Kivgiq is an Iñupiat messenger feast where villages celebrate the harvest, trade, and renew their kinship and partnership ties. Nalukataq has a different focus: after a whale is harvested, it includes a communal feast, games, and Iñupiat dancing. Bowhead whaling in the coastal villages of the North Slope also brings the community together to share the meat of a harvested whale and celebrate as a group. Iñupiat communities on the North Slope have lived in the Arctic for thousands of years. Feasts, trade, and communal sharing give the region’s cultural history a tangible framework.
Art, Daily Life, and Local History
The Iñupiat Heritage Center provides Iñupiat artists from the region with work and exhibition space for their crafts. The center includes a Traditional Room, where traditional whaling boats and other subsistence equipment can be built or repaired. Crafts and practical knowledge are presented as distinct but closely connected aspects of cultural life.
The Simon Paneak Memorial Museum in Anaktuvuk Pass is a museum of local history and ethnography. It is dedicated to the history, culture, and traditional way of life of the Nunamiut, also known as Inland Iñupiat. One exhibit shows seasonal subsistence activities: hunting, fishing, trapping, and trading. Visitors especially interested in the connection between culture and seasonal daily life will find a different focus here than at the Iñupiat Heritage Center, with its work and exhibition spaces.
Archaeological Traces and Monuments
The Birnirk National Historic Landmark consists of about 20 mounds on beach ridges, up to 14 feet high. The Birnirk Site contains the remains of a 1,000-year-old umiak with decorative ivory inlays and lashings made of baleen. It is also the type site for the archaeological Birnirk culture, considered the earliest expression of Iñupiat culture in North America. The mounds and the boat finds offer two different scales of archaeological history: the form of a landscape and traces of a single watercraft.
In Barrow, two monuments at the Rogers-Post Site commemorate the fatal 1935 plane crash of Will Rogers and Wiley Post. The site connects a specific remembrance of the two men with a precisely dated event.
Coast, Lagoons, and Wildlife Watching
Utqiaġvik lies on the Arctic Ocean. The Whale Bone Arch is made from a bowhead whale jawbone and reflects the region’s traditional whaling history. From the beach, the arch frames a view of the Arctic Ocean: history and coastal scenery meet at this landmark.
Kaktovik lies on the northern boundary of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Barter Island is a four-mile-wide tundra plateau between Arey Lagoon and Kaktovik Lagoon. Opportunities to view polar bears in Kaktovik are limited. During the ice-free period from August to October, many polar bears gather along the coast near Barter Island.
In Utqiaġvik, summer tours may include polar bear viewing, photographing snowy owls, and learning about traditional culture. Seasonal birdwatching there focuses, among other species, on spectacled eiders, king eiders, Ross’s gulls, and snowy owls. In winter, activities include viewing the northern lights and dog sledding. The opportunities described therefore vary by season: possible summer tour activities differ from winter activities. Check current providers for both summer and winter offerings before your trip.
Along the Dalton Highway, there are opportunities for hiking, boating, gold panning, and wildlife viewing. This selection therefore includes activities along a road as well as coastal and wildlife viewing.
Plan for Air Connections
Kaktovik can be reached by small commercial or charter aircraft; weather-related delays are common. Check flight connections and weather conditions before your trip. Anaktuvuk Pass and its Simon Paneak Memorial Museum are accessible only by air. Check flight availability for this destination in advance.
Discover more destinations: Barrow, Point Hope, Valdez-Cordova Census Area, Petersburg Census Area, Juneau, Fairbanks North Star Borough, Southeast Fairbanks Census Area, Ketchikan Gateway Borough.
For the main travel overview: Alaska.
