Aleut

View more History, Politics, Society videos

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