In The Great Land: An Indigenous History of Alaska, author Thomas Michael Swensen reconstructs Alaska’s history from Indigenous perspectives and offers a new understanding of how Native peoples shaped the modern Alaskan state. In the following Q&A, he discusses the meaning of “first space,” his personal history with the state flag, and the power of overturning imperial narratives.
What is your connection to Alaska and why was it important for you to write this book?
I’m Alutiiq Sugpiaq, born and raised in the Kodiak Archipelago. So, for me, Alaska is more than a distant subject that I stumbled across in an archive that I thought deserved its shot at a decolonial history—it’s home. I grew up with its weather in a bedroom without a heat vent. I’ve traveled the distances between towns and villages by boat and plane. More to the point, I’ve enjoyed my share of evaporated milk and rounds of cribbage. My family is from there, and its history is part of my life.
Alaska has a powerful public image. It’s the largest state in the union but also a distinct region of the Americas, close to the size of Mexico. The Last Frontier. Big mountains, gigantic bears, and roadless expanses. When it comes to Alaska, it seems like everybody gets to have their own wilderness narrative written in books and portrayed on screens. But there are people who live there whose families have lived there for thousands of years.
Once you start with Native history, you can’t tell the story of Alaska the same way again.
I wrote The Great Land because I wanted a history that starts with us. Not with the arrival of Russians, or with the American purchase in 1867, or with statehood in 1959. Alaska Native people already had political and cultural relations going on before the creation of the Alaska we know today. Native people didn’t stand around waiting for history to happen to them. They made history, too. That’s the book I wanted to write.
What is the significance of the book’s title?
“The Great Land” sounds like a slogan. And, in a way, that’s part of the point.
The name Alaska comes from the Unangax̂ words Aláxsxax or Aláxsxaq. One translation is “the [big] object toward which the action of the sea is directed.” Another is “The Great Land.” These descriptions existed before the Russians docked ashore any island. Later in the nineteenth century, American politicians adopted the name as they tried to define and claim the one part of the Americas unannexed by Europeans. Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner invoked the words of Indigenous people following the purchase while arguing that Americans should call the place Alaska: “The Great Land.” There’s something revealing about that. An Indigenous name became part of the language through which a government came to understand this massive region.
I wanted to direct something inherent from that original meaning into this story without pretending we can simply go back to a world before Russian arrival. The title asks readers to reconsider what makes this land great, and whose history they’re actually looking at when they use the name Alaska.
You introduce the idea of “first space.” Can you expand on what this concept means?
A lot of Alaska history is told like a relay race. The Russians show up, they run it for a while, and then the Americans buy it. They develop it as a territory that becomes a state. The Russian-American flag comes down, the stars and stripes go up, and everybody moves to the next chapter. It’s all very tidy. However, this neat little sequence of political handoffs puts government administrators in the driver’s seat and Native people as passengers awaiting the bio-break at the next gas station. That is to say, most histories of Alaska treat Indigenous life like background scenery to somebody else’s story.
I want people to see that Alaska Native people have always had a hand in history. . . . Their history isn’t a prelude to the modern state. It is part of the state’s foundation.
I use the idea of “first space” to understand the Russian and American periods as parts of one Indigenous timeline. Native people are the common thread connecting those transitions that built the Alaska we know today. Instead of following the lives of colonial administrators from one office to the next, I step back and look at the history through the experiences of the people who were already there and who continued to shape Alaska against some heavy odds.
“First space” begins with Alaska Native peoples and centers us in this history. What did Native people do? What did they think? What does the archive show us? From there, colonialism and American expansion look very different. Once you start with Native history, you can’t tell the story of Alaska the same way again.
Throughout the book, you illustrate the many ways that Native communities shaped Alaska as it is today. One thing that may particularly surprise readers is the story of the state flag. Can you share more about that?
Benny Benson designed the Alaska flag as a thirteen-year-old at a boarding school. Even if you have a heart of stone, you have to admit that’s a remarkable accomplishment. It’s one of those stories, however, that people tend to package as an uplifting bit of trivia. A young Native boy wins a contest and designs this beautiful flag, as though it’s all part of the inevitable American dream for the frozen North.
Historical Collections, American Legion, Alaska State Library. Identifier ASL-MS14-1.
Before I was born, Benny lived right next door to my family on Tagura Road in Kodiak, overlooking the old boat harbor. In the winter, my cousins used to go sledding and crash right into the side of his house. Benny belonged to the Elks Club, a popular hangout above the bowling alley downtown. He was part of that everyday life where people knew one another. After Benson passed away, my cousin Billy replaced him working at the Kodiak airport.
My father even had a tattoo of the Alaska flag on his left shoulder, above a drawing of the Kodiak Archipelago. He was proud of the flag, and he was proud of Alaska. He once pointed to the tattoo and said Kodiak should be its own state, so the symbol was always personal to me. But knowing Benson through my family’s stories strips away the museum-case polish.
Here was an Indigenous kid designing a symbol for a place whose political future was still being worked out, in a society that was also trying to assimilate Native children and restrict Native people’s rights. The flag grew into an integral part of the state’s identity. The boy who designed it came from an Indigenous world that helped make Alaska what it is. That’s incredible to me. Yet he was also a guy down the road who knew my family and lived his life in Kodiak.
The flag is everywhere in Alaska and beyond. In fact, there is a house that flies it near where I live in Salt Lake. My father carried it on his shoulder. I grew up with the story of the man who designed it. That’s history with meaning.
What do you hope readers take away from your book?
The Great Land is about people making choices while they navigate the creation of Alaska as a political and economic entity. But this isn’t just about the past. Look at Alaska politics today. The same questions of power, resources, and justice that shaped Alaska’s history are still with us. Think about the fact that I saw Metallica’s Damaged Justice Tour at the George Sullivan Arena in 1989, just after the Exxon Valdez oil spill. The venue was named after Dan Sullivan’s father. How’s that for historical irony? Go read the lyrics to “…And Justice for All.” It’s hard not to hear that song differently when you think about Alaska.
I want people to see that Alaska Native people have always had a hand in history. They shaped the economies that make modern Alaska. They negotiated political changes and made choices that helped determine what their homelands became. Their history isn’t a prelude to the modern state. It is part of the state’s foundation.
Thomas Michael Swensen is associate professor of ethnic studies at the University of Utah. He is the author of Where Next Columbus? A Native Punk Mixtape.
