"For the Progress of Man:" Tikigaq and Nuclear Landscaping

From "Project Chariot Marine Mammal Study, Cape Thompson, 1960-61." ASL-PCA-561

"If your mountain is not in the right place, just drop us a card."

Edward Teller, University of Alaska Commencement Address, 1959

In 1958 The United States Atomic Energy Commission proposed "Project Plowshare" to detonate a 2.4 megaton series of nuclear explosions in the building of a harbor off Alaska's northwestern coast. George Washington University Professor Al Teich describes the project as part of a larger trend among scientists called "nuclear landscaping." For after the advent of nuclear weaponry, scientists grew interested in the possible ways these devices could reshape expanses of land and alter seascapes. The Alaska mission was planned to take place at Cape Thompson, about 32 miles from Tikigaq, or The Village of Point Hope. A 1961 editorial in the Anchorage Times entitled "Alaska Test Needed For Progress of Man," argued for the venture on the grounds that building the harbor in that region would create viable economic opportunities for the new state, in the way of a large port. "Such development would," the op-ed by owner Robert Atwood asserted, "stimulate opportunities for employment and better living conditions in the area now on the fringe of civilization." The Inupiat communities living in the area of the area of the Project Chariot however felt it would hold terrible impacts on their life ways and  the animals of their homeland.

Original scheme for Project Chariot.

In the 1989 The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists article, "Project Chariot: How Alaska Escaped Nuclear Excavation," writer Dan O'Neill documented how the Chariot proposal was to be the first in a set of works in the Plowshares program that would rebuild the world through nuclear destruction. Brainchild of Edward Teller, lead Scientist at the Livermore Labs, the plowshares program would, under his guidance, (quoted through O'Neill) "engage in the great art of geographic engineering, to reshape the earth at your pleasure." Plowshares was part of a even more nationwide postwar movement to re-engineer landforms through massive endeavors, such as was the Glen Canyon Dam in southern Utah.

A 1958 picture of Edward Teller as Director of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

With great concern, the region's people, along with a concert of citizens outside the area, questioned how the explosions and the following radiation would harm the environment and their communities. Looking at how such devices brought terrible conditions to Nagasaki and the Bikini Islanders, the Inupiat didn't believe the promises of safely the government gave them. According to O'Neill, village representative David Frankson argued strongly against the idea, as did all regional Inupiat and Athabaskan communities.

David Frankson, in glasses, pictured with a group of Native representatives meeting with Gov. Egan.

The threats of Plowshare program, along with burgeoning governmental policies set to restrict Native subsistence life ways, made the Association of American Indian Affairs host the Point Barrow Conference on Native Rights in November, 1961. The conference resulted in the formation of the regional Inupiat Paitot organization, which included Frankson and artist Howard Rock. "Our Inupiat Paitot," they wrote in a statement, "is our land around the whole arctic world where Inupiat live, our right to be great hunters and brave independent people...our right to the minerals that belong to us in the land we claim." For the first time Inupiat people across Alaska formed an alliance as to express specific concerns for their rights as indigenous people. In their statement they wrote of Project Chariot, demanding a halt to the program, saying "The result of this explosion will be very dangerous to native health because of the effect of  radiation on animals the people have depended on for food." The Paitot articulated the larger cycle of life at stake in Project Chariot, by connecting their health to the health of the environment. "We deny the right of the Bureau of Land Management," their statement read, "to dispose of land claimed by a native village, and urge the Interior Department to revoke the permit before the experiment goes any further." The Inupiat Paitot also expressed that such nuclear tests held transnational consequences when communicating, "We, the Inupiat, strongly protest," any such activity on their lands,  "and request the President of the United States that the experiments of the Russians on their nuclear explosions be discontinued," as well.

In the summer of 1962, The government sidelined Project Chariot due to unforeseen "flaws" in its design. Yet the threat levied against the Inupiat by the proposal led to a political organization, which in a year and a half, began working with the Alaska Native Brotherhood and the Dena Nena Henash forming a large scale movement to secure Native rights to land and heritage in Alaska. These three political groups stood as foundational to the Native rights movement of the 1960s that would work toward the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971.

Inupiat filmmaker Rachel Naninaaq Edwardson made the incredible 2012 documentary Project Chariot, where she examines the history of the project and the fight against it in much detail.  The trailer below on Edwardson's Vimeo site.

Works Consulted/Cited

Al Teich's Tibits http://www.alteich.com/tidbits/t050602.htm

Other government documents.

