I don’t write many columns as Capital City Weekly editor. There are too many interesting people and events in Southeast Alaska to write articles about.
But one of those people was Teri Rofkar, a Ravenstail and spruce root basket weaver from Sitka, and Dec. 2, at 60 years old, she passed away after a battle with cancer.
I interviewed Teri twice — a little more than a year ago for a “Day in the Life of” profile, and this spring, when she was the featured artist for Tidal Echoes, Southeast Alaska’s literary and arts journal.
Teri was passionate, talented, creative, the kind of person the world needs more of. She was full of so many inspired ideas. For some of them, which she called her “Tlingit Superman” series, she’d received a Creative Capital grant. One robe she planned to make bulletproof with interwoven Kevlar, as a comment on America’s militarization. Into another, she would weave LEDs and fiber optics that would light up as the aurora when the wearer danced. A third she made completely from mountain goat, the first all mountain goat Ravenstail robe in hundreds of years. She wove double helixes along the side, in the shape of DNA, as an acknowledgment of the unique nature of Baranof Island mountain goats.
She traveled to Russia to see robes taken from Southeast Alaska, now in Russian museums, and was incredibly moved to see a robe from Lituya Bay — one intimately connected with her own family, as Lituya Bay is where she traced her ancestry back to.
“I called (my mom) up from Russia and said ‘Mom, they are our grandmother’s robes,’” she told me.
The robes and baskets Teri wove are treasures, just as her grandmother’s were.
“I’m the one that’s passing through for a brief period of time,” she told me last year. “I’m carrying this traditional art for a while; it’s going to go on beyond me.”
Teri, I’m just a writer who was lucky enough to speak with and write about you, but you made an impact on me and many others. You are already missed.
— Mary Catharine Martin, Capital City Weekly managing editor
*Here’s the profile I wrote about Teri in October 2015. http://www.capitalcityweekly.com/stories/100715/ae_1260573122.shtml Alaska Robotics also made a wonderful short documentary about her when she was chosen as the 2013 Rasmuson Foundation Distinguished Artist. It’s available here: http://alaskarobotics.com/2013/05/15/teri-rofkar/
