Encounters with Europeans: trade, settlements and corporations

European explorers and traders have visited the Bering Strait area since the late seventeenth century, but they had little impact on the northern areas of Alaska (Fig. 5). This changed in the late nineteenth century, when an increasing number of whaling ships started to come to the Bering Strait area during the summer to hunt bowhead whales. In 1898-9, gold was discovered in Nome, on the Noatak and Kobuk rivers, and in the Seward Peninsula. Whalers and prospectors offered seasonal employment to local Iñupiaq men, and a vigorous trade developed between the Iñupiat and the whalers (Fig. 6). But the newcomers also brought diseases, alcohol and firearms in their wake. At the end of the nineteenth century, the first missions and schools were established. Gradually, Iñupiaq life became more focused on permanent settlements and wage work. This tendency was accelerated by the collapse of fur prices during the 1940s.

After the Second World War, the economic gap between Alaska Natives and white Americans continued to widen. In addition, Alaska statehood, conferred in 1959, raised the question of land rights – a question that achieved additional urgency through discovery of major oil reserves, and the state's sale of land leases to oil corporations in northern Alaska in the 1960s.

Negotiations between representatives of Alaska Natives and the government led to the passing of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) by the US Congress in 1971. The Act provided 962.5 million US dollars in monetary compensation and 44 million acres of land for subsistence hunting grounds and settlement areas. This was administered by thirteen regional and over 200 village corporations, held in common by shareholding Alaska Natives. Today these corporations are the main focus of regional political and economic life in Alaska.