Indigenous healers focus of new exhibition at Anchorage Museum

Good Medicine on view March 21, 2023 through Spring 2024

March 17, 2023

ANCHORAGE, Alaska – Indigenous traditional healers have cared for communities throughout the world since time immemorial. In Alaska, traditional healing was the primary form of healthcare for Alaska Native peoples until colonization. Opening at the Anchorage Museum Tuesday, March 21, a new exhibition called Good Medicine considers the richness of traditional healing practices through art and knowledge shared by Alaska Native healers and medicine people.

Good Medicine addresses how colonialism has attacked and suppressed medicine people and Indigenous knowledge systems for hundreds of years and shows how the revitalization of healing practices and traditions provides ways of being in alignment with oneself, with community, and with our planet. Says Tlingit traditional healer and Good Medicine curator Meda DeWitt, “It is time to reclaim what was lost in the face of colonization—our cultures, our communities, and most importantly, our healing. Through art, we can explore what healing means on physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual levels.”

Unfolding over the course of a year and featuring different Alaska Native healers’ work, the exhibition offers diverse opportunities for gathering and exchange. Good Medicine opens with an in-gallery talk by DeWitt from 4:30 to 5:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 21, in the museum’s Art of the North Galleries.