Documents

Program from the Tikahtnu Plant Symposium, hosted by Southcentral Foundation, August 3-5, 2021, Anchorage, Alaska.

The Alaska Berry Futures website contains information about Alaska's berries and is designed to inform Alaskans about how we can plan for changing berry resources in light of climate change. The site contains information about berry biology, interactions with other organisms, human use and climate threats. It also contains links to berry booklets in their Berries in Alaska's Changing Environment Series. Alaska Berry Futures was created by faculty and graduate students at the Institute of Arctic Biology, University of Alaska Fairbanks with funding from the Alaska Climate Adaptation Science Center (CASC) Tribal Resilience Network.

Starting in 2012, the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC) Wellness and Prevention began hosting annual educational symposia on Alaskan Plants as Food and Medicine. This website provides background information about these symposia and a link to the current symposia's webpage.
 

Aleut/Unangax Ethnobotany: An Annotated Bibliography. Douglas Veltre, Catherine Pendleton, Stephanie Schively, Jessica Hay, and Natalia Tatarenkova. For a project on Traditional Use and Conservation of Plants from the Aleutian, Pribilof, and Commander Islands. Aleut International Association, University of Alaska Anchorage, and Institute for Circumpolar Health Studies, in cooperation with CAFF. CAFF Flora Technical Report No. 14, October 2006. Akureyi, Iceland: CAFF International Secretariat.

“Arctic Harvest.” A 28-minutes video showing Iñupiat Elders from a number of villages on the North Slope collecting, describing, and using plants. Utqiaġvik, AK: North Slope Borough, Iñupiat History Language and Culture Commission, circa 1995. Both an English and an Iñupiaq version were made. An online version was not found. For more information or to purchase a copy of the video, contact the North Slope Borough, Iñupiat History Language and Culture Commission, 907-852-0420, PO Box 69, Barrow, AK 99723.

Batuk’enelyashi: Natural Dyes from Dena’ina Lands project provides instructional resources, including a set of 15 in-depth videos and a comprehensive booklet featuring the teaching of Master Artist June (Simeonoff) Pardue.

In 2022, the Alaska Native Heritage Center collaborated with the Alaska office of the Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center on a project to perpetuate and strengthen Alaska Native knowledge of natural dyes stewarded for generations. The Batuk’enelyashi: Natural Dyes from Dena’ina Lands project – led by Alaska Native Master Artist June (Simeonoff) Parude, assisted by her granddaughter and apprentice Destinee VonScheele – included research, harvesting, experimentation, documentation and a week-long educational workshop attended by an inter-generational group of Alaska Native artists and students. All work took place on the lands of the Dena’ina Athabascan people.

During the Batuk’enelyashi project, different materials were sustainably harvested and experimented with for making and using as dyes: birch, willow and cottonwood tree bark; cottonwood and alder tree leaves, cottonwood tree catkins, low-bush cranberries (lingonberries), blueberries, black currants, dandelion flower and leaves, devil’s club buds and stinging nettle buds. Materials dyed included salmon skin, seal intestine, moose hide, porcupine quills, rye grass, spruce root, silk fabric and merino wool yarn.

The video set available through the Smithsonian Learning Lab features June and Destinee teaching how to sustainably harvest plants, make natural dyes, dye materials, naturally tan salmon skin, and more, along with June’s students and artists attending the workshop. Additional resources include a 48-page instructional booklet with photos and detailed information: dye recipes for hot and cold baths with different materials, harvesting plants, and general dyeing notes about supplies, preparations, additives, and techniques from start to finish. The site also includes a 47-page PDF of samples from the project workshop and PDFs about Alaska plants.

Cloudberry in a Changing Climate: Threats and Opportunities. Berries in Alaska's Changing Environment Series: Rubus chamaemorus. Christa P. H. Mulder, Lindsey V. Parkinson, Kristin Schroder, Hannah Foss, Molly Putman, Katie V. Spellman, Anne Ruggles, and Pamela K. Diggle. Fairbanks, AK: Institute of Arctic Biology and International Arctic Research Center, University of Alaska Fairbanks, 20

Dena'inaq' Huch'ulyeshi: The Dena'ina Way of Living. Teacher's Resource Kit. Suzi Jones, James A. Fall, and Aaron Leggett, Anchorage, AK: Anchorage Museum, 2013. Educational resource kit developed in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name.
Also available is the related book, Dena'inaq' Huch'ulyeshi. Suzi Jones, James A. Fall, Aaron Leggett, editors. Fairbanks, AK: University Alaska Press in association with the Anchorage Museum, 2013.

