Iñupiaq men in qayaqs, Noatak, Alaska, circa 1929. Edward S. Curtis Collection, Library of Congress Digital Collections.
Crossing the Chilkoot Pass, circa 1898. Courtesy Candy Waugaman and Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park.
The Gold Rush boomtown of Nome on the Seward Peninsula, 1900. Courtesy of U.S. Geological Survey Photographic Library.
Planning is currently underway for a conference to be held on the Kenai Peninsula in spring 2017 to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Alaska Treaty of Cession and discuss its history in the Kenai Peninsula area.
Keynote speaker will be Andrei Znamenski. He has studied history and anthropology both in Russia and the United States. His major interests include Native people and religions of Alaska and Siberia. His first book, Shamanism and Christianity (1999) explores indigenous responses to 19th-century Russian Orthodox missionaries. A follow-up project, Through Orthodox Eyes (2003), translates the journals of Kenai area missionaries who worked among the Dena’ina in south-central Alaska. His other books are The Beauty of the Primitive: Shamanism and Western Imagination (2007), Red Shambhala (2011), and two anthologies he edited. Znamenski has lived and traveled extensively in Siberia, Alaska, northern Europe, and Japan, and was the keynote speaker at the 2009 annual meeting of the Alaska Historical Society. Formerly a resident scholar at the Library of Congress, then a foreign visiting professor at Hokkaido University, Japan, he is currently Professor of History at the University of Memphis.
For more information, see: the 150 Years: Kenai Peninsula History Conference website; their Facebook page (150 Years: Kenai Peninsula History Conference); their 2016 newsletters; or contact lead organizer Shana Loshbaugh, (907) 460-7554 s.loshbaugh@gmail.com.
