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Alaska Native Resilience: Voices from World War II
The US government justified its World War II occupation of Alaska as a defense against Japan's invasion of the Aleutian Islands, but it equally served to advance colonial expansion in relation to the geographically and culturally diverse Indigenous communities affected. Offering important Alaska Native experiences of this history, Holly Miowak Guise draws on a wealth of oral histories and interviews with Indigenous elders to explore the multidimensional relationship between Alaska Natives and the US military during the Pacific War. The forced relocation and internment of Unangax̂ in 1942 proved a harbinger of Indigenous loss and suffering in World War II Alaska. Violence against Native women, assimilation and Jim Crow segregation, and discrimination against Native servicemen followed the colonial blueprint. Yet Alaska Native peoples took steps to enact their sovereignty and restore equilibrium to their lives by resisting violence and disrupting attempts at US control. Their subversive actions altered the colonial structures imposed upon them by maintaining Indigenous spaces and asserting sovereignty over their homelands. A multifaceted challenge to conventional histories, Alaska Native Resilience shares the experiences of Indigenous peoples from across Alaska to reveal long-overlooked demonstrations of Native opposition to colonialism.
- GenresHistory
300 pages, Hardcover
Published July 30, 2024
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
December 10, 2024
In ALASKA NATIVE RESILIENCE: Voices from World War II, Holly Miowak Guise (Iñupiaq) characterizes the response of Indigenous communities to the World War II incursion of the United States military into Alaskan Natives’ rightful homelands, detailing non-violent resistance and efforts toward equilibrium restoration.
Guise writes, “This book is not just about World War II Alaska; it is about the expansion of US empire and the ways that Alaska Native nations refused erasure by multiple competing settler colonial empires. The US Congress’s purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867 remains a folly,” she states, “because the empires never consulted with the Native nations.”
Although I’d studied materials focused on the lives of Japanese Americans interned after Executive Order 9066, I was unfamiliar with the experiences of the more than eight hundred eighty Unangax̂ people who, in June of 1942, their property seized, were forcibly relocated to camps in Southeast Alaska, where little or no attempt was made by the government to provide even the most basic necessities. Among tribal archives and oral histories recorded by the author are accounts of Alaskans who were able to retain their ancestral homes reaching out with gifts of food, shelter and traditional medicines to aid those so unfairly treated.
Pribolobians, also known as Unangax̂, were required to perform their customary work of seal hunting under the direction of the US government. They not only suffered a loss of personal determination, but received merely a fraction of the profit. This may well be perceived as a form of slavery. Even after the war’s cessation, Guise writes, Alaska Native people endured what she calls “Frozen Jim Crow,” referring to systematized, grievous discrimination and denial of rights.
Actions that purportedly began as military exigency due to Imperial Japan’s invasion of the Aleutian Islands, became, the author tells us, colonization. “Segregation, boarding schools and healthcare are all components of settler colonial institutions that seek to dismantle Native communities and sovereignty while emboldening US empire.”
The author emphasizes that during World War II, in determining with whom and to what degree they would cooperate, Native Alaskans were consistently purposeful in limiting erosion of their liberty, livelihood, family and tribal relationships.
An impressive accomplishment. An important book. I highly recommend ALASKA NATIVE RESILIENCE: Voices from World War II.
Author Holly Miowak Guise, Ph.D., History, is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of New Mexico.
Guise writes, “This book is not just about World War II Alaska; it is about the expansion of US empire and the ways that Alaska Native nations refused erasure by multiple competing settler colonial empires. The US Congress’s purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867 remains a folly,” she states, “because the empires never consulted with the Native nations.”
Although I’d studied materials focused on the lives of Japanese Americans interned after Executive Order 9066, I was unfamiliar with the experiences of the more than eight hundred eighty Unangax̂ people who, in June of 1942, their property seized, were forcibly relocated to camps in Southeast Alaska, where little or no attempt was made by the government to provide even the most basic necessities. Among tribal archives and oral histories recorded by the author are accounts of Alaskans who were able to retain their ancestral homes reaching out with gifts of food, shelter and traditional medicines to aid those so unfairly treated.
