Alaska Native Wisdom for Modern Times There is a single place in
the United States where indigenous peoples still live on
ancestral lands, consume over four hundred pounds of wild foods
annually per capita, and indigenous elders still remember the
arrival of the first Westerners in their regions. That place is
Alaska. Despite daunting challenges to cultural integrity and
ways of life, Alaska’s Native peoples retain vast storehouses of
their traditional knowledge, wisdom, and lifeways. Thus, many
traditional Alaska Native lifeways and understandings about how
human beings fit into the bigger matrix of creation remain
relatively intact. These ways have allowed our cultures to
survive and thrive for thousands of years, even in the face of
many daunting ecological and economic crises. In today’s
challenging times, such ways, having evolved through an intimate
and profound relationship to lands, waters, and all life, have
much to offer the American people and the entire human family.
Alaska’s vast lands are home t