Alaska Natives in the context of Department of the Interior

Native Americans (also called American Indians, First Americans, or Indigenous Americans) are the Indigenous peoples of the United States, particularly of the lower 48 states and Alaska. They may also include any Americans whose origins lie in any of the indigenous peoples of North or South America. The United States Census Bureau publishes data about "American Indians and Alaska Natives", whom it defines as anyone "having origins in any of the original peoples of North and South America ... and who maintains tribal affiliation or community attachment". The census does not, however, enumerate "Native Americans" as such, noting that the latter term can encompass a broader set of groups, e.g. Native Hawaiians, which it tabulates separately.

The European colonization of the Americas from 1492 resulted in a precipitous decline in the size of the Native American population because of newly introduced diseases, including weaponized diseases and biological warfare by colonizers, wars, ethnic cleansing, and enslavement. Numerous scholars have classified elements of the colonization process as comprising genocide against Native Americans. As part of a policy of settler colonialism, European settlers continued to wage war and perpetrated massacres against Native American peoples, removed them from their ancestral lands, and subjected them to one-sided government treaties and discriminatory government policies. Into the 20th century, these policies focused on forced assimilation.

Central Alaskan Yupʼik (also rendered Yupik, Central Yupik, or indigenously Yugtun) is one of the languages of the Yupik family, in turn a member of the Eskimo–Aleut language group, spoken in western and southwestern Alaska. Both in ethnic population and in number of speakers, the Central Alaskan Yupik people form the largest group among Alaska Natives. As of 2010 Yupʼik was, after Navajo, the second most spoken aboriginal language in the United States. Yupʼik should not be confused with the related language Central Siberian Yupik spoken in Chukotka and St. Lawrence Island, nor Naukan Yupik likewise spoken in Chukotka.

Yupʼik, like all Eskimo languages, is polysynthetic and uses suffixation as primary means for word formation. There are a great number of derivational suffixes (termed postbases) that are used productively to form these polysynthetic words. Yupʼik has predominantly ergative alignment: case marking follows the ergative pattern for the most part, but verb agreement can follow an ergative or an accusative pattern, depending on grammatical mood. The language grammatically distinguishes three numbers: singular, dual, and plural. There is no marking of grammatical gender in the language, nor are there articles.

The United States has a racially and ethnically diverse population. At the federal level, race and ethnicity have been categorized separately. The most recent United States census recognized five racial categories (White, African Americans, Native American/Alaska Native, Asian, and Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander), as well as people who belong to two or more of the racial categories. The United States also recognizes the broader notion of ethnicity. While previous censuses inquired about the "ancestry" of residents, the current form asks people to enter their "origins".

White Americans are the majority in every census-defined region (Northeast, Midwest, South, and West) and 44 out of 50 states, except Hawaii, California, Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, and Maryland. Those identifying as white alone or in combination (including multiracial white Americans) are the majority in every state except for Hawaii and California. The region with the highest proportion of White Americans is the Midwest, at 74.6% per the American Community Survey (ACS), followed by the Northeast, at 64%. Non-Hispanic whites make up 73% of the Midwest's population, the highest proportion of any region, and they make up 62% of the population in the Northeast. At the same time, the regions with the smallest share of White Americans are the West, where they comprise 51.9%, and the South, where they comprise 57.7%. Non-Hispanic whites are a minority in the West, where they make up 47.1% of the population. In the South, make up 54% of the population.

Aleuts (/ˌæ.liːˈuːt/ AL-ee-OOT; Aleut: Unangan (west) or Unangas (east) Russian: Алеуты, romanized: Aleuty) are the Indigenous people of the Aleutian Islands, which are located between the North Pacific Ocean and the Bering Sea. Both the Aleuts and the islands are politically divided between the US state of Alaska and the Russian administrative division of Kamchatka Krai. This group is also known as the Unangax̂ in Unangam Tunuu, the Aleut language. There are 13 federally recognized Aleut tribes in the Aleut Region of Alaska. In 2000, Aleuts in Russia were recognized by government decree as a small-numbered Indigenous people.

Eskimo (/ˈɛskɪmoʊ/) is a controversial exonym that refers to two closely related Indigenous peoples: Inuit (including the Alaska Native Iñupiat, the Canadian Inuit, and the Greenlandic Inuit) and the Yupik (or Yuit) of eastern Siberia and Alaska. A related third group, Aleuts, who inhabit the Aleutian Islands, are generally excluded from the definition of Eskimo. The three groups share a relatively recent common ancestor, and speak related languages belonging to the family of Eskaleut languages. These circumpolar peoples have traditionally inhabited the Arctic and subarctic regions from eastern Siberia (Russia) to Alaska (United States), Northern Canada, Nunavik, Nunatsiavut, and Greenland.

