Self-reinvention in the Birth of the Last Frontier

On June 25, 1897 the steamer the Alice carried a first load of gold through St. Michael's Trading post in Yupik territory on the western coast of the Alaska. Originally the Russian American company founded St. Michael Redoubt in 1833 and by 1897 the town of St. Michael became a major hub in the burgeoning Yukon-Alaska Gold Rush. The map below illustrates the Yukon trade routes the mineral would travel with St. Michael there on the shores of western Alaska Territory.

Klondike travel routes

Between 1886 and 1899 approximately 100,000 people entered (invaded?) the Alaska-Yukon area with aspirations of securing hefty tins of gold. This urgent haste started after, in August 1896, a group of Tagist family members, Shaaw Tláa, K̲áa Goox̱, and Keish, and Shaaw Tláa's non-Native husband George Carmack located gold in Rabbit Creek (afterwords known as Banaza Creek), around the relatively new (and contested) border between Alaska and Canada. The family decided to allow Carmack to announce the discovery to the trading post because the authorities would most likely have denied such claims made by Native people, leaving the claim open to others.

When near-do-wells flooded the north armed with pick axes and gold pans they transformed the shape and governance structures of Natives villages and towns. For example within a year from three prospectors finding gold in the village of Siqnazuaq in 1897, which previously held less than a 1,000 residents, the population swelled to 10,000. Upon the coming of this immense amount of people, Siqnazuaq's name was changed to Nome, Alaska. It's estimated that by the early twentieth century the town's population reached 28, 000. Currently, the population sits under 4,000.

The Alaska Territory's boom economy reopened an American frontier once proclaimed closed by historian Fredrick Jackson Turner in 1893 with his work  The Frontier in American History. In the nineteenth century there was an idea that the continent was an empty space allowing non-Natives to travel westward, securing land and sequestering and killing Native people, until the movement ended on the Pacific side of the contiguous part of the nation, what would be known as the "Lower-48." As the United States pushed westward that shifting border allowed those, within the context of U.S. sponsorship, to reinvent themselves. For Turner,  the end of the frontier meant the foreclosure to a distinct way of life, an end for the ability of the nation's population to reinvent and adapt themselves to a new land. Fortunately for the nation, the gold rush in the Alaska Territory created a "Last Frontier" bringing with it a sense of renewal to the nation's imagination. Factory workers in the industrial economy could rest assured that there were rugged independent people at the edge of the nation living lives that their own social and financial situations disallowed them (this is of course the time when Inuit art came to serve a similar purpose).

Felice Pedroni aka Felix Pedro

One such story of reinvention in the Last Frontier was that of prospector Felice Pedroni who uncovered gold amidst the shallows of Cleary Creek, now Pedro Creek, in the Fairbanks region of central Alaska allegedly on July 22, 1902. Born in Trignano di Fanano, Pedroni sailed to New York in 1881 at 23 years of age when he reinvented himself as Felix Pedro, donning a Hispanic name change. Working his way through the country he moved to the Yukon in 1895, with dreams of gold. His search went on for years as he worked claims on either side of the border. Upon a discovery near the Tanana Hills, he famously exclaimed, "There's gold in them there hills!"

Journalist and historian Dermot Cole discusses the shadow of scandal and drama that surrounded Pedroni's life in this exciting article published through the Alaskan Newsminer.com. Pedroni's claim to the mining site proves complicated by a partner Alexander L. Hanot, whom Pedroni knew from his days working in Washington state. Pedro claimed that the only reason Hanot became a split partner with him was that latter owed him 75,000 dollars and that signing him into the claim protected Pedroni's assets due to an alleged maternity case. Hanot denied such allegations that he owed money or that even his share of the claim was fake in any sense. Pedro asserted that when he made the deal with Hanot he was not of a healthy mind. From 1903 to 1909 various people testified to Pedro's deteriorating mental health, notes Cole. Yet, other's testified to the contrary! In divorce papers, Cole writes, Pedro's wife accused her husband of fraud in the Hanot situation.

View of a stone monument with brass plaque dedicated to Felix Pedro located at mile 16.5 of the Steese Highway at the location where Felix Pedro is believed to have discovered gold in 1902. UAA-hmc-0620-series1-f5-16

8 years after his claim, Pedro passed away at the age of 52. Reportedly losing his life to a heart attack, many thought he was a victim of murder. He body was buried in California and laid there until exhumed in 1972 to ship to his hometown in Italy. Upon the transfer, his body was examined and authorities determined his death was the result of ingesting poison. Many suspect his wife Mary Doran took his life. The notion of the frontier in the national imagery served for countless people such as Felice Pedroni shed their old lives as they domesticated an imagined frontier, refusing to acknowledge Indigenous lands, culture, and authority. One need not be Edward Said to see that the imaginative geography of imperial frontiers, which allow people to put forth, new names, or invented personas, are always home to other communities these actors help dispossess.


