It took Williams over two years to get a permit to hunt two goats so his aunt could weave him a traditional tunic out of goat hair. It took him three days to find and shoot the two large goats needed for the tunic. But they were old goats and kind of tough. His aunt dyed the tunic in the traditional way, with dark brown made from hemlock bark, yellow from a moss, and blue-green made from boiling the wool with copper in urine. Williams told me about a case pitting a Tlingit traditionalist and Park Service environmentalists.
Seals are a traditional food for the Tlingit, and potlatches are considered religious ceremonies.
The Park Service arrested Brown, confiscated the rifle and the seal, and charged him with taking a seal without a permit within the boundaries of Glacier Bay National Park. Brown at first asserted his native hunting and gathering rights, then religious freedom as grounds for dismissing the charges. After his lawyers questioned the right of the Park Service to enforce regulations on land it did not own below the mean high tide line in Glacier Bay, the U.S. Government dropped its prosecution of Brown at the end of 1993, not wishing to litigate the issue of ownership of submerged land in Glacier Bay at that time, although it continued to maintain it had the right to regulate all hunting and gathering within the boundaries of the national park. Brown wanted the issues resolved, but could not find a lawyer to pursue his case.