Thursday, May 30, 2013

Alaskans In the News


Greetings, Alaska historians. Check out these interesting items from the recent news.

First, Alaska Public Media has posted on its website a recording of Katie Ringsmuth’s recent lecture on “Wrangell Mountain Sky Boys: How Buffalo Bill, Buck Taylor and Bob Reeve Created Alaska’s Skyboy Narrative.” Part of the Centennial Flight of Alaska lecture series hosted by the Cook Inlet Historical Society, Ringsmuth delivered the lecture at the Anchorage Museum on April 18.

The recording is available here:

Also, poet Joan Naviyuk Kane will be visiting King Island this summer with twenty descendants of people who once lived in the abandoned community near Nome. Read more about her project and the innovative crowdsourcing fundraising method that will make it possible:

Sunday, May 26, 2013

Exhibit Preview: “Dena’inaq’ Huch’ulyeshi: The Dena’ina Way of Living”


By Katie Myers

Fire Bags, 1883, Ethnological Museum
of Berlin, image from AMRC

Although it is only just the start of summer, it’s not to late to think about an exciting exhibit at the Anchorage Museum that will open near the end of summer. Dena’inaq’ Huch’ulyeshi: The Dena’ina Way of Living will be on exhibit from September 12, 2013, through January 2014. If you’ll be in Anchorage during this time, be sure to check it out!

About half of Alaska’s residents live in traditional Dena’ina territory, but there is little general knowledge about the indigenous people who have called the Cook Inlet region home.

For 1,000 years before the founding of Anchorage, Dena’ina occupied 41,000 square miles of southcentral Alaska. They were once the most numerous of all Alaskan Athabascan groups. Since the late 19th century, the Dena’ina homeland has been subject to the greatest settlement, urbanization and population growth of any Alaska region. Dena’ina have become largely invisible as a people and a culture, their history unknown.

The Anchorage Museum has set out to change that. Starting in mid-September, “Dena’inaq’ Huch’ulyeshi: The Dena’ina Way of Living” will be the first major exhibition ever presented about the Dena’ina Athabascan people.

The exhibition will have films, life-size re-creations, images, hands-on learning stations, audio and more than 160 artifacts on loan from museums across Europe and North America. These objects include everything from war clubs to chief necklaces to a bear gut parka, as well as some artifacts on loan from the British Museum that were collected during Captain Cook’s Alaska expedition in 1778.

Visitors will also learn what it means to be Dena’ina in the 21st century. Today, many Dena’ina continue to live a traditional lifestyle; although not the same as their ancestors, they practice the same traditions passed on through generations and share their understanding of how land, stories, and people are tied.

Karen Evanoff, author of Dena’ina Elnena, A Celebration: Voices of the Dena’ina, and exhibit consultant and supporter for the Anchorage Museum summarizes: “The Dena’ina exhibit tells not only a story of the past, but a story of the Dena’ina people today. Dena’ina people lived in the Anchorage area long before outsiders moved in.  In the midst of tremendous changes and influence from the western society, the Dena’ina people have maintained their identity. The exhibit represents the four Dena’ina groups, separated by differences in language dialect: Upper Inlet, Outer Inlet, Inland, and Iliamna Dena’ina. This exhibit recognizes the first people of the Anchorage area and will educate the public in multiple ways. Not only will you see what is on display, but a way of life shaped by deep beliefs, values, spirituality and a relationship with the natural world. The Dena’ina people are honored to share their story and also to recognize and honor their ancestors of the past and elders of today.”

If you want to find out more about the rich history of the Dena’ina, make sure to stop by the Anchorage Museum to see this first of its kind exhibit!

Want to read about this exhibit before it opens? Find out about it here: http://www.anchoragemuseum.org/galleries/GalleryViewer2.aspx?incGal=0&cID=111&LayoutID=1

To find out more about the Dena’ina of West Cook Inlet, including more information about Karen Evanoff’s book, head to Lake Clark National Park’s publications page here:

Tuesday, May 21, 2013

Muktuk Marston’s Five-Point Plan


Even in a state whose history is populated with so many unique characters, Marvin “Muktuk” Marston stands out as one of the most incredible Alaskans of the twentieth century. In addition to organizing the Alaska Territorial Guard during WWII, a service that brought Alaska Natives into the political sphere with lasting effects to this day, Marston was as a miner, real estate developer in Anchorage, and delegate to the Constitutional Convention in 1955-56.


