Alaska Native Heritage Center

Experiencing Alaska Native culture first hand in the Bush is logistically complicated and expensive. Instead, come to this 11-hectare (26-acre) center and see how humans survived, and thrived, before central heating.

The main building houses exhibits on traditional arts and sciences. It also features various performances. Among them, the staccato Alaghanak song, lost for 50 years - the center collected bits and pieces of the traditional song from different tribal elders and reconstructed it. Outside, examples of typical structures from the Aleut, Yupik, Tlingit and other tribes are arranged around a picturesque lake. Guides explain the ancient architects' cunning technology - check out wooden panels that shrink in the dry summers (allowing light and air inside) but expand to seal out the cold during the wet winter.

This is much more than just a museum; it represents a knowledge bank of language, art and culture that will survive no matter how many sitcoms are crackling through the Alaskan stratosphere. It's a labor of love, and of incalculable value.