Slow Violence Across the Land and Sea: An Alaska Native Environmental History

On Tuesday November 11th at Colorado State University I will be giving a talk as part of the Native American and Indigenous Studies colloquium for Native Heritage Month. The next day on the 12th Ketchikan's own Emily Moore will also be speaking on "Art in the Time of NAGPRA: Innovative Possibilities for Native American Art in Museums." Other speakers also promise exciting talks. Check out the post below.

My talk Slow Violence Across the Land and Sea centers Native history as a way for connecting United States and Russian activities in Alaska. Each nation's industrial extractive pursuits in the region have led to a extended timeline of devastation, from the 18th century extinction of Steller's sea cow (Hydrodamalis gigas) to the Exxon Valdez Oil Spill in 1989. Moreover, Indigenous compulsory participation in this centuries long violence as impressed flexible labor makes visible an Indigenous geography, a first space, that is fundamental for understanding how Russian and United States endeavors compose one long history in the Great Land.

Yukon Gold Rush: "This Is What Really Brought Alaska to the American Map," July 17, 1896.

On july 17, 1896, The ship the Portland docked in Seattle with a hull filled with gold. This marked the reopening of the American Frontier, one which Fredrick Jackson Turner previously declared closed at the end of the California Gold Rush. The clip above features the former senator Ted Stevens discussing the history of this second gold rush and its impact on how Alaska would come to be known in the United States and Elsewhere.

"The World's Most Beautiful Fair:" the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in Seattle, Washington 1909

During this week in 1909 about 117,000 people attended the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition in Seattle, on the site of the University of Washington. During its six month run over 3 million people entered the gates of the fair. Previous to the exposition the University possessed only three buildings, but the fair's planners, with the work of renowned landscape architect John Olmstead, completely transformed the area with numerous buildings and manicured landscapes. The result was a "civilization in the wilderness," what as promised as the "World's Most Beautiful Fair."

Rail Road exhibit.

The fair was an advertisement for the Seattle and pacific area regional boosterism. Seattle businessmen, the local state government, and average citizens pitched in to get the event off the ground. The planners used the promotion of gold as a way to bring people in from far away. That is, the Yukon gold rush ignited the an interest in a new "frontier" of riches, after the end of the California gold rush had previously brought an end to frontier-thinking in popular American culture. The waters of the pacific were advertised as the best for motor boating. The technology of the rail road would serve as a way for people to understand how civilization was being carved from the wilderness of North America. In the end, all this energy was put into it because if people attracted to the area then perhaps these attendees would relocate there, using rail service to transport themselves and their goods. These relocated people would purchase property and take part in the civic life of the region. Alaska natural resources, such as gold and lumber, were the focus of the fair with Seattle being sold as a "gateway" to such a frontier.

Advertisement with Statue of Liberty for the Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, 1909. PH Coll 777.x.Advert.1

Chinese Village during a parade, with Ferris wheel to the right, Pay Streak, Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition, Seattle, Washington, 1909

The attendees came expecting to see displays of non-white peoples from throughout the world as well as technological advances. Above you can see the Chinese village that was constructed to house and display Chinese cultural attributes that may have exotic to people in the United States at the time. The fairs planners were engaged in this re-imagining of the Asia-Pacific rim by allowing participants to come to understand how Seattle was geographically poised to successfully trade with Asian nations in ways that many hadn't considered before. The opening ceremonies included representatives of the Japanese Navy.

Announcer at entrance to Eskimo Village, Alaska-Yukon-Pacific-Exposition, Seattle, Washington, 1909. Note on the photograph:Eskimo Village. In the Eskimo Village there are Eskimos from Siberia, Alaska and Labrador, and visitors have an opportunity to study the various tribes. The Eskimo Village is one of the largest attractions on the Pay Streak.

The representations of Native peoples at these fairs ran hand-in-hand with the display of technological advancement and the celebration of nationalism. There is a grand amount of scholarship examining the way indigenous cultures have been presented at world's fairs. The presentation of Native people as foreign and primitive have always played an important role in these fairs. As you can see below, there was an "Alaska" "Eskimo" village where the architecture was formed to resemble a glacier. 

Eskimo Village main entrance, with group of Eskimos and dog sled team in front, Pay Streak, Alaska-Yukon-Pacific-Exposition, Seattle, Washington,1909

Those who attended the fair could purchase postcards of Native peoples, like the one of Joe Cook, above. Or have their pictures taken with them, as in the photograph below.

