The Politics of Alaska Native Arts and Culture Panel NAISA 2015

The Native American and Indigenous Studies Association (NAISA) 2015 Annual Meeting takes place from June 4-6 in Washington, DC, brought to life hosted by the National Congress of American Indians and other regional institutions. This year there are panels dedicated to Alaska Native Studies with other Alaska Native studies scholars in mixed panels. As 40 percent of the nation's tribes, I'm thrilled to see at all this work at the conference this year. Alaska specific things bolded, below. There maybe more, so we'll see.

2:00 PM – 3:45 PM Friday June 5 

063. Politics of Alaska Native Arts and Culture

Panel
4:00 to 5:45 pm
Hyatt Regency: Redwood Chair:
Thomas Michael Swensen, Colorado State University Participants:
“Propatriation: Tlingit Arts in the NAGPRA Era” Emily Moore, Colorado State University
“Arts and Oral Traditions: Engaging “Storywork” in Higher Education” Beth Leonard, University of
Alaska Fairbanks
“Uncovering a History of Art and Violence through Susie Silook’s The Anti-Depression Uliimaaq.”
Thomas Michael Swensen, Colorado State University 

Thursday June 4 

111. Indigenous Natural law and Natural Resource Governance: Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives
Panel
2:00 to 3:45 pm
Hyatt Regency: Concord
Chair:

TBD
Participants:
Establishing Indigenous Natural Law through Indigenous Ontology & Epistemology Molly Sparhawk, University of Alaska Fairbanks
Re-examining Treaty through Nêhiyaw pimâcihowin (Plains Cree Way of Life): Paulina Reghan
Johnson, Western University
Uncovering the Doctrine of Mana Moana to Better Articulate Maori rights to Water Victoria Skelton,
University of Auckland
Changing corporate culture: Indigenous influence on extractive companies via negotiated agreements
Julia Keenan, The University of Queensland 

Saturday June 6

10:00 AM – 11:45 AM Saturday June 6

158. Ecological Knowledge and Imagination
Paper Session
10:00 to 11:45 am
Hyatt Regency: Yellowstone Chair:
Nancy Van Styvendale, University of Saskatchewan Participants:
"I’m Gonna Buy Me an Island": Road Development and Environmental Criticism in Tomson Highway’s The Rez Sisters Cameron Paul, Univerity of British Columbia
Decolonizing Dispossession: Rethinking Adivasi Land Relations in a Decolonial-Feminist Frame Padini Nirmal, Clark University
Indigenous Knowledge, Oral History and Place: Collaborative Research in a Northern Northwest community Judith D Ramos, University of Alaska, Fairbanks
Views from the End of the World: Conservation Ethics in Leslie Marmon Silko’s Almanac of the Dead and Cormac McCarthy’s The Road Virginia Kennedy, PhD, Otsego Land Trust 

2:00 PM – 3:45 AM Saturday June 6 

162. Modernizing the Trust for Self-Determination: A Policy Forum on Indigenous Education in the U.S.
Roundtable

2:00 to 3:45 pm
Hyatt Regency: Columbia C Chair:
TBD
Presenters:Malia Villegas, National Congress of American IndiansWilliam Mendoza, White House Initiative on American Indian and Alaska Native Education Carrie Billy, American Indian Higher Education ConsortiumBrian McKinley Jones Brayboy, Arizona State University 

2:00-3:45 Saturday June 6

164. Resisting Boundaries
Paper Session
2:00 to 3:45 pm
Hyatt Regency: Congressional D Chair:
Dina Gilio-Whitaker, Center for World Indigenous Studies Participants:
Beading and Walking Sovereignty: Dene Resurgence against Canadian Sovereignty Kelsey Wrightson, University of British Columbia
Indigenous Nations Challenging Transnationalism: Anishinaabe Narratives Crossing and Creating Borders in Northern Minnesota Nicholas Cragoe, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Indigenous (Im)Mobility and the Borderlands of North America Levin Arnsperger, Emory University Between Empires and Frontiers: Alaska Native Sovereignty, Statehood, and U.S. Settler Imperialism
Jessica Leslie Arnett, University of Minnesota 

