Anchorage Daily News

GAMBELL

POPULATION: 662

LOCATION: On the northwest cape of St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea, 200 miles southwest of Nome and 36 miles from the Chukotsk Peninsula, Siberia.

DESCRIPTION: A Siberian Yup'ik Eskimo community whose isolation has helped residents maintain their traditional culture, language and subsistence lifestyle. Residents, almost all of whom are bilingual, still use walrus-hide boats to hunt. The economy is based largely on the subsistence harvest of seal, walrus, fish and bowhead and gray whales. Some reindeer roam free, but most harvesting occurs out of the village of Savoonga. Ivory carving provides income. During the 2000 U.S. Census, more than 28 percent of the population was living below the official U.S. poverty level. There is one school attended by about 175 students.

HISTORY: St. Lawrence Island, jointly owned by Savoonga and Gambell, has been inhabited off and on for the past 2,000 years by both Alaska and Siberian Yup'ik Eskimos. In the 18th and 19th centuries, over 4,000 people inhabited the island in 35 villages. Sivuqaq -- the Yup'ik name for Gambell and for the island -- was renamed for Vene Gambell. During the 1930s, some residents moved to Savoonga permanently. The city of Gambell was incorporated in 1963. Gambell and Savoonga decided not to participate in the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act and instead chose title to more than one million acres of land in the former St. Lawrence Island Reserve.

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