Alaska Native Medical Center Craft Shop celebrates 50 years of Native culture, art and building the community
December 20, 2024Before the Alaska Native Medical Center
The Anchorage Medical Center of the Alaska Native Service (ANS) opened in downtown Anchorage in 1953, under management of the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA). Two years later, in 1955, the Indian Health Service (IHS) was established as a bureau of the U.S. Public Health Service, and took over operations of ANS.
When IHS was established, the leading cause of death for Alaska Native people was tuberculosis (TB) — introduced to Alaska Native communities by European colonizers. As a result, Alaska Native communities experienced a TB epidemic. ANS was originally opened as a TB hospital, where patients were cared for in wards. At that time, in some Alaska Native communities, as many as 75 percent of Alaska Native children tested positive for TB.
In the 1960s, that number began to decline as more Alaska Native people had access to health care services, both in their home communities and at ANS, and the hospital began to expand its scope of health care services.
ANMC Auxiliary and the birth of the ANMC Craft Shop
In 1967, the nonprofit Alaska Native Medical Center Auxiliary, Inc., was organized and incorporated. The Auxiliary and volunteer program were, and still are, composed of volunteers from the Anchorage and Mat-Su areas. The Auxiliary’s goal is to promote, support, and advance the welfare and comfort of clients and their families.
When people would travel to Anchorage for care at ANS, they often brought pieces of art and garments they made to sell while in town. At that time, there were not many opportunities for Alaska Native artists to sell their artwork. When people headed back home and had not yet sold their artwork, the ANS switchboard operator, Lovie Elasanga, told them they could leave it with her. She would sell it and then send them the money. This continued for several years.
When Elasanga announced she was retiring, the Auxiliary worked to help find a solution to keep this practice going. At the time, Agnes Coyle was a member of the Auxiliary — her husband, Dr. Maurice Coyle, was a physician at ANS. The retiring switchboard operator wanted to find someone to take responsibility of the artwork she had not sold and was leaving behind — someone to sit in the lobby and sell the art.
During this same period, Jeanne Dougherty had recently relocated back to Alaska with her husband and children after living out of state for several years. Upon her return, she found herself fascinated and captivated with Alaska Native art and people. She embarked on a journey that took her places she never imagined.
“After we got back, I would go to the museum if they had a Native art show. I would take names down of the best basket makers, doll makers, ivory carvers, and I would put a stack of letters in the mail asking them if they would make me a piece of art,” Dougherty said.
Dougherty understood the importance of building relationships and gaining trust with Alaska Native artists through these letters. She was surprised at the number of people who answered. They told her that her letters sounded earnest, and they were happy to send her pieces of art in return for payment.
“And so, with that, people started sending all of these things to my home,” Dougherty said.
Dougherty would then sell these pieces to her family, friends and neighbors.
It was during this time, a mutual friend connected Coyle and Dougherty. They were both working toward a similar goal — to help Alaska Native artists market and sell their artwork for fair compensation.
Coyle called Dougherty and told her what she wanted to continue at ANS. Dougherty was excited to be involved and especially looked forward to meeting Alaska Native artists. This was the start of a 45-year friendship and partnership until Coyle’s death in March 2020. They would sit in the lobby at ANS and sell items and send the artists the proceeds — just like Elasanga had done.
As the artwork flowed in, the ANS hospital administrator offered them a small room at the hospital to showcase and sell the art. At this time, most items were sold on consignment. They would mark the items up 5% to have some cash available for incidentals such as postage, and eventually to buy some art outright from people who really needed some help.
“We buy with our hearts,” Dougherty said.
Over time, the operation grew. Karin Vogeler, who was a good friend and neighbor with a background in bookkeeping, joined Coyle and Dougherty as a volunteer. They also enlisted Dougherty’s accountant son-in-law to help them get their expanding operation properly set up. They decided to increase the art markup to 10% with hopes of using profits to do more to help Alaska Native people. More volunteers began to join the Auxiliary. They were not in it to make a profit. They simply wanted to help Alaska Native people sell their art.
