SHI TO SPONSOR LECTURE ON SUBSISTENCE SHARING IN ALASKA
Free event to be offered virtually
March 8, 2021
Sealaska Heritage Institute (SHI) will host a free lecture this Thursday on the practice of subsistence sharing in Alaska.
The lecture, The Significance of Subsistence Sharing in Maintaining Alaska Native Communities and Sustaining Alaska Native Cultures, will be given by Steve Langdon, professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Alaska Anchorage.
Indigenous Alaskan societies have existed and flourished for more than 10,000 years, building sophisticated regional adaptations using natural resources available to them, Langdon wrote. Indigenous Alaskans depended and continue to depend on harvests of fish, wildlife, birds and plants for food and other uses. They also developed practices that provide well-being to everyone in the community.
“The sharing of subsistence resources is a central value and practice characteristic of all Indigenous Alaskan societies,” Langdon wrote. “It is also a moral and ethical principle whose practice is essential to Indigenous life and livelihood.”
The presentation, which is scheduled at noon on Thursday, March 11, is part of a lecture series this month focusing on subsistence in various Alaska Native communities and factors that impact traditional subsistence practices.
All lectures will be livestreamed at 12 pm Alaska time on SHI’s YouTube channel, youtube.com/c/SealaskaHeritageInstitute and available for viewing on YouTube any time after the livestream (no account required).
This program is provided under the Preparing Indigenous Teachers and Administrators for Alaska Schools (PITAAS) program and funded by the Alaska Native Education Program.
About the Lecture
Steve Langdon,Ph.D., is professor emeritus of anthropology at the University of Alaska Anchorage, where he taught for 38 years. He has conducted anthropological research projects throughout Alaska, with a focus on precontact, historic and contemporary fisheries of the Tlingit and Haida people. He has also conducted substantial research on subsistence practices of Alaska Natives, fisheries policies and their impacts on Alaska Natives, traditional and ethnohistoric topics of Tlingit society, regulatory policies related to Alaska Native marine mammal hunting and contemporary social and cultural dimensions of Alaska Native life. In 2012, he was invited by the Alaska Native Brotherhood to deliver the Centennial Convention keynote lecture. He received the Bullock Award from the University of Alaska Foundation in 2012 for his excellence and contributions to Alaska. In 2017, the Alaska Federation of Natives gave him the Denali Award, the highest award given by the AFN to a non-Native, for his contributions to Alaska Native rural communities. He is the author of the widely used book The Native People of Alaska - Traditional Living in a Northern Land.
Sealaska Heritage Institute is a private nonprofit founded in 1980 to perpetuate and enhance Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian cultures of Southeast Alaska. Its goal is to promote cultural diversity and cross-cultural understanding through public services and events. SHI also conducts social scientific and public policy research that promotes Alaska Native arts, cultures, history and education statewide. The institute is governed by a Board of Trustees and guided by a Council of Traditional Scholars, a Native Artist Committee and a Southeast Regional Language Committee.
CONTACT: Amy Fletcher, SHI Media and Publications Director, 907.586.9116, amy.fletcher@sealaska.com.
