“On the Trail of Eklutna”
By Ann Chandonnet with Naomi Klouda; Cardamon Press, 2025; 132 pages; $17.95.
Anyone who has visited Eklutna, the tiny Dene’ina Athabascan village lying just off the Glenn Highway within the Municipality of Anchorage, between the city’s metropolitan area and the sprawl of Wasilla, has in all likelihood been enthralled by the spirit houses found in the community’s cemetery. Placed over the graves of departed residents, they are a unique blending of Indigenous and Russian Orthodox beliefs and practices regarding the journey of one’s soul after its passing from this world.
“In the case of the Eklutna Indians, the spirit houses bring together both traditions in their burial rites,” the Archpriest Nicholas Harris is quoted as saying in “On the Trail of Eklutna.” The Indigenous inhabitants of the land “still have the aboriginal spirit house, but over the house is the Orthodox cross, which shows the person buried there is a member of the Orthodox church. My understanding is that the spirit house is simply a monument. But perhaps the deeper meaning is that it is a gesture of love.”
“On the Trail of Eklutna” is a short book that has gone through several incarnations. First published in 1979, it was written by the Alaska author, historian and poet Ann Chandonnet. It was subsequently updated three more times between then and the early 1990s, then left fallow until this year when, with the assistance of journalist and novelist Naomi Klouda, it has been reborn once again.
Despite the fame of the spirit houses themselves, they are only briefly discussed, mostly in a brief chapter a bit beyond midway through. But among other purposes, they represent the same thing the book offers readers: an honoring of history and those who lived it, and an enduring reminder that this history lives on, continuing to evolve with each new influence that touches upon it.
Chandonnet was living and working in Anchorage in 1973 when she first wandered into what was then an out-of-the-way village yet to be surrounded by the surging expansion of the city that came with the pipeline construction. She fell immediately in love with the town and the wilds surrounding it, and in 1979 self-published the first edition of this volume.
“It was the distant past that called to me,” she writes in the opening pages, explaining what compelled her to write the book.
The early chapters capture what originally drew her into Eklutna and its environs and kept her coming back. Her descriptions of the land are steeped in a calming sense of place, conveying its beauty and the personal centering she undoubtedly found there.
This is followed by a discussion of the Indigenous inhabitants of the broader region. Lacking written records, a precise history can never be known, but archaeology can reveal the elements of daily life — Eklutna, we learn, is one of Southcentral Alaska’s richest archaeological sites. Oral histories can fill in some of the human elements. To this we can add the observations of the earliest Europeans to nudge their way into the area, and the Russians who were first to colonize it.
Archaeology, like all sciences, is subject to change over time as new discoveries are made, new questions based on those findings arise, and new answers are postulated. The authors do a fine job of explaining the varied theories about the movements of peoples through the region and when the Athabascans came to settle it. Theories that both converge with and diverge from each other.
It’s roughly 45 pages in that the book turns to the shaman Eklutna Alex Vasily and the story takes form through he and his descendants. Eklutna Alex lived a long life, from 1865 to 1952. Long enough to span from the departure of the Russians to the cusp of statehood. He was a repository of traditional knowledge who hunted the mountains, sold meat to gold rush stampeders, worked fish camps in the Anchorage Bowl before being forced out by whites in 1918, and built a cabin on Eklutna Lake in 1927.
Eklutna Alex fathered something of a dynasty, members of whom feature prominently in the following pages. His son Mike Alex, who Chandonnet interviewed in the early seventies, was instructed by his father to take over the care of St. Nicholas Church and its colorful graveyard, which by the time she met him had become a tourist attraction. He speaks of his life on the land, and as a wisdom keeper, and his success working for the Alaska Railroad, while expressing regret for never having learned to read Russian and thus being unable to become a clergyman in a faith he adhered strongly to.
Mike Alex’s son Daniel attended college, becoming a geophysicist for the U.S. Navy in Washington, D.C., and later worked for various Native corporations. From this modern perspective, he speaks of his childhood, when food came from the land.
Eklutna Alex’s granddaughter, Debbie Fullenwider, was a director for both Cook Inlet Region, Inc. and Cook Inlet Tribal Council. With one foot on the land and the other in the boardroom, she embodies the present day lives of Alaska Natives, so many of whom cling to and carry forward their cultural heritage while fully inhabiting the contemporary world, straddling the delicate balance between both.
Aaron Leggett, the current president of the Native Village of Eklutna, and also a descendent of Eklutna Alex, is found in the final chapter, which explores through his narrative the present day political, economic, and cultural challenges and triumphs of those he represents.
Religious history is another topic. The authors explain that conversion to Christianity was fairly smooth owing to similarities with traditional beliefs, which in many ways blended. And while it’s unstated, perhaps the heavy reliance on iconography by the Orthodox Church helped enable the continued building of spirit houses.
“Whatever their origins, the spirit houses fascinate,” the authors write. “Like bright flowers on Memorial Day, they remind visitors of full lives, and bright memories.”
This short but vital book performs the exact same task.
