NPS Photo - Allyce Andrew
Bering Land Bridge National Preserve is located on the traditional homelands of the Iñupiaq people of the Seward Peninsula in Northwest Alaska. The Iñupiaq are considered to be the first people to come across the land bridge (during the last ice age), with deeply rooted cultural practices and traditional subsistence hunting and gathering that is still a part of everyday life.
The protection of resources within Bering Land Bridge National Preserve helps to support Alaska Native peoples subsistence lifestyles. These activities include whaling, seal hunting, and fishing (including char, grayling, cod). Wild game from the tundra includes caribou, moose, grizzly, and muskox, as well as bird harvesting and plant gathering including berries. Communities continue to work hard to preserve and promote the cultural traditions that have made them who they are today.
And read about Ear Mountain, where villagers from Shismaref use this geographical marker on their trips to and from Serpentine Hot Springs.
Learn about remarkable Inupiat people from the past including: Sinrock Mary, the Reindeer Queen of the Seward Peninsula and Alberta Schenck, advocate for indigenous equal rights in Alaska. Watch this video about Ada Blackjack whose “resilience as an indigenous woman carried her home” as the sole survivor of a 1921 Arctic expedition.
Hear local perspectives about climate change in the arctic and through University of Alaska Fairbanks's “Observing Change in Alaska’s National Parks” Project Jukebox, including an interview with Roy Ashenfelter addressing growing up following the seasonal subsistence lifestyle and seeing environmental changes throughout his lifetime including sea ice, seals, moose, caribou, beavers, fish, permafrost, and vegetation.
Visit the Preserve's website at: Bering Land Bridge National Preserve (U.S. National Park Service) (nps.gov)
Last updated: January 16, 2024