The following are links to web activities, virtual exhibits, museum guides, and lesson plans focusing on Alaska native and American Indian tools and artifacts. Click the links to either download a PDF, or be taken to a website.
Multicultural (Alaska Native and American Indian)
- Arctic Artifacts (web activity)
Hosted by the National Park Service
From the Smithsonian Institute. Virtual exhibit allowing visitors to explore Smithsonian collections from these Northern Natives. Digital reproductions of artifacts can be browsed by culture, community, ceremony, or environment. An interactive map tells you about the different Natives of Alaska and where they can be found.
From PBS. History has shown that the Harriman Alaska Expedition lived up to all expectations: genera and species new to science were described, fossil species newly recorded, natural history collections, created, and the Harriman Fiord surveyed for the first time. By any standard, the world's scientific and environmental portrait of Alaska was greatly enriched as a result of the 1899 Harriman Alaska Expedition.
On July 22, 2001 over two dozen scientists, artists, and writers left Prince Rupert, British Columbia on the Harriman Expedition Retraced. The Clipper Odyssey followed the itinerary of E. H. Harriman's lavishly-outfitted George W. Elder, sailing through the Inside Passage, the Gulf of Alaska, the Aleutian Archipelago, and northward throught eh Bering Sea. Four weeks later, on August 20, the travelers made their final stop in Nome. Join the trip via the Expedition Log, and learn more about the changes that have taken place on Alaska's coast during the past century.
Download the Expedition Book and Instructional Guide.
From the Smithsonian Institute. Take a virtual journey to meet American Indians of the 1830s with artist, ethnologist, and showman George Catlin. This site compiles paintings, historical documents, and commentary from contemporary experts so you can explore the intersections of two cultures, both in Catlin's time and today.
From the Peabody Essex Museum. ARTscape is an award-winning online browser that links users with a multimedia database of museum artworks. Peruse the ARTscape sets or bookmark favorite objects and media resources to create a personal reference folder.
>>Note: Search "Alaska" or specific Alaska Native groups to find artworks and artifacts pertinent to your curriculum.
From ECHO Spaces.
Alutiiq
Combining archaeology, history and oral tradition, Looking Both Ways is a community-based exhibition planned in collaboration with the Alutiiq people of southern Alaska. The exhibition and companion volume retrace the compelling history of the Alutiiq people, examining the changing meanings of their culture and identity. Explore the exhibit online to learn more about Alutiiq culture and history.
Inupiaq
From the Smithsonian Institute. This lesson plan and activity guide gives teachers materials and guidance for teaching students about the Bering Sea Eskimos through artifacts and stories. Working like detectives, students will be given guidance in how to learn about a culture through the everyday objects they use and the stories they tell. Great for social studies or language arts, these activities teach students about a new culture while showing them how to use primary sources and critical thinking to discover about other cultures.
From ECHO Spaces. This Learning Center delves into the household cooking kit that every 19th century Nunamiut family used as they traveled throughout the Brooks Range of Alaska in pursuit of food and a livelihood.
From ECHO Spaces. This Learning Center demonstrates the ingenious adaptations to the Arctic environment that the itchalik embodies. Like all successful shelters, it provided protection from the elements using materials that were readily available. It could be easily repaired and was especially suited to the nomadic Nunamiut of Alaska.
From ECHO Spaces.
Tlingit & Haida
From the Harvard Peabody Museum. This virtual exhibit is the online counterpart to a yearly teaching display mounted in the Peabody Museum that highlights some of the wonderful potlatch objects in the Museum collections.
Yup'ik
From the Arctic Studies Center. An exhibition of more than 200 masks, Agayuliyararput, Our Way of Making Prayer is the first major exhibition of Yup'ik Eskimo material planned by Alaska Native people in collaboration with the museum community. The masks are presented in the context of the dances, stories and complex cosmology of the people who created them, the Yupiit of southwestern Alaska.
- Of Kayaks and Ulus (Curriculum Packet)
From the Smithsonian Institute. This curriculum packet contains 5 small booklets detailing the travels and discoveries of the great 19th century naturalist, Edward W. Nelson and his time with the Bering Sea Eskimos of Western Alaska (now called the Yup’ik). This packet consists of information about Yup’ik folklore and daily life as well as both primary sources from Edward W. Nelson’s letters and journals and secondary sources which put Nelson’s discoveries into a larger perspective. Throughout the packets are numerous pictures to give a visual understanding of Nelson’s discoveries as well as study questions and discussion topics to foster critical thinking and a big picture view. The packet is based on original materials in Nelson’s monographic study, the Eskimos About Bering Strait” (1899) and by the exhibition catalog, “Inua: Spirit World of the Berinjg Sea Eskimo” (1982) by William Fitzhugh and Susan Kaplan.
From the Smithsonian Institute. This Art to Zoo (now called ‘Smithsonian in Your Classroom’) article is based on the curriculum packet above. Like the curriculum packet, it contains information on Yu’pik life and culture as well as Nelson’s discoveries and many pictures, study questions, and discussion topics to get students thinking about the material. It is much shorter than the above packet, but also contains a pull-out activity page about the art of the Alaskan Eskimos and a word search.
From the Arctic Studies Center. Curated by Ann Fienup-Riordan with support from the Anchorage Museum, the exhibition “Yuungnaqpiallerput (The Way We Genuinely Live): Masterworks of Yup’ik Science and Survival” presents 200 remarkable 19th- and early 20th-century tools, containers, weapons, watercraft and clothing that the Yup’ik people have used to survive for centuries in the sub-arctic tundra of the Bering Sea coast..
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