Aleut dancers in ceremonial dress. Photo by Clark James Mishler. Part of the documentation in Alaska's Local Legacies project.

Alaska

The American Folklife Center has among its holdings ethnographic collections featuring the traditional music and folklore of Alaska. The earliest material included in these collections, Tlingit Indian music recorded on cylinders, dates from 1903. Other Alaska groups represented in the collections are the Aleut, Atna Athabaskan, Haida, Inuit, and Ingalik. The Archive also holds recordings of stories, songs, recitations, and oral histories of more recent settlers, recorded in the 1940s and later.

Collections

National Sampler Project : Selections from Alaska Collections: Listen to audio recordings and view photographs. Learn more about the National Sampler Project.

Finding Aid: View a complete list of our Alaska collections.

Local Legacies: This project provides a "snapshot" of local culture as it was expressed in the year 2000. View Alaska's Local Legacies projects.

Veterans History Project: Browse state collections from the Veterans History Project.

Songs of America: Browse an interactive state map for selected songs from the American Folklife Center’s collections, as well as songs from the Library’s Music Division and Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division.

Additional Resources

Educational Resources: View a list of educational materials related to Alaska from A Teacher's Guide to Folklife Resources.

Folklife Resources: Find state folklife-related agencies, societies, archives, higher education programs, and more, in Folklife Sourcebook: A Directory of Folklife Resources in the United States.

Publications:
The Federal Cylinder Project: A Guide to Field Recordings in Federal Agencies, Volume 3: Great Basin/Plateau Northwest Coast/Arctic Indian Catalog [view catalog record]

A Brief List of Materials Relating to Alaskan Music (bibliography from 1965) [view full text]