The global community acknowledges the essential nature of potable water and proper sanitation to the realization of human rights. Since 1959 federal, state and tribal efforts have focused on the goal of equitably providing these services to Alaska Native villages. However, demographic and geographical realities along with limited resources pose formidable challenges to achieving this lofty goal. This thesis explores the challenges to providing safe drinking water in remote Interior Alaska villages and their impact on self-reliance from the perspectives of knowledgeable village residents. Findings from a grounded theory analysis reveal that despite competence and concerted efforts to meet community needs, social and institutional dimensions pose difficulties to sustainable water services. Such challenges include community perceptions about treated water, communication barriers, unharnessed local expertise and opportunities to develop local capacity, complicated needs assessment and resource acquisition processes, mismatched policies and technology vis-a-vis the realities of village living, and resident out migration.

This research analyzes the Tribal House project in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve in Southeast Alaska, which the Hoonah Indian Association (the tribal government at Hoonah) and Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve have promoted collaboratively. The Tribal House project is the construction of an indigenous structure in Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve, primarily for the use of Hoonah, the local Tlingit community. This research investigates the motivations of the partners in supporting the project. It concludes that the two partners' motivations, which derive from distinct missions, reconcile with one another in a complex way. The Hoonah Indian Association supports the project primarily to reconnect the younger Tlingit generations to their ancestral land, Glacier Bay, and to promote their cultural survival, which lies at the core of the tribal government's mission. The reconnection also represents a metaphorical restitution of Glacier Bay in demonstrating for park visitors the Tlingit clans' ties with Glacier Bay, which have been maintained from prehistoric times to modern days. Both the reconnection and the restitution affirm Tlingit clan-based identities. The representation of contemporary Tlingit culture in the Tribal House, however, requires a consolidation of multiple clan identities. Glacier Bay National Park and Preserve promotes the project to accomplish the National Park Service's mission to tell Glacier Bay's history fairly to park visitors by acknowledging that Glacier Bay is the indigenous group's ancestral homeland. This acknowledgement contradicts the original purpose of the National Park, to preserve the region as uninhabited wilderness. This examination of the two entities' motivations in their collaborative project will serve as a case study for considering contemporary park management issues in light of indigenous peoples' inhabitation of park lands since time immemorial.

Geographical features and cultural traits may influence the character of big-mountain tourism in Alaska. For example, Alaska's wild landscape, rich climbing and skiing history, and cultural mythos of wilderness and frontier fostered its status as a major destination for niche big-mountain tourism. Growth in the industry since the 1980s has been phenomenal, though a change threatens the identity of mountain guides of the region, demanding they accept international standards for their self-regulating and uniquely Alaskan version of big-mountain tourism. This research project explored big-mountain niche tourism in Alaska, considering the influences of wilderness and frontier concepts on the tourism culture and examining guides' and clients' motivations for participation in the industry. I queried clients and guides at two guiding services, the Alaska Mountaineering School and its Denali mountain climbers, and Alaska Powder Descents and its Coast mountain heli-skiers. The quantitative client survey assessed participant motivations for engaging in big-mountain tourism, for hiring a guide, and for travelling to engage in mountain tourism. The qualitative guide interview asked guides their motivations for working in big-mountain tourism, their experience with the management of big-mountain risk, and changes they had observed over time in the industry. I am a professional mountain guide and instructor in Alaska and use this experience as a third data point. The findings showed that Alaska's big-mountain tourism offers individuals a transcendental, sublime, yet physical encounter, one that is part of a globalized political and economic system. Except for the guides themselves, the high mountains are generally accessible only to those who are at the high end of the socioeconomic spectrum. Gender is also a defining characteristic of the industry, as the guiding ranks and the clientele in Alaska's big-mountain tourism are overwhelmingly male. For guides, the frontier mythos of intrepid and rugged individualism is a powerful motivator, an identity construction that relates well with the depictions of the region in early literature, and in images promoted by the tourism industry. Clients on the other hand may come to Alaska because it is geographically exceptional, but they are not as enamored of the frontier ideology that resonates so deeply with many permanent residents.

Black Phase is a speculative fiction novel for a young adult audience, set in and around a fictional boarding school in modern-day southeast Alaska. Our protagonist is Mara Edenshaw, an ambitious young artist of Tlingit descent who survives a mysterious illness only to find herself the primary suspect in a string of bizarre vandalisms. Her search to clear her name leads her to Alvis Norling, a shy alchemist’s apprentice living on a nearby island with only his own creation for company: a doll-sized homunculus made from a combination his and Mara’s DNA. Thus Mara’s illness and the vandalisms proved to be linked and, as more clues arise connecting these events to the “sacred science” of alchemy, she and Alvis must work together to uncover the truth, which is intimately tied to the boarding school’s history as an assimilation tool under the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the secret atrocities that happened there in the name of science. Rooted in northern history, Alaska Native culture, traditional folklore and the lives of modern teens in the Last Frontier, Black Phase is appropriate for readers ages thirteen and up.

