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When Good People Walk Among Us
by Andy Hope III

We have to appreciate them
Kaalgeikw’
Andrew John Hope, Jr.
Stoonookw
Herb Hope

Kiks.ádi men X’aaka Hít Káakx
Point House men

Sons of Kaagwaantaan
Sons of Andrew and Tillie Hope

Dad and Herb were
Good teachers

Dad attended every ANB Convention
From the time he joined in 1946 through 1998

He would have made the 1999
If he was alive

Dad and Herb
Were at every ANB and T&H convention

In the 60s, 70s, 80s and 90s
When I was learning
The protocol
How to get things done

Dad talked to me when I first
Moved to Juneau, just after I turned 18
I left Sitka because I wanted to live with him

He talked to me about how he survived
Tuberculosis
When he was young

How he had watched others
Give up
And pass away

He talked to me about the
Importance of learning
Robert’s Rules
Parliamentary procedure

He learned those rules
They were really
About learning to be civil
To be diplomatic
To be a gentleman

To be friendly
To your opponents

How important it was
To talk to your opponents

And he practiced those rules
Lived those rules
Applied those rules

And he helped organizations
Get things done

Together, as a group
As a community

He helped people
Work out disagreements
Misunderstandings
Conflicts

Humor was an important
Factor in everything
He did

And he was able to
Communicate with people
In public
Because he utilized humor

And speaking skills
That he learned from his uncle
Dalwoolsees’
Don Cameron

Taught him oratorical skills
By making him practice
Presentation
From the top of a tree stump

When he was a boy
He was raised by Dalwoolsees’
Who worked as a translator at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries
With ethnographer John Swanton

And, with Andrew Hope, was one of the founders of
The Sitka Camp of the Alaska Native Brotherhood

And his maternal aunt
Yaandusgei
Amelia Cameron

The Kiks.ádi matriarch
Who documented our
Tlingit genealogy
With the anthropologist Ronald Olson

In the 1930’s
Who dad referred to as Mrs. Cameron
Who sold the land the Sitka Post Office was built on to the U.S. Government for $600

Yaandusgei and Dalwoolsees’ believed the Kaalgeikw’
Was the reincarnation of their son John,
Who drowned around 1915

And Kaalgeikw’ grew up as John Cameron
In Yaandugei’s and Dalwoolsees’s home in the Native Cottages
At the entrance of what is now the Sitka National Historic Park

He was a
Peacemaker
Master parliamentarian
Dedicated to the brotherhood

He wrote a manuscript on the history of the ANB
A gentleman

Stoonookw was a tactical strategist
Not unlike his namesake

Who lead the military campaign
Against the Russians
Two hundred years ago

Stoonookw documented, retraced and reenacted the Kiks.ádi Survival March
The route the Kiks.ádi took across Baranof Island following the 1804 Battle of Sitka

A student of how to win
Community support
How to win elections

Working with people
Communicating with families
In the Sitka Indian Village
In Anchorage neighborhoods

To get people to support
Policies and people
That wanted to get things done

Kaalgeikew’ and Stoonookw were mentors
To those that came into
The brotherhood and sisterhood
And wanted to accomplish something
To work for the community
For the Native people