Aleut dancers in ceremonial dress. Photo by Clark James Mishler. Part of the documentation in Alaska's Local Legacies project.

Alaska

The American Folklife Center was created in 1976 by the U.S. Congress through Public Law 94-201 and charged to "preserve and present American folklife." The Center incorporates the Archive of Folk Culture, which was established at the Library of Congress in 1928, and is now one of the largest collections of ethnographic material from the United States and around the world.

Collections

The American Folklife Center has among its holdings nineteen ethnographic collections featuring the traditional music and folklore of Alaska. The earliest material included in these collections, Tlingit Indian music recorded on cylinders, dates from 1903. Other Alaska groups represented in the collections are the Aleut, Atna Athabaskan, Haida, Inuit, and Ingalik. The Archive also holds recordings of stories, songs, recitations, and oral histories of more recent settlers, recorded in the 1940s and later.

• Alaska Collections in the Archive of Folk Culture [full text]

Alaska participated in the Library's Bicentennial Local Legacies project, which includes documentation of local traditions and celebrations for the American Folklife Center's Archive of Folk Culture.

• View Alaska's Local Legacies projects

Publications

• The Federal Cylinder Project: A Guide to Field Recordings in Federal Agencies, Volume 3: Great Basin/Plateau Northwest Coast/Arctic Indian Catalog [catalog record]
• A Brief List of Materials Relating to Alaskan Music (bibliography from 1965) [full text]