The Russian Empire had a problem. While they had established
successful colonies in their territory of Alaska, life in the
settlements was anything but civilized. The settlers of the
Russian-America ...Company were drunk, disorderly, and corrupt. Worst
of all, they were terrible role models for the Natives, whom the
empire saw as in desperate need of moral enlightenment. The
empire's solution? Send in women. In 1829, the Company decreed that
any governor appointed after that date had to have a wife, in the
hopes that these more pious women would serve as glowing examples
of domesticity and bring charm to a brutish territory. Elisabeth
von Wrangell, Margaretha Etholén, and Anna Furuhjelm were three of
eight governors' wives who took up this domestic mantle.
Married to the Empire tells their stories using their own
words and though extraordinary research by Susanna Rabow-Edling.
All three were young and newly wed when they left Russia for the
furthest outpost of the empire, and all three went through personal
and cultural struggles as they worked to adjust to life in the
colony. Their trials offer a little-heard female history of Russian
Alaska, while illuminating the issues that arose while trying to
reconcile expectations of womanhood with the realities of frontier
life.
Massacres, mayhem, and mischief fill the pages of Outlaw Tales of Alaska. Pan for gold with dry gulchers and claim jumpers. Duck the bullets of murderers, plot strategies with con artists, hiss at ...lawmen turned outlaws. A refreshing new perspective on some of the most infamous reprobates of the Last Frontier.
The teacher and the superintendent Boulter, George E., II; Boulter, George E; Green, Alice
The teacher and the superintendent,
2015, 2015, 2015-12-03
eBook
Odprti dostop
From its inception in 1885, the Alaska School Service was charged with the assimilation of Alaskan Native children into mainstream American values and ways of life. Working in the missions and ...schools along the Yukon River were George E. Boulter and Alice Green, his future wife. Boulter, a Londoner originally drawn to the Klondike, had begun teaching in 1905 and by 1910 had been promoted to superintendent of schools for the Upper Yukon District. In 1907, Green left a comfortable family life in New Orleans to answer the “call to serve” in the Episcopal mission boarding schools for Native children at Anvik and Nenana, where she occupied the position of government teacher. As school superintendent, Boulter wrote frequently to his superiors in Seattle and Washington, DC, to discuss numerous administrative matters and to report on problems and conditions overall. From 1906 to 1918, Green kept a personal journal—hitherto in private possession—in which she reflected on her professional duties and her domestic life in Alaska. Collected in The Teacher and the Superintendent are Boulter’s letters and Green’s diary. Together, their vivid, first- hand impressions bespeak the earnest but paternalistic beliefs of those who lived and worked in immensely isolated regions, seeking to bring Christianity and “civilized” values to the Native children in their care. Beyond shedding private light on the missionary spirit, however, Boulter and Green have also left us an invaluable account of the daily conflicts that occurred between church and government and of the many injustices suffered by the Native population in the face of the misguided efforts of both institutions.
After its rudimentary beginning in 1749, fur farming in Alaska rose
and fell for two centuries. It thrived during the 1890s and again
in the 1920s, when rising fur prices caused a stampede for land ...and
breed stock and led to hundreds of farms being started in Alaska
within a few years. The Great Depression, and later the development
of warm, durable, and lightweight synthetic materials during World
War II, brought further decline and eventual failure to the
industry as the postwar economy of Alaska turned to defense and
later to oil. The Fur Farms of Alaska brings this history
to life by capturing the remarkable stories of the men and women
who made fur their livelihood. "For more than 200 years 'soft gold'
brought many people to Alaska. Fur farming was Alaska's
third-largest industry in the 1920s, and Sarah Isto writes of the
many efforts, successes, and ultimately of the fur farming
industry's failure. This well-researched history contextualizes
current fox elimination projects on Alaska islands and explains the
abandoned pens one stumbles across. This is a story that has long
needed to be written."-Joan M. Antonson, Alaska State Historian
When Richard Nixon signed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act
in 1971, eighty million acres were flagged as possible national
park land. Field expeditions were tasked with recording what was
...contained in these vast acres. Under this decree, five men were
sent into the sprawling, roadless interior of Alaska, unsure of
what they'd encounter and ultimately responsible for the fate of
four thousand pristine acres. Life and Times of a Big
River follows Peter J. Marchand and his team of biologists as
they set out to explore the land that would ultimately become the
Yukon-Charley Rivers National Preserve. Their encounters with
strange plants, rare insects, and little-known mammals bring to
life a land once thought to be static and monotonous. And their
struggles to navigate and adapt to an unforgiving environment
capture the rigorous demands of remote field work. Weaving in and
out of Marchand's narrative is an account of the natural and
cultural history of the area as it relates to the expedition and
the region's Native peoples. Life and Times of a Big River
chorincles this riveting, one-of-a-kind journey of uncertainty and
discovery from a disparate (and at one point desperate) group of
biologists.
