Mythbusters – Alaska! No igloos.

Well, at least not in the sense you’re imagining. Technically, “igloo” is the Inupiaq word for “house”. So there are houses. They’re just not normally made of blocks of ice.

That’s not to say ice block igloos don’t exist. They are just more of a Canadian Inuit Eskimo tradition. They are basically the same people as the Alaskan Inupiaq Eskimos, but they have a slightly different dialect and they reside in a different country. I was told the Inupiaq do know how to make ice block igloos. And if they get caught out away from camp for an extended period of time, they may construct one. But it is not their normal housing by any means.

As you can see by the photos, I took a tour of the outside “village sites” at the Alaska Native Heritage Center yesterday. It was about 2 degrees when I got there, but no wind, so not altogether unpleasant. And they have put heat systems in a couple of the houses for the comfort of visitors. Normally, of course, there would be a fire on the hearth so the houses would be nice and cozy in the winter.

There is a village site for each of the different regional groups. The most familiar looking is the log cabin of the Athabascan people. It’s a two-room structure. One room (the one we’re seen entering in the photo) is the smoke-room where moose meat is hung and smoked via a fire in the center and a small smoke escape hole in the roof. Kind of like a sugar shack, but the whole is covered by a skin, not another little raised roof. The other room is the living quarters and in this house was a little larger than the smoke-room. Near the cabin would be a cache raised on stilts which acts as a freezer and protects your food from bears and other animals. The ladder is propped by the stilts, but would be moved if the family went away for awhile. The stilt poles would also be greased with bear fat so they smell like a bear and are slippery enough to keep other marauders out of your freezer.

One of the interesting stories I heard yesterday was from an Athabascan woman who was born in January of 1947 in a tent not so far from Big Delta (where my parents were stationed in 1954 with my then, 2 year old sister Susan). When this woman was born in this tent, it was -79 degrees outside. She and her family were some of the last to live in the old way of hunting and gathering. In the winter, they went by dog sled to Winter Camp which consisted of tents. Then in spring, to Spring Camp which was a cabin. In summer, they moved to Fish Camp by Tetlin Lake where they stayed for the longest time and ate fish 3 times a day. This woman doesn’t care much for whitefish anymore! Then in the fall, it was on to her Uncle’s site to hunt for moose to stock up for the winter months. What struck me as interesting was that while my parents and their 2-year old daughter were living like most other military families in east central Alaska… here was this whole other world of existence going on all around them. Neither interacting with the other or even really aware of the other’s existence. It makes me wonder what is going on around me right now of which I have no idea, but might find fascinating…

In one of the photos, you'll see our guide, a blend of Yupik and Inupiaq. He's pointing to the Yupik style houses. Some variation of these is used by the Inupiaq and Aleuts as well. They are traditionally built about halfway underground. But to accommodate their senior citizen cruising tourists, they've built these fully above ground so no one has to stoop or crawl into them as might normally be necessary.

These houses are built in places with few trees. So they use the materials they have including sod and driftwood. The driftwood consists of whole trees dragged down to the coastal regions by the massive rivers like the Yukon and the Kuskokwim, both of which have their deltas in Yupik territory.

You'll also see the world's earliest Ziploc bag. Known locally as a seal float or seal bag. Alaska natives would store food in the seal and bury it under ground to freeze. Voila! Freezer bag! They would also inflate them and use them as buoys to either keep their harpoons from being lost on a whale hunt or to tether their catch of other sea mammals until the hunt was complete. (Sort of like stringing fish to keep them fresh in the water.)