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Alaska Natives are the indigenous peoples of Alaska. They include: Aleut, Inuit, Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, Eyak, and a number of Northern
Athabasca cultures. Alaskan natives in Alaska number about 119,241 (as of the 2000 census).
There are 229 federally recognized Alaskan villages and five unrecognized
Tlingit Alaskan Indian tribes.
It is important to understand the diversity of
native Alaskan tribes which speak 20 different languages, belong to five
geographic areas, are organized under thirteen Alaska Native Regional
Corporations and have eleven different cultures. Alaskan natives make up 20%
of the population of the state of Alaska.
Alaska's indigenous people, who are jointly called Alaska
Natives, can be divided into five major groupings: Aleuts,
Northern Eskimos (Inupiat), Southern Eskimos (Yuit), Interior
Indians (Athabascans) and Southeast Coastal Indians (Tlingit and
Haida). These groupings are based on broad cultural and
linguistic similarities of peoples living contiguously in
different regions of Alaska. They do not represent political or
tribal units nor are they the units Native people have
traditionally used to define themselves.
At the time of contact with Russian explorers in the mid-18th
century, Alaska was occupied by approximately 80,000 indigenous
people. The phrase "time of contact" means the earliest time
when a Native group had significant direct interaction with
Europeans. This time varied for different parts of Alaska;
therefore Alaskan Native groups have had somewhat different
historical experiences through their contact with Europeans and
Americans. In the early spring of 1942, when the Army Corps of
Engineers arrived to begin building the Alaska Highway, Alaska's
population was approximately 73,000. About half of those
residents were Native Alaskans, members of indigenous groups who
inhabited Alaska before it was colonized by Russia.
Alaska Natives have varied cultures and have adapted to harsh
environments for thousands of years. They are as far north as
Barrow and as far south as Ketchikan. Today, Alaska Natives
account for just over 15 percent of the total Alaskan population
of approximately 648,000 people. Since the 1960s and 1970s,
aboriginal autonomy has rebounded in Alaska. The Alaska Native
Claims Settlement Act of 1971 officially ended native land
ownership claims while creating regional corporations that
administered approximately one-ninth of Alaskan territory; the
shareholders of the corporations are the native peoples. The
legal battles for rights to their ancestral land began a
revitalization of native society that is evident today.
Stretching like a rocky necklace from Asian to North America,
the Aleutian Islands and the nearby Alaska Peninsula are the
home of the Aleuts. The term "Aleut" was introduced by Russians
and comes originally from the Koryak or Chukchi languages of
Siberia; it appears to have been quickly adopted by the Aleut
people themselves.
The most diverse group of Alaskan Natives are the southern
Eskimos or Yuit, speakers of the Yup'ik languages. At the time
of contact, they were the most numerous of the Alaska Native
groups. Communities stretched from Prince William Sound on the
north Pacific Coast to St. Lawrence Island in the central Bering
Sea. The Yuit settled this vast region from west to east
reaching the Kodiak archipelago and Prince William Sound by
about 2,000 years ago.
Occupying the islands and mainland of southeast Alaska are
the northernmost groups of the Northwest Coast cultures; the
Tlingit and Haida Indians. They are well-known for their
distinctive art represented in totem poles and other elegantly
carved objects.
The Tlingit and Haida are more similar to Indians along the
coast of present day British Columbia than to other Alaskan
groups. The Tlingit occupied the vast majority of the area from
Yakutat Bay to Portland Canal while the Kaigani Haida, whose
Haida relatives occupied the Queen Charlotte Island off the
north coast of British Columbia, controlled the southern half of
the Prince of Wales archipelago. The two groups share similar
social and cultural patterns; however, their languages are
unrelated and they have distinct ethnic identities.
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