Some Inuit, Yupik, Aleut, and other individuals consider the term Eskimo, which is of a disputed etymology, to be pejorative or even offensive. Eskimo continues to be used within a historical, linguistic, archaeological, and cultural context. The governments in Canada and the United States have made moves to cease using the term Eskimo in official documents, but it has not been eliminated, as the word is in some places written into tribal, and therefore national, legal terminology. Canada officially uses the term Inuit to describe the indigenous Canadian people who are living in the country's northern sectors and who are not First Nations or Métis. The United States government legally uses Alaska Native for enrolled Yupik and Inuit tribal members, and also for non-Eskimos including Aleut, Tlingit, Haida, Eyak, and Tsimshian, in addition to at least nine northern Athabaskan/Dene peoples. Other non-enrolled individuals also claim Eskimo/Aleut descent, making it the world's "most widespread aboriginal group".

Innoko Wilderness is a 1,240,000-acre (500,000 ha) wilderness area in the U.S. state of Alaska. It was designated by the United States Congress in 1980. It lies within the southeastern part of Innoko National Wildlife Refuge. Innoko Wilderness is a transition zone between the boreal forestland of interior Alaska and the open tundra of western Alaska. More than half of the Wilderness is wetlands of muskeg and marsh, lakes, rivers, and streams dotted with islands of black spruce and an understory of mosses, lichens, and shrubs. Along the Yukon and Innoko Rivers are numerous privately owned subsistence camps used periodically for hunting and fishing by Alaska Natives.

The United States Department of the Interior (DOI) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government responsible for the management and conservation of most federal lands and natural resources. It also administers programs relating to Native Americans, Alaska Natives, Native Hawaiians, and four of the five inhabited insular areas of the United States, as well as programs related to historic preservation. About 75% of federal public land is managed by the department, with most of the remainder managed by the Department of Agriculture's Forest Service. The department was created on March 3, 1849. It is headquartered at the Main Interior Building, located at 1849 C Street NW in Washington, D.C.

The department is headed by the secretary of the interior, who reports directly to the president of the United States and is a member of the president's Cabinet. The current interior secretary is Doug Burgum, who was sworn in on February 1, 2025.

Fort Ross is a former Russian establishment on the west coast of North America in what is now Sonoma County, California. It was notable as the first multi-ethnic community north of the Spanish missions in what is now the U.S. state of California. Owned and operated by the Russian-American Company, it was the hub of the southernmost Russian settlements in North America from 1812 to 1841. Notably cosmopolitan, different ethnic groups settled in and around the fort: Native Californians, Native Alaskans, Russians, Finns, Swedes. It has been the subject of archaeological investigation and is a California Historical Landmark, a National Historic Landmark, and on the National Register of Historic Places. It is part of California's Fort Ross State Historic Park.

The Yupʼik or Yupiaq (sg & pl) and Yupiit or Yupiat (pl), also Central Alaskan Yupʼik, Central Yupʼik, Alaskan Yupʼik (own name Yupʼik sg Yupiik dual Yupiit pl; Russian: Юпики центральной Аляски), are an Indigenous people of western and southwestern Alaska ranging from southern Norton Sound southwards along the coast of the Bering Sea on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta (including living on Nelson and Nunivak Islands) and along the northern coast of Bristol Bay as far east as Nushagak Bay and the northern Alaska Peninsula at Naknek River and Egegik Bay. They are also known as Cupʼik by the Chevak Cupʼik dialect-speaking people of Chevak and Cupʼig for the Nunivak Cupʼig dialect-speaking people of Nunivak Island.

The Yupiit are the most numerous of the various Alaska Native groups and speak the Central Alaskan Yupʼik language, a member of the Eskimo–Aleut family of languages. As of the 2010 U.S. Census, the Yupiit population in the United States numbered over 34,000 people, of whom over 22,000 lived in Alaska. The vast majority of these live in the seventy or so communities in the traditional Yupʼik territory of western and southwestern Alaska. About 10,000 speak the language. The Yupʼik had the greatest number of people who identified with one tribal grouping and no other race (29,000). In that census, nearly half of American Indians and Alaska Natives identified as being of mixed race.

The Yupik (/ˈjuːpɪk/; Russian: Юпикские народы) are a group of Indigenous or Aboriginal peoples of western, southwestern, and southcentral Alaska and the Russian Far East. They are related to the Inuit and Iñupiat. Yupik peoples include the following:

• Alutiiq, or Sugpiaq, of the Alaska Peninsula and coastal and island areas of southcentral Alaska.
• Yupʼik or Central Alaskan Yupʼik of the Yukon–Kuskokwim Delta, the Kuskokwim River, and along the northern coast of Bristol Bay as far east as Nushagak Bay and the northern Alaska Peninsula at Naknek River and Egegik Bay in Alaska.
• Siberian Yupik, including Naukan, Chaplino, and—in a linguistic capacity—the Sirenik of the Russian Far East and St. Lawrence Island in western Alaska.

