Alaska Native/Native American Heritage Month

Agnes Cusma was interviewed on June 24, 1998 by Karen Evanoff Stickman in Nondalton, Alaska. In this interview, Agnes talks about the traditional Dena'ina lifestyle in the Lake Clark region where they lived off the land by hunting, fishing and trapping, and learned skills from their elders. She also talks about the types of houses they lived in, plants they used for medicine, Native sport hunting guides, the methods of transportation used, and the trails people used to get around the area.

Ben Nungasak (Nuŋŋasauraq) was interviewed on March 15, 1982 by Bill Schneider and Wendy Arundale at his home in Barrow, Alaska (now known as Utqiaġvik) for the Chipp-Ikpikpuk and Meade Rivers Oral History Project. Alice Solomon was the Iñupiaq language translator during the interview. In this first part of a two part interview, Ben talks about growing up living a traditional subsistence lifestyle based upon hunting, trapping, fishing, and seasonal movements, his work history, and camps he remembers on the Meade River.

In the turbulence of war, in a place where survival was just short of miraculous, the Aleuts of Alaska would redefine themselves -- and America. From indentured servitude and isolated internment camps, to Congress and the White House, this is the incredible story of the Aleuts' decades-long struggle for human and civil rights.

Cory Mann (Tlingit) is a quirky businessman hustling to make a dollar in Juneau, Alaska. He gets hungry for smoked salmon and decides to spend a summer smoking fish at a family's traditional fish camp. The unusual story of his life and the untold history of his people interweave with the process of preparing traditional food as he struggles to pay his bills and keep his business afloat.

The story of Elizabeth Peratrovich, a Tlingit Indian mother of three, who testified before the Alaska Territorial Senate in 1945 and swayed the floor vote with her compelling testimony in favor of the passage of the Anti-Discrimination Act, the first civil rights bill passed in the United States since the Civil War.

Documents the lives of people who have occupied the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region of western Alaska for about three thousand years. Explores how both Yup'ik youth and elders have tried to balance a traditional subsistence lifestyle with a modern way of life.

Celebrated every Thanksgiving as the Indians who saved the Pilgrims from starvation, and then largely forgotten, the Wampanoag Tribes of Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard are now saying loud and clear, and in their Native tongue, 'As Nutayunean,' - We Still Live Here. Spurred on by their celebrated linguist, Jessie Little Doe Baird, recent winner of a MacArthur `genius' award, the Wampanoag are bringing their language home.

Discusses the ways in which our government, economy, agriculture, medicine, language, & legal system have been influenced by Native American contributions.