Day 92: Alaska Native Heritage Center

July 15, 2014

Today we awoke to a partly cloudy day. We had some sunshine and blue skies periodically through out the day but it was not as nice as yesterday. However – no rain!

After another nice walk on the nature trail this morning we headed to the Alaska Native Heritage Center. This center allows the visitors to learn and explore the traditional and contemporary ways of Alaska's indigenous cultures. It is much more than a museum. In the Hall of Cultures there are exhibits as you would expect in a museum from the 5 major cultural groups in Alaska.

One of several watercraft built for the center

St Lawrence Island Yupik Auklet Parka. It takes about 80 auklet skins to make this parka.

There were also artisans present who offered various art demonstrations from beading to mask carving to basket weaving.

There was also a theater with short films on various aspects of the native culture running continuously. We watched one on making/building boats/canoes/kayaks from various materials. In the “Gathering Place” there were speakers and demonstrations of various kinds. One session was an “Introduction to Alaska Nation Cultures”. Then there was a session on Alaska Native Storytelling, Alaska Native Games, and Alaska Native Dance as well as others.

They were all interesting and informative but we liked the Native Games demonstration the best. Some of the young men doing the demonstration were leaving today for the world Eskimo-Indian Olympics being held in Fairbanks later this week. All these games are designed to improve the persons balance, strength, ability to hunt etc. Each one is significant to Native life and tradition. Those guys are amazing athletes.

One Foot High Kick

Alaskan High Kick

 Outside of the main building there are six life-sized traditional Native dwellings representing 11 major cultural groups. Each site has a young person sharing the story of their people and explaining the home and some of the articles/furs used there. We were impressed with the young peoples' knowledge and poise.

One of the things we learned today is that they are working very hard to teach the young people about their culture and heritage. To teach them their native language so it will not be lost. The Center has the various presentations as we saw today during the summer season. During the school year they work with the elementary thru high school young people helping them to learn and understand who they are – what their heritage is. We can recommend this interesting stop as well worth a visit.

After the Heritage Center we moved down to Eagle River for the night. We spent some time planing the remainder of our time in Alaska and looking at various routes home, but haven't decided yet. It's hard to believe it's almost time to head back south, but it's a long way back to Alabama and we have several stops to make along the way. After supper we went Reflection Lake to locate the Cache Across America - Alaska geocache . Another really pretty nature trail! Nice lake!

A really nice way to end the day. Tomorrow – Hatcher Pass and Independence Mine and hopefully good weather for pictures.