Alaska Native Service Survey of Native Foods, Yukon River communities, 1940s-1970s

• Main Authors: Philip A. Loring, Anne Beaudreau, Cecile Tang
• Format: Dataset
• Language: unknown
• Published: Arctic Data Center 2020
• Subjects: subsistence; Alaska; wildlife; fish; Esox lucius; Arctic; Yukon; Anchorage; Alaska Canyon; Yukon river
• Online Access: https://doi.org/10.18739/A2GX44V7K

This data was created in a project that sought to better characterize Alaska Native food systems during the mid-20th century, a time of significant social change. We completed a partial transcription of the Alaska Native Services' "Reindeer Records", held at the United States National Archives Records Administration-Alaska Region (NARA-AR) in Anchorage. Specifically, we transcribed annual surveys of native foods (i.e., fish and game) as recorded by Alaska Native Service schoolteachers each year, specifically for 25 rural communities along the Yukon River, covering a period of 1941-1972. Our transcription and subsequent analysis was completed by the authors in 2019. We copied each record from a scanned version of the original, focusing only on the presence/absence of specific wild food species harvested each year. We did not include such details as harvest quantity, which were only reported sporadically, or qualitative observations by the teachers regarding harvests and food security, which were also present on some records. Our goal with the study was to explore whether changes such as Alaska's statehood, federal land claims settlement, or other trends at that time, drove change in the diversity of subsistence food systems. These data also inform a forthcoming study by the same authors, to be published in the September, 2020 issue of Arctic.