Coming Home: The Return of the Alutiiq Masks

136 years ago Alutiiq masks were taken from Kodiak, Alaska and given to France And for a short time they are... Coming Home: The Return of the Alutiiq Masks A one-hour radio documentary by Dmae Roberts, two-time Peabody-winning producer, Clark Salisbury, Shyanne Beatty. This short film trailer was produced by Clark Salisbury and Dmae Roberts. The documentary takes us to Kodiak, Alaska where Alutiiq peoples work to save their language, cultural traditions and heritage by unlocking the secrets of the masks collected by French explorer Alphonse Pinnart in 1872. When he died in 1911, he bequeathed the masks to the Chateau Musee, a small museum off the coast of Northern France. There the collection survived two World Wars and were rediscovered by Alutiiq artists who began making pilgrimages to France in 2000 to see the artifacts of their culture. This led to an unprecedented sharing of history between two cultures, two different countries a world apart.