Alaska
The U.S. state of Alaska is located in the northwest corner of North America, west
of
British Columbia and
Yukon Territory, and east of Russian Siberia. At 943,739 km
2 (about 365,000,000 acres), Alaska is the largest U.S. state, with over 54,000 km
of coastline that touches the North Pacific Ocean, Bering Sea, Beaufort Sea, Chukchi
Sea, and the Arctic Ocean; its western and southern borders span 2,500 km running
adjacent to Canada.
1The name Alaska, an English corruption of the original name,
has a complicated etymology.2 It originates from the Aleut (Unangan) wordaláxsxaq,
which refers to an object to which the sea is directed--in this case an island or
peninsula; it also translates as to Alyeksa, which means great land.
3 From Alyeksa, the Russians derived names for the Alaskan peninsula, “Aliaska,” and
the territory as a whole, “Alashka.”4 The current variation of the name “Alaska” follows from the same etymology, rooted
in the Eskaleut language family.5
The Russian explorer Vitus Bering is credited as the first non-Indigenous visitor
to present-day Alaska, in
1741.
6 Spanish explorer Juan Perez followed in
1774, and
Captain James Cook arrived in
1776.
7 The Russian explorer and fur trader Grigorii Shelikhov, who established the Shelikhov-Golikov
Company, established the first non-Indigenous settlement in
1784.
8 Alaska became the last major confluence of Empire in the North Pacific. In
1867, Alaska was sold by the Russians to the United States, where it existed variously
as a District, Department, and Territory until statehood was granted in
1959.
Many Indigenous Peoples continue to live in Alaska, with histories dating back at
least 10,000 years.9 Within western classifications, there are five distinct groups of Indigenous Peoples
within Alaska: Northwest Coast Indians, Inupiaqs (In Canada, Inuit), Yupiks, Aleuts,
and Athabascans.10 Many of these groups’ traditional territories have been divided by the creation of
arbitrary borders: Richard Osburn describes these disjointed territories as divided
by artificial lines.
11 The “Northwest Coast Indians” comprised of the Haida, Tlingit, and Tshimshian Peoples,
as well as the Inupiaq, Yupik, and Athabaskan Peoples, continue to exist within a
complex geopolitical sphere of influence amongst the United States, Russia and Canada.12 Indigenous Peoples comprise approximately 16% of the Alaska's total population of
736,239.13
In the collection, many of the documents on Alaska reveal anxieties caused by an increased
American presence within the territory. For example, in
this despatch,
Governor Frederick Seymour discusses rumours of annexation by the United States and the unprecedentedly high
number of Americans flooding over the border. In a follow-up
despatch, Seymour goes on to explain that the “Indians” have,
regrettably,
taken up the English flag in opposition to their new American administrators.
- 1. Geography, State of Alaska.
- 2. Ella Higginson, Alaska: The Great Country, (New York: The Macmillan Co, 1912).
- 3. Alaska State Names (Etymology of Names), eReferenceDesk.com.
- 4. Higginson, Alaska: The Great Country.
- 5. Unangan (Native Americans of the Arctic), What-When-How.com.
- 6. Merle Colby, A Guide to Alaska: Last American Frontier. (Toronto: Macmillan, 1939).
- 7. Ibid.
- 8. Ibid.
- 9. Alaska Natives, State of Alaska.
- 10. Ibid.
- 11. Richard Osburn. 2000. Problems and Solutions regarding Indigenous Peoples Split by International Borders, American Indian Law Review 24, no. (2): 471.
- 12. Alaska Natives, State of Alaska.
- 13. Geography, State of Alaska.