Curio Cabinet

It's Flashback Friday! In honor of National Native American Heritage Day, enjoy these curios about Native American history, ingenuity, and expression.
 
It's easy to see why this state is called "the last frontier"! Positioned near the top of North America, between the Pacific and Arctic oceans, Alaska is one of the U.S.'s most remote states. It's a place replete with wilderness, natural resources, and an impressive array of arctic wildlife. Yet it took quite a while for Alaska to become United States property, let alone a full-fledged state, and not everyone was happy with Alaska's statehood.
 
Alaska has been populated by humans since at least 14,000 B.C.E., when nomadic people crossed the Bering land bridge. Today, there are six main groups of Native Alaskans still living in the state: the Inupiat, the Haida, the Yuits, Athabascans, Aleuts, and Tlingits. The name "Alaska" comes from the Aleut word "Alaxsxaq", meaning "mainland" in English. In the 17th Century, contact was established between Native Alaskans, Russians, and Europeans. By the 18th Century, the Haida engaged in regular trade with them. However, when the Russians the majority of Alaska as a colony, in 1733, tensions began to rise between Native Alaskans, who had called Alaska home for thousands of years, and outsiders looking to profit from its rich resources.  

The 18th and 19th Centuries in Alaska were marked by conflict and disease. Nearly 80 percent of the Aluet population was destroyed by foreign illnesses due to contact with Russia. In 1857, a battle broke out between American settlers and a group of Haida and Tlingits who refused to recognize American authority. This culminated in a U.S. military officer, Colonel Isaac Ebey, being shot and beheaded by the Tlingits. In 1867, the same year that the United States bought Alaska from Russia for $7.2 million, an American ship brought smallpox to Alaska's shores. The Haida population dwindled from around 6,600 individuals to around just 830.
 
Russia had its reasons for selling Alaska. During the 19th Century, Russia and England were engaged in a power struggle called "the great game", in which both sought to become the most powerful nation on earth. As war threatened to break out between the two countries, Russia realized that Alaska would be strategically difficult to defend, and feared the humiliation of losing it to Britain. Instead, they opted to sell it to the United States, although the change of ownership was unpopular on all fronts at first. Many Russians felt that Alaska had been given up too quickly or too cheaply. Many Native Alaskans saw the deal as yet another foreign attack on their way of life. Many Americans didn't understand how their country could benefit from owning an "icebox" state. Some even referred to the deal as "Seward's icebox" or "Seward's folly", so named for the U.S. Secretary of State William Seward, who had signed the deal. However, the American populace changed its tune in 1896, when gold was discovered along a Klondike River tributary running through Canada and Alaska, ushering in the Klondike Gold Strike.
 
Despite having occupied Alaska for thousands of years, the indigenous peoples did not become U.S. citizens when Alaska was purchased. This meant that they couldn't vote or technically own property in their homeland. Their citizenship was finally recognized in 1924, when the Indian Citizenship Act was passed. 35 years later, in 1959, U.S. President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the Alaska Statehood Act, making Alaska the 49th U.S. state. Importantly, the act contained language guaranteeing certain ancestral lands to Native Alaskans. After several more decades of dispute, President Richard Nixon finally ceded 44 million acres of federal land to Native Alaskans, in 1971.
 
Although Alaska was scarred by colonialism, today around 120,000 of Alaska's nearly 740,000 people are Native Alaskan. The state also maintains a reputation as one of the most beautiful places on earth. Alaska contains the U.S.'s largest national forest, Tongass National Forest. It is also home to three of the world's eight bear species: black bears, brown bears, and polar bears, as well as more wolves than anywhere else on earth. Talk about a wild place with a wild history!
 
Image credit & copyright: 12019, Pixabay

It's Flashback Friday! In honor of National Native American Heritage Day, enjoy these curios about Native American history, ingenuity, and expression.
 

If you've been to a national park, you've probably seen an image of Smokey Bear imploring you to prevent forest fires. After all, every 9 out of 10 fires are man-made. But did you know that Smokey Bear's slogan was considered problematic? That's right, some man-made fires actually prevent wildfires? Many indigenous cultures practice what's known as a prescribed or controlled burn. These fires minimize flammable fuel build up (think overcrowded brush), help minimize the spread of disease and insects, replenish the nutrients in soil, and promote the growth of a healthy ecosystem. But they also require deep knowledge of a region's topography and climate of a region, as well its flora and fauna. In places like Australia and the United States, this practice was commonplace until the forced removal of indigenous peoples from forested areas. Not only did this practice devastate entire peoples, but it also had catastrophic effects on the environment. Take California, which as of publication, has set a new record for acreage ravaged by wildfires in a year. Well before the 1800s, indigenous peoples in the region would burn between 1.8 and 4.8 million hectares of forest annually. Spanish colonizers were the first to ban the practice, dismissing it as primitive and environmentally destructive. The United States government continued the ban in the 1850 Act for the Government and Protection of Indians. By the 20th century, government services focused efforts on suppressing wildfires rather than preventing them. It wasn't until the National Park Service discovered no new redwoods had grown in the Sequoia National Park that they realized the error in their ways. Yet, sufficient resources have not been allocated to controlled burns as the US Forest Service already spends over a billion dollars annually fighting wildfires. Fortunately the Forest Service in Northern California has decided to partner with the Karuk and Yurok tribes to learn how to manage land through knowledge passed down by oral tradition. Even Smokey Bear has gotten onboard with controlled burns!
 