Edible Alaska, is a culinary magazine and online presence dedicated to Alaska’s local food movement. Their mission is to advocate for a strong local food economy while exploring Alaska’s rich culinary and cultural landscape, and to celebrate Alaska’s unique food traditions, new culinary trends, and the people who shape the local food scene.

Edible Alaska is published quarterly by co-publishers Amy O'Neill Houck and Jeremy Pataky, and is part of Edible Communities, an award-winning network of more than 90 regional print food publications across the US and Canada.

"The Ethnobiology of the Central Yup'ik Eskimo, Southwestern Alaska." Dennis Griffin. Alaska Journal of Anthropology, Volume 7, Number 2 (2009), pp. 81-100.

Gin Xila'a - Plants. Grade Levels K-2. Elementary level curriculum featuring Haida language, culture and history related to plants and plant use developed in Ketchikan and Hydaburg, Alaska from 2004 to 2006 by a team of linguists, educators, curriculum specialists, Native language speakers, and traditional knowledge culture bearers. This curriculum was developed under the Haida Language Immersion Program: Boosting Academic Achievement grant from the U.S. Department of Education (#S356A030046) awarded to the Sealaska Heritage Institute in 2005.

Keeping it Living: Traditions of Plant Use and Cultivation on the Northwest Coast of North America. Edited by Douglas Deur and Nancy Turner. Seattle, WA: University of Washington, Press, 2005. (Note: Chapters 9 and 10 about Tsimshian and Tlingit horticulture are of particular relevance to the study of Alaska ethnobotany.)

Medicinal Flora of the Alaska Natives. A Compilation of Knowledge from Literary Sources of Aleut, Alutiiq, Athabascan, Eyak, Haida, Inupiat, Tlingit, Tsimshian, and Yupik Traditional Healing Methods Using Plants. By Ann Garibaldi. Anchorage, AK: Alaska Natural Heritage Program, Environment and Natural Resources Institute, University of Alaska Anchorage, 1999.

"Nausiaq - Plant?: Ethnobotanical Classification in Shishmaref, Alaska." Stacie McIntosh. MA Thesis. Fairbanks, AK: University of Alaska Fairbanks, 1999.

Plants That We Eat: Nauriat Nigiñaqtuat: From the Traditional Wisdom of the Iñupiat Elders of Northwest Alaska. Anore Jones. Fairbanks, AK: University of Alaska Press, 2010. (Revised from original edition, 1983)

"Portrait of an Eskimo Tribal Health Doctor." By Sandra Juul. Alaska Medicine, Volume 21, Number 6, November 1979: 66-71.

The Sitka Local Foods Network is a 501(c)3 non-profit group whose mission is to increase the amount of locally produced and harvested food in the diets of Southeast Alaskans. Their website is used to keep people updated on what the organization is doing and to let people know how they can participate in this community effort.

The Healing Power of Alaska's Plants. Exhibit Guide. A Chugach Heritage Kit (Draft). Developed by Frances Bennett and Sandra Angaiak. Funded by the U.S. Department of Education, Grant Number S356A090054. Anchorage, AK: Chugachmiut, no date.

Traditional Uses of North Slope Plants. Carolyn Parker, Scientific Author; Patuk Glenn, Project Lead; and Rainey Nasuġraq Hopson, Illustrator. Anchorage, AK: Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, 2018. Unpublished document made available only to shareholders of Arctic Slope Regional Corporation (ASRC). Contact ASRC for more information.

Copies are also available for check-out from Elmer E. Rasmuson Library, University of Alaska Fairbanks, Loussac Public Library in Anchorage, UAA/APU Consortium Library, University of Alaska Anchorage, and Tuzzy Consortium Library in Utqiaġvik.

Uqaluktuat: 1980 Elders Conference, Women's Session. Transcribed and translated by Dorothy Panikpak Edwardsen. Barrow (Utqiaġvik), AK: North Slope Borough, Commission on Iñupiat History, Language and Culture, 1993.

The PDF attached here only includes pages 2-22 where the discussion is about palpating as a traditional practice for treating intestinal problems, and about childbirth.

Pilgusich Inuunilugnikun: 1982-mi Utuqqanaat Kasimaninanni (Ways of Survival: 1982 Elders Conference). Barrow (Utqiaġvik), AK: North Slope Borough, Commission on History, Language and Culture.

The PDF attached here is only the section where Della Keats from Noatak talks about traditional healing and medicine.

Wild Edible and Poisonous Plants of Alaska. Christine A. Heller. Fairbanks, AK: Cooperative Extension Service, University of Alaska Fairbanks, 1993.