The three women, Agnes Coyle, Jeanne Dougherty and Karin Vogeler became the Craft Shop volunteer managers.
“The common thread is the respect and the admiration for the people and the love of them. What can we do to help this person? That’s where we’re coming from,” Dougherty said.
Leaders of Tomorrow Scholarship program and support for ANMC hospital and patients
In 1985, as the proceeds from the art sales began to grow and the art consignment markup was raised to 20% (it is still 20% today), the Craft Shop managers presented the idea of a scholarship program for Native youth interested in higher education to the Auxiliary board of directors. In the first year of the scholarship program “Leaders of Tomorrow,” they provided seven students with $1,000 scholarships. Dougherty and Vogeler are still in touch with some of the original scholarship recipients, who are nearing 60 years of age.
“The 20 percent markup made it possible to do more for Alaska Native people,” Dougherty said.
The Leaders of Tomorrow scholarship program is now celebrating its 40th anniversary and approximately $1.5 million in scholarships have been provided to 360 Alaska Native and American Indian students.
“Thanks to the generosity of the ANMC Auxiliary Scholarship, I was able to use a portion of the scholarship to travel abroad to Malaga, Spain, to study at the University of Malaga. This support allowed me to expand on my love of languages and learning and I am so thankful for their support. What really stands out to me about this scholarship, as well as the ANMC Craft Shop, is that it is made possible by the dedication of the volunteers, who make it possible to provide this scholarship,” Jeran Pelagio said. He received his Bachelor of Arts in Political Science from Fort Lewis College in 2015. Pelagio has worked for the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium since 2021 and is a Contaminated Sites Program Coordinator.
Dougherty fondly recalls a past Leaders of Tomorrow scholarship recipient, Donna Sallee, as her connection to the Craft Shop goes back to the items her family sold there. Sallee first received a Leaders of Tomorrow scholarship in 1987. Her grandmother, mother, uncles and cousins have all sold their work at the Craft Shop. Sallee often visited the Craft Shop at ANS with her grandmother and mother when she was a child.
Sallee earned a bachelor’s degree from Northern Arizona University, becoming the first on her mother’s side of the family to receive a college degree. This is one of the many examples of how the Craft Shop has positively affected multiple generations in one family.
The Leaders of Tomorrow scholarship is for Tribal health beneficiary students living in the Anchorage and Mat-Su areas. The Craft Shop managers also wanted a way to be able to provide scholarships to Tribal health beneficiary students living in rural Alaska, off the road system. They developed a partnership with the University of Alaska Foundation (UA Foundation) to be able to expand their scholarship reach. The UA Foundation is a private nonprofit corporation that operates as a public foundation to solicit, manage, and invest donations for the University of Alaska’s exclusive benefit.
The Craft Shop established an endowment with the UA Foundation to provide scholarships to rural Alaska Native students. Over the years, this scholarship fund has been sustained entirely by donations to this program.
Many Alaskans donate pieces from their Alaska Native artwork collections to the ANMC Craft Shop — the proceeds from selling the previously owned art go directly to the scholarship fund and then the Craft Shop donates funds to the UA Foundation. This has been a 20-year partnership between the Craft Shop and the UA Foundation. The UA Foundation scholarship fund benefits Alaska Native students graduating from a rural village high school that is off the road system. Through this partnership, the Craft Shop has provided funds for 270 scholarships to rural Alaska Native students.
Over the years, the Craft Shop has also provided thousands of dollars in funds for patient support and outreach. With their proceeds, the Craft Shop has funded medical equipment: NICU incubators; 19 new postpartum beds for Mother Baby Unit; four MamaRoo multi-motion baby swings for inpatient Pediatrics; and four Sara Stedy standing and raising aids, which enables a single caregiver to assist patients in performing sit-to-stand transfers throughout their hospital stay and can support early mobility initiatives by encouraging patients to be active participants in their own mobility and recovery.