Source:
Dermot Cole's article "Accusations of scandal, legal battle followed Felix Pedro to the grave"
http://www.newsminer.com/news/dermot_cole/accusations-of-scandal-legal-battle-followed-felix-pedro-to-the/article_7635918a-f112-11e2-a15e-001a4bcf6878.html

"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.

No University of the Aleut Nation: Thoughts upon hearing an interview with Claudio Saunt

The other day I listened to an interview with historian Professor Claudio Saunt on New Books in Native American Studies Podcast. The conversation between Professor Saunt, the co-director for the Center for Virtual History at the University of Georgia, and the interviewer Andrew Epstein concerned the historian's compelling new book West of the Revolution: An Uncommon History of 1776, published by W.W. Norton and Company. West of the Revolution examines 9 locations in the Americas amidst the pivotal year 1776, the founding year of the United States, by tracing the stories of people in these places as to contribute a greater understanding of the Americas at that moment in time. The work has received high praise for its creative linkages, being called "bold and inclusive" by Chicago Times reviewer Doug Kiel, among a list of other praises.

The work entails the global histories of many American groups interconnected by the year 1776. This  includes not only the colonists, who would come to call themselves Americans, but also the original Americans such as the Lakota, the Osage, and the Creek. In doing so, he makes the case for building a history decentered from the incubating nation-state for a more inclusive notion of America. For example, the work accounts the Osages' movements into Spanish controlled parts of the continent and Creek participation in Cuban trade.

In the first chapter "Soft Gold: Aleuts and Russians in Alaska," Saunt traces the history of a small group of Unangax̂ people, whom Russian colonists called Americans, then labled them Aleuts. Here he reads the story of 7 Unangax̂ men whom traveled 2500 miles with Russian funcationaries across the Bering to Eurasia. After their arrival two Aleuts decided to return home with 5 staying on to haul a cache of sea otter pelts another freezing 750 miles to the city of Irkutsk, a Russian border town. This site served as a place where the pelts of both sea otter and beaver could be sold to Chinese merchants. I recommend anyone interested in the imbrications of Unangax̂ people, and global supply chains to read this book.

During the New Books in Native American Studies interview Saunt makes the case for approaching American history in such a way as to place the nation-state along side the rest of American history. "Even today," he observes, "I think so many of us are parochial in the way we the way we imagine North America and of course the U.S. in the broader world." He suggests moving beyond the structure of feeling that American history should be defined solely in regard to the history of the United States. To allow American history to become lodged within that frail framework is "....something" he says, "we all need to fight against." History outside the systems of ideas that manufacture national experience as solitary to the history that took place throughout the continent proves paramount for the study of national history. "In a very practical sense, if we are going to write about American history, " Saunt asserts, "then we need to write about the places the United States took over." In the uncovering of this past comes an understanding that the nation-state fails to eclipse the histories of America that have long gone unnoticed due to the narrative of westward expansion as the dominant paradigm.

Great resource! (found in an Oakland bookstore)

Saunt makes the case for this approach to history by elaborating on just what institutions exist for pursuing this type of work. "There is no university dedicated to the Aleut nation," he tells Epstein, continuing to say, "the resources don't exist." The task and responsiblity to produce this broad American history sits with scholars because, he contends, "Aleut" communities are without resources to support their own research institutions. If one lends a quick read to Barbara Švarný Carlson's "There is No Such Thing as an Aleut" one can see that Saunt's case for scholars to incorporate these complex cultures and histories into American history holds the possibility enriching an already exciting field of knowledge. I think in doing so would help alleviate the formable obstacles many Alaska Natives have with seeing their historical participation in the formation and operation of the United States in Alaska. Moreover, he powerfully declares that, "If its (the project to document American history) not going to be done by the institutions in the United States then its not going to be done." In other words, he's saying that the people known as Aleuts are an important part of the United States and to iqnore their part in history is to do a remarkable disservice to their communities and to the stories that constitute the American past.

