Civil rights activist Tillie Paul-Tamaree and her great-granddaughter, journalist Joaqlin Estus, were among the 10 women inducted into the Alaska Women’s Hall of Fame, Class of 2025.
Estus, one of Alaska’s first Native journalists, lives in Anchorage and is now retired. She most recently was a national correspondent for Indian Country Today. She also worked as news director at KNBA in Anchorage, the flagship station for National Native News.
Estus is Tlingít with ties to Wrangell, where she attended high school, but she is not the only Alaska Native with Wrangell ties to be honored this year.
“Another Alaska Native is my great grandmother, Tillie Paul-Tamaree,” Estus said. “She was a civil rights leader in the early 20th century.”
Estus said it is an honor to be inducted along with her great-grandmother.
“It’s fascinating,” said Bonnie Jack, one of the organizers of the Women’s Hall of Fame program. “It wasn’t done intentionally.”
Jack said both Estus and her great-grandmother were nominated separately, by different people.
Estus helped to co-host KNBA’s live coverage of the Alaska Federation of Natives convention a week before she was inducted into the Hall of Fame. She talked about how her great-grandmother got arrested in Wrangell in 1922.
“She was walking down the street, and she saw Charlie Jones, Chief Shakes,” Estus said. “She stopped to visit with him, and he had just been kicked out of voting.”
Estus said her great-grandmother accompanied Shakes back to the polls, where he was again refused the right to vote — the poll workers said he wasn’t a citizen. She and Jones were indicted for their efforts. Paul-Tamaree’s son, William Paul, later successfully defended them.
She died in Wrangell in 1952.
Paul-Tamaree’s husband, Louis Paul, started the Alaska Fisherman Newspaper, which reported Native news in the 1920s. Paul’s brother, William Sr., was a lawyer who wrote blistering articles about racism and helped lay the foundation for the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.
“My family was considered by the white communities they lived in as rabble rousers,” Estus said. But through her father, Paul Estus, who came from a farming family in Missouri, Estus had a window into two worlds. In his work as editor of the Wrangell Sentinel — he took the job in 1969 — Paul exposed his daughter to the issues of the day.
Before moving to Wrangell, Estus spent her early childhood in California. She said she had not yet felt the racial hatred some Alaska Natives experienced in Wrangell.
When her family moved to the Southeast Alaska community, she initially felt culture shock. But a turning point came when she realized she wanted to be a force for healing and harmony — to make it her life mission to educate Alaskans about the beauty and richness of Native history and culture.
When she moved to Juneau in 1985 to take a state job as an Alaska Coastal Management program coordinator, a path presented itself.
Estus got her start in journalism as a volunteer at KTOO, Juneau’s public radio station. Soon, she found herself with a new job, helping to launch Southeast Alaska’s first programs on Native issues.
Her talents soon caught the attention of larger markets like Minnesota Public Radio, but she later returned to Alaska to work in journalism and public relations.
In her decade as communications director at the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, she held monthly training sessions on Alaska Native history and culture. She also published the statewide Mukluk Telegraph, pioneering ways to build bridges across Alaska.
Estus’ bridge building goes beyond journalism. In 2023, she worked to produce materials to convince the national Presbyterian Church to apologize for its racist actions against Walter Soboleff, a Tlingít minister, whose popular church had been torn down.
She is also one of the primary organizers of the Sharing Our Knowledge Conference in Southeast Alaska, which brings academics, researchers and Alaska Natives together for a week of cross-cultural learning. She is one of the founding members of the Alaska Native Media Group, which mentors Native communications professionals.
