21 Facts About Jennie Thlunaut

Jennie Thlunaut was born in Laxacht'aak, in the Jilkaat Kwaan, Southeast Alaska, where she led a typical Tlingit childhood, being outdoors and playing at the beach.

Jennie Thlunaut hunted and fished with her family, as well as gathered native plant foods, such as berries or wild celery.

Jennie Thlunaut's father was Gaanaaxteidi clan in the Frog House in Klukwan.

Jennie Thlunaut's mother fostered those interests by teaching her how to do those arts.

Jennie Thlunaut has become widely recognized especially for her skill as a Tlingit weaver of Chilkat blankets.

Jennie Thlunaut received her first batch of mountain goat hair as a child and her mother taught her weaving when she was only 10 years old.

Jennie Thlunaut was married by arrangement at the age of thirteen in 1905 to John James, a Gaanaxteidi man from the Shakes family in Wrangell.

Jennie Thlunaut's parents gave the Chilkat blanket with the frog crest that Jennie Thlunaut and her mother had made in 1902 to John James at their traditional Tlingit wedding.

John James became ill with something that Jennie Thlunaut described as "funny sick" in 1920 and, after two months in the hospital in Haines, died.

John Mark Thlunaut died in 1952, and Jennie moved out of the Raven house at Haines to a small house by the river in Klukwan.

In 1973 Jennie Thlunaut moved to a new house that was "constructed by the Tlingit and Haida Housing Authority under the HUD program," but its location away from the river was inconvenient for her, and she split her time between the two houses.

Jennie Thlunaut finished a blanket that had been started by her mother and had been passed to Jennie Thlunaut after her mother died in 1908.

Jennie Thlunaut made her own first blanket from start to finish in 1910 while living "in a tent" in Ketchikan where she and her husband were fishing for the summer.

When her daughter attended Sheldon Jackson School, Jennie Thlunaut paid the tuition with a blanket she wove featuring a frog emerging from winter hibernation.

Jennie Thlunaut made more than fifty blankets and twenty-five tunics in her seventy-five-year-long career.

Jennie Thlunaut was a prolific weaver, and while traditionally a Chilkat blanket would take a full year to finish, Jennie Thlunaut was able to finish many blankets while preserving subsistence foods, holding down a job, and raising her children.

Jennie Thlunaut sold some of her work, but much of her work was given as gifts to her family.

Jennie Thlunaut spun all of her own yarn in the traditional way, twisting the wool against her leg.

Jennie Thlunaut's work was featured in many exhibitions, including "Tlingit Aanee" at the Harvard Museum of Natural History.

Jennie Thlunaut died from cancer on 16 July 1986 while on an airplane, flying home to Klukwan, Alaska.

Many of the traditional and cultural arts of the Northwest coastal regions are experiencing a revival, and Jennie Thlunaut has been a seed carrier of knowledge to the younger generations.