The maritime fur trade, a ship-based fur trade system, focused largely on acquiring furs of sea otters and other animals from the Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast and Alaska Natives. Entrepreneurs also exploited fur-bearing skins from the wider Pacific (from, for example, the Juan Fernández fur seal) and from the Southern Ocean.

The trade mostly serviced the market in Qing China, which imported furs and exported tea, silks, porcelain, and other Chinese goods, which were then sold in Europe and in the United States.

Whale meat, broadly speaking, may include all cetaceans (whales, dolphins, porpoises) and all parts of the animal: muscle (meat), organs (offal), skin (muktuk), and fat (blubber). There is relatively little demand for whale meat, compared to farmed livestock. Commercial whaling, which has faced opposition for decades, continues today in very few countries (mainly Iceland, Japan and Norway), despite whale meat being eaten across Western Europe and colonial America previously. However, in areas where dolphin drive hunting and aboriginal whaling exist, marine mammals are eaten locally as part of a subsistence economy: the Faroe Islands, the circumpolar Arctic peoples (Inuit in Canada and Greenland, related native Alaskans, the Chukchi people of Siberia), other indigenous peoples of the United States (including the Makah of the Pacific Northwest), Saint Vincent and the Grenadines (mainly on the island of Bequia), some of villages in Indonesia and in certain South Pacific islands.

Like horse meat, for some cultures whale meat is taboo, or a food of last resort, e.g. in times of war, whereas in others it is a delicacy and a culinary centrepiece. Indigenous groups contend that whale meat represents their cultural survival. Its consumption has been denounced by detractors on wildlife conservation, toxicity (especially mercury), and animal rights grounds.

The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), also known as Indian Affairs (IA), is a United States federal agency within the Department of the Interior. It is responsible for implementing federal laws and policies related to Native Americans and Alaska Natives, and administering and managing over 55,700,000 acres (225,000 km) of reservations held in trust by the U.S. federal government for indigenous tribes. It renders services to roughly 2 million indigenous Americans across 574 federally recognized tribes. The BIA is governed by a director and overseen by the assistant secretary for Indian affairs, who answers to the secretary of the interior.

The BIA works with tribal governments to help administer law enforcement and justice; promote development in agriculture, infrastructure, and the economy; enhance tribal governance; manage natural resources; and generally advance the quality of life in tribal communities. Educational services are provided by Bureau of Indian Education—the only other agency under the Assistant Secretary for Indian affairs—while health care is the responsibility of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services through its Indian Health Service.

The history of Alaska dates back to the Upper Paleolithic period (around 14,000 BC), when foraging groups crossed the Bering land bridge into what is now western Alaska. At the time of European contact by the Russian explorers, the area was populated by Alaska Native groups. The name "Alaska" derives from the Aleut word Alaxsxaq (also spelled Alyeska), meaning "mainland" or "continent" (literally, "the object toward which the action of the sea is directed"). While initially used to refer solely to the Alaska Peninsula, the name eventually broadened to represent the entirety of Alaska.

The U.S. purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867. In the 1890s, gold rushes in Alaska and the nearby Yukon Territory brought thousands of miners and settlers to Alaska. Alaska was granted territorial status in 1912 by the United States of America.

The United States has a racially and ethnically diverse population. At the federal level, race and ethnicity have been categorized separately. The most recent United States census recognized five racial categories (White, Black, Native American/Alaska Native, Asian, and Native Hawaiian/Other Pacific Islander), as well as people who belong to two or more of the racial categories. The United States also recognizes the broader notion of ethnicity. While previous censuses inquired about the "ancestry" of residents, the current form asks people to enter their "origins".

White Americans are the majority in every census-defined region (Northeast, Midwest, South, and West) and 44 out of 50 states, except Hawaii, California, Texas, New Mexico, Nevada, and Maryland. Those identifying as white alone or in combination (including multiracial white Americans) are the majority in every state except for Hawaii and California. The region with the highest proportion of White Americans is the Midwest, at 74.6% per the American Community Survey (ACS), followed by the Northeast, at 64%. Non-Hispanic whites make up 73% of the Midwest's population, the highest proportion of any region, and they make up 62% of the population in the Northeast. At the same time, the regions with the smallest share of White Americans are the West, where they comprise 51.9%, and the South, where they comprise 57.7%. Non-Hispanic whites are a minority in the West, where they make up 47.1% of the population. In the South, make up 54% of the population.