Enter the Europeans
13-year-old Aleut, John Bell (Bennie) Benson, made his mark in history with the design of the Big Dipper for the Alaska State flag, in a contest prior to Alaska's statehood. An Aleut artist, Thomas Stream, from Kodiak, has become an abstract artist, blending Aleut subjects into his gouache paintings and playing a part in evolving Aleut art with colorful and playful themes. The Aleutian Chain has become a home to the tourist and fishing industry. With airports, computers, and other expanding luxuries, the present-day Aleuts have emerged as a modern people, reclaiming and honoring their ancestral culture and redefining what it means to be an Aleut, to be an Unangan.
Aleut dance group wearing traditional Aleut regalia
Source: Photograph courtesy of the Aleut Corportation.
Aleut dance group wearing traditional Aleut regalia
Source: Photograph courtesy of the Aleut Corportation.
— Pamela Rae Huteson
See also Athabascan; Native Peoples of the United States
Further Readings
Hauck, S. A. (1986). Extinction and reconstruction of Aleut music and dance. Doctoral dissertation, University of Pittsburg. Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms International.
Jochelson, W. (1966). History, ethnology, and anthropology of the Aleut. Oosterhout, The Netherlands: Anthropological Publications.
Kohlhoff, D. (1995). When the wind was a river. Seattle, WA: University of Washington Press in an association with Aleutian/Pribilof Islands Association, Anchorage, AK.
Liapunova, R. G. (1996). Essays on the ethnography of the Aleuts: At the end of the eighteenth and the first half of the nineteenth century (J. Shelest, Trans., W. B. Workman & L. T. Black, ed. assist.). Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press.
Lubischer, J. (1988). Baidarka as a living vessel: On the mysteries of the Aleut kayak builders. Port Moody, Canada: Baidarka Society.
Rubicz, R., Schurr, T. G., Babb, P. L., & Crawford, M. H. (2003). Mitochondrial DNA variation and the origins of the Aleuts. Human Biology, 75, 809-835.
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