The First Alaskans Institute has announced the keynote speakers for the 2017 the 34th Elders and Youth Conference, which begins Oct. 16, just ahead of the Alaska Federation of Natives in Anchorage.
Alaska Native Arts & Culture
Tlingit poet and scholar Nora Marks Dauenhauer, 90, was culture bearer
A fluent Tlingit speaker, Dauenhauer made countless contributions to the study and preservation of the language and oral tradition.
A piece of history, culture comes home to Southeast
Tribal leaders from around Southeast Alaska gathered Sept. 14 in Sitka to welcome home a Chilkat robe associated with one of the most famous figures in modern Alaskan history.
Pre-K in Igiugig is all in Yup’ik
Four kids toddle around a cozy room. There are all the items typical for a pre-kindergarten classroom — stuffed animals, puzzles and teachers. The puzzles are the kind with a hole cut out for each piece, and each piece is labeled in Yup’ik.
Juneau business showcases diverse artists’ work in postcard contest
Kindred Post owner Christy Namee Eriksen, her staff and other community members whittled 250 entries down to 10 winners, with a priority on artists who’ve been social marginalized. Their work will be sold in a run of 1,000 postcards in October.
After 87 years in a Smithsonian collection, bones of Igiugig ancestors return home
In 1931, a Smithsonian anthropologist excavated the bones of 24 men, women and children from a village site near Igiugig. After eight decades in the museum’s collection, those remains were reburied near their original places of rest.
NASA Mars mission gets an assist from Delta-grown engineer
Thousands of miles to the south of us, engineers at NASA are hard at work on the NeMO Mission, the next orbiter mission to Mars. They got a little help this summer from an engineering intern from Bethel, and something called the Muktuk Plot.
World’s largest collection of Yup’ik and Cup’ik videos becoming available online
The collection captures glimpses of nearly a half-century of life on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, and for the first time it’s available to anyone searching the web.
In Quinhagak, an ivory carver pays tribute to the ancients’ work
An exhausted team of archaeologists on the Bering Sea coast just finished their dig at Nunalleq for the year after uncovering hundreds of artifacts. They plan to return to the 700-year-old village next summer, provided the winter storms don’t wash it away.
Archaeologists shed light on Tlingit culture near Petersburg, before Europeans
The current town site was established around 1900 by Norwegians looking for a good spot to process fish commercially. But archaeologists are finding more evidence that Mitkof Island is just like others in the region. Tlingit people had settlements around Petersburg for thousands of years before Europeans planted their roots.