MY TLINGIT NAME is Kootink. I was born in Ketchikan and raised just west of there on Prince of Wales Island, in Craig, a town of about 1,000, where my people have thrived since time immemorial. But I haven’t always lived there.
When I went to college, it was in Santa Barbara, and on my first day in California, I went to the grocery store to buy chicken, and that—the act of buying meat in a store—was a culture shock. From the