Native Peoples of Alaska: A Traveler's Guide to Land, Art, and Culture

Travelers planning trips to Alaska need more information.
It costs a lot of money to travel to Alaska and throughout the state. You often discover tours, museums and sites you'd like to see after you arrive, but haven't budgeted time or money for them. Visitor studies have shown that people come to Alaska first, to witness its legendary scenic beauty, secondly, to learn about Native culture. However, visitors are often disappointed because they can't find Natives, and they often leave with souvenirs that were made in Taiwan. The problem isn't that Natives are hiding--the problem is that information is scattered in brochures all over the state and you either find them by chance or at the end of your trip..by then it's often too late! My guidebook helps you plan, by telling you where to find Native-led tours of lands they've occupied from 6,000-10,000 years; museums, interpretive centers, where and how to buy authentic Native art, public art collections containing traditional and contemporary Native art and even where to buy jams and jellies made by Natives from wild berries picked from their own lands. Most Alaska Natives live in the vast rural and roadless areas of Alaska, accessible by jet in some cases, and smaller villages by air taxi, as common in Alaska as taxicabs are in New York. My book tells you who is giving tours, what series of airlines to book to get there, what to wear, what to expect and other things to do in the area so that you are spending your time and money wisely. For example, Abe David, a Cup'ik Eskimo and licensed commercial airplane pilot, offers guided tours of Nunivak Island, 90 miles off the west coast on Alaska in the Bering Sea. Expect to meet local ivory and whalebone carvers, visit a fish camp on the Mekoryuk River and take a skiff to nearby rookeries to look for puffins. Depending on the time of year you can ice fish for grayling in the winter, catch king crab in March and April, watch walrus migrate north of floating ice in April and May, and see reindeer and musk ox herds browsing in the tundra.You can also plan an extended stay with Abe and his family at their fishing camp on the south end of the island during the summer.To get there you fly to Anchorage, then to Bethel by jet, then on a small plane which lands on a gravel airstrip in the village of Mekoryuk.I give you phone and fax numbers, addresses, e-mail and web sites. My book also introduces you to larger attractions such as the Alaska Native Heritage Center opening in Anchorage in the spring of 1999; Saxman Village demonstrations of Tlingit culture (including totem pole carving) near Ketchikan; and group tours of Inupiat Eskimo village centers of Kotzebue and Barrow, north of the Arctic Circle. Because there are five major Native ethnic groups and more than 200 Native villages in Alaska, I found plenty to fill this guidebook. It also has sidebars telling you about all kinds of things from how to make Eskimo ice cream from seal fat to taking a traditional Alutiiq steambath (similar to a Finnish sauna) in the Kodiak archipelago. Pat Petrovelli, of Aleut heritage, an anthropologist with the Alaska Native Heritage Center, wrote two essays for the appendix on the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, and on subsistence hunting and fishing. Alex Muktoyuk, an Inupiat Eskimo and good friend, wrote the last words in the book, a short essay on hunting walrus on King Island, 40 miles west of Nome, where he grew up. Ben Marks, the former travel editor of Sunset Magazine, and now an editor at Infoseek on the world wide web, said "What's remarkable about this book is not just the wealth of places to stay or the tireless attention to detail. What makes it so special are the people we meet, from Barrow to Ketchikan. By giving both faces and facts, Native Peoples of Alaska heralds a welcome new genre of travel guidebook--one that's both passionate and comprehensive." I met wonderful people along the way while researching this book for two years in Alaska--flying over volcanos and hundreds of miles of tundra, landing on the beach in small aircraft, and traveling through the Inside Passage by ferry.I know you will too.