Haammom'ax. A gift that makes you smile.
It's my daughter's Tsimshian name. She received it last summer at her great-grandparents' home in the Southeast Alaska community of Metlakatla after we met them for the first time earlier that day.
The naming ceremony was my idea. Olive is growing up in Anchorage but she's a daughter of the Tongass -- that fortress of towering spruce, cedar and hemlock, a rainforest that blankets the Southeast panhandle. She's Tsimshian, a member of one of three Alaska tribes that have inhabited the place for thousands of years -- a rugged, bear-infested strip of mountainous coastline, defined by isolated communities, jagged fjords and huge runs of wild salmon.
Olive's biological family is from Metlakatla, a Tsimshian community in the southernmost reaches of the panhandle. As her adoptive mother, I wanted Olive to know this rain-swept place, her blood relatives, her Tsimshian heritage.
I figured it could start with a name.
Read More: "Raven girl: Adoptive parents work to preserve Alaska Native daughter's culture"
Alaska Dispatch Publishing