4:00 PM – 5:45 Saturday June 6
176. Diasporic Times: Complicating Space-Based Approaches to Native American and Indigenous Diasporas
Panel
4:00 to 5:45 pm
Hyatt Regency: Bryce
Chair:
TBD
Participants:
Will Rogers’ Occupations: Temporal Diaspora through Performance Bethany Hughes, Northwestern
University
Remembering Aleut Internment in World War II Alaska Holly Guise, Yale University
Eradication Nation: Disrupting the Time of Settler-Colonialism in Simon Ortiz’s From Sand Creek and Sherwin Bitsui’s Flood Song Christopher Pexa, Cornell University
“A Meeting Place for All”: Cultural Production and Embodied Resistance at Haskell’s 1926
Homecoming and Powwow Beth Eby, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign 
Comment:
Jeane Breinig, University of Alaska, Anchorage 

Debt and Alaska Native Cooperatives

Alaska Natives possessed a variety of formal organizations before and during the implementation of IRA-based (and styled) tribal governments and ANCSA Native-operated corporations. One of these formations, cooperatives, formed in villages as instruments to bring Natives into an emerging regional economy set-up by new comers. The cooperatives came as the US business interests increasing developed enterprises that extracted natural resources such as timber and sea life from the region. In doing so, the businesses quite often blocked Native access to traditional resource sites, altering the very life ways of these Native communities. One of the consequences of being forced from traditional lifeways was that Indigenous individuals funneled into the asymmetric employment conditions of cannery work. Often governing structures possessed legally consigned financial instruments for bringing Native people into the US economy, and Native people with few options had to participate.

Native houses at the Naknek Packing Co. Cannery.UAA-hmc-0186-volume4-3795

Even before the changes in Indian Reorganization Act to include Alaska Natives, the government enrolled Native individuals into chartered stock companies. Drawing from previous posts on this blog, many Natives once indoctrinated into the reindeer herding business then faced compulsory ownership in the reindeer industry. As active investors in industry, the worked to turn a fair profit on their labor.

Two men, Frank Seppilu and Irving Ifkohluk, sit at the entrance of a tent, counting reindeer. 
Collection: O. C. and Ruth Connelly, 1938-1941.UAA-hmc-0562-53 c

Also in 1936 under provision 17 of the IRA, Native communities could organized as cooperative associations. Legal scholars David Case and David Voluck assert that these cooperatives brought together Native individuals by way of their "common occupation," rather than their "strict geographic residence." That is, the cooperatives activated in the spaces of labor activities brought together Natives through their involvement in the new territorial work force for what was surely promised to be measurable profits.

Above is a newspaper article I found while conducting archival work for my current book project. From 1954, the piece talks about how the southeastern Alaska Native cooperative canneries were in "bad shape" and suffered losses and that the "loan" programs toward these communities had "to this date not been successful." The interesting part of the cooperative business plan was that these ventures were financed through a government loan program. If these Native labor associations couldn't pay their loans then they suffered incredible amounts of debt, owed to the federal government. The article describes how some of these cooperatives were defaulting on hundreds of thousands of dollars. In the mid-20th century the burden of debt became a way to organize Native communities, under the instrument of the 'cooperative' in the mid-20th century.

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.

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. 

Alaska Native Border Studies

A few years back I was delivering one of my first professional conference papers, entitled "Domesticating the Last Frontier," when an audience member earnestly questioned, what was the last frontier? I said, "Alaska." In turn the scholar replied, "Oh, you mean Palin-ville," shaking their head and causing a slight round of laughter across the room. The scholar was of course referring to Sarah Palin, who at the time, served as the governor of Alaska. The essay I was presenting was about the construction of Alaska as a "wilderness" that the nation would over time come to "domesticate" through settlement, a process displacing Native communities. The presentation had little to do with the polarizing figure so to stay on topic I shrugged and read the essay. Years later upon recounting this antidote to the Director of the American Indian Studies program at UIUC (giving credit to where it is due) at the time, he suggested that when people ask me about the former governor I should tell them I'm not a "Palin-tologist." This one-liner proves one of my favorite jokes and could be useful for any scholar active in Alaska Native studies.

