Alaska: Kartographer Katie
Hi everyone! I’m Katie, and I’m obsessed with geography. While I embrace my Southern family roots in North Carolina, I’ve always had a travel bug and have an immense appreciation for history, politics, and culture. I’ve lived in Charlotte, Buenos Aires, Los Angeles, Edinburgh, and currently New York City, and have traveled to 30+ countries on 4 continents so far.
My intended audience is people who have a Eurocentric, United States worldview. Whether we like it or not, we sit in positions of power as citizens of a country with hegemonic dominance. This perpetuates self-importance — and accompanying naivety — in the narrative we create about the world around us. Precisely because of this, we often do not grapple with considerations of indigenous issues, Western extractive power structures, and other aspects of the present-day diplomatic status quo of other countries while we enjoy our travels and leisure.
While I do want these blog posts to be fun and interesting (traveling is fun, and I’ll hopefully convince you that maps are cool!), my ultimate goal is for them to inform, inspire, and spark critical thinking about what maps — and the places and people behind them — tell us about power structures and how we can be more unifying and empathic in our understanding of the world around us.
- Please note that these posts are in no way meant to be exhaustive, comprehensive histories and overviews — if I held myself to those standards, I could never do these places justice. They are also not intended to highlight what scholars consider to be the most important issues — I am NOT an expert to attempt to make those sorts of calls. These posts are merely “starter packs” to further research, and I’ve done my best to link credit where credit is due for further exploration.
Table of Contents
Why it matters — “Last Frontier” of the United States, indigenous cultural perpetuity, land preservation, seafood and gaming industries
Indigenous history — Alaska natives / Inuit people, indigenous ways of life including cultural and practical importance of subsistence living
Power structures — Russian occupation, gold rush, World War II, U.S. occupation and statehood
Today — Indigenous rights, oil pipeline, environmental conservation
Why it matters
“The very thought of this Alaska garden is a joyful exhilaration… Out of all the cold darkness and and glacial crushing and grinding comes this warm, abounding beauty and life to teach us that what we in our faithless ignorance and fear call destruction is creation finer and finer.”
— John Muir, “Travels in Alaska”, 1915
When people think of Alaska, they may conjure up images of vast wilderness, mystery, and adventure. They may envision the mystic northern lights, majestic mountainous terrain, curious moose and other wildlife in Denali National Park, or various elements of Inuit culture that persists today above the Arctic circle. They may think of endless sun during the summer solstice in Sitka, or fishing off the Aleutian islands. Perhaps they recall pop culture, from the movies (The Proposal, anyone?) to the political (Tina Fey’s impersonation of Sarah Palin famously quoting, “I can see Russia from my house!”).
“Alaska has long been a magnet for dreamers and misfits, people who think the unsullied enormity of the Last Frontier will patch all the holes in their lives,” says Jon Krakauer in his renowned Into the Wild, a journalistic account of recent Emory University graduate Chris McCandless’ eventually fatal journey into Alaska’s harsh wilderness on the Stampede Trail in Denali in 1992. While this journey of self discovery (or self abandonment, or search for meaning beyond self, call it what you will) took a dark turn, the broader allure to Alaska for many folks is tinged with wonder and intrigue.
Known for its vast wildlife-filled terrains, summer days and northern lights-strewn long winters, Alaska has a particular draw for even folks who have lived in the United States their entire lives. As the United States’ largest state by geographic area and its 49th entry to statehood, Alaska was admitted to the union in 1959 after being acquired from Russia in 1867. Its relative newness to the United States, combined with its isolation from the rest of the country’s mainland, proximity to the North Pole, and vast tundra and tundra-like terrain, among other things, it perhaps comes as no surprise that we tend to view it with a tinge of nostalgia for how we used to see much more of the United States — of a great beyond west of the Mississippi River, what we still fantasize about in movies and TV shows about uncharted territory.