The Craft Shop has also funded crafting supplies for patients, emergency clothing for patients, blenders (for patients with broken jaws); Pediatric NICU comfort items and supplies for patients; Indigenous foods and snacks sent to Seattle for families in need of comfort foods; birthday celebrations for patients admitted to ANMC; Christmas gifts for each patient admitted during the holidays and holiday activities throughout the month for Patient Housing guests; supported Patient Housing guest activities, like art therapy, Yupik language class, spa day for moms, and bingo; support for Ronald McDonald House guests, including healthy snacks for pregnant women, weekly Fresh Fruit Tuesdays and PB&J Thursdays; and support for the roving cart at ANMC that is stocked with yarn, art and crafting supplies, books, magazines and reading glasses.
Longtime ANMC Auxiliary volunteer, Jacque Glavinovich, visits inpatient Pediatrics every week with a cart of games, activities and art supplies for kids, helping make their hospital stay a little brighter.
“This is a collection of art that grew from the heart.”
In the late 1970s, a woman who was receiving treatment at ANS for cancer came into the Craft Shop. She had a handful of Alaska Native artifacts and asked if they could sell them.
Dougherty visited Walter Van Horn, curator of collections, at the Anchorage Museum of History and Art, to talk about the artifacts. Van Horn said he was not able to assist Dougherty in valuing them but connected her with resources to learn more — Smithsonian and Nelson-Atkins Collection publications. As her knowledge grew, Dougherty began identifying Alaska Native artifacts using resources from the museum. The Craft Shop started accepting more artifacts from Alaska Native people who had found these items in their communities and wanted to sell them.
Dr. Bill Paton, an orthopedic surgeon at ANS who frequently visited the Craft Shop and had a reverence for and interest in Alaska Native artifacts, proposed the idea of buying and displaying them in the hospital.
The Craft Shop managers went to the Auxiliary board of directors and proposed the idea of using some of the proceeds from the Craft Shop to purchase art for a collection to be kept and preserved for Alaska Native people. They pointed out that many Elder artists were passing away, and they were seeing a significant amount of Native artwork leaving the state to private buyers. The Auxiliary agreed, and the Craft Shop managers began to purchase items for the Auxiliary Heritage Collection. There was one issue, though. They did not have a place to store these pieces of art.
Dougherty, having an established relationship with Van Horn, explained to him that the Craft Shop was purchasing a collection of their own but had no place to store it. Van Horn said the Museum would store their collection and asked if the Museum could also display some of the items. The Auxiliary happily agreed. So, as they purchased art for their collection, they would bring the items over to the Museum for storage. The Museum ended up storing the collection for 15 years.
In the 1980s, IHS began planning for a new medical center for Tribal health beneficiaries in Anchorage. ANS was outdated and not built to support the growing health care needs of the population. NBBJ, a Seattle-based architecture firm, was hired by IHS to design the new medical center planned for construction off east Tudor Road in Anchorage. In May 1990, NBBJ began designing the Alaska Native Medical Center. The design team saw an opportunity to create a new, state-of-the-art hospital that integrated culture and arts into the healing spaces. Prior to beginning the design process, the NBBJ design team spent 18 months researching Alaska Native cultures, which included a series of visits to rural Alaskan communities.
Early in the design process, the NBBJ team was introduced to Craft Shop managers and visited the existing shop at ANS.
In “From the Heart: Art at the Alaska Native Medical Center” a 2016 book written by Richard Dallam, NBBJ architect, who was on the design team for the Alaska Native Medical Center, he recalls that the first time the design team visited the Craft Shop at ANS. They were amazed by what they saw – a small room filled from floor to ceiling with a wide variety of Native arts and crafts.
The design team quickly realized they had come across something special. The Craft Shop managers then took them to the Museum and showed them the Auxiliary Heritage Collection they had been building. It was then, that the design team realized this expansive and unique collection of Alaska Native artwork could play a major role in the design of the Alaska Native Medical Center.
