Chilkat Valley News - Serving Haines and Klukwan, Alaska since 1966

The U.S. Mint in February released its $1 coin commemorating and honoring the late Alaska Native civil rights leader Elizabeth Wanamaker Peratrovich, but it’s not easy to get one — or two or three.

The public can order the coins from the U.S. Mint, but the minimum is 25 coins. And while the Mint recently set up a special program for financial institutions in Alaska only to order the coins, the minimum is 1,000. Before the new program, Alaska banks could order $1 coins but would receive an assortment with no guarantee if or how many Peratrovich coins would be in the boxes.

And the Peratrovich coins cost you more than $1 each from the Mint. They are sold “as numismatic products (collectors’ items) at a premium above face value,” explained the Numismatic News, which has been writing about coin collectors, dealers and scholars since 1952.

A roll of 25 coins costs $34.95, plus shipping. A bank’s 1,000-coin order would come in at $1,159.

The brightly gold-colored coins are mostly copper, with a little zinc, manganese and nickel mixed in, according to the U.S. Mint website. At just a little over one inch in diameter, each coin weighs almost three-tenths of an ounce.

It’s the first time any U.S. currency has depicted an Alaska Native. On its other side, the coin features Sacagawea, a Shoshone tribal member who served as interpreter for the Lewis and Clark expedition from the Dakotas to the Pacific Northwest in 1804-1806.

Peratrovich was an Alaska Native of the Lukaax̱.ádi clan of the Tlingit nation. She was born on July 4, 1911, in Petersburg, and lived in Sitka, Klawock and Juneau.

The Alaska Legislature in 1988 established Feb. 16 each year as Elizabeth Peratrovich Day to honor her work.

“Her advocacy for Alaska Natives and an impassioned speech to the Alaska Territorial Legislature” helped convince lawmakers to pass the state’s anti-discrimination law in 1945, the Alaska Native Brotherhood and Alaska Native Sisterhood reminded people in a July 3 press release. The organizations asked people to consider “purchasing some of these coins for family and friends to honor Alaska’s Indigenous history and to signal hope for the future.”

An inscription on the coin, just below the images of Peratrovich and a raven, representing her Tlingit moiety, makes note of the 1945 law.

Anyone can order the coins from the U.S. Mint at catalog.usmint.gov or call 1-844-467-1328.

On July 4, the 109th anniversary of her birth in Petersburg, the community dedicated a mural in her honor. Installation of the mural at the courthouse is significant, Brenda Norheim, vice president of the Petersburg Indian Association, told Petersburg public radio station KFSK. Seeing Peratrovich honored on the courthouse is an important representation for Native cultural history, she said.