A legally empowered equitable co-management system of the Kuskokwim River salmon fishery between subsistence users and state and federal managers does not exist. Despite federal legislation Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) (Section 8) calling for a "meaningful role" for subsistence users in managing fish and game on federal lands, some rural subsistence users believe that they have yet to assume a "meaningful role" in the policy-making process. The absolute maximum capacity that subsistence users can fulfill in terms of participating in the management of the resources they depend on comes in the form of one of many advisory boards. Ultimately, management regimes and policymakers do not have to consider advisory council member recommendations, suggestions and/or group proposals. On the Kuskokwim River, the decline of king salmon, perceived mismanagement, general mistrust of management agencies, inter-river conflict, and lack of authority and accountability felt by local users, has prompted some subsistence salmon fishermen to press for a stronger role in salmon management. The United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) and the Kuskokwim River Inter Tribal Fish Commission (KRITFC) have developed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) pertaining to the management of the fishery. The Alaska Department of Fish and Game (ADFG) has not entered into negotiations with the KRITFC and United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) regarding management. This thesis explores the history of the Kuskokwim salmon fishery and options available to Alaska Native subsistence salmon users who seek an equitable role in managing the fishery.

This thesis explores the reflections of Utqiaġvik community members on British Petroleum's Corporate social responsibility activities within the region of North Slope, Alaska. The term Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) refers to actions taken by corporations to improve the quality of life for its employees, local community members, and the environment, while also contributing to its own economic development. The thesis is driven by a guiding research question: how have the people of Utqiaġvik responded to the CSR activities of oil companies whose oil extractive industry operations impact the region's social, economic, and environmental welfare? In particular, this thesis seeks to understand why CSR activities sometimes fail to achieve their purported goals. By interviewing residents from the community of Utqiaġvik, I obtained perspectives on the impacts of oil development on the local environment and community, bringing to light the limits of current CSR activities, such that I might provide recommendations for rectifying CSR shortfalls. I argue that while oil companies' profit motives tend to restrict the potential of CSR activities, local people should be able to influence the types of CSR activities corporations pursue, given that they experience the local impacts of the industry. Based on my respondents' perspectives, I suggest that oil companies improve their risk-management approaches and communicate and discuss more effectively with local communities their current and planned developments and their intentions to minimize impacts, respect local culture and hire more local employees. The thesis concludes by offering recommendations to the oil companies regarding the nature and desired impacts of their CSR activities.

From 1850 to 1920, over 25,000 Scandinavians who had joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints emigrated to Utah to unite themselves with fellow Church members (Mormons) and build their Zion. These Scandinavian immigrants brought distinctive cultural heritages and traditions that contributed to the collective identity in Utah. The majority of literature on Scandinavian immigration to America and Scandinavian immigrants in America, however, neglects to consider the Mormon Scandinavian immigrants in the larger discourse. In addition, many historians of Utah history have concluded that Scandinavian immigrants assimilated culturally and left no trace of their Danish, Norwegian and Swedish traditions. To understand the Scandinavian immigrant experience in Utah, this study examines the material culture emigrants took and produced in their new home. These objects reveal that rather than totally jettisoning homeland heritage, Scandinavian immigrants and their descendants maintained and modified their traditional folkways, skills, and crafts while comingling them with new cultural traditions. The work presented here is the product of four years of fieldwork throughout areas in Utah that were predominantly settled by Scandinavians in the nineteenth century. The study concentrates on furniture, pottery, folk painting, textiles, embroidery, tools and implements. Each object was compared to similar objects in Scandinavia to verify their validity as Scandinavian, then the history of each object was investigated though archival research. Objects and contextual material were examined to elicit their reflection of the immigrant experience and cultural adaptation, especially to understand the evolving identities of Scandinavian Mormons in their new land. This dissertation analyzes material culture to explore the concepts of acculturation and identity. The artifacts suggest that while immigrants adapted to Utah's desert landscape and adjusted to gendered Church expectations, they retained core aspects of their homeland identities. The findings thus illustrate complexity of identity; that it evolves and that certain threads are perhaps more resilient than others. The findings of this study contribute to the broader discourse on Scandinavians in America and assert that Scandinavians in Utah maintained and perpetuated skills and traditions acquired in their homelands as they adjusted to the culture and environment of their new home.

This dissertation probes the origins of intercultural conflict and regional disparity in the circumpolar North. The dissertation asserts that the national governments of Denmark, the United States and Canada have utilized policies of internal colonialism in Alaska, Greenland and the Yukon Territory, and that those policies have shaped inter-cultural relations and contributed to regional disparities in their northern jurisdictions. Michael Hecther's and Dale Johnson's definitions of internal colonialism are utilized for the purposes of this study. The dissertation uses a comparative case study approach, reviewing how national government policies evolved and were applied in Alaska, Yukon and Greenland. It treats Alaska and the Yukon as similar cases, while Greenland is examined in a separate chapter as a dissimilar case. The dissertation provides an historical analysis and comparison of national policies towards aboriginal peoples, and shows how those policies were applied differently in Alaska and the Yukon than they were in the southern United States and Canada. These policies exacerbated conflict between the aboriginal and non-aboriginal populations due to the cultural division of labor that was created. The dissertation then examines the impact of federal policies on the economic development of Alaska and the Yukon. Thirdly, the dissertation examines the history of constitutional change, and compares the struggle for Alaska statehood with efforts to achieve provincial status for the Yukon. The dissertation concludes that policies of internal colonialism have been detrimental to the social and economic well-being northern peoples, but that responses to these policies have generated creative new approaches and agreements.

