Kodiak Filipino Community Stories Films- Posted!

We are excited to announce that the Kodiak Filipino Community Stories student directed films are now available for viewing online. All nine films are on the Baranov Museum's YouTube channel at www.youtube.com/BarMuse, or by clicking through to an individual film from the list below.

Special thanks to our partners on this project: the Filipino American Association of Kodiak, the Kodiak Island Borough School District, and Media Action. And thanks to the wonderful students, who demonstrated incredible energy, creativity, and sensitivity to their topics. This project was made possible through financial support from the Alaska Humanities Forum.

"The Many Filipino Organizations of Kodiak" by 9th grader Kyla Villaroya
http://www.youtube.com/watchv=1sdwlwFB0SY&feature=relmfu

"Remembering the Workers" by 7th grader Rey Jacob Roy
http://www.youtube.com/watchv=B6CiZovDkD0&feature=relmfu

"Denis's Story" by 12th grader Olivia Bennett
http://www.youtube.com/watchv=jBr6rvPdoNA&feature=relmfu

"The J-1 Visa Controversy" by 7th grader Marina Cummiskey
http://www.youtube.com/watchv=28YoMTNeMo0&feature=youtu.be

"Filipinos in the Aleutian Homes" by 11th grader James Guilas
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1sdwlwFB0SY&feature=relmfu

"Filipinos in the Canneries" by 10th grader Max Mutch
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sxyoXGIp_M&feature=youtu.be

"USCG Filipinos" by 7th grader Hunter Blair
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jxo8Bt-3_Fg&feature=channel&list=UL

"Education - the Filipino Experience in Kodiak" by 10th grader Blake James
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UirSZF5H-Rk&feature=relmfu

"Filipinos in Politics" by 10th grader Jonas Anderson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlWUiL-grT4&feature=channel&list=UL

Kodiak Kids, Making History

“How do you separate the audio from the video clip?”

RJ Roy and Hunter Blair film an interview at
the museum.

“When did Filipinos start living in the Aleutian Homes?”

“How has the fishing industry affected the Filipino population?”

“Will this work for b-roll?”

These are a sampling of the questions that have flown around the second floor of the Magazin over the last two weeks. The museum has been a hive of activity as the 7^th-12^th grade students enrolled in our Kodiak Filipino Community Stories history and film intensive conduct interviews, frantically do research, and intently edit their short films.  

This project, the brainchild of Curator of Education Marie Acemah, all started when Filipino Fulbright scholar Joefe Santarita came to the museum to research the history of Filipinos in Kodiak, only to find a small folder with a few pieces of paper inside. Considering that the population of Kodiak is around 30% Filipino and that the community has had a presence in Kodiak since around 1900, we saw our lack of information as a critical gap to be filled. Marie knew we needed to gather more information- and figured that it would be the perfect opportunity to engage students. As a result, the museum, Media Action, and the Filipino-American Association of Kodiak, partnered together to create this class, which was graciously funded by the Alaska Humanities Forum.

Dr. EJR David from UAA flew to Kodiak for the day to
lead a workshop on Filipino American identity during the class.

Nine students will receive one high school history credit for their work. In less than 2 weeks, the students have collected over 20 interviews with community members about the history and legacy of Filipinos in Kodiak. They have done research within the museum’s archive and at the Kodiak Daily Mirror office. They’ve Skyped with family members back in the Philippines and today will have a video teleconference with Senator Mark Begich to ask him about his position on the J-1 visa. And now they are working like mad to complete their films, which will be premiering at the Teen Center on Friday night and on exhibit at the museum, beginning in October.

You are all invited to a potluck and celebration at the Teen Center on Friday, June 15, from 6-9 PM to view the films for the first time. Beyond the films, a break dancing group and Visayan youth music group will perform. Please bring a dish to share! Come congratulate our Kodiak youth filmmakers and learn about the history of Filipinos in Kodiak.

Stay tuned for information on the opening of the Kodiak Filipino Community Stories exhibit in October! Please be in touch if you are interested in finding out about exhibit sponsorship opportunities, too. Thanks to everyone who has already supported this amazing project!

Filipinos on Kodiak: Celebration and Inquiry

For the last 100 years, Kodiak's story is very much an immigrant story. The most current US census data lists Kodiak as 7% Latino and 20% people of Asian descent, and those numbers only reflect Kodiak residents, not seasonal workers temporarily living on the island. Fulbright Scholar Joefe Santarita spoke at the Baranov Museum on Filipino Kodiakans, and jokingly emphasized the question of why people from the tropics immigrate to Alaska by quoting an article on King Crab fishing that states "Alaska has cold, frigid, eat-into-your-soul weather." On a more serious note, Mr. Santarita spoke about a variety of socio-economic reasons that Filipinos have immigrated to this island. His talk helped inspire Baranov Museum staff to launch both a celebration and inquiry into Filipino culture on Kodiak.

Our first celebratory event was a Family Fun Night hosted with the Filipino American Association of Kodiak (www.filamkodiak.org/). Members of FilAm Kodiak prepared a veritable feast of foods ranging from bibinka to lumpia, and highlights included dressing up in traditional Filipino garb and learning how to dance. FilAm Kodiak President Mary Guilas-Hawver took the lead to engage the variety of participating community members in Filipino culture, and fun was had by all.

