Native Culture

PHOTOS

Heritage Center opens with Mother's Day event

The Alaska Native Heritage Center celebrated the opening of its 13th summer season on Sunday with its annual Mother's Day event. The center is now open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. daily. The East Anchorage cultural center and museum helps visitors expand their understanding of Alaska's indigenous people.

Photos: Alaska Native Heritage Center opening

Young filmmaker hopes to capture the spirituality of Orthodox Natives in the North

Dmitry Trakovsky wasn't quite sure what he'd seen when he visited Alaska last August. The 26-year-old moviemaker from California had gotten on the art film map with his first feature documentary, "Meeting Andrei Tarkovsky," which premiered at the Film Society of Lincoln Center in 2009.

'Strong Man' retells Tlingit tales for modern life

In the Tlingit story of Strong Man, the hero Dukt'ootl grows up building his strength until one day he is ready to become a leader of his people.

Preserving Native languages target of bill

Linguists and Native groups from across Alaska are lining up behind a proposal aimed at preserving and revitalizing the state's 20 Native languages.

Alaskan is carving totem for Smithsonian

The Smithsonian Institution has commissioned David Boxley of Metlakatla to carve a 22-foot-tall totem pole that will be installed at the National Museum of the American Indian.

Bronze artifact found on Alaska's Seward Peninsula

A research team is attempting to discover the origin of a cast bronze artifact excavated from an Inupiat Eskimo homesite believed to be about 1,000 years old.

Kotzebue teen leads the charge to prevent Alaska suicides

Mt. Edgecumbe High School senior Tessa Baldwin knows all too well about the staggering suicide rate among Alaska Natives. Baldwin, a 17-year-old from Kotzebue, was 5 when she saw her uncle take his own life.

AFN hearing airs Alaska suicide issues

UAA anthropologist's discoveries rewrite history of Aleutian society

More than 25 years have passed since Diane Hanson, as a young anthropology graduate student, reported to the Alaska Anthropological Association about one Adak archaeological site that wasn’t in the usual place — along the Aleutian coastline

Video: Field work at an archaeological site

Video: YouTube channel for "Central Aleutian Archaeology"

Facebook page: "Central Aleutians Upland Archaeological Project"

Athabascan matriarch Hannah Solomon remembered

A red rose atop a pink and blue crocheted pillow marked an empty pew seat at St. Matthew's Episcopal Church that was occupied for many years by Athabascan matriarch Hannah Solomon.

Researchers find ancient artifacts in Alaska

University of Alaska Fairbanks officials say researchers have discovered ancient artifacts in northwest Alaska.

uafnews.com: See photos from the expedition

Alaska artist John Hoover dead at 91 in Washington

John Hoover, one of Alaska's most respected and revered artists, died in Washington state on Saturday morning. He was 91. Hoover's large sculptural work is a familiar sight at the Egan Civic and Convention Center, the Alaska Native Medical Center and the Alaska Native Heritage Center in Anchorage.

FIRST OF TWO PARTS

Warming Greenland means lifestyle changes

The winter sea ice that defined Greenlander life for millennia is melting and it's the southerners who did it, as Jean Malaurie's Inuit foretold long before science showed industrial emissions were warming the planet -- the Arctic twice as fast as the rest of the world. "Greenland is experiencing some of the most severe environmental impacts," social researcher Lene Kielsen Holm concludes in a preliminary report on a north-to-south survey of Greenlanders.

Photos: Greenland - the melting Siku

Teen sings in Yup'ik to help preserve language

Alyson McCarty speaks Latin. She knows a little Greek and few words of Spanish. But when the 14-year-old sings, she sings in her mother's language of Yup'ik.

Photos: Alyson McCarty

Video: McCarty sings 'When I Was Lonely'

Native Center visitors go to the dogs -- on wheels

Fourteen strapping sled dogs in harness are spending their summer pulling tourists around the Alaska Native Heritage Center. But the contraption to which they are hooked would have the ghost of Balto shaking his head.

Subsistence salmon fishing cut on Yukon

Federal managers have limited subsistence fishing on the Yukon River because this summer's king salmon run is weaker than average

Canoe found in Southeast may be 500 years old

A centuries-old Haida canoe has been discovered near the Prince of Wales Island village of Kasaan, Sealaska Corp. announced Tuesday. Work on the nearly 34-foot vessel may have stopped around the same time that Columbus sailed from Spain.

Anchorage is Alaska's biggest Native 'village,' census shows

Anchorage has long been known as "Alaska's biggest Native village." With new numbers from the U.S. Census Bureau, the city can claim, more specifically, to be home to both the largest Yup'ik and largest Inupiat communities.

Educators work to preserve endangered Alaska languages

Young people embrace ancestral languages in texts, raps

Technology, long considered a threat to regional languages, now is being seen as a way to keep young people from forsaking their native tongues for dominant languages. YouTube and Facebook, as well as Internet radio and cell phone texting, are helping minority language groups stave off death.

Videos: YouTube Enduring Voices channel

Living Tongues Institute for Endangered Languages

Educators work to preserve endangered Alaska languages

If Alaska's Native languages vanish in the next generation, it won't be because people didn't work to keep them alive.

Young people embrace ancestral languages in texts, raps

Languages dying off around the globe

Some linguists say that languages are disappearing at the rate of two a month. Half of the world's remaining 7,000 or so languages may be gone by the end of this century, pushed into disuse by English, Spanish and other dominating languages.

Educators work to preserve endangered Alaska languages

Young people embrace ancestral languages in texts, raps

Unexploded shell found in Kake is a blast from past

Della Cheney remembers playing with a family heirloom growing up in Kake, a rather strange-looking metallic object that wasn't easily moved about. The heirloom? a roughly 12-inch long, 30-pound unexploded round of ammunition fired by the U.S. military on the village more than 140 years ago.