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History lessons

Learn about Alaska's culture, from Natives to Bush planes

By STEVE EDWARDS
sedwards@adn.com

Published: April 24th, 2008
Last Modified: April 24th, 2008 at 09:30 AM

Alaska isn't a million miles from anywhere else on the planet. At times, it just feels that way.

Now imagine if you were one of the Native people settling the Great Land thousands of years ago. Or perhaps one of the prospectors searching for riches in gold-producing streams at the turn of the 20th century. Or maybe one of the state's early bush pilots flying across wide-open spaces.

Alaska has a unique cultural history. Thankfully, Anchorage has a number of museums and other facilities that can help the traveler get a good perspective with a minimal investment of time.

Two of the most popular destinations in town are the Alaska Native Heritage Center and the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center. The two offer a combined ticket for summer visitors and a shuttle between the two locations. A combined ticket is $24.95.

The Alaska Native Heritage Center, 8800 Heritage Center Drive, brings village life into Alaska's biggest and busiest city. Many activities are scheduled during the day, sharing insight into the state's 11 cultural groups, which are divided into five main groupings: Athabascan (Southcentral and Interior); Aleut and Alutiiq (Aleutians and Southcentral maritime); Inupiaq and St. Lawrence Island Yupik (north and northwest); Eyak, Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian (Southeast); and Yup'ik and Cup'ik (southwest).

"When people hear the beat of the drum and they walk into the Gathering Place, it is an undeniable attraction," said Melissa Saunders, the center's director of sales and marketing. "After that, they can go out into the villages and talk with the people, see them face to face. The person may tell them, 'I am from here, my family picks berries here, this is what we do, this is the tool we use.'

"The Heritage Center stands out as a cultural center. People are stepping into the past when they walk down a tunnel into a subterranean house. Misconceptions are blown away."

The Gathering Place is a hub of activity at the center. Drumming, Native dancing, Native games demonstrations and storytelling all are based at the Gathering Place. Other inside activities include the Hall of Cultures, which features exhibits and Alaska Native artists creating and selling art. The theater hosts a variety of movies throughout the day, including "Stories Given, Stories Shared," a film about Alaska's Native cultures, the state's landscape and unique climates.

Outside at the 26-acre complex are six authentic, life-sized Native dwellings. Each village site has a traditional structure and artifacts that each culture used in its daily life. Saunders said guided tours are available, but guests are welcome to walk through the villages at their leisure.

"There are one or two hosts at every site to talk with visitors," Saunders said. "If they're in the Aleut village, we try to have an Aleut or an Alutiiq host.

"They talk about the tools they use. They talk about the house, why it was made the way it was made. They talk about the items they had in the home."

Several special programs are planned throughout the summer, including July's Fish Camp Day, where Native elders show how the different cultures cut salmon and put it up for storage.

The Heritage Center (www.alaska native.net, 330-8000) is open daily, and admission is $23.50 for adults and $15.95 for children ages 7 to 16.

The Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center, 121 W. Seventh Ave., offers other insights into Alaska's rich history.

Visitors should head upstairs to the museum's Alaska Gallery to begin their historical trip.

The gallery's timeline begins in 1648 and travels through the European discovery of Alaska, the history of the Russians, the history of whaling, the Gold Rush era, World War II, the 1964 Good Friday earthquake and the trans-Alaska oil pipeline. Even a piece of the oil pipeline is on display.

The gallery includes full-scale and miniature dioramas. Life-size dioramas depict living arrangements for Aleuts, Tlingits, Athabascans, Yup'ik Eskimos, a gold miners' cabin, a Quonset hut from World War II and a 1920s-era Anchorage home.

The summer's main exhibit, "Yuungnaqpiallerput (The Way We Genuinely Live): Masterworks of Yup'ik Science and Survival," presents more than 200 19th- and early 20th-century tools, containers, weapons, watercraft and clothing in an exploration of the scientific principles and processes that have allowed the Yup'ik people to survive in the subarctic tundra of the Bering Sea Coast.