FilAm Kodiak's support of the Baranov Museum did not end with family fun night; they are now our partner in a project called Kodiak's Filipino Community Stories (KFCS) that received $8,500 of funding from the Alaska Humanities Forum. The Baranov Museum, FilAm Kodiak, and Media Action (www.mediactionproject.org) planned KFCS to engage high-school students in ethnography and digital storytelling about the history of Filipino Americans on Kodiak, culminating in an exhibit featuring these digital stories during October 2012, National Filipino American History Month.

While we will keep you posted about how the KFCS project unfolds, we hope that you consider the family photographs and family objects in your life that shed light on Kodiak's Filipino history and consider sharing them with the museum and this project. Even the most seemingly trivial items can contain a world of stories; an old, tattered pair of extra tuffs your grandpa wore in a cannery, a western union receipt documenting money sent home, a recipe handed down through the generations.

Exploring the History of Kodiak's Filipino Community, Part One

Filipino Fulbright scholar Joefe Santarita,
in residence at Kodiak College during the 2011-2012 school year

Last Saturday, Joefe Santarita, Fulbright scholar from the Philippines, gave an enlightening lecture to a standing-room only crowd at the museum on the history and contributions of Kodiak's Filipino community. The contributions of the Filipino community are unquestioned. From cannery work to banking, from military to transportation, Filipinos make up the largest minority in Kodiak and Kodiak's Filipino community is the largest in Alaska. But although many recognize these facts, the over one hundred year history of Filipinos in Kodiak has not received the attention that it deserves, and this is something that the Baranov Museum is looking to remedy.

What do we know about the historical legacy of Filipinos in Kodiak? In Joefe's preliminary research, the earliest mention of a Filipino in the Kodiak archipelago was in 1900, although we are fairly certain that Filipinos have been coming to Kodiak for much longer than that. In fact, in 1788 a Filipino crew member of the Iphigenia at least saw Kodiak Island as the fur trading vessel travelled through Shelikof Strait. Other "Manilla Men" aboard the multi-ethnic whaling and fur trading vessels of that same era were well familiar with the "Kodiak Grounds"- the whaling area near Kodiak Island in the Gulf of Alaska.

However, 1900 is a fair estimate as to the beginning of a sustained Filipino presence in the archipelago since it was after the 1898 Spanish-American War that Filipinos traded one colonial government, Spain, for another, the United States. Although as colonial subjects Filipinos were not considered citizens, they were American "nationals." At that point pensionados, or Filipino students, started travelling to the US to receive higher education. These pensionados usually came from the upper class of Filipino society. As a result, not only were these individuals the first Alaskeros, but also the first to start what can be seen as an historic trend- college students working in Alaskan canneries as a summer job.

As anyone who works or has worked in a cannery knows, this is a tough job. The hours are long, the physical labor exhausting, and the pay is often minimum wage, and those are today's conditions! Imagine what it was to work in a cannery one hundred years ago. During his lecture, Joefe showed the crowd a song that hints at the conditions and emotions of these Filipino student cannery workers.

Cannery workers in the 1940s in an unidentified Kodiak-area cannery.
From the collection of the Baranov Museum/ Kodiak Historical Society

"A Cannery Worker's Song in Dacanay"

It's a hard and lonesome fate

That we face in Alaska

Oh! What a fate!

Stale fat and ill-cooked fish,

Our major, daily dish

From the stingy, bossy Chink

Gives us tummy-ache

Oh, Skies, give approbation

For all these tribulations

Ah! Consolation!

The fish, let it run slow.

To give us less to do,

Or let the work be through

So home we go.

The song hints at the multi-ethnic composition of the canning crew in the slight again the Chinese boss. In the early years of the Alaskan canning industry, there were two contracts. One was between Chinese labor contractors and the cannery, in which the contractors agreed to supply workers, workers' supplies, and the annual salmon pack. The other was between the Chinese labor contractor and the cannery worker. As a result, the Chinese contractors were middlemen who financially benefited from cannery workers' poor living and working conditions, including providing substandard grub, like "stale fat and ill-cooked fish."

Further research is required to figure out more about the stories and experiences of those working in the early canneries, but the 1910 Karluk census data surely piques the imagination.



The canning line inside a Kodiak area cannery in the 1940s.
Baranov Museum/ Kodiak Historical Society



1910 Census, Karluk

White           226

Mixed           19

Aleut             78

Filipino          81

Chinese         67

Mexican        43

Hawaiian       25

Korean          3

Puerto Rican  3 

Chilean          2

Note that there were more Filipinos living in Karluk than Alutiiqs/ Sugpiaqs during the summer that the census was compiled. Also, consider the makeup of today's cannery labor force. How different is it now?

As you can see, the museum is only beginning to scratch the surface in our quest to document the significant history of the Kodiak Filipino community. Please stay tuned for more information as our research continues, and know that we need your help to tell the story. What do you know about the history of Kodiak's Filipino community? Please let us know!

For more information:

Thelma Buchholdt. Filipinos in Alaska: 1788-1958. Anchorage, AK: Aboriginal Press, 1996.

Sue Ellen Liljeblad. "Filipino-Alaska: A Heritage." Alaska Historical Commission, 1978.

Patricia Roppel. Salmon from Kodiak: An History of the Salmon Fishery of Kodiak Island, Alaska. Alaska Historical Commission Studies in History No. 216, 1986.