First Peoples of Alaska is highly featuring over 400 objects that represent 20 Alaska Native cultural/linguistic groups with accompanying stories and descriptions from distinguished elders, artists, and scholars from Alaska’s Native cultures—Inupiaq, St. Lawrence Island Yupik, Yup’ik, Unangax^, Sugpiaq, Athabascan, Tlingit, IIaida, and Tsimshian. It shows how each Native nation is unique—and how all are connected. Universal themes of “Sea, Land, and Rivers,” “Ceremony and Celebration,” and “Community and Family” are explored through featured objects, including exquisite masks, parkas, beaded garments, basketry, weapons, and carvings that embody the lifeways, histories, and cosmologies of northern indigenous communities.

Based on a collaborative exhibition by Alaska Native communities, the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, and the Anchorage Museum, First Peoples of Alaska celebrates the return of long-absent cultural treasures to the new Smithsonian Arctic Studies Center at the Anchorage Museum in Alaska. The collections will be on long-term display in a cutting-edge collaboratively designed exhibition and available for ongoing community-based study and interpretation.