Son of William H. Seward, chief figure in the purchase of Alaska. Eskimos left to right: "Columbia", Eskimo from Labrador; infant named "Seattle"; and mother of the child.

Below is a photograph of Native children from Alaska and the Philippines, the "Eskimo" and the "Igorotte." While very "modern" Alaska Natives and people from the Philippines were working away throughout the fishing industrial complex in canneries and boats from Seattle to Kodiak, at the exposition they were both presented as primitive spectacles, so distant from the articulations of civilization.  

In May 30-November 29 2009, the Burke Museum, on the campus of the University of Washington, Seattle, held an indigenous artistic exhibit responding to the way Native folks and culture were exploited during the exposition. The museum's project "Juxtapos[ed] historic objects and photographs from the 1909 fair with contemporary artwork by Native artists to explore how the representation and understanding of indigenous people and cultures has changed or not changed over 100 years." This short film below interviews the artists involved with the 2009 response. Just over halfway through appears Swil Kanim, and I think he presents a very provocative indigenous perspective.  

215 Years Since the Russian American Company Established Headquarters in Sitka

AMRC-b85-27-1365

I grew up in Kodiak walking passed the Baranov House Museum practically on a daily basis. Across from the ferry dock, near the church, and the old KANA building (which is no longer there), the museum once served as the Russian-American Company's storehouse and commissary. The museum was named after the chief functionary of the Russian colonial project at the time, Alexandr Baranov. He arrived in Kodiak in 1790 and hammered out the economies and social order of Russian America.  

"Portrait of Aleksandr Andreevich Baranov, first Russian Chief Manager of Alaska, 1790-1818."
ASL-P01-2603

This week on May 25, 1799 Baranov moved the center of Russian America from Kodiak Island to Sitka where the Russians would name New Archangel. The name "Sitka" for the town originates from the the Tlingit word  Sheet’ká, a contraction of "Shee At'iká" meaning "People on the Outside of Baranof Island", whose call themselves Sheet’ ká X'áat'l. Below is a photo of "Sitka" and the Baranov residence in 1885.

 "Baranov's Castle, Sitka, Alaska, ca. 1885." ASL-P01-2199

Baranov had constructed a large castle that was finished in 1835, but as you can see in the photograph below by 1885, 23 years after the United States took control of the Alaska region, the residence was in dilapidated condition. Strangely enough, the nation built "experiment stations" on the sight where the residence once stood by 1899.

"The Old Baranof Castle as it appeared about 1890." ASL-P20-140 

215 years later Sitka is a city of approximately 9,000 people, and as part of the United States, it sits in Southeast Alaska. In the early 20th century, as mentioned in a previous post this area of the world, the coastal Tlingit homeland, would become the Tongass National Forest. Below is a short tour of contemporary Sitka, centuries after Russian colonialism.

The History of Reserves in Alaska

"Klukwan, Alaska on the Chilkat River. Extreme wide angle, showing village across water. Houses appear to be frame construction. Dugout canoe on beach in foreground." ASL-P87-2909

On April 21, 1913 President Woodrow Wilson created the Chilkat Native reserve at Klukwan. This was one of 150 reserves created by "Executive Order" before 1919. Executive Order (EO) is one of five methods the United States employed to recognize extra-constitutional indigenous spaces commonly called reservations. These EO reserves are referred to as "Reservations at Will." Besides these EO reservations there are four other forms of reservations, such as Treaty Reservations, Statutory Reservations,  Public Purpose Reservations, and reservations derived from the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 (IRA). When the IRA was first brought into law and gave the ability of American Indians to structure into recognized governments under US law, it gave no provisions to include Alaska Natives.

However by 1936, with the help of Tlingit William Lewis Paul, the US extended the rights of the IRA to indigenous communities of the then Alaska Territory. After that time, the Tlingit community at Chilkat enrolled in the IRA and basically transferred the reservation into trust under the guidelines of the new law.

While many American Indian communities in the contiguous part of the nation have reservations from treaty negotiations this national practice of making treaties with Native was legislated out of existence in 1888, just before such negotiations could be made in Alaska. The backstory to the nation ending the treaty process with Native communities came about because the House of Representatives (without such power) saw this ability by the President and the Senate to create treaties as an unfair advantage. Thus, when the House added a rider to end the making of treaties with Natives to a bill, the rest is history.

