July 6, 2004
Alaska Native Heritage Center
Well, after a near-lifetime of avoiding using the word "native" in respect to indigenous people, I am learning that this is the preferred term up here in Alaska.
Yesterday, my colleague Rose and I visited the Alaska Native Heritage Center here in Anchorage. Anyone with a bit of amateur anthropologist (or geographer) in them will love the center. Outdoor replicas of living quarters appear for Alaska's Indians, the Athabascans; for its Eskimo peoples, the Yup'ik and Cup'ik, Inupiaq, and Aleut and Alitiiq; and the Tlingit and related tribes who share the Northwest Coast culture of the Seattle area Indians.
Eskimos apparently entered their half-buried timber homes via tunnels about four feet high, with chambers leading off for food. The tunnels prevented the cold from entering the structure. In Alaska, they did not build igloos (this was a feature of Canadian natives).
The Tlingit structures of cedar are gorgeous and smell wondeful, and the center features a nearby totem pole. The planking of the outside walls is gappy during the summer, allowing ventilation, and swells shut so the sides of the planks shut during winter, keeping the heat in.
Two aspects of our visit stood out. First, native Alaskan teens serve as guides to the structure, and may be the most charming young people in the 50 states. They really made the visit for me. A young girl named Lisa, with a sweet smile, showed us a tunic her grand-mother made her. Others showed us otter skins, steps to the roof made of notched logs, grass baskets and similar paraphernalia.
Second, I wonder again, as I did in my book An Amateur's Guide to the Planet, about the links of Indonesian Borneo to the rest of the world. In Amateur, I wrote of the links between Borneo and Polynesia to the east and Madagascar to the west. Looking at native Alaskan tribal artifacts, I saw a lot of similarity between baskets, notched log ladders, and communal houses to aspects of Borneo.
Is Borneo the cultural template for most of the Pacific rim? If so, what an incredible sphere of influence for these highland island people.
