What My Alaska Wedding and Native Heritage Taught Me About Sustainability That Aligns with Long-Term Marketing Strategies
One of my favorite memories from my wedding day happened right after the ceremony, which was held by the river. We walked over to our Native Village’s Ceremonial Longhouse for a song and dance celebration. This is a tradition that has stood the test of time and hasn’t been done in our village for a wedding in over 100 years.
As the whole wedding party and all the guests were walking to the Longhouse, I whispered to my husband, “By the way, we are going to be dancing with them.” I had forgotten to tell him about this part of the ceremony in all the chaos of wedding planning. Oops!
But being able to participate in a traditional song and dance that has been passed down through our family for generations was one of the best experiences that I know everyone who was there will remember forever.
The Village Experience
Klukwan, our tribe’s village, is located in Southeast Alaska, 22 miles outside of Haines, Alaska. To get to Klukwan from the lower 48, you need to fly to Juneau, AK (the state capital), then take a ferry or a small seaplane to Haines, AK. It’s a long but beautiful travel day that becomes part of the whole experience.
Klukwan has been my tribe’s land since time immemorial. However, Western written records first documented the village by name in 1880.
My ancestors have endured many hardships through the times of colonization and oppression. This makes it all the more sacred that our traditional ways were preserved through it all, so that my family could sing traditional songs and dance that sustained it. Our traditional practices for subsistence living, like smoking salmon, preserving berries, and weaving, have also stood the test of time.
Everything operates seasonally with long-term planning in mind. Subsistence living is something practiced by many in the village, but it takes a lot of intentional planning. The community has a garden in the summer months, and people catch salmon, halibut, and crab to ensure there is a stock for the winter. Hunting and berry picking are also summer activities. The summer months are a busy time for hunting and gathering food to stock up for the winter. Winter is a time for slowing down, weaving, and beading.
The Alaskan Wedding Experience That Wasn’t Just a Wedding
The wedding itself was a community effort. It was a lot of Pinterest inspiration, DIY planning, and community sourcing to decorate and host the wedding.
It started with friends and family flying in a few days before the wedding. People were traveling far for this, so we made sure they had an itinerary of experiences to make the most of their trip. For many, it was their first time visiting Alaska.
This added to the experience of celebrating in the best way. Not only was it a wedding, but we had all our closest friends and family together, just making memories together. We river rafted, had brewery hangs, went on our tribe’s cultural tour (led by my mom), and had many meals together over the days we spent together.
Our hope was that people didn’t just feel like they came for a wedding, but that they got a whole cultural experience that also felt like a vacation. They came to our world, and we wanted their needs taken care of and for them to understand how honored we were that they came to celebrate with us.
The Sustainability Lesson for Business
There is so much about subsistence living and how we approached our wedding experience that aligns with long-term marketing strategies like blogging and Pinterest.
To live off the land sustainably, you have to plan far ahead. Knowing when to plan and harvest is crucial to the success of the crop. Making sure you have the time and resources to harvest and fish when the berries are ready, and the salmon are swimming, takes planning.
You need to make sure you have time in the summer months to dedicate to all the work that goes into gathering food. It’s not just about harvesting the food either; there’s the time it takes to preserve everything you’ve gathered so it’ll last through the winter months. Yes, you’re enjoying the food you’ve worked so hard to gather now, but you’ll also feel the payoff long after as it sustains you through winter.
This is a similar experience with blogging and Pinterest. The content you create needs to have the seasons in mind, and you need to create it well before the peak of each season to ensure it all gets indexed appropriately. And it may take a while to see the payoff, which makes the hard work of creating content now even more important.
And then I think about the experience our guests had at our wedding. We didn’t expect them to show up in our community and space we’re familiar with and figure it out themselves. We didn’t tell them, “Here’s the date and time, you figure out the rest.” We had lists of lodging and accommodations, we had planned events, and lists of things to do in the area; we stocked their rooms with supplies and made sure they knew what to expect along the way.
This is the experience you want to create when a new person lands on your site from Pinterest, too. They’re showing up to your space for likely the first time, and it can make all the difference if you help guide their experience.
For your website, that might look like inviting them into the next right step, whether that’s more blogs that you think they’d be looking for next, your offer or product, or a free guide you offer. You want them to feel taken care of when they come looking for what they need. The traffic won’t mean much if they don’t find value or stick around to opt in to more.
Where This Lands in How I Build My Business
Over the past year, I've been building my business with this same kind of sustainability in mind – something that lasts through the busy and quiet seasons, not just the ones where everything feels easy.
That’s meant doing my own version of summer gathering, which has looked like writing and organizing content before the season it's meant for, so it has time to take root and be found when people actually need it. And that’s the exact process I use for my clients, too!
And it's meant my own version of winter: going back through what I've built, weaving loose pieces into something that actually holds together, instead of leaving people to piece it together themselves.
At the end of the day, that’s what I want my website to be for people – a place where everything I’ve created is organized and designed in a way that points you to the next right step, so when someone lands on my site for the first time, they're not left standing at the door wondering where to go.
It’s been so fun to see how this new, sustainable version of my business connects so clearly to my heritage, and I hope you can find your own version of that, too.
And if you want Pinterest to be a part of that, I’m here to help! CLICK HERE to learn more about my Pinterest Marketing services or browse the blog here.