Watch at your own risk

The greater public grew all too familiar with Sarah Palin in the 2008 presidential campaign when she acted as vice-presidential running-mate in John McCain's bid for president. I was busily composing a dissertation as the events unfolded and grew as bewildered as anyone else to the campaign's eerie journey. Please forgive me, but I would like to use an interview segment of one of Palin's many and infamous moments to draw out the issue of border studies and Alaska Natives. If you are faint of heart and the clip is too much, let me explain that during an ABC television interview Sarah Palin claimed that, "You can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska." This assertion made the American public uproar with criticism. Below is a photo of the governmental demarcation between Alaska and Siberia that also acts as the international dateline.

International Dateline between Siberia and America. Imaginary International dateline drawn on iceberg between Big Diomede and Little Diomede Islands. Identifier AMRC-b88-3-191

One international border adjacent to Alaska consists of a maritime division with Russia while the other to the east, trails across the continent forming a division between Alaska and Canada. This political map above displays the two demarcations. The graphic additionally leaves one unable to see how the international dateline divides the Aleutian Chain islands under both Russian and U.S. jurisdictions. In contrast, the Alaska Native language map below reveals the trans-Bering and transnational aspect of "Alaska Native" culture. Reading the map, Siberian Yupik and "Aleut" folks possess cultures that extend across the international dateline to the west. The Inupiaq and the inland indigenous cultures, as well as the southeastern groups articulate over the border to Canada.

http://www.uaf.edu/anla/collections/map/

"This unfortified boundary line between the Dominion of Canada and the United States of America should quicken the remembrance of the more than a century old friendship between these countries, a lesson of peace to all nations. Erected August 4 1957 Kiwanis International.Identifier UAF-2006-131-27

During the presidential campaign the discussion of the governor's ability to see Russia concerned her foreign policy experience. After this initial comment she continued making statements to the press about military air patrols guarding the nation's most western border, keeping the nation safe. In contrast, the plaque above makes visible an issue Alaska Natives studies shares with those who have interests in Mexican-U.S. border studies, the militaristic border between Alaska and Russia in comparison to the "unfortified" border between the state and Canada. This low-intensity conflict with Russia grew from the rise of the Cold War, after the region became fortified amid World War II. Many communities became divided as the the nation strengthened the border to Russia. In contrast to the eastern border with Canada which is less invested in such enterprise. The international dateline came into existence with the Alaska Purchase. leaving a reasonable amount of work that can be done exploring various issues involving Alaska Native border studies.

Recent developments along the Mexican-U.S. border have many members of the public questioning if the use of drones to patrol the border is good idea. I'm unsure if drones are being used along the U.S.-Russian border but the link below leads to a discussion about the use of drones in the Arctic. And this video clip discusses they can monitor the Trans-Alaska pipeline.

http://www.nbcnews.com/science/drones-handle-all-kinds-work-arctic-theres-lots-more-do-8C11012648

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."

The Distance Between November 6, 1971 and December 18, 1971

On November 6, 1971 the United States military detonated the 5-megaton Cannikin nuclear device deep in the earth at Amchitka Island, Alaska. They were testing the effectiveness of the weapon's design as well as new tools made for measuring seismic shifts. This explosion stands as the largest in national history and many feared it would create earthquakes throughout the region. The apprehension was due to Amchitka, or Amchixtax̂, sitting on the Aleutian chain, along the tectonic trench that allows a warm current to flow from the waters proximal to Japan up to Kodiak beaches. The island, previously inhabited for thousands of years, lies approximately 1300 miles southwest of Anchorage Alaska, bordering on the United States side of the chain. Cannikin was the final of three tests on Amchitka and its detonation coincided with the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act December 18, 1971 (43 U.S.C. 1601). The settlement proved the most considerable agreement the nation had contracted with an Indigenous group. Through the nullification of Alaska Native claims to land and water rights the public law established village and regional corporations to manage lands (parcels not transferred to state and federal holdings through the agreement) in fee-simple status. The clip below presents the Cannikin detonation on Amchitka. Watch the ground rumble and consider the shock the sea mammals felt as it relayed through the water. 

