One of the most interesting aspects of Alaska’s historical and cultural timeline is its diversity. From the ancient ancestors of today’s Alaska Natives to the arrival of the Russians and the influx of fortune-seekers during the Klondike Gold Rush, there was always something exciting going on way up here in the north.
It all starts with Alaska’s most distinctive culture — that of its aboriginal people, the Alaska Natives that make up nearly 20 percent of its population today. Native history, and indeed human history, plays a huge role in Alaska’s history. One place to learn more is the Alaska Native Heritage Center, in its fifth year of operation, and one of the most culturally enlightening places to visit if you’re passing through Anchorage.
The 26-acre site is a mini-recreation of Native life that celebrates traditional and modern ways and includes tours, workshops and lectures by Native artists and leaders.
“What we try to do is become what some people describe as a living museum,” said Kay Ashton with the Center. “We have presentations that involve live performances, including dancing and story-telling, demonstrations of Native games and other different presentations. These events are for large audiences and it gives them an idea of what it is like to live here today and in years past.”
A visit to the Alaska Native Heritage Center begins at the 26,000-square-foot Welcome House, which is designed to acquaint visitors with Native history through timelines on the walls and a selection of short documentary films about the five Native cultures — Athabaskan, Aleut, Inupiaq, Yupik, and Tlingit (which also includes Eyak, Haida and Tsimshian). Visiting artists and performers will explain their work — just ask as you browse the center.
“Our small collections area has artist studios,” Ashton said. “We have demonstrating artists who work their crafts and sell their crafts to people, and they can talk about their work with you as you visit. It is very interesting because we have work represented from each of the five cultures and some is very old and some is contemporary.”
Outside the Welcome House the cultural education continues. There are five mini-villages on the grounds that recreate authentic Native ways, from the dwellings to the tools to the décor. Ashton said this feature is a key part of the Center’s mission.
“The unique part about our heritage center is we have a lake on the property and we hire cultural representatives for the summer who actually stay in the houses, representing each of the five houses,” she said. “They give presentations when each of the tours come in, and there are touch-and-feel items that people get to touch and ask questions about.”
Ashton said the Alaska Native Heritage Center is reaching its goal of education and self-preservation — for visitors and Natives alike.
“A lot of the Native community is separated from their village or has lost touch or forgotten or has never had the chance to learn from their elders,” she said. “Or they may just miss their Native culture. We, as visitors, also learn a lot from the Native community, so we get information, too.”
Elsewhere in Anchorage, there is the not-to-be-missed Anchorage Museum of History and Art, which is home to some 17,500 historic objects plus more than 350,000 historical photographs.
“For the size of this museum and the size of this staff we are amazingly productive,” says marketing director Janet Asaro. “We have 20 exhibit changes a year, which is a phenomenal amount especially for a museum of its size.”
The museum, which takes up nearly a city block at Seventh Avenue and A Street, has two levels, starting with an art gallery featuring prominent artists like Sydney Laurence and Fred Machetanz as well as national shows, juried exhibits, photographs, watercolors and more.
The journey continues upstairs, where on the walls overlooking the atrium are photos of pioneer Alaska families accompanied by stories of their struggles and triumphs. Asaro said it is one of the most popular exhibits at the museum.
“I think it gives (visitors) a new appreciation for ‘real’ Alaska,” she said.
Asaro said the museum doesn’t have enough space to show more than 10 percent of its collection at any given time. Most of the museum’s exhibits are directly related to Alaska and Alaska Native culture — such as an entire room showing how Native cultures lived and thrived before the arrival of Europeans.
And then there is the rest of the state.
Although Anchorage boasts two of the largest museum and culture centers, there are some equally as impressive places to see elsewhere in Alaska.
In Southeast, for instance, there are several notable places to learn more about the local history and culture. Memorabilia from the Klondike Gold Rush at the Skagway Museum and Archives includes “good guy” Frank Reid’s will, “bad guy” Soapy Smith’s tie, an Eskimo kayak and an Indian canoe.
