ABOUT ALASKA AND ALASKANS

Doing health research in Alaska with the indigenous people of this great land is uniquely challenging and rewarding. We offer the following information and resources to those who may be interested to know about where we come from and who we are.

Two really wonderful websites that provide a wealth of information about Alaska Native peoples are:

The Alaska Native Knowledge Network (ANKN) is affiliated with the University of Alaska Fairbanks. It is designed to serve as a resource for compiling and exchanging information related to Alaska Native knowledge systems and ways of knowing. It has been established to assist Native people, government agencies, educators and the general public in gaining access to the knowledge base that Alaska Natives have acquired through cumulative experience over millennia.

Alaskool is an organization affiliated with the University of Alaska Anchorage that develops and makes available materials about Alaska Native history, education, languages and cultures for teachers, students, and anyone interested in Alaska’s first people.

Both sites provide a fair amount of overlapping information each in its own way, but they each have plenty of unique topics as well and both are worthy of attention. For instance, each site gives a lot of consideration to the diversity of Alaska Native languages that are so very important and fundamental to who a person is. Both provide a map of Alaska that shows the distribution of each language in the state, however, the ANKN language map offers a bit more information by including a view of eastern Russia as well as an inlay of the western US, Canada and Greenland, thereby showing the connection between indigenous peoples of these distant lands. The Alaskool language map is at http://www.alaskool.org/Language/languageindex.htm.

Additional information about Alaska’s indigenous peoples is available at the Statewide Library Electronic Doorway or SLED for short - http://sled.alaska.edu/native.html.

The State of Alaska website is at http://www.state.ak.us/. Learn about any Alaskan community at -http://www.commerce.state.ak.us/dca/commdb/CF_CIS.htm. This page provides information summaries about community location, population, taxes, climate, history, culture, demographics, utilities, schools, health care, economy, transportation, as well as contact information for important local agencies and organizations.

A general overview of Alaska is available at World Atlas.com - http://www.worldatlas.com/webimage/countrys/namerica/usstates/ak.htm. This site also provides interesting facts, statistics and information about Alaska.