Bunten, Alexis C. 2010. "Indigenous Tourism: The Paradox of Gaze and Resistance." La Ricerca Folklorica, no. 61 (2010): 51-59. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41548467.

Bunten examines the complexity of indigenous tour guides. They feel enormous pressure to deliver a competitive product or experience for their clients while confronting stereotypes and trying to maintain their own native culture. Bunten’s secondary source is useful in framing the attitudes, struggles, and successes of indigenous people in the tourism industry.

Bunten, Alexis C. 2010. "More like Ourselves: Indigenous Capitalism through Tourism." American Indian Quarterly 34, no. 3 (2010): 285-311. doi:10.5250/amerindiquar.34.3.285.

Bunten looks at how indigenous business leaders are working hard to “culturalize” commerce by incorporating their culture’s core values into business models. They are striving for an industry that is carefully crafted to appeal to tourists while upholding local values. Bunten’s secondary source is useful for examining how indigenous people take advantage of the opportunities of economic development in tourism.

For additional information on port taxes visit: https://blog.cruise.me/port-charges-and-taxes-explained-4896a3fe563f

For more information on the history of Alaskan cruises visit http://cruiselinehistory.com/alaska-steamship-company-seattle-1895-1971/ and check out the historic documents, maps, and colorful images from 1895-1971.

Worlds of Alaska Travel Show. Los Angeles Times (1923-Current File), Feb 02, 1978.

Author unknown. This article describes many different tour packages provided by a variety of companies. It details the places that a tourist can choose to go to and some of the activities to do there. This primary source is useful in comparing tourism by time period and by company.

Sharon Dirlam was an esteemed travel writer for the Los Angeles Times in the 1980s. “Exploring Alaska Sights the Independent Way” explains that travelers do not have to pay extra for their independence and it offers several different travel packages in 1986. This primary source is useful in comparing available tourist attractions and prices by time period.

Bunten, Alexis C. 2015. So, How Long Have You Been Native? : Life As an Alaska Native Tour Guide. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2015.

Dr. Bunten is a senior researcher and ethnographer, active in tourism studies since 2006 after she completed a NSF postdoctoral fellowship at UC Berkeley. In this book Bunten writes about the tourism industry of Alaska from the inside. She worked as a guide for Tribal Tours and she explains her experiences along with those of her fellow employees. This primary source is useful in framing what the tourism industry is like for indigenous people.

For firsthand accounts of the Alaskan wilderness read John Muir’s book: Letters From Alaska. Muir reports on the region's Natives and missionaries, gold mines, towns, mountains, trees, glaciers, and wildlife. These distinctive writings retain the freshness, immediacy, and candor that mark Muir's best publications.

For maps, images of and from the route, and information about the rail today visit: https://wpyr.com/sights-sounds/maps/

For additional information about the Tlingit Indians visit: http://www.indians.org/articles/tlingit-indians.html

Meaux, Jean Morgan. 2013. In Pursuit of Alaska: An Anthology of Travelers' Tales, 1879-1909. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2013.

Jean Morgan Meaux lived in Anchorage from 1971 to 1985, was writer for the Anchorage Daily News during that time, and returns to a cabin she owns in Haines, Alaska almost every summer. Meaux has gathered over two dozen firsthand impressions published over thirty years, between 1879 and 1909, which she has grouped into three categories: tourists, explorers, and gold seekers. Meaux’s secondary source is useful for looking at the transformation of Alaska’s forbidding wilderness into a land that becomes increasingly accessible and alluring to tourists.

“Gold was a driving force in the early development of Alaska bringing thousands of fortune seekers north. Because of gold strikes, many communities experienced sudden prosperity, followed by equally rapid depression as areas were mined out. Beginning as early as 1861, and spanning four decades until 1898, Wrangell played an important role in three major gold rushes: the Stikine River, Cassiar and Klondike Gold Rushes. These gold rushes transformed this small subsistence community to a bustling supply center for the miners with warehouses, hotels, dance halls, saloons, equipment and food stores and the first of many churches in Alaska.” For more information visit: http://www.wrangell.com/visitorservices/wrangells-three-gold-rushes

For more rad statistics and some trendy figures, go to https://www.ustravel.org/answersheet

Here, Maurice Strong states what was a shocking fact. The world was rapidly using more and more energy every year and it seemed that development of Arctic oil was the only answer to the growing demand. In 1976 the United States used 15.5 quadrillion Btu (Ramsey). That is more than many developed nations use today, however, in that time we were the leading consumers of energy. In contrast to those numbers, in 2014, China alone used 119.5 quadrillion Btu and the United States trailed, consuming 98.3 quadrillion Btu. For the United States, that is over six times as much energy as we were using 1976. A Btu or “British thermal unit is a measure of the heat content of fuels. It is the quantity of heat required to raise the temperature of 1 pound of liquid water by 1 degree Fahrenheit at the temperature that water has its greatest density (approximately 39 degrees F)” (Ramsey). These numbers have drastically increased worldwide and a pipeline through North American is still part of the equation and is largely controversial. As the world becomes more consumer oriented, we need more energy and if we are able to safely and cleanly transport it, we will still depend on oil.