A general view of Metlakatla taken at 9:30 p.m. , 1896.
Buildings and dwellings, with mountains in background
ASL-P326-10

The history of reservations in Alaska began with the Congressional manufacturing the Metlakatla statutory reserve in 1891. The reservation came under scrutiny in 1916 when the Alaska Pacific Fisheries corporation started placing a fish trap just off shore of the island. However, as the trap neared completion President Wilson declared the waters near the island as additional reservation property. The Department of Justice filed suit against the cannery, leading to a Supreme Court case where the court affirmed the reservation in 1916.

At Eklutna Vocational School, ca. 1940. "Students at Eklutna Vocational School, Eklutna, Alaska, with telegraph apparatus. ca. 1940." AMRC-b00-10-11.

The United States also made a second type of "Reservation at Will," this kind known as Public Purpose Reservations that only served very discrete functions. Unlike a statutory or Executive Order Reservations, Public Purpose reserves in Alaska mostly acted as spaces for the vocational training of Native workers. For example, the government made reserves for the sole of purpose of teaching indigenous people how to herd reindeer. Above is a picture taken at the Eklutna, a public purpose reservation that had a technical employment training school.

"School, quarters, and part of homes, Venetie, Alaska, 3/1939."
ASL-P306-0760

Since the late nineteenth century the US has created four types of reservations in Alaska, each distinct from the other. The addenda to the 1934 Indian Reorganization Act did allow the Department of the Interior to take land to be held in trust for Native governments. Yet the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act in 1971 ended all reservational communities, even if such communities chose to forego ANCSA enrollment, as did the community of Venetie. ANCSA allotted the land to the village fee simple. While all the reservations may have disappeared, the first Metlakatla still exists to this day.

Metlakatla in the 1890s. For more information about this community click here: http://www.metlakatla.com

The Reindeer Industry and Native Alaska

According to Dean Olson in the report "Alaska Reindeer Herdsmen: A Study of Native Management in Transition," that he authored in 1969, the idea for implanting reindeer into the Alaskan ecology came to Dr. Sheldon Jackson while he and Capt. M.A. Healy set out on a cruise through the Arctic in 1890. Seeing Siberian Native economies built around reindeer the two began hatching a plan to import the animal across the Strait. Hoping to employ Natives as reindeer herders Jackson asked the federal government for the 2000 dollars.

"Sheldon Jackson, D.D., LL.D., Vice President Alaska Geographic Society, May 15, 1899."
Identifier ASL Jackson-Sheldon 1

Capt. M.A. Healy, U.S.R.M., Commanding U.S. Revenue Cutter "Bear."
Collection. ASL. Identifier ASL-Healy-MA-1 ASL-P01-3278  

The government was unwilling to provide the funds so Jackson collected donations with which he shipped 16 deer from Siberia to the Aleutians. At that point, the reindeer industry began without haste. Jackson appealed to the federal government for funding and by 1892 four Indigenous Siberians came with a shipment of 171 of reindeer to Port Clarence Alaska, where a reindeer station was built as well as herding instructional facilities. Olson reports Native resistance to the development in Wales, Alaska. Sounds like the reindeer station became a site of immense tension, resulting with the death of one worker. Two years after their arrival the Siberian Natives returned home. By the end of the century hundreds of reindeer lived in Alaska. Transportation routes for herds stretched throughout the Alaska mainland. According to Carrie Bucki Manager of Reindeer Research Program, University of Alaska Fairbanks, many people preferred hitching reindeer to sleds over dogs because reindeer ate grass and therefore less expensive to keep as work-animals.

"A reindeer harnessed up for pulling a sled.
Reindeer called Qimukti in Iñupiaq were commonly used for pulling sleds."
Point Barrow, Alaska, 1899-1908. ASL-PCA-320 IdentifierASL-P320-28

Alaska Native herders worked throughout the mainland into the 20th century. Here are some photographs I found of Native folks herding. Take note the first image taken in Golovin, Alaska looks to be taken during one of the less snowy seasons. The image beneath that one Theresa Creek, Alaska appears to have captured the wintertime corralling of reindeer. The next post will explore some of the social implications the reindeer industry brought Native life.