Alaska's rate of reported sexual assault is nearly three times the national average, and underreporting may be as high as 70 percent. In rural communities, the rates of both sexual and domestic violence are higher still. Through oral history methodology my research explores how survivors, elders, and professionals view the issues surrounding this violence in remote communities. My findings highlight the interconnectedness of social problems, and the conditions within rural Alaskan communities that hinder reducing these problems. The variables associated with sexual and domestic violence that my respondents highlighted include: alcohol abuse, multigenerational trauma, lack of funding for services, isolation, and normalization of sexual assault and domestic violence. Based on my analysis of the interviews, I have suggested recommendations that I believe are attainable for professional offices in rural Alaska, and that may help them provide better quality services to their communities. These recommendations include: 1) social abuse and crisis training for rural paraprofessionals; 2) socio-cultural training for frontline professional workers, to educate them not only on the history of the region in which they work, but also on the interconnected and long-lasting effects of sexual and domestic violence; and 3) improved communication between rural Alaskan communities and the state agencies that serve them, possibly via a cultural liaison. I also urge public and rural education initiatives, both in schools and to the public at large, regarding the long term, complex, and multigenerational effects of sexual and domestic violence and alcohol abuse.

This thesis assesses the role of modern environmental risks and their institutionalized management in the subpolitics of North Slope stakeholder groups. It draws primarily on the concepts developed by Ulrich Beck and the literature that has grown out of his Risk Society thesis. The purpose of this research is to determine whether the current designs for knowledge production and management inside Alaska's oil management regime are inclusive of the indigenous knowledge (IK) of North Slope residents during the mediation of environmental risks, and whether the extent of inclusion is in proportion with the risk exposures of these communities. The premise of the thesis is that Alaska's oil politics is influenced by risk society conditions, and inclusion of North Slope residents' IK in environmental risk mediation has failed to match the scope of risks imposed upon local communities by negative externalities of oil development policies. Consequently, this trend has resulted in a technocratic hegemony of administrative agencies over risk definitions and disputes over the legitimacy of expert risk-decisions. The thesis is supported by an extensive literature on the politics of science and risk, an examination of the public process at state agencies, and a qualitative analysis of knowledge management initiatives both at the state and at the subpolitical level. The findings of this study support the idea that a new knowledge management model for risk mediation is needed to effectively include stakeholders' cultural rationalities on the acceptability of risks.

By 1966, the King Island Inupiat had moved from their island village and lived at Nome. Little has been written about the de facto relocation of the King Islanders---and how and why it happened. What follows is an ethnohistory of the relocation based on the anthropology and history of the Bering Strait region, archival records of the Bureau of Indian Affairs and interviews with King Islanders in Nome. The heart of the matter was the village's school. Based on the evidence, the BIA closed the school because of the expense and inconvenience of operating at King Island. This accomplished what the BIA had been unable for decades to do by persuasion---to move the village to the mainland. The immediate result of the closure, the resettlement of the villagers in Nome, fits within the established pattern of BIA policy over time, one that had assimilation as its ultimate goal.

Between 1775 and 1792 the shores of what is now Alaska and British Columbia were opened to European reconnaissance by a series of mostly Spanish expeditions. The most ambitious and prestigious of the Spanish expeditions was also one of the last; the Spanish hydrographic expedition of 1789-1794 --the Viaje Politico-Cientifico Alrededor del Mundo, created and commanded by Alessandro Malaspina. The Malaspina expedition was a technical tour-de-force that was meant both materially and symbolically to assert Spain's program of reform and modernization under the Bourbon monarchs, but Malaspina's liberal Enlightenment philosophy would in the end isolate him from the absolutist monarchy he served, dooming the results of the expedition to more than a century of obscurity and Malaspina to imprisonment and banishment. This thesis examines how European state cartography contributed to a competition for imperial space on the Northwest Coast and particularly how that space was shaped through the efforts of the Malaspina Expedition. A close examination of the Malaspina expedition and Malaspina's personal narrative opens a window on the distinctive Spanish imperialism of the late 18th century, and how the cartography of the region contributed to the territorial delineation of modern Alaska and British Columbia.

This study examines the practices of the Alaska Family Health & Birth Center in order to understand how midwives help clients navigate the process of pregnancy, birth, and the postpartum period with a high rate of success, as defined by a low cesarean rate, low mortality and morbidity, and high maternal satisfaction. How do the midwives prepare mothers to navigate the transformation and how do they address failure to progress during birth? This study analyzes birth as a rite of passage, which incorporates a culture's worldview and its practices. These outcomes are achieved by employing a positive, holistic view of the natural, physiological process, by using practices that support the physiological process and minimize intervention, and by keeping the space in which out-of hospital birth takes place. The fact that parents are choosing an alternative ritual for birth at an increasing rate nationwide reflects a change happening in American culture.