eBook

Alaska Native Resilience

Holly Miowak Guise

2024

Overview

Alaska Native elders remember wartime invasion, relocation, and land reclamation The US government justified its World War II occupation of Alaska as a defense against Japan's invasion of the Aleutian Islands, but it equally served to advance colonial expansion in relation to the geographically and culturally diverse Indigenous communities affected. Offering important Alaska Native experiences of this history, Holly Miowak Guise draws on a wealth of oral histories and interviews with Indigenous elders to explore the multidimensional relationship between Alaska Natives and the US military during the Pacific War. The forced relocation and internment of Unangax̂ in 1942 proved a harbinger of Indigenous loss and suffering in World War II Alaska. Violence against Native women, assimilation and Jim Crow segregation, and discrimination against Native servicemen followed the colonial blueprint. Yet Alaska Native peoples took steps to enact their sovereignty and restore equilibrium to their lives by resisting violence and disrupting attempts at US control. Their subversive actions altered the colonial structures imposed upon them by maintaining Indigenous spaces and asserting sovereignty over their homelands. A multifaceted challenge to conventional histories, Alaska Native Resilience shares the experiences of Indigenous peoples from across Alaska to reveal long-overlooked demonstrations of Native opposition to colonialism.

• Publisher: University of Washington Press
• Subject: 20th century / Alaska / Alaska Jim Crow / Alaska Territorial Guard / Aleutian Islands / Aleutian Islands (Alaska) / Aleuts / Aleuts-Alaska-Social conditions-20th century / Aleuts-Forced removal and internment, 1942-1945 / Aleuts-Relocation / American Indian Studies / American Studies / Attu Island (Alaska) / Attu Island (Alaska)-History-Japanese occupation, 1942-1943 / Attu, Battle of, Alaska, 1943 / Battle of Attu / Campaigns / Evacuation of civilians / Forced removal and internment, 1942–1945 / History / History / American History / HISTORY / Military / World War II / HISTORY / United States / State & Local / West (AK, CA, CO, HI, ID, MT, NV, UT, WY) / internment / Japanese occupation, 1942–1943 / Military Studies / Native American and Indigenous Studies / oral history / Pacific Northwest / History / Pacific War / Personal narratives, American / Relocation / segregation / Social conditions / SOCIAL SCIENCE / SOCIAL SCIENCE / Ethnic Studies / Native American Studies / Unangax̂ relocation / violence against Native women / World War, 1939-1945 / World War, 1939-1945-Alaska / World War, 1939-1945-Alaska-Aleutian Islands / World War, 1939-1945-Campaigns-Alaska-Aleutian Islands / World War, 1939-1945-Evacuation of civilians-Alaska / World War, 1939-1945-Personal narratives, American
• ISBN: 0295752513, 9780295752518, 029575253X, 9780295752532