Cam’i

My name is Cheryl Potts. My heritage is Alutiiq (Sugpiak) Native, Irish, and Seneca. I grew up in a small fishing village of Kodiak, Alaska

Within my community here in Topanga, C.A., where I now live I am an elder, teacher and storyteller.

I have contributed to the safe return of stolen Alaskan Ancestral bones held for over one hundred years in boxes at the Museum of Man in San Diego CA. Through dreams and intuition, I was shown that some of these Ancestors and Sacred Beings were hidden in the museum without the knowledge of the museum director. I could feel their longing to go home. When this information was validated, they were sent home in a sacred way.

Their return, I was shown, is essential to restoring the balance as all the Sacred Beings.

In 1918 I saw a photograph of the Snub Nose Mask on loan for five years to the Alutiiq Museum in Kodiak, Alaska from a museum in France. I could see the heartache, pain and suffering this mask had to endure from its journey and could feel how the Mask wanted to stay on the earth of his people, the earth he had known as home. I could feel it deep in my bones.

I sat with the image of the Mask for many weeks listening for what the Mask might say. One day I looked in the Museum catalogue and saw the Weatherman Mask. It is the one who wanted to speak. Listening and following the path opened the door for this story of the Mask to be born.

I want to acknowledge the work of Alutiiq Museum and the Alutiiq people who are engaged in helping restore their language which has all but gone extinct and in saving their culture which wasn’t colonized once but twice. Quyanasinaq to my people.