The distance of weeks between Cannikin and the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act proves haunting to say the least. The explosion embodied the peak of the nation's technological progress-narrative. In a blast 400 times larger than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima, "little boy," it was reportedly without injury to humans. Not accounting for the other damages to the island nor the living creatures on or around it, there are reports that Cannikin claimed the lives of thousands of sea otters, a mammal important for the subsistence traditions of "Aleut" cultures. Relationally, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act opened the Alaska region for oil companies and other businesses interested in resource extraction and exploitation. That the government detonated the bomb previous to the passage of the settlement reverberates an uncanny symbol for the transfer of Native occupancy rights to the nation. What must have Native leaders thought when they witnessed the explosion on television or read about in newspapers? Did it lend a coercive element to the settlement process? Were they even informed of the development? The parallels with Cannikin and the Alaska Native Claims settlement to other events in the nation's history are numerous. To list a few, analogies to Hiroshima, Wounded Knee, and the Bear River Massacre abound.

The archive reveals this personal photograph below of Nick Neuzorof (left), Inokenty Golodov (right). They are two Unangax̂, Unangan, men working on the island in 1961. During World War II Amchitka was at the heart of the pacific theater of battle between the United States and Japan. For a host of reasons brought on through national authority by the early 1940s Native folks no longer resided there, nor used the island as a place for subsistence practices. After the war the island hosted ports, landing strips, and communications systems left over from the war. In the birth of the Cold War the government began considering the island for nuclear tests in the 1950s. By the early 1960s plans were underway for the first test in 1965. Mr. Neuzorof and Mr. Golodov were apparently employed by one these enterprises on the island. Beneath that photograph is another taken over a decade later of Bureau of Indian Affairs official Bert Bauer, paying Billy B. Johnson, in the role of representing the 13th corporation, over 7 million dollars for the extinguishment of land claims with the nation. How may have the Cannikin bomb influenced the settlement process?

Nick & Innokenty, Amchitka Island, Nick Neuzorof (left), Inokenty Golodov (right), Aleut.
Steve McCutcheon Collection
Identifier AMRC-B1990-014-5-AKNative-27-50 circa. 1961

"Handing over the first money the 13th received."
Collection Billy Blackjack Johnson Papers, 1923-1997. UAA-HMC-0384
Identifier UAA-hmc-0384-s3-f10-3
(Some point in the 1970s) 

While the research for this blog dilates Alaska Native studies the obvious connection point between Cannikin and the Alaska Native Claims Settlement in the archive lies with the late senator from Alaska, Ted Stevens. Stevens invested his long life with decades of service to Alaska and the claims settlement was a paramount contribution he helped engineer into regional history. Below is a one-minute clip with Stevens discussing the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act in regard to a debate in 1992 about Native subsistence practices.

Here is the Senator, one of many photographs, touring the facilities and grounds on Amchitka in 1971, before the nuclear detonation and the Alaska Native Claims Settlement fashioned into law.

Sen. Stevens, Amchitka, Atomic blast project.
Steve McCutcheon, McCutcheon Collection, Anchorage Museum, B1990.14.5.Pol.4.237 

Another photograph places the senator with two unnamed Unangax̂, Unangan, workers at Cannikin also in 1971. The younger man is the foreground wears a nylon jacket while the Senator adorns a fur coat. The fondness of nylon jackets by Native people of that generation always makes me smile, even in a foreboding image as this. I'd imagine they're hard to find these days.

"Sen. Ted Stevens w[ith] Aleuts of St. Paul, atomic blast project."
Identifier: AMRC-B1990-014-5-Pol-04-231
Steve McCutcheon, McCutcheon Collection, Anchorage Museum, B1990.14.5.Pol.4.231

The detonation and the settlement present an interesting riddle. Growing into adulthood I learned more than just the basics about Alaska Native Claims settlement Act through lived experience but only through research have I scratched upon the profundity of the relationship the settlement possesses with the nuclear tests.