In Alaska’s state capital, there are a couple of options, including the Juneau-Douglas City Museum and the Alaska State Museum. The former includes exhibits on Juneau’s early days as a gold-mining community, and it’s gradual transformation to the economy of today.
Not far away is the Alaska State Museum, which is a particularly good place for children to visit. On the second floor is a child-sized copy of Captain James Cook’s ship, the Discovery, and there also is a collection of wild animal pelts for children to touch and feel.
Farther north in Fairbanks, the University of Alaska Museum continues to collect and preserve historic artifacts, and a tour of this soon-to-be-expanded building will provide visitors with a sense of the entire state’s cultural past.
“I think the thing that really makes our museum different than what people expect is that instead of organizing things by type — instead of a hall of mammals or a hall of birds — we organize ours by region,” said the Kerynn Fisher, who works at the UA Museum. “So visitors can see things in connection to the land. You can go to the western Arctic coast and watch videos on Yupik dance or a whale hunt, or you can go to Southcentral and see about life in that part of the state.”
The museum splits the state into five regions — Southcentral, Southeast, Interior, Western Arctic coast and Southwest. Fairbanks, which is in the Interior, gets special consideration.
“You’ll see our gold-mining past, and that’s something that we have primarily in the Interior gallery,” Fisher said. “We have a really nice display on women of the Gold Rush, like Klondike Kate and Ethel Berry.”
The UA Museum also features the state’s largest gold nugget and jewelry display, and the largest collection of high-latitude dinosaurs and related vertebrates in the world. While you’re there, don’t miss Blue Babe, the museum’s best-known artifact, a 36,000-year-old steppe bison discovered by gold miners in 1979 and now a permanent resident.
In the far north, there are several opportunities to explore Native culture, at the Inupiat Heritage Center in Barrow or the Museum of the Arctic in Kotzebue.
Both locations provide visitors with a better understanding of what life is like in the region, what types of animals and birds live there and the tools and skills needed to survive.
At the Museum of the Arctic, learn about Eskimo sewing, dancing, leather craft and ivory carving, or watch the Eskimo blanket toss, in which participants are thrown up to 30 feet in the air by a group of people holding a giant, round blanket made of walrus hide.
At the Inupiat Heritage Center in Barrow, visit the extensive avian species exhibit, or learn about traditional whaling practices. Barrow’s whaling culture is rich, and the center was designated as a National Park Service-affiliated area of the New Bedford Whaling National Historical Park in New Bedford, Mass. to keep the Alaska Natives’ whaling heritage alive. More than 2,000 whaling voyages from New Bedford sailed into arctic waters in the 1800s and 1900s, and many of the Inupiat in and around Barrow participated in commercial whaling.
Much to the surprise of many visitors, the legendary Gold Rush went all the way to Nome on the western coast of Alaska, where a stampede to its “golden beaches” occurred at the turn of the 20th century. The Carrie McLain Museum, while small, is packed with information on what life was like during those times. Because Nome is home to the finish line of the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race each year, there is also tons of information on dog mushing. The community’s dependence on dog-powered travel goes back much further than the Iditarod; Native people have used teams of dogs for centuries.
In Southwestern Alaska, the Museum of the Aleutians is a 9,400-square-foot building that is in the process of cataloging and preserving bits of Alaska’s prehistory. It is the only archaeological research and museum storage facility for the Aleutian Chain and a great place to learn about the Unangan people, ancestors of today’s Aleut Natives.
Kodiak Island, too, is rich in culture, not only in its Native population (visit the Alutiiq Museum and Archaeological Repository to learn more about Native life) but also the European history. The Baranov Museum is named for Russian fur trader Alexander Baranov, who settled first in Kodiak and later in Southeast Alaska. The museum is housed in the oldest Russian building in Alaska, built around 1808.
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