Image credit & copyright: Ylvers, Pixabay
 

Sometimes, history happens by chance. On this day in 1963, President John F. Kennedy was assassinated, and the event was captured in the home video of Abraham Zapruder—a dressmaker and photography enthusiast. It would end up becoming one of the most important pieces of footage in U.S. history. On the day of the assassination, Zapruder was in Dealey Plaza, across the street from his office and the Texas School Book Depository. Holding his Model 414 PD Bell & Howell Zoomatic Director Series Camera, he waited for the president’s motorcade to make its way around the plaza, hoping to capture Kennedy, a man he personally admired, on film.
 
Of course, the ensuing tragedy is now one of the best known and widely discussed events in American history. The 26-second footage Zapruder recorded is known as the Zapruder Film, and though it wasn’t the only footage taken that day, it was by far the clearest. While the entirety of the film is now available for anyone with an internet connection to view, it wasn’t seen by the public for years following Kennedy’s assassination. When Zapruder originally sold the print rights to Life in 1963, he insisted that frame 313 be left out. That is the frame which shows the moment Kennedy is struck by a bullet, a sight which gave Zapruder nightmares and which he wished to spare the public from seeing.
Then in 1975, the ABC late-night show Good Night America showed the footage, including frame 313, on network television for the first time. Although the complete footage had been in circulation for several years by then, the mass viewing spurned further government investigations, including the formation of the United States House Select Committee on Assassinations.
 
Zapruder had already passed away by then, having died in 1970 of stomach cancer in Parkland Memorial Hospital—the same place where Kennedy was pronounced dead seven years prior. Nevertheless, his film continued to push for renewed investigations and stoked public interest any time it was shown, including in Oliver Stone’s 1991 film, JFK. After the movie included the real-life footage of the assassination, the US Congress passed the President John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Collection Act of 1992, which expedited the declassification of many documents relating to the event. The assassination of President Kennedy continues to drive conspiracy theories and commands public interest today, and the Zapruder Film is nearly always at the center of discussion. All because one man just wanted to make a home video.

 
[Image description: Abraham Zapruder’s camera against a gray background.] Credit & copyright: U.S. National Archives, Public Domain

Turns out, the ill-fated RMS Titanic had a sister ship. On this day in 1916, four years after the Titanic sank in the North Atlantic Ocean, the HMHS Britannic sank in the Aegean Sea. Despite their similar fates, the two ships served very different purposes, and the Titanic’s much-publicized destruction did lead to better safety measures for the Britannic, and a much-reduced loss of life during the latter ship’s sinking.

 
Both the RMS Titanic and >em>HMHS Britannic, along with their other sister ship the RMS Olympic, were built by the Belfast-based firm Harland & Wolff for use by the British shipping company White Star Line. All three were part of White Star Line’s Olympic class of steamships, and were intended to be used as transatlantic passenger liners. While the RMS Olympic made its first voyage in 1911 and went on to have a long, 24-year career serving both military and civilian purposes, the RMS Titanic famously sank on April 15, 1912, killing around 1,500 of the 2,200 people on board. Freezing waters and lack of lifeboats (the ship had just 16 boats and four rafts) both contributed to the massive loss of life. Thus, the Britannic, which was still being built at the time, was fitted with 48 lifeboats from the get-go, each one capable of carrying up to 75 people, ensuring that even if the ship reached capacity at 3, 309 people, everyone would have a place on a lifeboat. Builders also added more watertight compartments to the Britannic, which allowed incoming water to be more easily contained in case of emergency. The 882-foot ship took its first test voyage on February 26, 1914, but, as fate would have it, the Britannic would never become the passenger liner it was built to be.
 
In 1914, World War I broke out. The massive Britannic was immediately requisitioned as a hospital ship and given its full title, the HMHS Britannic, which stood for His Majesty's Hospital Ship. On December 12, 1915, the Britannic acquired a medical team of over 100 nurses, almost 400 military officers and a crew of close to 700. Her maiden voyage, on December 23, involved journeying from Liverpool to the island of Lemnos, in the Aegean Sea, to bring back over 3,000 sick and wounded soldiers. After sailing two more, similar voyages, the Britannic was released from military duty in June, 1916...but was almost immediately requisitioned as a hospital ship once more, and served on three more voyages without incident.
 
The Britannic’s sixth and final voyage began on November 12, 1916. The ship was meant to sail from Southampton to Lemnos, to pick up more soldiers requiring medical attention. However, at 8:12 a.m. on November 21, as the Britannic made its way through the Kéa Channel, near Athens, Greece, and the island of Kéa, an explosion suddenly shook the ship. It had come from a collision with an underwater German mine, and struck the Britannic’s starboard side. Captain Charles Alfred Bartlett, who was on the bridge when the explosion struck, immediately sent out an SOS signal and ordered the closing of all the ship’s watertight compartments. Unbeknownst to him, the explosion had damaged the Britannic’s communications antenna, making it so that, while the ship could still send transmissions, it couldn’t receive them. The Britannic’s crew had no way of knowing that several other ships in the area had heard its distress signal.
 
The Britannic’s watertight compartments soon filled, and damage caused several non-watertight areas, such as boiler rooms, to begin filling with water. The ship began to tilt, or list to one side, making it clear that it would soon sink. Hoping to beach the Britannic near Kéa, Captain Bartlett sent the ship full-steam toward the island. But water began flooding in through portholes due to the forward motion, and just 55 minutes later, the Britannic sank completely. Luckily, due to the abundance of lifeboats, only 30 people died, while over 1,000 were saved. The low death count likely also had to do with the ship’s experienced crew and their disaster training. When sailing the Titanic’s sister ship, it surely didn’t hurt to be prepared.

 
[Image description: A black-and-white photo of the Britannic during the time it served as a hospital ship.] Credit & copyright: Public Domain