Episcopal Press and News

ALASKA: 'Our Lady of Alaska' icon conveys Tlingit culture's hospitality, generosity

Episcopal News Service. March 16, 2010 [031610-04]

Pat McCaughan

Contemplating the Our Lady of Alaska icon means more than words can say for Marge Byrd, a Tlingit elder and a member of St. Philip's Church in the island community of Wrangell in the Episcopal Diocese of Alaska.

The icon, depicting the Virgin Mary and baby Jesus as Native Alaskans "means a lot to us because we work so hard to hang onto our culture," said Byrd, 75, during a recent telephone interview from her home. "To see something like this that represents us and our people and the people that were in Alaska first does your heart good."

Also comforting is the familiar red and blue of Mary's regalia, says Byrd. "She's wearing what I'd wear to a pot-lodge or a festival where we are dancing and talking about our history.

"It's a robe shaped like a blanket. It has the design of our clan and my tribe, the Kiksetti," she added.

Her parents were the first couple married at the historic St. Philip's, "a church built by native people," she said. Like her parents, Byrd was born and raised in the scenic "Inside Passage" rainforest community of about 1,500 residents, located 80 miles north of Ketchikan in Alaska's southeast panhandle.

The icon was inspired by Byrd's family and was a joint project of Sherry Lynch and her husband, Rob Ridnour. Lynch had previously created an icon for the Byrd family, which is displayed at St. Philip's Church.

"I fell in love with Tlingit art," Lynch recalled during a recent telephone interview from her La Center, Washington, home. Creating the madonna and child was also a labor of love that took more than a year of perfecting an initial drawing. The goal was to convey the Tlingit culture's hospitality and generosity, she said.

The 16 x 26-inch icon incorporates traditional religious images with the distinctive Tlingit symbols of an eagle and a raven, representing the two halves of the Tlingit Nation. The symbols are included on the madonna's golden halo and on the bentwood box that serves as her footstool, Lynch said.

"You're either a raven or an eagle" clan, Byrd explained. "My mother was a raven and my father was an eagle. All the children take their mother's clan," she said, so she and her seven siblings, as well as her five children, ten grandchildren and four great-grandchildren are all ravens, she said.

The icon's four corners include "attempts to translate symbols of the four evangelists into the visual language of Tlingit," Lynch said. "They are painted as though they might have been carved on a totem pole, left to weather outside for generations," she added.

The Christ child is shown in full festival regalia. He wears a painted adaptation of a Chilkat dancing tunic, "which was woven from mountain goat wool and was a very prestigious possession. Only the most aristocratic in the old tradition could own such a thing," she said.

The child's neck is adorned with a red cedar bark neck ring symbolizing his elevated status. Three heads, derived from Chilkat weaving, symbolize the Trinity and are surrounded by representations of winged heads, also done in Chilkat style and reminiscent of the winged seraphim. "He is holding in his hand a silver cross based on the Alaska cross given to native-born Alaskans at their confirmation," Lynch said.

He also holds the scroll of the Old Testament, which indicates the belief that all prophecies of the Old Testament are realized in Christ. His halo is ornamented with three gems of mother-of-pearl, used traditionally in Northwest Coast art.

Diocesan administrator Suzanne Krull said the idea for the icon evolved during anti-racism team conversations. "We had some discussions about how wonderful it would be to have an icon that represented the Virgin Mother and baby Christ in native garb," she said.

Since Lynch presented the completed icon to the diocese during a September 2009 Native Convocation in Wrangell, there has been talk about sharing the icon among the diocese's some 53 congregations, spread across the state, Krull said.

"Not everybody can come to convention, so we are trying to put together a mechanism for her to be able to rotate, to let her be wandering," Krull said. "So, if a congregation would like to have her for a time, we can send her off to them.

"Then they'd be responsible for sending her on to the next place. The gift that Sherry Lynch gave us in the icon, and her incredible art work—is really beyond words," Krull added during a March 9 telephone interview from her Fairbanks office.

"It's really wonderful to see Alaska represented so well in the Virgin Mary and the Christ child."

Byrd echoed the sentiment. "She (the icon) is very, very beautiful. Seeing her, you get a feeling of what Alaska is like."