And yet, just like the glamorization of Manifest Destiny, the idealization of Alaska comes with its own set of problematic oversights and accountabilities worth scrutinizing. European descendants must reckon with the colonization and forced statehood of a place that was alive and prospering far before the creation of the United States. Alaska’s land and wildlife are vulnerable to the environmental effects (and potential disaster scenarios) of the presence of oil, most prominently seen in the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System and most notorious failure of the transportation of oil being the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989, the second largest spill in modern history. Protection of the land is also more nuanced than merely protecting it from oil, though — natives fiercely protect their right to hunt on the land that they claim as theirs.
And yet despite the darker topics to grapple with, Alaskans hold deep pride for their land and the communities tend to have deep respect for and harmony with indigenous people, many whom work in local government and coexist with newer residents of the land. As we gain a deeper understanding of the history, culture, and terrain of Alaska, it is important to hold both appreciation and accountability of the land.
Beyond the tourism and self-discovery plights from the exterior, Alaska boasts a wealth of some of the last remaining untouched land in the United States, as well as some of the strongest presences of indigenous people’s culture, political influence, and rights still at the forefront of everyday life.
Thousands of people come from all over the world each year to witness the Northern lights (aurora borealis) in winter, visit Denali National Park, climb the highest mountain in the United States (Mount Denali), or enjoy stunning coastlines in summer. Alaska has renowned seafood, from king crab to Pacific halibut to Chinook salmon to rockfish, to name a few. On land, common game to hunt include bison, caribou, elk, muskox, and black-tailed deer. Let’s dive in!
Indigenous history
The name Alaska comes from the Aleut word alaxsxa or alaxsxix^, both meaning “mainland” or “great land”. Experts estimate that people have inhabited Alaska since somewhere in the range of 15,000 to 10,000 BCE. At that time a land bridge extended from Siberia to eastern Alaska, and migrants followed herds of animals across it. Of these migrant groups, the Athabaskans, Aleuts, Inuit, Yupik, Tlingit and Haida remain in Alaska.
The first people arrived in Alaska following herd animals across the Bering Land Bridge. This land mass connected Asia to the Americas when more of the sea was locked up in ice age glaciers. It served as the entryway point for this Amerind migration group to eventually populate all of the Americas. Then, around 3,000 years later, Western science estimates that the second migration was what brought Na-Dene and Eskimo-Aleut in Alaska from Asia, where they moved through the north to populate Alaska and Canada.
These peoples’ ways of life transitioned from purely nomadic to more permanent settlement building around 4,000 BCE. Once the most recent ice age ended and sea levels rose, the American populations were isolated from the rest of the world until Western colonial rediscovery.
Some evidence alludes to Siberian and Alaskan natives staying in contact throughout this period as many of the tools and early writings discovered are strikingly similar and indicate a level of transcontinental trade.
There is distinct circumpolar culture that still exists today, and reinforced politically as entities like the Inuit Circumpolar Council (ICC) have cropped up. The ICC was founded in 1977 by the late Eben Hopson of Barrow, Alaska (Note: In October 2016, residents of the town formerly known as Barrow voted to officially change the name of their city to the traditional Iñupiaq name Utqiaġvik). The ICC has grown into a major international non-governmental organization representing around 180,000 Inuit of Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and Chukotka. They work on a variety of initiatives from human rights to environmental and sustainable development.
Subsistence living is an essential element of indigenous people that persists today. Subsistence practices contain a set of values passed down through generations about how to live off the land. While each culture has nuances in the beliefs and behaviors to express them, there are many sensibilities that Alaska natives, and many non-native residents, have in common (Source: U.S. National Park Service):
(1) Self-sufficiency and sustainability. Stewardship of wild resources so that they can be accessed by future generations is a foundational value of subsistence. In remote areas of Alaska, where the supply of store-bought foods can be expensive and unreliable, access to wild foods helps provide food and self-reliance for local people.
(2) Respect. All living things are to be respected. The mistreatment or waste of an animal is offensive, and in many cultural traditions is associated with the belief that a person who is disrespectful will have bad luck as a hunter and experience difficulty harvesting animals in the future. When an animal is harvested, the whole animal is used; waste is disrespectful to both the animal and the people who depend on it.
(3) Sharing. Caring for others by providing for the family and community are widely shared values. Harvested wild foods are shared with elders and households without hunters throughout the community. There are cultural standards and traditions associated with harvesting and sharing wild foods. Family members who have moved to urban areas are often sent wild foods as a way to maintain cultural connections and familial ties.
