket out of it.

My mother [Clarissa Rizal] made this Ravenstail weaving and she crocheted corners on it, and it’s intended to drape over the bar of her loom but with these little pockets to put little baskets in it, and then put balls of yarn in that. So, this is an example of exactly what we looked at in a museum where she [Clarissa] wove an entire Ravenstail thing with the intent of making something other than a blanket.

My masks are ​ similar. I’m fingertwining in Chilkat techniques as I would for a dancing blanket or apron, I’m just adapting the final shape to record our world pandemic.

The contemporary nature and different shape of weaving a mask gives me hope that we’ll be seen as current and not past tense. And I mean that’s part of the whole Chilkat Protector narrative [that] we took care of each other and we are still weaving. We’re still here.

But I don’t know if I was thinking about it in terms of bigger than just a mask. That’s funny. And that is what it’s doing. It’s reaching a different audience. Or not a different audience but like speaking to the contemporary nature of the work.

HM: Right, and that’s the reactions that I’ve seen online and heard from people is just how much it hits home and how relevant it is.

LH: Yes! On that note, somebody was like, “Hey Lily, you’re not able to teach for the next however long. What are you going to do about that?” And I was like what do you mean? And they were like, “Are you just not going to teach all year? Or what are you going to do?” So I started my Patreon page and hold space for weavers every other Sunday. It’s called “Weave with Me” and we get to weave for three hours from 2:30 to 5:30 Alaska time. I think I have forty-nine patrons and Sundays are included, [so] it’s six hours a month of continued weaving time with me where they can bring their weaving and ask questions. Then four times a year we do a start to finish project. Our first project was a small woven pendant, we did a zig-zag Ravenstail diamond pattern in it. Then because half the students were like, “Well can we weave a circle in this pendant?” And I was like sure, let’s replace the diamond with an actual circle, so I did a tutorial on how to do that and they had basically two-in-one projects.

That has probably been the best part about Corona virus is continuing to weave and be together.

A close up of Lily Hope at her loom with her latest Chilkat blanket design, Between Worlds (2020). Photo by Sydney Akagi.

HM: I know a lot of people have missed the in person contact so it has been amazing to see virtual meetings and having Patreon set up where you can actually meet and talk and do class.

LH: Yeah. I’m trying to not to calculate all the dollars that I spend having a professional Zoom account and paying for extra Zoom storage so they can actually go back and watch the recordings. It’s not cheap but I know that the value is worth it in the end, like what they are getting out of it.

HM: Right. And years later you can go back and say, “Hey, I did teach this class if you want to look at it, go look here.”

LH: Yes, that.

HM: For your classes, do people buy materials through your website or is it materials that they get elsewhere? Or is it part of that network that you’re trying to build with people spinning and dying for you?

LH: That has been a problem. This is the final yard of Chilkat warp that I own [holds material up to the screen] and if I don’t spin it myself then I don’t have it. Ricky [my colleague] is spinning, but he’s spinning for two other people, so he’s got basically three months of spinning work to do before I can have anymore. So, I have to spin until I can find someone who is really good at it and wants to do it. That’s a problem, but I set up my Patreon to be that you can participate in the project if you sign up a full thirty days prior to the project starting.

I probably could let people join on December 1 and send them a kit of materials, but the scarcity of materials - actually even getting black yarn [2] in this style of yarn that we want isn’t possible because of Corona virus. The people who are making it can’t make any for me. We could use substandard yarns, but I don’t want to.

So, finding materials is a problem right now. Maybe in March I’ll be able to say yes, I have extras. At some point in the future I will have kits available and people can join at will.

HM: Has that affected what you’ve been able to do commission wise?

LH: I took on a commission in March before I finished the Chilkat blanket for this Los Angeles art collector. Didn’t finish that blanket on time. Thank you, Corona virus. And we wanted to do a first dance event. She was going to come up for Celebration and see the robe danced for the first time. We did it socially distanced with Sealaska Heritage. Everybody wearing mask. That is on YouTube.

This blanket is a Chilkat blanket that is in progress and it was supposed to be half done three days ago. It is not half done. The only thing that is woven in the center. I messaged them and said, “Hey, how’s Corona virus going for you guys? Because I have not made adequate progress on this blanket.”

Meanwhile I have to make a living to pay my bills. So, what’s that trade off of how many hours do I do this? And how many hours do I do this?

HM: Do you have any other fun projects coming up in 2021?

LH: It’s this blanket and three masks are due by the end of December, so my rainbow is in progress. Which I did to myself. I applied for some of the Juneau CARES ArtWorks  artist funding, and I thought, “Oh wouldn’t it be fun to do a series of Chilkat Protector masks with the colors of the transgender flag, a rainbow one, and then an Ancestors one.” Speaking to that narrative of Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian people used to have this different reverence or respect or elevation of our two-spirit peoples and that is not true now. So much has kind of fallen away. Thank you, colonization.

I’m really hoping they will let me put them at the Zach Gordon Youth Center in Juneau. Then that’s a youthful conversation with a little plaque of narrative that goes there, and like, “See! You’re valuable. Hang out here and know that you’re valuable.”

Lily Hope, Ancestral Indigenous Protectors (2020). Photo by Sydney Akagi.

Lily Hope, Ancestral Indigenous Protectors (2020). Photo by Sydney Akagi.

HM: Lily, thank you so much for talking with me. This is great, and it’s always a pleasure and a delight just hearing you talk.

LH: Aw thanks. And thanks for sharing. 

Further Resources

Hope, Lily. www.lilyhope.com. Accessed 22 February, 2021.

Hope, Lily. “Artist Statement by Lily Hope, Chilkat & Ravenstail Weaver and Teacher.” YouTube, uploaded by Lily Hope, 26 December, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyEI7RNpQ3A.

Hope, Lily. “Chilkat Crisis: A Calling to Vitalize Indigenous Knowledge Foundations with Tlingit Weaver Lily Hope.” YouTube, uploaded by Sealaska Heritage Institute,  8 October, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1I3wjJ9iZJ4&t=1073s.

Instagram for Lily Hope.

Endnotes

1. Emily Buhrow Rogers, Lily Hope, “The Spirit Lives on in Art: Lily Hope’s ‘Chilkat Protector,’” Folklife, 25 November, 2020, https://folklife.si.edu/magazine/crisis-lily-hope-chilkat-protector. Accessed 22 February, 2021.

2. Per the artist, “the true black of my large Chilkat blanket borders are dyed with Jacquard brand acid dyes. The dark brownish black in the Between Worlds (in progress) dyed with Hemlock bark.”