Learn how Native Alaskans live off the land.

Subsistence is unfamiliar and uncommon to many of us, but is a way of life for many of the villagers we visit in the Bering Sea, Alaska, British Columbia, and even Central America. Most of the modern world is based on a cash economy, full-time employment and access to urban centers and markets where we are able to purchase what we need with the cash we make. In rural Alaska and Russia, many villages are located so far from urban centers that there are no full-time employers to provide income, and no markets where they can make purchases, therefore they rely on the land,the sea, the rivers, and each other to survive. What is caught is shared amongst everyone, young and old. Specialized products like seal oil are often traded among other communities for items that are usually unavailable to them, such as wood like willow, hemlock, birch, and spruce to build with.

It is no accident that many subsistence villages are located on or near the shores of a river or a lake, or on the coasts of the Pacific, Bering Sea, or Arctic Ocean. The natives rely on what they are able to take from the waters and the land to provide for their way of life. They look to the waters for various types of fish, whales, and walrus, and to the land for fox, caribou, nesting sea birds, and polar bears. They harvest the meat for food, use the walrus hides for skin boats, feathers and furs for parkas, mittens and boots, intestines for waterproof clothing, buoys and bags, and use the bones and sinew for sewing. The processing and drying of the meat is done as it has been for thousands of years. To round out their diet, berries and edible plants are gathered from the tundra and forests. You will see walrus meat and hides hanging to dry from wooden racks, and you may see and smell this year's whale kill as it lingers on the beach.

As you meet and learn about subsistence, you will also come to know the rich culture and traditions of each people. The stories of their hunts and traditions are told in song and dance by men and women dressed in traditional kuskpuk, mittens, and boots, and their stories are in the ivory carving of the walrus hunter or in the native doll to which hours of painstaking labor has been put into creating a miniature replica of a feather parka that dresses the doll.