The seeds for The Island Institute were planted by four Sitkans interested in ideas and writing who founded the Sitka Symposium in 1984. They began a nonprofit organization that has  grown to be multifaceted and has, for two decades, explored social, cultural, and community questions of local and global concerns.

The Sitka Symposium, held annually for twenty years, has achieved national distinction. The roster of more than eighty guests faculty includes some of the country's finest writers on environmental and community issues as well as distinguished Native American and international voices. they have included poets, fiction and nonfiction writers,  folklorists, anthropologists, scientists, teachers, and politicians. The themes explored have circled in various ways around notions of a sustainable human culture. Examples include "Landscape and Community: Finding Common Ground," "A Culture to Sustain Us: Creating a Center that Holds," "Matters of Faith, Matters of Fact," "Gifts of Grace: Restoration, Reconciliation and Forgiveness," "On the Edge: The Necessity of Beauty." [You will find the full list of themes and faculty on the CHRONOLOGY page.]

Over the years, the Symposium has attracted participants from thirty states and as many Alaska communities, people of diverse ages and backgrounds. Robert Hass, recent U.S. Poet Laureate and  twice a faculty member, has said of the Sitka Symposium, "It is that ideal thing: home grown, community-based,  sustained for years now by mostly voluntary and always inspired work, national in reputation, global in its concerns."

Our Resident Fellows Program, unique to Alaska, was initiated in 1989  to create a strong link between the literary arts and the community of Sitka. Single residencies three times a year have been offered to thirty-five published and aspiring writers to develop and share their works as well as to explore the connections between their work the and diverse   beliefs, experiences, and cultural traditions that make up the community of Sitka. Residents' community activities have included community readings, writing workshops, class visits from the elementary level through college, and sessions with groups as diverse as the women's shelter, news journalists, conservation groups, and senior citizens in Sitka's Pioneers Home.

We began our journal, Connotations, in 1993 in order to share the substance of conversations  from the Symposium and Resident Fellows Program with a wider audience. The journal inspired our anthology From the Island's Edge: A Sitka Reader (Graywolf Press, 1995) which commemorated the first ten years of the Sitka Symposium. Edited by Carolyn Servid, it won a Critics' Choice Award in 1995 as one of the best anthologies of that year. A second anthology, The Book of the Tongass (Milkweed Editions, 1999) co-edited by Servid and colleague Don Snow, offers a varied portrayal of the Tongass National Forest which encompasses the forested mountains and islands of Southeast Alaska, the home of The Island Institute.

Through our literary programs, we have become recognized as one of Alaska leading literary organizations. We have frequently cooperated with the Creative Writing Programs at the University of Alaska campuses in Anchorage and Fairbanks, to bring noted writers to Alaska communities. In 1998-2000, we were the lead organization in the Alaska Literature Consortium (made up of five organizations) for a two-year National Endowment for the Arts grant project. The three parts of the project involved tours of seven writers to 23 Alaska communities, the development of the literary website called LitSite Alaska, and the production of Northern Letters, a 13-part radio series of interviews with writers that was made available to public radio stations  throughout the state and around the country.

In 2000, Carolyn Servid, one of the founders of the Institute, was recognized for her years of service in the literary arts when she received the Governor's Award for the Humanities as a Distinguished Humanities Educator.

The Institute began to turn some of its attention to local community issues when Sitka's largest employer, Alaska Pulp Corporation, closed its mill in 1993. Our programs were already linked to community, demonstrating the power of the literary arts to nourish the human spirit, especially in the face of adversity. With the uncertainty brought about by Sitka's mill closure, we became interested in encouraging conscientious civic engagement in questions of community sustainability.

We were the catalysts for the 1999 publication of Sitka Community Indicators: A Profile of Community Well-Being, a report developed by local citizens to track social, economic and ecological trends in Sitka. The report was widely distributed and used the in the community, and hailed as a model for other communities within Alaska and around the country. A second updated edition was published in 2002.

When controversial issues have surfaced in Sitka, we have convened community forums for public discussion before policy decisions were made. These issues have ranged from municipal tax cuts to a deepwater cruise ship dock for Sitka. In each case, our purpose has been to provide an open venue for all points of view to be heard.

Taking this kind of citizen  engagement further, in 1991 we began working with David Chrislip, principal of Skillful Means in Boulder, Colorado, to introduce Sitkans and people in the region to collaborative ways of solving community problems and making community decisions. Workshops we sponsored on building Collaborative Communities were the catalyst for a two year collaborative process to develop a long-term Solid Waste Plan for Sitka. The working stakeholder group's recommendation were adopted by the City and borough Assembly, among them a viable recycling program. The workshops also spurred collaborative efforts in both Juneau and Sitka to deal with the highly contentious issues of tourism planning. And the workshop skills have been put to use in schools, church parishes, and other community groups.

We have also worked to offer creative venues for dealing with other contentious community issues. In 1997, in the heat of controversies over mill closures in Southeast Alaska, with the cooperation and support of the U.S. Forest Service, we brought a one-man play, In the Heart of the Wood, to four Southeast Alaska communities. Written and acted by Seattle actor and playwright Todd Jefferson Moore, the play is based on interviews Moore conducted in logging towns around the Pacific Northwest at the height of logging controversies over spotted owl habitat. In his play, he portrays nineteen different characters with perspectives on all sides of the logging issue, poignantly demonstrating the complex human stories intertwined with the controversy.

The Institute's role in each case has not been tied to the particular issues. Rather, we see ourselves as convenors, focusing on bringing together people of diverse perspectives to create viable ways to deal with community concerns. Our motive is one of healing, building trust in an often divided community. When people work constructively together on long-term solutions that are best for the community at large, such trust can take hold.

Through its varied programs, The Island Institute has changed lives in ways not often measured. Assumptions have been reconsidered, values examined, and spirits renewed for people from all walks of life. We remain committed to fostering insight and inquiry that contributes to the greater global effort to shape a sustainable human culture.