Sealaska Heritage Institute (SHI) will sponsor a free lecture next week on Alaska Native leadership from the late 1800s to modern times in honor of Walter Soboleff Day.
In his talk, Hall of Famers in History: Decades of Leadership, longtime Tlingit leader Edward K. Thomas will lay out how tribal relations to the United States have changed over the decades.
“It is helpful to match our Native leaders to the timeframe in which they did their outstanding work addressing the challenges that faced Native people at that time,” Thomas wrote.
About the Lecturer
Ed Thomas was born and raised in Craig, Alaska, where he graduated from high school in 1960. He began his college education at Sheldon Jackson College earning his associate in science degree and then went on to earn his Bachelor of Science in Education from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks. In 1974, he accepted a fellowship from Pennsylvania State University where he earned his master’s in education administration.
Thomas began his 25-year commercial fishing career as a cook at the age of 13 on the FV Verness of Klawock. He would go on to skipper a seine boat and later a power troller; he currently owns a hand troller permit.
Thomas taught junior high school and coached the boy’s junior high basketball team in Klawock, Alaska, for a year. He was a high school counselor and coached the boy’s junior high basketball team in Craig, Alaska, and served as the Indian Studies student counselor for the Sitka School District. He also served as the executive director of the Indian Education Program in Ketchikan for nine years.
Thomas has been the president emeritus of the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska (Tlingit Haida Central Council) since April 2008. He served as president of the tribe from October 1984 until April 2007, was re-elected in 2010 and officially retired in 2014. He served on the Sealaska Corporation board of directors from 1993 to 2020 and is the chairman of the Sealaska Timber Corporation board in addition to a variety of other positions and responsibilities he fulfills.
All lectures will be held in-person at noon (Alaska time) at the Walter Soboleff Building in Juneau. SHI will also live stream the series on its KZfaq and save the talks on its channel immediately after. Viewers are encouraged to pose questions in-person and online.
Learn more about Sealaska Heritage here: www.sealaskaheritage.org/
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