"Herders driving reindeer to corral. Golovin, Alaska." "View of reindeer herders driving reindeer to Lomen Reindeer Corporation reindeer processing plant corral at Golovin,Alaska. July 1938." Photographer: Ray B. Dame. Original photograph size: 8 1/8" x 10". Identifier AMRC-b75-175-211

 "Theresa Creek Reindeer Corral, 3/1942." "Deer passing from outer to inner holding pocket. Photographer's number 803. CreatorDale, George Allan, 1900- Contributors Butler, Evelyn I. Evelyn Butler and George Dale. Photographs, 1934-1982. ASL-PCA-306 IdentifierASL-P306-0717

"Reindeer herding in Southwest, Alaska 1930's" Collection NameEugene L. Snow Collection Alaska Film Archives, University of Alaska, Fairbanks IdentifierAAF-51

Resource for those with more interest in the history can find a wonderful primer written by Carrie Bucki Manager of Reindeer Research Program, University of Alaska Fairbanks here: http://www.uaf.edu/files/snras/MP_04_07.pdf

Asserting a Racial Geography in Northern Alaska, 1901-1906: "The ability to imitate with masked fidelity."

In October 1901, Susan R. Bernardi went to Kingegan, a village located in Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska, to work as an instructor at a religiously-based government-funded school. Kingegan's closest major town is Nome, a former-village where the population more than tripled from 1890-1900 because of the gold rush. After holding similar positions in the southern United States, her job involved teaching the Natives of Kingegan a general curriculum. As the most western inhabited place in the Americas the village surely proved most distinct from any of her previous experiences. Writings and photographs from her personal collection helps understand the way in which people from the United States would came to think about Alaska and Arctic people more broadly. With an album containing 105 photographs held at the University of Washington special collections one can peruse captivating images taken during her time there. For instance the photograph below depicts Bernardi in a classroom of Inupiat students, seated at desks, reading their text books. She peers intently at the students, with the United States flag hanging above her head. Take notice of the globe next to her. On the chalkboard one can make out a date "May Tenth" and some basic arithmetic. In the written passages of the collection Bernardi refers to the Inupiat villagers as "Eskimo," a term, to say the least, that makes for a host of complications in it's usage and proves entailed with countless derogatory meanings and unintended significations. Bernardi was not alone in employing the term to describe the vast cultures of people who inhabit a large portion of the Northern world. In fact, the written parts of the album along with the images provide for the reader and viewer an archive on how Westerners thought of Arctic people as they set upon their communities with various agendas.

"Susan R. Bernardi teaching Eskimo pupils at U.S. Government School, Cape Prince of Wales, Alaska, ca. 1906"

The image above belongs to a genre of photographic work, that when taken, attempted to depict how indigenous students could be taught a curriculum of knowledge and basic skills that would shape them into competent modern individuals, however unequal to their Western benefactors. Today we can see how these photographs document a rather unsettling history of colonial education that was taking place throughout the continent at the time. For the people of the Kingegan village lived competently long before the arrival of the school. There are many great works documenting the experiences indigenous children, and their families, endured at Indian boarding schools throughout the United States and Canada. The Bernardi collection proves compelling because it documents how a newcomer, one who was to bestow civilization upon the locals, came to situate this region's people within her beliefs about the broader world.  

"A lesson in geography. To Quont'nuk and Menadéluk"
PH Coll 49.87b

The photograph above "A lesson in geography" spells out an unfortunately familiar and still quite moving scene where the instructor appears to be lightly scolding her wards, Quont'nuk and Menadéluk. What is to be made of this disciplinary scene, staged for a camera, in the midst of a geography lesson? Is the message here that the instructor will work tirelessly to teach the students where they sit in the global order of civilization? From my own memories growing up in Kodiak, I can clearly parcel out the moments in social studies class when, as a young person, I was being taught to fill out a map of the contiguous part of the nation. In all my teachers' efforts, their lessons to educate me on the locations of many Lower-48 states proved a hapless endeavor. What did this geography lesson mean for the instructor and how did it translate to the students and their families at Kingegan? Below is a photograph of more students, I believe in the bottom row are "Kuzrina, Natongok, Anouruk, Keotkona."

Notes Handwritten in album: Kuzrina, Natongok, Anouruk, Keotkona ca. 1906
PH Coll 49.96

Along with photographs of life among the Native residents Bernardi lent her hand to locating the people of the village in relation to the indigenous people of the contiguous part of the nation, as well as to the people of the Japanese nation. Please note Japan is approximately 2,500 miles away from Kingegan (the distance between Barcelona and Moscow proves closer than these two places are). "Eskimos are not Indians," she clarified for the viewers of the collection, "but Mongoloids." Not part of the Bernardi collection, below is an uncanny map of the western racial imaginary that constructed the "mongoloid" as a type.

