Last modified: 2020-12-26 by rick wyatt
Keywords: aleut community of saint paul island | alaska | native american |
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image located by Valentin Poposki, 11 November 2020
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‘Aleut Community of St. Paul Island’ is a title by which the federal
government of the United States formally recognizes ‘the tribe,’ which is the
group of people of the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island, as having a
time-honored common bond of living together; a nation born, living, and
self-governing before the United States was conceived.
The Aleut
Community of St. Paul Island is a community in transition, adjusting to the
cultural shock waves of Euro-American contact and governance. Beginning with
enslavement by the Czar of Russia’s fur companies, through the 1867 Treaty of
Cession to the United States of America with Marshall law and forced labor, the
Unangan, or Aleut, people of St. Paul are on the front line of contact and
efforts toward natural resources conquest. While the families relocated to St.
Paul are strong people, generation-after-generation has been exposed to
cultural, physical, and psychological trauma in the form of slavery, World War
II Internment Camps, Native boarding schools away from home and family; corporal
punishment for speaking in the Native language; epidemics of disease filling the
Island’s cemetery; proselytization and condemnation of traditional spiritual
practices; and overabundant interaction with the non-Native child welfare,
justice, and corrections systems. Through this turbulent history, the Aleut
people have maintained dignity and pride and have remained culturally resilient.
The people of the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island are survivors.
St.
Paul Island is one of the five Pribilof Islands is located in the middle of the
Bering Sea, 300 miles from the Alaska mainland; 800 miles from Anchorage, the
closest urban center; and 300 miles north of the Aleutian Chain. It is one of
two inhabited islands in the Pribilof Islands. Its total land and water area is
295 square miles and the island’s land area is 40.32 square miles.
The
flag is black with the tribal government seal on it. Photos of it and useable
seals can be found on its Facebook page.
Links to the tribal website and
Facebook page:
https://aleut.com/
https://www.facebook.com/St.PaulIsland/
Valentin Poposki, 11 November 2020