Pribolobians, also known as Unangax̂, were required to perform their customary work of seal hunting under the direction of the US government. They not only suffered a loss of personal determination, but received merely a fraction of the profit. This may well be perceived as a form of slavery. Even after the war’s cessation, Guise writes, Alaska Native people endured what she calls “Frozen Jim Crow,” referring to systematized, grievous discrimination and denial of rights.
Actions that purportedly began as military exigency due to Imperial Japan’s invasion of the Aleutian Islands, became, the author tells us, colonization. “Segregation, boarding schools and healthcare are all components of settler colonial institutions that seek to dismantle Native communities and sovereignty while emboldening US empire.”
The author emphasizes that during World War II, in determining with whom and to what degree they would cooperate, Native Alaskans were consistently purposeful in limiting erosion of their liberty, livelihood, family and tribal relationships.
An impressive accomplishment. An important book. I highly recommend ALASKA NATIVE RESILIENCE: Voices from World War II.
Author Holly Miowak Guise, Ph.D., History, is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of New Mexico.
January 4, 2025
The information in the book was invaluable and we’ve needed something like this for a long time. Many people don’t know that the US also interned Aleut peoples (Unangax) during World War II. It was allegedly for their own safety. Japan invaded Attu, raped the women and transported several people back to Japan as POWs (most of whom did not survive the war.)
Dr. Guise’s book brought relevant information about what it was like to live in the internment, which was far more deadly than the US internment of Japanese. About 10% of the interned population died from lack of clean water, insufficient food, lack of heat, and lack of clean living conditions, all of which magnified the deadliness of disease that would occur in those conditions. After the Battle of Attu, the US occupied the Unangax houses in violation of the 3rd Amendment, and seemed to ransack, burn down, and steal from the Attu residents’ homes with impunity.
Dr. Guise also gets into interesting ideas about Native Sovereignty, inter-Native alliances, the trade offs the Unangax made in allying with the US and how they exercised sovereignty in doing so.
This story is nearly invisible in the US, so whatever criticisms I have are more than offset by the stories and Guise’s analysis of the choices and actions the Unangax and Tinglit communities made in the rapid change spurred by the war.
Guise was interviewed by Jason Herbert on his new podcast Reckoning With Jason Herbert. It’s worth checking out if you’re on the fence about reading this.
Dr. Guise’s book brought relevant information about what it was like to live in the internment, which was far more deadly than the US internment of Japanese. About 10% of the interned population died from lack of clean water, insufficient food, lack of heat, and lack of clean living conditions, all of which magnified the deadliness of disease that would occur in those conditions. After the Battle of Attu, the US occupied the Unangax houses in violation of the 3rd Amendment, and seemed to ransack, burn down, and steal from the Attu residents’ homes with impunity.
Dr. Guise also gets into interesting ideas about Native Sovereignty, inter-Native alliances, the trade offs the Unangax made in allying with the US and how they exercised sovereignty in doing so.
This story is nearly invisible in the US, so whatever criticisms I have are more than offset by the stories and Guise’s analysis of the choices and actions the Unangax and Tinglit communities made in the rapid change spurred by the war.
Guise was interviewed by Jason Herbert on his new podcast Reckoning With Jason Herbert. It’s worth checking out if you’re on the fence about reading this.
April 24, 2025
The review on the Goodreads site is very well done. This book was a slow start for me but I stayed with it and was an eager reader as I go into it. I learned about a history that I had never heard of prior to this reading. The theoretical foundations were also new to me & contribute to my enlighten my readings of other histories of oppression.
My next trip to Alaska will be much richer because of this book.
My next trip to Alaska will be much richer because of this book.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews