Donna Beaver (Kaakwdagaan) is Kaagwaantaan (Wolf Clan) of the Eagle/ Wolf Moiety of her mother, grandmother, and Great Grandmother Annie Dalton James, who was the elder sister of George Dalton from the Kaagwagaani Hit (Burnt Timbers House) of the Glacier Bay Area in the Tongass National Forest, the ancestral territory of her family and the Hoonah Tlingit.
ABOUT
Donna Beaver is an Alaska Native (Tlingit / Tsimshian) poet and multidisciplinary artist, originally from Juneau, Alaska, now living in North Carolina. In addition to writing, she is a fine art photographer, filmmaker, graphic/web designer, and multimedia artist. Donna also works in traditional materials as a mixed-media collage artist, illustrator, sculptor, and jewelry designer.
As a former education outreach coordinator specializing in informal and Native science education, she continues to do Indigenous Knowledge talks and storytelling workshops.
Get to know Donna through the poetry podcast, Haiku Chronicles, that she produces and co-hosts with her husband and poet, Alan Pizzarelli. Haiku Chronicles is a free, non-profit educational podcast devoted to the art of haiku and related poetic forms.
Poetry reading and performance by Donna at the Issyra Gallery, Hoboken, NJ (2019).
MEDIA
Artist profile in the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian magazine's Winter 2023 issue.
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News Article in the Juneau Empire on, Remembering the sparks of the ‘Alaska Native Literary Renaissance’ (Juneau Empire, 2018) on a poetry event I organized to be a part of CELEBRATION, Sealaska Heritage’s biennial festival of Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian cultures that has been held in Juneau, Alaska, every even year since 1982.
In September 2016, Clarissa Rizal was a NEA National Heritage Fellow recipient for her Chilkat weaving. I took part in Clarissa’s performance group for the NEA concert: https://youtu.be/kDVckQQ-LtM?t=6188 (starts at 1:43:09). The video includes a lovely interview with Clarissa on Chilkat weaving, followed by our song and dance performance. Our troupe included Darlene See, Donna Beaver (that’s me wearing Clarissa’s “Weavers Across the Waters” fringed Chilkat robe), Clarissa Rizal, and Irene Lampe. The “Weavers Across the Water” is a Chilkat-Ravenstail robe composed of squares woven by 54 weavers, which Clarissa sewed together as a collaborative piece to be worn in celebrations of Northwest Coast canoe launchings and other cultural ceremonies. Clarissa passed away a few months after the event. (Photos by Tom Pich).
Article in the Daily Sitka Sentinel of me (left) and Clarissa Rizal (right) highlighting our presentation on “Regalia Research.” Part of the Ceremonial Regalia panel with panelists, Megan Smetzer, Evelyn Vanderhoop, and Emily Moore at the Sharing Our Knowledge Clan Conference in Sitka, AK (2007).
I was also panel lead for the session, Ethnohistory - Part 2. Panelists included: Ben Paul, Judith Berman, Diane Purvis, and Gil Truitt. My presentation for the panel, titled “A Geologist’s Vision for a Bureau of Ethnology,” focused on John Wesley Powell and highlighted early USGS photographs taken in the field, particularly during the period following the boom and redesign of wooden field view cameras from 1870 to 1930, including the documentation of Native people in Alaska.