In addition to the Auxiliary Heritage Collection, $225,000 was allocated from the federal budget for ANMC to commission original Native artwork that would be integrated into the design of the hospital. Patterns and techniques commonly used in Alaska Native art even inspired the patterns, colors and textures used throughout the interior and exterior of ANMC.
However, they needed a plan to display the Auxiliary Heritage Collection throughout ANMC. In talking to Van Horn at the Museum, the Craft Shop managers realized they needed someone to curate the collection. Someone to build each individual display, which included having cases fabricated and mounts created. They looked at some different professional organizations for assistance but were not finding the right fit. Dr. Coyle suggested Steven Dougherty, Jeanne Dougherty’s son. Steven had an eye for design and composition — having previous experience displaying Native art and working on the window displays at Nordstrom in downtown Anchorage. He also grew up in a home that had a reverence for Alaska Native art and people. Steven turned out to be the perfect fit. Today, Steven is still the curator for the Auxiliary Heritage Collection and the only paid position on staff.
The design team also ensured a space for the Craft Shop at the new hospital — in a prominent location that received a lot of foot traffic. They also created an adjacent window display space. This is the location that Craft Shop managers set up the Alaska Native Peoples’ Christmas Tree every year (which has 500 Alaska Native ornaments on it), in addition to frequently changing, beautiful window displays.
ANMC Craft Shop awards, accolades and events
The ANMC Craft Shop and Craft Shop managers have received numerous awards and recognition over the last 50 years. Some noteworthy accolades include recognition from the Alaska Federation of Natives in 2023, National Indian Health Board Local Impact Award in 2009, the American Hospital Association Award for In-Service Hospital Volunteer Program in 2008, and the Alaska State Council on the Arts Native Arts Award in 2000.
“Providing a service for Native people has been the goal of the Craft Shop. By being in the hospital, we have been able to help many people who come to Anchorage for medical treatment,” Dougherty said. “It is the feeling of being able to make a difference that has made this my volunteer career. Buying and selling Native art would not have been enough to keep me doing this for 50 years. After being here so many years, many people are our good friends. Agnes, Karin, and I have enjoyed visiting many of these people in their villages.”
Agnes Coyle passed away and is very much missed. Dougherty and Vogeler continue to volunteer and further the good work they started 50 years ago. Dougherty still volunteers in the Craft Shop every Monday and throughout the rest of the week, as needed. Vogeler also continues to volunteer in the Craft Shop.
In his introduction in “From the Heart: Art at the Alaska Native Medical Center” Dallam wrote, “To a very large extent, it is a story of three remarkable, yet very modest, women intent on helping other people. It is about their efforts to preserve Native heritage, to help stabilize the lives of countless Alaska Natives coming to the ANMC for medical treatment, and to realize their vision of the therapeutic use of art.”
The Craft Shop managers also started the Native People’s Bazaar — an annual event held on the first Saturday in December, which provided an opportunity for Alaska Native artists to sell their items and receive payment in time for their own holiday celebrations. The inaugural Native Peoples Bazaar was held in 1984 at ANS, and as many as 60 volunteers would help organize the Native People’s Bazaar. This event was held annually up until the COVID pandemic.
The Leaders of Tomorrow scholarship has been on a temporary pause since the COVID pandemic. The ANMC Craft Shop is open Monday-Friday, from 11 a.m.-2 p.m., and is exclusively staffed by volunteers. They welcome you to come in and shop their wonderful selection.
Vivian Echavarria, Vice President of Professional Services at the Alaska Native Medical Center has served as the executive liaison for the ANMC Craft Shop for many years, closely safeguarding its purpose to ensure that the reputation of the Craft Shop and the artists are maintained.
“The Craft Shop has been a success only because of the dedication of the hundreds of volunteers who have given thousands of hours in service to Alaska Native people,” Dougherty added. “The Craft Shop managers want to extend our gratitude to past hospital administrators, IHS and ANMC for allowing us the opportunity to do what we’ve done these last 50 years. It has been a wonderful experience for all of us.”