To view an interactive map of consumption by country go to: https://www.eia.gov/beta/international/data/browser/#/?pa=000000001&c=ruvvvvvfvtvnvv1urvvvvfvvvvvvfvvvou20evvvvvvvvvnvvuvo&ct=0&vs=INTL.44-2-AFG-QBTU.A&vo=0&v=H&start=1980&end=2014

Ramsey, William J. U.S. ENERGY FLOW IN 1976 . Report no. 17443. United States Energy Research & Development Administration. 1977.

Industry blazed a trail, rather physically, across the North. Big oil companies came in, ran tests, drilled wherever they pleased, and left scars on the fragile landscape. Before they could drill though, they had to find out where the oil was and to do so, seismic crews would do a survey of the area using what is called the single line method. “This method required the use of several tracked vehicles in a caravan, setting off blasts and collecting the data from them, and gashing vast stretches of the Arctic landscape” (114). These trails are what Berger is referring to and they are very much still visible today, decades after being created. The seismic testing left an impact on the physical substrate and the vegetation growing on it. The trails “are physical legacies of the ways multinational oil companies, governmental policies, and geological science combined to enroll Arctic nature into global energy economies. To those who know their full history, though, they are also a reminder of how ecological disturbance became a focal point for scientific and Inuit activism in the 1960s and 1970s” (115). As Berger goes on to say, the land itself could be, and was, taken from the native people and they are reminded every day of that when they see these trails.

Annotation drawn from Stuhl, Andrew. Unfreezing the Arctic: Science, Colonialism, and the Transformation of Inuit Lands. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2016. For aerial images and more information on seismic trails visit: https://www.fws.gov/refuge/arctic/seismic.html

Way before white men ventured into the Arctic, the indigenous people had a perfectly functioning economy of their own. They did not need wages or paper money to do business. They relied on what the environment around them provided, working for food and trading furs. In the 1920s, when scientists and researchers began coming north it led to the introduction of reindeer husbandry as a way to feed the influx of people. This “did not work well with Inuit herders on the north slope, since their labors supported people who did far less work, but still paid through shares of meat and hides” (82). There was a divide between the reindeer community and the genuine Inuit which caused major strife in the economy. Many Inuit “pointed to fur trapping as offering more fulfillment and dignity [than herding reindeer], even though it required similar commitments of labor and time…The private fur trade thus remained an escape from state-sponsored colonialism” (82). However, despite their best efforts to stay true to their native economy, in the 1940s, “herding and harvesting reindeer appeared as more stable than animal life cycles and the global fur trade” (84). But this is not the farthest extent to which southerners took over the land and economy of the Arctic. “Even if Inuit did not imagine themselves within the world being created by southerners, they could hardly avoid participating in it. While the United States and Canada established an Arctic oil economy, the world Inuit had built deteriorated. In the 1950s, fur-bearing creatures became harder to find, markets for fur evaporated, and the Hudson’s Bay Company converted its Arctic fur posts from fur trade centers to retail outlets. For both outsiders and Inuit, the 1950s were a turning point, when the machines and methods of colonialism became the vehicles of cultural survival” (91). There was no longer a market that could support a lifestyle of only hunting and trapping. The indigenous people had to leave that way of life behind and take up wage jobs in the industrial system.

Annotation drawn from Stuhl, Andrew. Unfreezing the Arctic: Science, Colonialism, and the Transformation of Inuit Lands. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2016.

In the late 1800s and early 1900s northern explorers depended on the indigenous people. The natives knew the land, the climate, and the wildlife. Because of their knowledge, the indigenous northerners served as local guides in this harsh and uninviting place. The native people also served as interpreters for researchers and were a lifeline for those that had little-to-no knowledge of how to survive in that kind of environment. However, they were not always seen as important figures. As southern technologies became more and more prominent in the far north, native peoples were pushed aside. “The airplane and helicopter strained relations among researchers and northerners. These technologies relieved field-workers from establishing extensive and regular relationships with locals as guides, interpreters, and informants. Permafrost scientists in particular could produce knowledge about the Arctic environment without Inuit expertise and apply that research in governmental construction projects without consulting locals” (108). The Inuits began to view the government scientists as pests, “they arrived in summer ‘in lusty swarm’ and were just as annoying” (108). Many researchers come during the warm months and gather information that allows them to cut ties to the indigenous people. The use of modern technology in the north forces Inuit to work menial jobs and completely change their way of life in order to survive in the modernizing landscape. While the industrial system has brought many valuable things to them, the Inuit are no longer needed or heard. If it is in the best interest of the oil industry, a pipeline would be built right over their homeland, even if they are still on it.

Annotation drawn form Stuhl, Andrew. Unfreezing the Arctic: Science, Colonialism, and the Transformation of Inuit Lands. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2016.