Cliff Keeler

After stumbling through heavy undergrowth in a remote corner of Alaska’s Kodiak Island, I stood over a vaguely familiar piece of bone protruding from moss covered ground. I carefully pried it loose with the toe of my boot from a thick overlay of covering moss wondering, “What’s this from?”

Suddenly my host’s voice interrupted the reverie, “Careful there. He may come back to haunt you.” When I turned to investigate, Steele Davis stood astride a moss covered human skull that stared up at me.

Davis owns an adventure travel resort called “Spirit of Alaska.” Tucked away in a remote corner of Kodiak Island just off the Kenai Peninsula, “Spirit of Alaska” embodies many things to Davis. He guides hunts for Kodiak Island’s incomparable brown bear and for fishing its fertile waters for cod, halibut, sea bass and a variety of other fish including several species of salmon. Marine life there literally teems with countless varieties of terns, gulls, ducks, puffins, a Bald Eagle’s nest every few hundred yards of shoreline while otters, harbor seals, sea lions, Orca killer whales and humpback whales earn a living there as well.

Davis, a transplanted New Englander, was born and raised in New Hampshire. He spent his military service near Anchorage. After mustering out of the military, Alaska’s hold on him was too strong to return to New Hampshire. He gathered enough financial resources to build rustic camp sites deep in Kodiak Island’s interior. “The Spirit of Alaska” sprang from sweat equity wrung from his hands.

When contacting Davis to plan our excursion to Kodiak, I expressed a desire to learn as much about the cultural aspects of the native Aleuts, hereafter referred to as Alutiiq (plural) or Alutiit (singular), that once lived there and current native lifestyles that remained - as much as he could show me. Little did I realize what that request would reveal later. I was to learn that Davis’ “Spirit of Alaska” encompassed far more than just a breathtaking panorama of scenery and wildlife.

Davis gave a tour of his property laying below the snug cabin we occupied during our Kodiak stay. I saw remains of a good sized “barabara” (a pit-type ancient native residence built partially below ground-level with whalebones, tree trunks, boards and other available scavenged material to secure the dwelling above ground). It evidenced side rooms, dug off to the side of the main room, that were used for storage and separate sleeping quarters for families residing there. There was a tremendous midden, or refuse pile, accumulated on the beach punctuated with many grass and moss lined depressions revealing former excavations that may have been small shelters or storage deposits for the “Old Ones.”

All of the above was virtually within sight of a small community across Uyak Bay called Larsen Bay. Larsen Bay is a community comprised primarily of about 180 native Alutiiq. The sole source of employment is a cannery other than the subsistence lifestyle exercised by its residents.

Tiny remote Larsen Bay, led by its late former Mayor Frank Carlson, waged a fight against the Smithsonian Institution’s museum in Washington D.C. to have relics of Alutiiq human remains and their accompanying artifacts returned to them. From 1931-1936 Ales Hrdlicka, curator of the Division of Physical Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institute’s National Museum of Natural History excavated hundreds of native skeletal remains and accompanying artifacts from a dig adjacent to the Larsen Bay community. He then removed them to the museum in Washington D.C. In the 1970s, Larsen Bay posited that this was disrespectful to their ancestors and successfully demanded the relics be returned to their rightful resting place.

If I had climbed a tall enough tree standing over that skull between Davis’ feet, I could probably have seen Larsen Bay from that spot.

Davis then loaded us into his unique water craft the Shelbee Dee and boated me to another ancient midden site just down the coast and more in line across from the Larsen Bay community. It lay several miles across Uyak Bay on the opposite side.

As Davis steered his craft to a landing on the beach, it was impossible not to notice the remains of a huge midden outlining the upper reaches of a moderately high bluff paralleling the beach for more than the length of a football field. A human leg bone hung precariously over the edge of the midden in plain view.

Middens are the remains of refuse piles utilized by ancient subsistence cultures to discard refuse accumulated during the course of their daily routines. This included garbage, broken pottery, other utensils and tools and, in the case of Kodiak Island’s ancient Alutiiq, burial remains of their ancestors. Occasionally the “Old Ones” deceased were also buried under the floors of their barabaras, or nearby their homes. But more often they were simply laid to rest in shallow shale-lined coffins, or crude sarcophagi, buried in a nearby midden.

It was such an area that Davis now had me explore. I looked about with no small measure of disgust and revulsion. A shovel blade, sans the handle, lay nearby. Hundreds of excavated pits revealed countless human remains scattered on the surface and laying revealed on the bottom of some of the crudely managed excavations. It was desecration of the highest magnitude. I reluctantly took pictures accompanying this article to show the utter disregard for respect of the deceased and the hallowed ground they were placed in.

A child’s paper thin partial skull lay revealed in one hastily opened pit. While I stood capturing yet another image in another pit, Davis walked up behind me and casually picked up a stone oil lamp laying on the ground where it had been excavated out of the burial site but overlooked by grave-robbers. The lamp possibly left to light the child’s path to the afterlife was no longer in place.

