Villagers, by Claire Fejes

The Natives of Alaska, the Athabaskan Indians, are facing a momentous crisis. Their traditional way of life is being threatened with extinction by the culture of the white man. What changes have been wrought in the lifestyle of the Indians? How are they meeting the challenge to their heritage? In Villagers (224 pages), Claire Fejes–a resident…

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Dreaming Bears, by J. Michael Holloway

Dreaming Bears (208 pages) is the true story of the rare friendship that develops between a young medical student with deep roots in the South and an elderly Indian couple in the wilds of northeast Alaska. In 1961, Mike Holloway, his brother Ted, and a college friend set out from South Carolina to spend the…

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The Tlingit Indians, by Aurel Krause

In 1881, two German geographers were on their way to the continental United States from the Bering Sea Coast when they came upon a Native population in southeast Alaska that had formed a society far more complex than those of most other North American tribes. Upon return to Germany, Aurel Krause published “The Tlingit Indians.”…

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Red Thunder, by David Matheson

Red Thunder (280 pages) is a memoir of a People. The story draws from the oral history of the Schi-tsu-umsh Indians, now called the Coeur d’Alene Tribe in Northern Idaho. This unique portrayal of pre-European Native Americans is an authentic work displaying the rich cultural teachings behind Native American life. Red Thunder is not only about courage, love…

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Moments Rightly Placed, by Ray Hudson

Along a thousand-mile chain of treeless and windswept islands, Unalaska is perched at the end of the world, or, as some prefer to say, the beginning. In 1964, Ray Hudson, 22, landed in Unalaska village with a brand-new college degree, eager to teach. The Aleuts had seen many outsiders who had come but seldom stayed…

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Two Old Women, by Velma Wallis

Based on an Athabascan legend passed along from mother to daughter for many generations on the upper Yukon River in Alaska, this is the tragic and shocking story–with a surprise ending–of two elderly women abandoned by a migrating tribe that faces starvation brought on by unusually harsh Arctic weather and a shortage of fish and…

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A Cheechako Goes to the Klondike, by C.W. Adams

The Klondike Stampede caused a transportation boom in the north, where in its thrilling heyday about 250 wooden steamboats operated in the Yukon River drainage of Alaska and the Yukon. The sternwheelers became gold rush icons. But the hardy, pragmatic entrepreneurs who ran the boats were lured by profits, not romance. In 1901, a passenger’s…

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