Ernestine Hayes

Ernestine Saankaláxt Hayes (born 1945) is a Tlingit author and an emerita professor at the University of Alaska Southeast in Juneau, Alaska. She belongs to the Wolf House of the Kaagwaaataan clan of the Eagle side of the Tlingit Nation. Hayes is a memoirist, essayist, and poet. She served as Alaska State Writer Laureate 2017–2018.

Hayes was born in Juneau at the end of the Second World War when Alaska was still a territory. For the first several years of her life, Hayes lived with her grandmother in the Juneau Indian Village while her mother was in and out of hospitals for tuberculosis. At the age of fifteen, Hayes and her mother moved to California, where Hayes lived for twenty-five years.

Career Hayes returned to Alaska twenty-five years later, in 1985, where Hayes graduated magna cum laude from the University of Alaska Southeast. In 2003, she graduated from University of Alaska Anchorage with a Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing and Literary Arts. Almost immediately after earning her MFA, she began teaching at the University of Alaska Southeast, while also serving as associated faculty for the University of Alaska Anchorage's low-residence MFA program. Hayes actively promotes Native rights and culture, and works with efforts to decolonize the institution. For just over a year, she wrote a column, "Edge of the Village," for the Juneau Empire. As State Writer Laureate, from 2016 to 2018, Hayes visited many small communities of Alaska, like Seward and Seldovia, where she held two-day creative writing workshops. Hayes is working on a her third Alaska Native Memoir.

Reviews

Blonde Indian Blonde Indian, a memoir of Hayes's childhood in Southeast Alaska, is written with traditional Tlingit stories, fictional characters, and historical moments. Because of Hayes' fair hair, her grandmother sang out to her "Blonde Indian, blonde Indian" as Hayes danced along. The fictional tale of "Tom" coincides with an experience similar to Hayes, an Alaska Native child who is separated from their traditional lifestyle and heritage. In Blonde Indian, Hayes elaborates on her experiences in Western society, narrating her lived experience and traditional stories to honor her Tlingit ancestors and tradition, while shedding light on the impact of colonization on Indigenous children and families.

The Tao of Raven A continuation of her work in Blonde Indian, The Tao of Raven: an Alaskan Native Memoir weaves together traditional Alaskan Native storytelling and life lessons, with personal memories from Hayes, and legends of the Raven, and the Spider. Thematically, the book centers around redefining the meaning of "treasure," a word that Hayes explained as the time we’ve spent on the earth, rather than any material commodity.

Awards 2002 Alaska Native Writer Award, Anchorage Daily News Fiction 2006 Native America Calling October Book of the Month 2007 Kiriyama Prize finalist for Blonde Indian, An Alaska Native Memoir 2007 PEN-USA non-fiction award finalist 2007 American Book Award. 2007 HAIL (Honoring Alaska Indigenous Literature) Award 2014 Alaska Literary Award 2015 Rasmuson Artist, Djerassi Artist Residency 2015 AWARE Woman of Distinction 2016 Named Alaska State Writer Laureate for 2017–2018 2021 Rasmuson Foundation Distinguished Artist Award 2021 Marie Darlin Prize 2023 United States Artists Fellowship

Works

Tao of Raven: An Alaska Native Memoir. 2017.

Anthologies

Essays