Cultural life

The arts

Alaska’s Indigenous peoples are well known for their ivory and wood carvings, and the nearly lost art of totem carving has been revived, particularly in Sitka National Historical Park. Basketry and beadwork are common crafts among Alaska Natives as well.

Alaska is celebrated in a rich body of literature written both by Alaskans and by visitors on whom the state had a dramatic and lasting effect. Most prominent among the latter group is Jack London, who was drawn to Alaska in the 1890s by the Klondike gold rush in the nearby Yukon territory and set a number of books in the state, including Call of the Wild (1903), White Fang (1906), and Burning Daylight (1910). Naturalist John Muir explored the Alaskan wilderness and wrote about it in Travels in Alaska (1915). Decades later, an Alaskan sojourn was the subject of journalist John McPhee’s Coming into the Country (1977). On the Edge of Nowhere (1966), a memoir by James Huntington (as told to Lawrence Elliott), the son of a white trapper father and Athabaskan mother, is another landmark of Alaskan literature. Velma Wallis, another Athabaskan, wrote several highly regarded books, most notably Two Old Women (1994).

Cultural institutions

Juneau is the site of the state’s historical library and state museum. The Museum of the North, part of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, is a major Alaska-oriented research museum and includes a permanent exhibit on the northern lights. The Sheldon Museum and Cultural Center in Sitka is dedicated to the heritage of the Alaska Natives of the southeast.

Alaska provides the country’s only significant Arctic wilderness, and much research is done in the study of glacier, mountain, and tundra biomes, atmospheric and ionospheric conditions, and polar oceanography by federal, state, university, and private agencies. For example, the University of Alaska carries out extensive research on Arctic problems through its Geophysical Institute, Institute of Marine Science, Institute of Arctic Biology, and other groups. Since 1946 the Juneau affiliate of the Foundation for Glacier and Environmental Research, in cooperation with the National Science Foundation, the University of Idaho, and the University of Alaska, has sponsored a glaciologic and environmental research and field sciences training program on the Juneau Icefield. The Alaska SeaLife Center in Seward contains the state’s only public aquarium as well as an ocean wildlife rescue centre. It is also a major research centre for the study of marine life and a tourist attraction.

Sports and recreation

The official state sport is dogsled racing, which ranges from sprints to long-distance treks. The most famous race is the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race; since its inception in 1967, it has grown from a 25-mile (40 km) to a 1,100-mile (1,770 km) race. The annual World Eskimo-Indian Olympics are held each July in Fairbanks, where Indigenous peoples from Alaska, Canada, and the Pacific Northwest compete in traditional Alaskan competitions. The University of Alaska Fairbanks and the University of Alaska Anchorage compete in men’s and women’s basketball and skiing as well as in men’s hockey, among other sports. In 1979, in an attempt to put its men’s basketball program on the map, the University of Alaska Anchorage exploited a rule that allowed collegiate teams to play more than the then-allotted limit of 28 regular season games if they were played outside the Lower 48 and began holding the basketball tournament that became known as the Great Alaska Shootout. That tournament attracted some of the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s premier programs to its annual Thanksgiving gathering until it ended in 2017. Since the 1960s some of the best collegiate baseball players in the United States have made the trek north in summer to showcase their talents in the Alaska Baseball League, which has two teams in Anchorage, along with teams in Palmer, Chugiak, and Kenai, and features an annual Midnight Sun Game.

Opportunities for active recreation abound in every region of the state. There are several national wildlife refuges in Alaska, with more than 77 million acres (31 million hectares) managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In 1980 more than 100 million acres (40.5 million hectares) were designated for national parks, preserves, wildlife refuges, and wilderness areas, adding to the 7.5 million acres (3 million hectares) already established. One of the largest ice-carving festivals in the world is held annually at Fairbanks.

Media and publishing

Alaska’s major newspapers include the Anchorage Daily News, Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, and Juneau Empire. There are other local and weekly newspapers as well. There are a variety of radio and television stations throughout the state, and cable and satellite television services are widely available.