While commanding the ATG, the always outspoken Marston wrote numerous memos advocating for the social and economic betterment of Alaska Natives. Although in describing his Native friends he often lapsed into the paternalistic rhetoric common of the time—“dusky-skinned,” “simple, kindly folk,” that sort of thing—Marston was a staunch advocate for equality and civil rights. There is little evidence his superiors at Fort Richardson ever acted on or even paid attention to Marston’s missives. In fact, he often found himself combating the overt racism of the officer class who believed Alaska Natives to be inferior beings who lacked the capacity for military discipline.

Reading Marston’s memos today one is struck by his foresight and passion. One can also see his thinking that led him, as a Constitutional Convention delegate a decade after the war, to speak so forcefully in support of Native land claims.

What follows is an excerpt from his “Five Point Post-War Program for the Eskimo,” an undated memo (circa 1945) that resides in the Otto Geist Collection (ATG Papers) at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. A biography of Muktuk Marston needs to be written; I hope a historian out there is willing to take on the task!

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“In light of [Alaska Natives’ service in the ATG], I submit the following post-war program for the Eskimo, believing it to be a sound military program, as well as an humanitarian undertaking:

“FIRST, make adequate fuel supplies available immediately for all native villages by opening up nearby coal and oil deposits. There is an unestimated amount of good coal and fuel oil scattered generously throughout Alaska.

“SECOND, segregate the active cases of tuberculosis…so that young and healthy members of the family can have a fair chance to escape this prevalent plague. . . . Complete hospital equipment should be retained at each [village]. Furthermore, a long range health program should be set up and initiated immediately.

“THIRD, reestablish the reindeer industry. . . . These reindeer herds can become one of Alaska’s most valuable industries, if properly handled. . . . All too often, the Eskimo faces the winter with overalls and cotton shirt, or shoddy cloth garments, wholly inadequate for the severe northern climate. As a result, he is unable to follow his trapline, and he and his family go hungry. Even if benevolent Uncle Sam rescues him from starvation, he has been robbed of his self-reliance and independence. These reindeer herds should be a guarantee of food and clothing for him.

“FOURTH, restore and conserve as many of the tribal customs as practical. Establish a community center, so it can take its true place as the center of tribal life. In making available the so-called blessings of civilization, encourage the native to retain his racial distinction, and respect his tradition and mores.

“FIFTH, some means of travel and communication between villages, particularly in the winter season, should be devised and inaugurated immediately. In the absence of roads and landing fields, snowmobiles of some type might be used on the ice.

“The above suggestions, I consider, represent the minimum possible in any post-war program for the Eskimo. These simple, kindly folk can become happy, useful citizens of our most northern frontier, if they are considered first by the Territory. Much has been written and said about our treatment of another primitive race whose lands we appropriated. We are about to open up and develop the wealth and natural resources of the Arctic. Let it not be said that the white man sacrificed the native on the altar of his own greed.”

Saturday, May 18, 2013

Denali Legacy: New Exhibit at UA Museum


Today the UA Museum of the North in Fairbanks opens its new exhibit, “Denali Legacy: 100 Years on the Mountain.” The exhibit, which runs through April 2014 and was created in partnership with the National Park Service, explores the journey of the first expedition to summit the mountain through the original journals of those climbers.


   See artifacts from the 1913 expedition: the camp stove, a Eucharist set, and the climbers’ diaries.
   Learn how equipment from the last century compares to today’s technology.
   Hear saws and axes cutting into ice, feet crunching on snow, wind, and other sounds of Denali.
   Examine a scale model of the mountain and explore the 100-year history of routes and climbers.

Wednesday, May 15, 2013

Petersburg Newspapers, Digitized and Online (1913-1931)


The Petersburg Public Library has digitized editions of the Petersburg Weekly Report, Petersburg Press, Petersburg Herald, and The Progressive from 1913 to 1931. The issues are keyword-searchable and available online at:


As the library notes, “Discover people, places and events in the early days of our town. Use the archive to gain a local perspective on historical news, to research your family history or to read about a person or event that interests you.”