Beginning in 1951, Will Troyer embarked on a thirty-year career
with the U.S. Department of the Interior that included positions
such as fish and game warden and manager of the Kodiak Island brown
...bear preserve. Troyer's engaging prose affirms his passionate
connection to the natural world, as he describes experiences such
as being in the midst of a herd of 40,000 caribou. Bear
Wrangler is an absorbing tale of one man's experience as an
authentic pioneer in the last vestiges of American wilderness.
For many the idea of living off the land is a romantic notion left
to stories of olden days or wistful dreams at the office. But for
Sara Loewen it becomes her way of life each summer as her family
...settles into their remote cabin on Uyak Bay for the height of
salmon season. With this connection to thousands of years of
fishing and gathering at its core, Gaining Daylight
explores what it means to balance lives on two islands, living
within both an ancient way of life and the modern world. Her
personal essays integrate natural and island history with her
experiences of fishing and family life, as well as the challenges
of living at the northern edge of the Pacific. Loewen's writing is
richly descriptive; readers can almost feel heat from wood stoves,
smell smoking salmon, and spot the ways the ocean blues change with
the season. With honesty and humor, Loewen easily draws readers
into her world, sharing the rewards of subsistence living and the
peace brought by miles of crisp solitude.
Winner of the 2012 Donald Hall Prize in PoetrySelected by Arthur SzeHyperborealoriginates from diasporas. It attempts to make sense of change and to prepare for cultural, climate, and political turns ...that are sure to continue. The poems originate from the hope that our lives may be enriched by the expression of and reflection on the cultural strengths inherent to indigenous culture. It concerns King Island, the ancestral home of the author's family until the federal government's Bureau of Indian Affairs forcibly and permanently relocated its residents. The poems work towards the assembly of an identity, both collective and singular, that is capable of looking forward from the recollection and impact of an entire community's relocation to distant and arbitrary urban centers. Through language,Hyperborealgrants forum to issues of displacement, lack of access to traditional lands and resources and loss of family that King Island people-and all Inuit-are contending with.
Among Wolves Haber, Gordon; Holleman, Marybeth
10/2013
eBook
Alaska's wolves lost their fiercest advocate, Gordon Haber, when
his research plane crashed in Denali National Park in 2009.
Passionate, tenacious, and occasionally brash, Haber, a former
hockey ...player and park ranger, devoted his life to Denali's wolves.
He weathered brutal temperatures in the wild to document the wolves
and provided exceptional insights into wolf behavior. Haber's
writings and photographs reveal an astonishing degree of
cooperation between wolf family members as they hunt, raise pups,
and play, social behaviors and traditions previously unknown. With
the wolves at risk of being destroyed by hunting and trapping, his
studies advocated for a balanced approach to wolf management. His
fieldwork registered as one of the longest studies in wildlife
science and had a lasting impact on wolf policies. Haber's field
notes, his extensive journals, and stories from friends all come
together in Among Wolves to reveal much about both the
wolves he studied and the researcher himself. Wolves continue to
fascinate and polarize people, and Haber's work continues to
resonate.
From the turn of the twentieth century in interior Alaska, dog team
mail carriers were charged with maintaining the trail systems and
carrying the mail until they were replaced in the late 1930s and
...'40s by airplane mail service. With the advent and widespread
adoption of aviation, many of the trails were abandoned, and a
generation of rural Alaskans has now grown up with few ties to the
overland trail system that supported their grandparents and
inspired modern traditions such as the world-famous Iditarod Race.
In addition to chronicling the history of this unique postal
service, On Time Delivery pays tribute to the men who
carried the mail and the families who supported them, and considers
the changing nature of how people experience the country where they
live-and how this is affected by the systems of communication and
transportation upon which they depend.
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