As Arctic environmental conditions fluctuate, ongoing economic-related agreements established for the Barents Region continue to support and attract Norwegian and Russian oil-producing expeditions within the shared maritime zone. Increased industrial activity throughout the Circumpolar North heightens the need to understand the factors that influence policies responsible for protecting the environment – in particular, preventive measures. Agency theory provides the framework for an analysis of various dynamics that influence the Norwegian and Russian governments (principals) as they develop and enforce rules that regulate petroleum industries (agents). The research question asks about differences between the prevention policies of the two nations even though both acknowledge a very similar need to protect the Barents. Since the regulatory and governance structures cannot fully explain the differences between the two countries’ prevention policies, the hypothesis presents an argument that the strategic goals of Norway and Russia in the global political economy provide sufficient conditions for policy divergence. This research presents case studies of economic and environmental factors that influence how Russia and Norway develop energy-related prevention policies in the Barents Sea. The findings suggest that differing strategic goals between the two countries influence their oil spill prevention policies. Russia’s oil spill prevention policy enables it to maintain high production levels that it can leverage to further its geopolitical aims. Norway’s more cautious prevention policies promote domestic economic stability. In a progressively interdependent world, this study contributes insight into contemporary international relations regarding aspects of partnerships, energy economics, and geostrategic policy.

Many people consider Alaska the last frontier, isolated and independent from the rest of the United States. An analysis of the salmon industry in Bristol Bay and a strike that occurred in 1951 cast doubt upon this belief. The labor dispute and preceding events paint a vivid picture of a population clearly dependent on a fishing industry controlled by absentee owners who manipulated events from Seattle and San Francisco. The strikers included Natives and Non-Natives who joined together to fight the powerful cannery owners and west coast unions who sought to expand their membership. Some of these unions had suspected communist members, and Alaska joined in the paranoia that seized the rest of the United States in their cold war fear of Communism. The strike and the actions of participants in the strike illustrate how Alaska's isolation and independence was but an illusion in the last frontier.

Until the 18th century, the North Pacific coast of North America remained one of the last territories in the world unexplored by Europeans. As terra nullius, or land unclaimed by any Christian prince, this coastline became a coveted prize as Spanish, Russian, French, and British explorers raced to establish sovereignty on behalf of their respective monarchs. The use of symbolic acts of possession in the North Pacific and the indigenous reaction to those ceremonies has never been properly examined. Often dismissed as meaningless pageantry, symbolic acts were for centuries the principl means by which European powers established claims to territories too vast to be settled or defended militarily. By reexamining the accounts of Spanish explorers and their imperial rivals, this study reveals both the power of symbolic acts in the struggle for sovereignty and their weaknesses as ritual claiming yielded to the practical realities of effective occupation and military prowess.

Once upon a time all the books in the Arctic were rare books, incomparable treasures to the men and women who carried them around the world. Few of these tangible remnants of the past have managed to survive the ravages of time, preserved in libraries and special collections. This thesis analyzes the over 22,000-item rare book collection of the Elmer E. Rasmuson Library at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the largest collection of rare books in the State of Alaska and one of the largest polar regions collections in the world. Content, chronology, authorship, design, and relevance to northern and polar history were a few of the criteria used to evaluate the collection. Twenty items of particular value to the study of Alaskan history were selected and studied in depth. The collection not only reflects the social, political and economic development of Alaska, but also the interests, personalities and expertise of collectors and authors, including works owned or written by key individuals in Alaska history, such as Hieromonk Gideon, Ivan Veniaminov, Ivan Pan’kov, Iakov Netsvietov, Kiril Khlebnikov, Hubert Howe Bancroft, George Davidson, Hudson Stuck, Sheldon Jackson, James Wickersham, Charles Bunnell, Alfred H. Brooks and others. Accident and happenstance also played a role in filling the shelves. There are more mysteries than answers—why some of these particular works resisted hundreds of years of neglect, cold, flood, and fire can never be known. While some books have no marks, no identifiable owners or traceable past, the provenance of others makes them unique. Sometimes the story behind the story is the story.

This thesis details the farming history and current importance of the Creamer's Field Migratory Waterfowl Refuge in Fairbanks, Alaska. More significantly, it is the story of a grassroots effort by the community of Fairbanks, working with a kindly old farmer, to preserve open land in the heart of a rapidly expanding city for the benefit of the thousands of migrating cranes, geese and ducks that rely upon the grain fields each spring and fall. Because of their vision, Creamer's Field has become a center for environmental education, outdoor recreation, and biological research while actively providing for the needs of wildlife.

In 2002, the United States abandoned the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and began constructing a missile defense system in Alaska. Questions about how missile defense will contribute to U.S. security remain. Moreover, beliefs about what constitutes security are expanding to include considerations of global environmental stability. According to environmental security theories on arms control, non-proliferation, and environmental degradation, deploying missile defense may make the U.S. and the world less secure. This analysis addresses the issue by exploring the military's role in Alaska and resulting environmental damage, followed by a history of missile defense systems and a description ofthe Alaskan project's components. Arguments for and against missile defense are explained, and the history of Kodiak Island's rocket launch facility illustrates how these issues are evolving in Alaska. The conclusion discusses why pursuing the system is seen by many as a risky policy choice in both traditional and environmental security contexts.