(4) Connection to place and culture. Harvesting and processing wild foods is a cultural cornerstone; it strengthens ties between people and the land and is intertwined with cultural practices and traditional skills. Nearly everyone in a community participates in harvesting and processing wild foods. Some activities, such as hunting, are more limited in participation; a few skilled hunters may share their harvest with the rest of the community. Other community members engage in fishing or gathering berries. The intergenerational interactions of working together to find, process, share, and store food keeps traditions and culture vibrant.
Power Structures
After thousands of years of indigenous life, the first European explorers arrived in the eighteenth century, beginning with Danish explorer Vitus Bering in 1728, when he crossed the (self-named) Bering Strait between Asia and North America. A subsequent expedition in 1741 led him and a Russian Crew to what became known as Kayak Island (fun fact: the word kayak is derived from the Danish word kajak, which is derived from Greenlandic qayaq, meaning literally “small boat of skins”).
In 1778, Captain James Cook sailed into what is now the Cook Inlet. Captain Cook continued to sail up the western coast of Alaska, through the Bering Strait, and entered into the Arctic Ocean but was forced to turn back due to ice blocking the way (by the way, there is still a massive statue of Captain Cook in Anchorage, which has driven criticism recently for its optics of Western/colonizer superiority towering over the land).
In 1784, the first Russian settlement in Alaska was established on Kodiak Island at Three Saints Bay. Russia controlled most of the area that is now Alaska from the late 1700s until 1867, when it was purchased by U.S. Secretary of State William Seward for $7.2 million, or about two cents an acre. The near extinction of the sea otter and the political consequences of the Crimean War (1853–56) were factors in Russia’s willingness to sell Alaska to the United States. U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward spearheaded the purchase of the territory and negotiated a treaty with the Russian minister to the United States. After much public opposition, Seward’s formal proposal of $7.2 million was approved by the U.S. Congress, and the American flag was flown at Sitka on Oct. 18, 1867. The Alaska Purchase was initially referred to as “Seward’s Folly” by critics who were convinced the land had nothing to offer.
The Gold Rush made its way up to Alaska soon after, when gold was discovered in Sitka in 1872. Between then and 1888, more than 60,000 people arrived in Alaska in search of gold. The gold rush made Americans aware of the economic potential of this previously neglected land.
By 1898, special legislation extended the provisions of the Homestead Act of 1862 , which Abraham Lincoln had instituted to incentivize people to move west into massively underdeveloped territories during the economic and social hardships of the Civil War.
Similar to the stipulations from 1862, extension similarly allowed settlers of Alaska to stake claims for 160 acres of land to grow agriculture and build homes for their families. The Klondike Goldrush from 1897 to 1900 brought another 100,000 Americans to areas near the Alaska-Canadian border, including Yukon, in the hopes of striking rich.
Alaska is central to the great circle route connecting North America with Asia by sea and air and is equidistant from most of Asia and Europe. That central location has rendered Alaska militarily significant since the Japanese invasion of the Aleutians in 1942. During World War II, the Japanese occupied two Alaskan islands, Attu and Kiska, for 15 months.
The town of Nome, Alaska’s proximity to Russia lent itself to playing a strategic role in the broader U.S. Lend-Lease Agreement between the U.S. and Allied Nations during World War II. The Lend-Lease policy was officially titled “An Act to Promote the Defense of the United States”, and was a program where the U.S. supplied Free France, Great Britain and the Republic of China with food, oil, and material between 1941 and August 1945. This program later included the USSR and other Allied nations. For the Soviets, the final Lend-Lease agreement was signed in Washington, D.C., on June 11, 1942.
In particular, the ALSIB (or the Northern Trace) was the Soviet Union portion of the Alaska-Siberian air road receiving Lend-Lease aircraft from the Northwest Staging Route. Aircraft manufactured in the United States were flown over this route for World War II combat service on the Eastern Front. The ALSIB route was particularly treacherous, with strong, artic winds that blew over vast tracts of tundra.
