Alaska Native Heritage Center

A couple weeks ago we got a Cultural Pass that was good for the Anchorage Museum and the Native Heritage Center. At that time we did the Museum which was wonderful. No pictures, but there is an art gallery featuring Alaska's best known artist Sydney Laurence who does many Denali paintings; an historic photo exhibition of Bristol Bay salmon fishing industry; displays of artifacts and heritage exhibits of life in the North spanning from gold rush days to the pipeline; and the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center. The Smithsonian exhibit was predictably awesome with artifacts from many native tribes and brief videos explaining the traditions of each. We spent 3-4 hours in this museum and it's a good thing you don't have to do both on the same day!

The Native Heritage Center is an outdoor experience and we were fortunate to have it be a perfect weather day. Natives run this center completely as far as I can tell. There are 11 distinct cultures and 21 different languages in Alaska and the Center is organized based on 5 cultural groups that have similarities culturally or geographically. A guided tour takes the visitor to five different sites where Native people of the represented culture give a 5- 10 minute talk and show some of the tools of survival from the past.

Athabascan, the most familiar group to most of us from the lower 48, is the largest of the Alaska Natives occupying land from the interior to the Cook Inlet. Their pole and log homes were built above the ground and look similar to log cabins, but you'd better duck coming through that door!

Contrary to popular belief, igloos were not the typical home (that is Inuit from Canada). The Yupik and Cupik had homes underground and this is the qasgiq, the men's house. At age 5, boys were sent here where they were taught all the things a man should know. There was also a women's house and when the teaching was complete, boys and girls traded houses and were taught the jobs of the opposite sex. In the winter the doorway was shut off and you would enter and exit from a hole in the ground inside the house and outside the door with a low ramp that went down 2 or 3 feet and then back up to ground level, thus keeping the cold air down where it belongs!

The Inupiaq & St. Lawrence Island Yupik also had underground houses that were very efficiently heated with a large, slightly concave lava rock which was filled with seal oil that would burn for up to 8 hours and then keep the place warm for another 8 hours.

Whales were also very important to subsistence living both then and now and one eye catcher here are these grey whale jaws that frame the Heritage Center from across a small manmade lake.

Another stop displayed qayaqs (kayaks) of the Unangax & Alutiiq people. I do hope you're having fun trying to pronounce these names. These were used for everything from trade & fishing to warfare and it is said that modern engineering cannot improve upon their design.

Our last stop was at a tent where native artists were learning rock carving. The rock they use is one of two: Indiana limestone or Utah raspberry alabaster! They look white now, but the alabaster will be polished and become a beautiful reddish color.