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[Russian.]
For more information on Aleut, visit Britannica.com.
The Aleuts (from the Russian word Aleuty) consist of Near Island Aleuts, Kodiak Island Alutiiq (or Sugpiak, the "real people"), and Unangan Inuit (including some Dillingham Yupik and Cook Island Athabascans). They are indigenous to southwest Alaska, from Prince William Sound in the east, across the Alaska Peninsula, and extending west through the Aleutian Islands. They traditionally speak the Aleutic language, which has common roots in Proto-Eskimo-Aleut with the Inuit languages spoken throughout arctic Alaska, Canada, Greenland, and Siberia. Historically their societies consisted of hereditary common, slave, and noble (from whom the leaders were chosen) classes. Men tended to hold positions of political power, while women retained power and influence as shamans and healers, and it is speculated that elite family lines were matriarchal. Living in partly subterranean sod houses, they built relatively populous settlements, and had an economy based on hunting sea mammals, including whales. They rarely ventured inland, but traded along the Alaskan coasts, and seem to have traveled regularly throughout the North Pacific, including coastal Siberia, possibly for more than ten millennia.
In 1741 the Aleuts came into contact with Europeans following the arrival of a Russian expedition led by the
Dane Vitus Bering, who estimated their population to be 20,000 to 25,000. Immediately the Russians enslaved them largely for their ability to hunt sea otters. The early Rus-sian fur hunters exhausted the resources of each place they landed, leaving after massacring villages and devastating wildlife populations; by 1825 the Aleut population was below 1,500. Many Aleuts were converted to the Russian Orthodox Church, which remained a dominant influence after the American purchase of Alaska in 1867.
In 1971 Congress passed the Alaska Native Settlement Claims Act (ANSCA) as a way of returning 40 million acres of land to Alaskan Natives and creating an infrastructure for economic development and the management of natural resources. While the political pursuit of ANSCA united Native people throughout Alaska, its passage caused the 23,797 Aleuts (according to the 1990 U.S. Census) and their traditional homelands to be divided among five Native corporations: Aleut Corporation, Bristol Bay Native Corporation, Chugach Alaska Corporation, Cook Inlet Region Incorporated, and Koniag Incorporated.
Bibliography
Crowell, Aron L., Amy F. Steffian, and Gordon L. Pullar, eds. Looking Both Ways: Heritage and Identity of the Altuiiq People. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2001.
Fortescue, Michael, Steven Jacobson, and Lawrence Kaplan. Comparative Eskimo Dictionary with Aleut Cognates. Fair-banks: Alaska Native Language Center, University of Alaska, 1994.
—Jefferson Faye Sina
Bibliography
See V. I. Jochelson, The History, Ethnology and Anthropology of the Aleut (1933, repr. 1966); R. Ackerman, Ethnohistory in Southwestern Alaska and the Southern Yukon (1970); W. S. Laughlin, Aleuts (1981).
| Aleut | ||||||
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 Traditional Aleut dress |
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| Total population | ||||||
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17,000 to 18,000 |
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| Regions with significant populations | ||||||
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| Language(s) | ||||||
| English, Russian, Aleut | ||||||
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| Christianity, Shamanism | ||||||
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| Inuit, Yupik |
The Aleuts (self-denomination: Unangax̂, Unangan or Unanga) are the indigenous people of the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, United States and Kamchatka Krai, Russia.
The homeland of the Aleuts includes the Aleutian Islands, the Pribilof Islands, the Shumagin Islands,Hawaii, and the far western part of the Alaska Peninsula. During the 19th century, the Aleuts were deported from the Aleutian Islands to the Commander Islands (now part of Kamchatka Krai) by the Russian-American Company. uour face bub
After the arrival of missionaries in the late eighteenth century, many Aleuts became Christians by joining the Russian Orthodox Church. One of the earliest Christian martyrs in North America was Saint Peter the Aleut.
In 18th century, Russian furriers established settlements on the islands and exploited the people.(see Amchitka#Early history)
There was a recorded revolt against Russian workers in Amchitka in 1784. It started from the exhaustion of necessities that the Russians provided to local people in return for furs they had made.(see Amchitka#Aleuts' revolt)
Prior to major influence from outside, there were approximately 25,000 Aleuts on the archipelago. However, barbarities at the hands of outside corporations and foreign diseases eventually reduced the population to one-tenth this number. Further declines led to a 1910 Census count of 1,491 Aleuts.
In 1942, Japanese forces occupied Attu and Kiska Islands in the western Aleutians, and later transported captive Attu Islanders to Hokkaidō, where they were held as POWs. Hundreds more Aleuts from the western chain and the Pribilofs were evacuated by the United States government during World War II and placed in internment camps in southeast Alaska, where many died. The Aleut Restitution Act of 1988 was an attempt by Congress to compensate the survivors.
The World War II campaign to retake Attu and Kiska was a significant component of the operations of the Asian theater.
Aleuts constructed "barabaras" -- partially underground houses. According to Lillie McGarvey, a twentieth-century Aleut leader, barabaras have the properties of "keeping occupants dry from the frequent rains, warm at all times, and snugly sheltered from the high winds common to the area".
Hunting, weapon-making, building of baidarkas (special hunting boats), and weaving are some of the traditional arts of the Aleuts. Nineteenth-century craftsmen were famed for their ornate wooden hunting hats, which feature elaborate and colorful designs and may be trimmed with sea lion whiskers, feathers, and ivory. Aleut seamstresses created finely stitched waterproof parkas from seal gut, and some women still master the skill of weaving fine baskets from rye and beach grass.
Aleut basketry is some of the finest in the world, the continuum of a craft dating back to prehistoric times and carried through to the present. Early Aleut women created baskets and woven mats of exceptional technical quality using only an elongated and sharpened thumbnail as tool. Today Aleut weavers continue to produce woven pieces of a remarkable cloth-like texture, works of modern art with roots in ancient tradition. The Aleut word for grass basket is qiigam aygaaxsii.
In Neal Stephenson's novel Snow Crash, the character Raven is an Aleut harpooner seeking revenge for the US's nuclear testing on Amchitka.
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 | Dictionary. The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2007, 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2007. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. Britannica Concise Encyclopedia. © 2006 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| US History Encyclopedia. © 2006 through a partnership of Answers Corporation. All rights reserved. Read more |
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| Columbia Encyclopedia. The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition Copyright © 2003, Columbia University Press. Licensed from Columbia University Press. All rights reserved. www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup/ Read more |
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| Wikipedia. This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Aleut". Read more |
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