Of course "Aleut" people as Alaska Natives are part of the United States and the nation's resources are also "Aleut" resources, but I think he is suggesting that institutions throughout the nation should be supportive of projects and scholars who are pursuing the types of research programs that are inclusive of indigenous people. Speaking to that, as a graduate of Benny Benson Secondary School who went on to do this type of work I can say that countless people have selflessly extended their hands my direction and helped me cobble together a research program and a personal archive of materials. However, according to the work of Professors Alberta Jones and Jessica Bisset Perea there is still plenty of work required to bring Alaska Natives and their programs into the national academy. Yet, there are a handful of Alaska Native scholars sprinkled through the "lower-48" who are doing excellent work. Within Alaska institutions like, University of Alaska Anchorage's Alaska Native Studies Program Kodiak College's Alutiiq Studies Program The University of Alaska Southeast's Native Studies program, and University of Alaska Fairbanks' Cross-Cultural and Indigenous Studies Program are all in the midst of pushing great work forward.

I want to applaud Professor Saunt for writing this book and to New Books for the awesome interview.

"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.  

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. 

The Naturalization of the Great Land: "A confidence in our destiny."

Alaska Film Archives, University of Alaska, Fairbanks Elmer E. Rasmuson Papers 

Identifier AAF-8902

"What does it mean to be an Alaskan?" In 1968 Elmer Rasmunson rhetorically asked this question to an audience of children at a regional elementary school in the filming of this political advertisement. His explanation of Alaskan identity as "being born free" provides a moment for understanding how non-Native people imagined their lives in Alaska at the time. A campaign commercial, this one minute film was produced by lifelong Alaska resident Elmer Rasmuson (a banker, philanthropist, and politician) as he sought a bid for the U.S. Senate. Born in Yukatat, he spent his life tirelessly serving the Alaska community in a host of ways. He was the mayor of Anchorage during the city's reconstruction after the earthquake, a member of the board of regents at University of Alaska, and a dedicated philanthropist. Upon his passage he left his fortune to charity, establishing the Rasmunson Foundation. His good will and selfless service to community proves admirable and can be seen in his efforts here to include a brief lesson about Native people and language in regard to explaining how the word Alaska equates, in English, to meaning the "Great Land." The broader read of this film shouldn't undermine his integral devotion to the well-being of all Alaskans, past or present.

The film tells us that Alaskans "live free" and their ability to "contemplate the outdoors" help produced their exceptional character amid the 1960s. They held, the film argues, "a confidence in [their] destiny that [came] from shaping the new land." Along with the "shaping" of the "new land" Alaskans spent time "harvesting the seas for the human betterment." This service to humanity in turn lent Alaskans an "optimism" and "faith" in the future. The term the "new land" referenced the United States tacit investment in Alaska as the Last Frontier. For besides the "Great Land," Alaska was also known in this way. The Last Frontier embodied a place where the nation could "shape the land" and "harvest the sea" as it had done a hundred years earlier in where now sits the contiguous western part of the nation. The concept of the Last Frontier served as an extension of the western frontier invented in the nineteenth century during the nation's expansion across the continent to the Pacific shoreline. Building on the Last Frontier the national imagination could make a rightful operation of the continued mid-twentieth century Alaska project.

Alaska was not a new land to indigenous people of the region. For them, Alaska proved a geography of origin where the land and sea shaped their histories and cultures previous to statehood. This is apparent through Rasmunson's discussion about the word Alaska as possessing a Native root. There is an implication here that Alaska would be impossible without Native people. Undoubtedly, he grew up beside indigenous people, shared in their culture, and as a regional leader felt an obligation towards representing Native populations. Under that consideration, he should be applauded for taking what could been seen as a political risk in this acknowledgement. Native children, on the other hand, were forbidden to speak their languages in school. During the 20th century public policy forced indigenous kids to speak English and to quit learning their indigenous languages (or other languages they may have known). That is the intriguing part about the film, that children were being taught the meaning of the word Alaska yet in real life Native students faced an educational regime discouraging this type of knowledge. Schools set to normalize national belief systems and somehow reset indigenous culture to operate under a new set of rules. The long term success of this broad project is debatable but its results have been very harmful.

Truly one of the challenges in working with Native history lies in discentering these chronotopic notions of the frontier, or the "new land," that guide and police scholarship. Histories to regions like Alaska began before national settlement, or western exploration, and indigenous people as part of these histories operate under expansive cultures which may or may not reflect the set of ideologies that were imposed to naturalize the nation in the 'Great Land." With that in mind, I do think that he does impart some reasonable advice: "If you're going to live up to the name of our state," he suggests in the film, "you have to think big and act big."