Russian Colonization
In 1784, the Russian American Company arrived on Kodiak Island and forced large numbers of Native men to harvest sea otters for European markets. When the Russian Orthodox Church and the Czar intervened in our behalf, we were moved into seven large communities with other tribes. Along with the smallpox epidemic of 1837-1840, this move decimated the Alutiiq population and significantly changed our social, economic, and governance arrangements.
American Occupation and Cultural Integration
Later, in 1867, the United States government bought the occupation rights to Alaska and enforced a policy in schools of non-tolerance for indigenous languages, institutions, and customs. This policy continued well into the 20th century. Even though we were forced to Americanize, our people were not granted citizenship rights equal to those of other Americans until the passage of the Civil Rights Act.
Throughout the last hundred years, non-Native immigrants have created a population boom in Alaska that has brought with it great pressure to emulate a "white" lifestyle. During World War II, the urban center of Kodiak engulfed our traditional village, leaving our tribe with the added challenge of having no jurisdictional presence. Our people additionally have faced strong competition from non-Native hunters and the fishing industry for access to traditional subsistence hunting and gathering resources, as well as the use of traditional tribal lands.
Federal Recognition as a Tribe
Our tribe "disappeared" from the list of federally recognized Native tribes in the 1970s for unknown reasons. Without federally acknowledgement, we lost our standing as a sovereign nation, and our tribal council lost its status as a legally-sanctioned body.
In 1987, we formally reorganized as a non-profit organization, the Kodiak Tribal Council, Inc., and elected a board of directors to govern our tribe. The Tribal Council led our effort to regain federal recognition. In October 1988, we held a constitutional convention and formally adopted our constitution. On December 29, 2000, our hard work paid off, and we once again received official federal status as an Alaska Native tribe.
Recognition as a sovereign nation has enabled us to establish the Sun'aq Tribal Council as our official governing body. Our nonprofit entity, the Kodiak Tribal Council is now a separate organization dedicated to supporting the social and economic well-being of the Sun'aq people.
Recent Tribal Revitalization
The last 15 to 20 years have witnessed a cultural revival among the Alaska Natives of Kodiak. We feel an increased sense of tribal unity and identity. We desire to pass our traditions on to our young people, who also wish to learn our ancestral lifestyle. We see preservation of the values and practices of our traditional way of life as contributing to the health and vitality of our tribe's infrastructure, to the larger Kodiak community, and to the land and sea that are our home. |