In 1959, almost 100 years after the original purchase of Alaska from Russia, it became the 49th State. President Eisenhower signed the official declaration on January 3, 1959. Upon attaining statehood, Alaska increased the size of the United States by one-fifth.
This statehood brought about — and solidified as topics to be debated on American soil — various issues that persist today: oil, conservation, and Alaskan indigenous rights. In 1968, oil was first discovered in Prudhoe Bay and plans were initiated to build a pipeline to the North Slope to recover it.
Opened in 1977, the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System became one of the world’s largest pipeline systems with the main crude-oil pipeline, 11 pumping stations, several hundred miles of feeder pipelines, and the Valdez Marine Terminal.
In 1989, an oil tanker known as the Exxon Valdez ran into a reef in the Prince William Sound, spilling 11 million gallons of crude oil along 1,500 miles of coastline. A massive cleanup began, lasting more than three years and sparking massive outcry. It remains the second largest oil spill in U.S. history (the first being the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico) and affected the region’s habitat for salmon, sea otters, seals, and seabirds.
Today
Alaska today is a series of tenuous balances — between indigenous life and modern encroachment, between conservation and development — which has persisted since the beginning of the twentieth century.
The most prominent indigenous activism in modern history began in 1945, when Alaska natives civil rights leader Elizabeth Peratrovich addressed the Alaska Territorial Senate. Her speech is widely credited as being influential to the passage of the Anti-Discrimination Bill of 1945. This legislation was initially proposed by the Alaska Native Brotherhood (ANB) and Alaska Native Sisterhood (ANS), organizations composed primarily of Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian people from Southeast Alaska.
Although the ANB and ANS contacted government officials various times prior to 1945, the first attempt to pass an anti-discrimination act failed in 1943. Two years later the campaign for its passage was championed by ANB and ANS Grand Presidents Roy and Elizabeth Peratrovich (also husband and wife). Their tireless effort spent working with Governor of Alaska Earnest Gruening, and speaking of the bill’s benefit to legislators resulted in enough votes to see the legislation passed.
Alaskan natives have continued to be staunch advocates for their political and civil rights, with topics ranging from land protection to representation in local government to the right to continue subsistence living (e.g., not limiting their rights to hunt) and everything in between.
The Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN) was formed in 1966 to settle land claims and continues to be a principal forum for native voices. The largest statewide Native organization in Alaska, AFN represents more than 140,000 Native peoples — about one out of every five Alaskans. Formed in 1966 to settle land claims, AFN continues to be the principal forum and voice of Alaska Natives in addressing critical issues of public policy and government.
The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) was passed in 1971, giving Alaska Natives land and capital, as well as establishing the Native Corporations. Today some Native corporations are major contributors to Alaska’s economy. They also benefit from a government preference for minority contracts and are involved in everything from defense and mining to fishing and catering. They account for a third of the state’s 50 largest companies. Corporations also provide employment for Alaska Native people, and some provide college scholarships.
The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) passed in 1980, creating the huge public lands system in Alaska. Over 100 million acres are set aside for preservation and protection throughout Alaska. Alaska Native lands are managed by the state and federal government. That means that sometimes activities like hunting and fishing, which Native people see as a way of life, are restricted by wildlife managers.
Oil of course remains a hot topic in Alaska, both as a huge driver of the economy and as a concern for environmental conservation. The state’s largest manufacturing export category is petroleum & coal products, which accounted for $201 million of Alaska’s total goods exports in 2018. In the early 21st century, declining oil production was a major concern of Alaskans.
The issue of whether to drill in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, in the National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska, and in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas continued to be hotly debated. Meanwhile, Alaska’s foreign-born population continued to increase, as did tourism.
With vast flora and fauna across land and sea, stunning terrain, fiercely upheld indigenous practices honoring community and nature, as well as new economic developments and debates surrounding where the future is headed, Alaska remains a place full of wonder and striving for harmony. I encourage all to visit and learn what they can about the land, its people, and history, and grapple with perspectives of how it both exists within our definitions of U.S. statehood and transcends these geopolitical conventions in the name of longstanding tradition of respect and admiration for the land.
“The mountains are calling, and I must go.”
-John Muir, letter to his sister, 1873