Since people of the village failed to embody comparable traits with "Indians," they somehow had to fit into the larger racial imaginary. For as the passage ensued she wrote of the villagers' traits in relation to the Japanese, saying that "both have all inherent reverence for their ancestors, the Japanese possessing the characteristic a degree stronger than the Eskimos." The blanketing statement about both groups comes to illustrate the idea that there was a global hierarchy of civilizations (European at the top, indigenous at that bottom) that many people of the time invested their energies in proving as true and maintaining it as a truth for their benefit. In the ranking of civilizations the villagers, for Bernardi, sat beneath the way she imagined the Japanese. As noted by Coleen Lye in America's Asia, around the turn of the century the United States, eager to hold on to Pacific Rim colonies, began viewing Japan with suspicion (17-24). Perhaps because of these growing notions about the Japanese in the United States she felt it important to mark them as similar but distinct, even though they really aren't sharing a close proximity.  

Further in the collection, Bernardi's comparison continued, "the Japanese serve fish raw," and she noticed that "the Eskimo eats his raw but nature most often serves it to him frozen. Jade is used extensively by both Eskimos and Japanese. Both have the ability to imitate with masked fidelity." Also, one can notice the ascription of Inupiat as "He" while the Japanese are left without being assigned a gender. The description moves from comparing the foodways of distant peoples as to align them under a cryptic assertion that they both possess the "ability to imitate with masked fidelity." The Japanese and the villagers, in her view were capable of emulating western cultural practices. (Most likely she isn't meaning to say that they can perform celebrity impersonations.) 

Handwritten in album: "Telling whale stories."
PH Coll 49.35

In comparing her upbringing to the villagers she wrote, "We are prone to say "bread is the staff of life." "The Eskimo," she argued, "would change it to "oil is the staff of life." She viewed the that for the villagers were dependent on oil, a claim which later could be applied to others in the region when the Trans-Alaska pipeline was constructed in Alaska.

In the their use of oils she wrote:
"the oil of the hair seal the walrus and whale provides for most of the wants of the Eskimo. He uses it to warm his house and dry his boots, to cook his seal meat and if there is no meat to cook he can use the oil for food. In olden times cariboo were plentiful. The meat was dried and the skins used for bedding and clothes. Heated deer suet rendered is eaten with snow and blue-berries it looks like whipped cream and is called koni mi nook. "When a person dies a feast is prepared and all friends and relatives come to the home and eat so that the dead one may not be hungry. If two persons fall ill at the same time in the same house one of them must be immediately moved, for should one die his spirit would call to the spirit of the other and he would have to go." Again, one can see how the description of the villagers moves from foodways to interpersonal relations.

Five young women identified as left to right: Kuzrere or Grace (Mrs. Percy Blatchford of Nome), Koot egweena, Angnohok, Oo me eeuk, Ang arolok or Bessie (Mrs. Henry Miller of Teller) UAF-1959-875-33

Further in the description she wrote that the villagers "never cheat each other but think it a virtue to cheat a white man." This horrid generalization meant that Native people act unethically towards outsiders, justifying the need to educate the children so they'll act morally and respect non-Inupiat people in all dealings. The problem I have with this statement is that she's talking about the parents whom are trusting her with their children in her classroom. The collection presents many photographs of young people, adorned in "western" (her words) clothes, posing for the camera. For almost a century the people of this region lived through multiple forms of abuse as they were made to attend these schools. A quick google search will give a list of accounts on the topic. There is also plenty of scholarship out there that asks readers to consider the viewpoints and histories of people whom these types of photographs were taken of as to better understand the agency and resolve they acted with in such harrowing times.

Nora and Angnolok. Collection. S.R. Bernardi Photographs. UAF-1959-875-34

In the conclusion of the passage she wrote, "Good bye in Eskimo means "I am sorry to see you go." If you are calling at an Eskimo home you should not leave," she continued, "until your hostess tells you you may go." In the last sentence of her description she attests that, "if a man and his wife go to another village to trade and stay a few days it is a courtesy for the men to trade wives." Ending the passage with such an observation positions her work as justified in that she was bringing what she saw as a moral order to the people. The album's photographs and narrations are a great archival source for the articulation of Western racial beliefs about subject peoples in a northern part of the Alaska Territory amid the early twentieth century.