North ─ Finding Place in Alaska

Alaska is part of an international circumpolar North, which makes the United States an Arctic nation. Alaska is a place of Indigenous ingenuity and adaptation, a place where environmental extremes challenge the ways of living. In its more recent history, Alaska has been a place of resources and influx—a land known best for what it provides. This frontier persona, with its sourdoughs and prospectors, has not been easily shed, but Alaska today is pivotal because it represents America’s North and a complex and changing Arctic.

North: Finding Place in Alaska explores the state’s various facets through exhibitions and artifacts at the Anchorage Museum and the words of a diverse selection of writers, curators, historians, anthropologists, and artists. From romantic landscapes by Rockwell Kent and Thomas Hill, to the art and spirituality of Alaska’s Native peoples represented by a bentwood feast dish and a uniquely carved hook for catching halibut, this collection examines connections throughout the circumpolar North. No longer as remote as once thought, Alaska serves as a narrative for our future.

Julie Decker is director of the Anchorage Museum. The other contributors to the volume are Kirsten J. Anderson, Alan Boraas, Michael Brubaker, David Holthouse, Priscilla Naungagiaq Hensley Holthouse (Inupiaq), Nadia Jackinsky-Sethi (Alutiiq), Mara Kimmel, Aaron Leggett, John Pearce, Sandra Talbot, and Walter Van Horn.