Larsen Bay lay virtually within sight across the bay. The same community whose indignation at the removal of ancestral remains similar to those literally scattered at my feet brought the Federal Government to their knees and resulted not only in the return of their ancestors’ relics but helped initiate some far reaching Federal legislation.

In 1990, Congress enacted the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA). This act requires museums and qualified anthropologists to report excavations of native cultural sites to appropriate tribal councils within the country and work with those councils regarding their archeological excavation work. It is now a federal crime to remove an artifact from a native grave in this country - whether cultural or skeletal.

While Larsen Bay brought the mighty United States Congress to its knees from virtually the far side of the continent regarding the disrespect Hrdlicka’s Smithsonian work subjected their ancestors to during the 1930s, today a worse crime is perpetrated on their ancestors – still virtually within the shadow of their homes at Larsen Bay.

There is not room in this article to identify all the historical impacts highlighting Alutiiq cultural identification problems and their struggle to achieve respect for their identity as a race. That doesn’t mean they are insignificant because too many incidents perpetrated on these people down through history demoralized their culture and helped lead to the current problem. For one, when the United States took over Alaska from the Russian influence in the region, American teachers installed in the native schools forbade the Alutiiq young people to speak in their native tongue(s) - in fact, punished them severely if they did.

Today, one major stumbling block in protecting their “turf” is that, like most all North American native cultures, ownership of specific plots of land is alien to their evolutionary background. While different villages and tribes might have exercised territorial control for the tribe’s benefit over another tribe, individual possession of land was a European quirk of the white man’s they never comprehended. Land, and all that crawled or grew on it, belonged to the tribe as a whole. None owned any portion individually. The concept is totally foreign to subsistence cultures virtually world wide. That native Alutiiq trait still complicates current events today.

On December 18, 1971 the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) was passed to, allegedly, once and for all settle the taking of native lands from the ancestors of living Alaskan natives. Forty four million (44,000,000) acres and $962,000,000 for distribution to registered natives with claims through tribal affiliations was set aside to “once and for all” right the wrongs in wresting Alaska lands from its former occupants. (Sarcasm intended.)

To identify how confusing this problem gets, the land that Steele showed me where the moss covered skull stared up at me from between his feet was once involved in the ANCSA land repatriation program. According to Davis, it was titled to an approved Alutiit registered on the tribal rolls at Larsen Bay. Approximately 40-acres in size, it was then sold to a non-native family that, according to Davis, now proposes to build a residence on it and take the road accessing the proposed residence right through the burial site where the skull rests atop its shallow grave.

Financial resources apparently mean more than protecting ancestral dignities on a personal basis. Historically, Alutiiq culture viewed the entire area as their collective home, “kitchen,” and livelihood as a gift from the same ancestors now being “sold” into oblivion. So much for ANCSA.

Is the latter a crime as defined by NAGPRA? It will take a more educated legal opinion than I can personally muster to determine the latter. However, no matter what that decision, the 800-pound gorilla sitting in the middle of the question regards a continuing lack of respect accorded Kodiak Island’s native burial sites irregardless of Larsen Bay’s singular victory over the Smithsonian Hrdlicka abuses inflicted in the 1930s.

I visited the Alutiiq Museum and Archeological Repository in the City of Kodiak prior to our departure from Kodiak Island regarding the archeological desecrations witnessed near Larsen Bay. Museum Director Sven Haakanson, Jr. was kind enough to accord valuable time from his busy schedule, with little or no notice I might add, to visit with me about the latter. I remain extremely grateful to him for that courtesy.

Haakanson expressed his opinion that commercial fishing fleets in the area were responsible for the looting of the archeological sites near Larsen Bay. He furnished a poster he stated had been dispensed to the fishing fleet, school systems and others declaring fines of up to $250,000 and confiscation of all equipment and vehicles used to commit the crime. He also claimed to have previously visited the area and caught perpetrators in the act of digging in that area.

But so far, no fines have been levied and no commercial fishing fleet boats have been confiscated for transporting stolen archeological artifacts by grave robbers.

Davis pointed out that the time of the year, May, that he showed me the various abandoned ancient Alutiiq village sites was key to us being able to see where these ancient locations were situated. As the growing season progresses, vegetation literally overgrows the sites creating a veritable jungle of impenetrable growth. This growth conceals the landscape and its secrets until winter levels the vegetation and the cycle starts again.

What I witnessed was more than mind-boggling: Remnants of red fire-scorched shale on high outlooks adjacent to pits containing human skeletons. Could they possibly have been ancient “lighthouses” guiding hunters and whalers home from dangerous expeditions to feed the village? Possibly to nourish some of the same remains now so crudely exposed to the elements? The pit-remains of an ancient barabara where ancient Alutiiq families lived out their lives and whose bones probably now lie amongst those scattered across the real estate just a few heartbeats across from Larsen Bay.

Outrage expressed by Haakanson was expected and admirable. However, responsible authorities allowing these atrocities to continue without enforcing the laws put in place to stop them is merely throwing voice to the wind. Chaining these perps to a jail cell and confiscating the equipment facilitating the rape of this country’s historical evidence is the least that should be brought to bear to bring this travesty under control.