"The main exhibit is really a blend of science and spirituality; it's very hands-on and interactive," said Janet Asaro, the museum's director of marketing and public relations. "The Yup'ik people have no word for science, ironically, but their early tools were so well designed that it allowed this group of people to survive for thousands of years.

"What the exhibit does is show the blending of what we call 'science' and how it has permeated their lives. We in Western culture call it 'science,' but for them it was just a part of their culture and their lives."

While history has a place at the museum, art lovers also need to stop in. The museum has an extensive collection of art, from traditional painters like Sydney Laurence and Fred Machetanz to contemporary Native artists.

The museum (www.anchorage museum.org , 343-4326) is open daily, and admission is $8 for adults and free for children 17 and younger, although a $2 donation is suggested.

The Alaska Heritage Museum at Wells Fargo, 301 W. Northern Lights Blvd., has one of the largest collections of Native Alaska artifacts on display in the city. The displays cover all the state's indigenous people and include clothing, hunting weapons and household utensils. There is a large basket collection, and it's interesting to compare weaving techniques and materials.

"We exhibit over 900 artifacts from all the major Alaska cultures," curator Artemis BonaDea said. "What people see is a wonderful overview of how the people lived, responded to the environment, how they used tools, processed food and made clothing.

"Within those cultures, one of the things most people are impressed with is the examples of clothing. It really shows a difference in geography. You see things made from seabirds from the island people versus Tlingit button-cloth trade items."

The 2,000-square-foot museum (265-2834) also displays artwork from some of Alaska's masters -- Laurence, Machetanz, Eustace Ziegler and Rusty Heurlin -- a huge woolly mammoth tusk, a 46-troy-ounce gold nugget, carved ivory and a large collection of guns. The museum is inside a Wells Fargo bank building in Midtown. It is located on the first floor, but more items are displayed in the elevator lobbies throughout the bank. There also is a noncirculating reference library, which was started before the city's library system was up to speed. Admission is free; it is open weekdays.

The Alaska Museum of Natural History, 201 N. Bragaw St., is a place for kids and adults who are interested in dinosaurs and other natural history.

The permanent collection includes a paleontology/archaeology pit, dinosaur and ice-age fossils and many touchable mounts of Alaska animals. Explore Alaska's birds, dinosaurs, geology and more.

The museum (www.alaskamuseum. org , 274-2400) is open Tuesday through Saturday; admission is $5 for adults and $3 for children.

The Alaska Aviation Heritage Museum, 4721 Aircraft Drive, tracks the key role aircraft and bush pilots played in the state's history. More than 20 airplanes are on display at the museum, including a 1944 Grumman Widgeon amphibian and a Stinson L-1. There are photo displays, information on the early bush pilots and the Alaska Aviation Hall of Fame.

The museum (www.alaskaair museum.org, 248-5325) is open daily except Tuesdays. Admission is $5.

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Special sections editor Steve Edwards can be reached at sedwards@adn.com or 257-4316. Visit his Alaska travel blog at www.alaska.com/alaskology.

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Editor's picks

• One-stop history: I'm a member of the Anchorage Museum at Rasmuson Center, and I never get tired of visiting. I could look at Sydney Laurence's painting of Mount McKinley on display in the Art of the North galleries 100 times and keep coming back -- it is that impressive. Plus the museum tracks thousands of years of Alaska history.

• Visit villages in town: Most visitors will never travel to Bush Alaska. Most Alaskans won't either. But the Alaska Native Heritage Center takes visitors on a virtual tour via six life-size replicas of traditional Native dwellings.

• It's free, it's fun: The Alaska Heritage Museum at Wells Fargo is a free museum with plenty of Native artifacts. My favorite things to look at are the huge woolly mammoth tusk and the artwork by Laurence, Fred Machetanz and others.

What locals say

"When people visit Alaska, they think there is one Alaska Native. One of the things they comment on was that they had no idea there were so many different cultures here."

-- Artemis BonaDea, curator of the Alaska Heritage Museum at Wells Fargo