The United States Census Bureau defines St. Lawrence Island as Block Group 6, Census Tract 1 of Nome Census Area, Alaska. As of the 2000 census there were 1,292 people living on a land area of 1,791.56sqmi (4,640.1km2).[6] The island is about 90mi (140km) long and 8–22mi (13–35km) wide. The island has no trees, and the only woody plants are Arctic willow, standing no more than a foot (30cm) high.
The island's abundance of seabirds and marine mammals is due largely to the influence of the Anadyr Current, an ocean current which brings cold, nutrient-rich water from the deep waters of the Bering Sea shelf edge.
To the south of the island there was a persistent polynya in 1999, formed when the prevailing winds from the north and east blow the migrating ice away from the coast.[7]
The climate of Gambell is:
January
April
July
October
Daily max
12°F (−11°C)
20°F (−7°C)
50°F (10°C)
34°F (1°C)
Daily min
3°F (−16°C)
10°F (−12°C)
41°F (5°C)
29°F (−2°C)
Villages
The island contains and is jointly owned by two villages: Savoonga and Gambell. The island is now inhabited mostly by Siberian Yupik engaged in hunting, fishing, and reindeer herding. As a result of having title to the land, the Yupik are legally able to sell the fossilized ivory and other artifacts found on St. Lawrence Island.
The St. Lawrence Island Yupik people are also known for their skill in carving, mostly with materials from marine mammals (walrus ivory and whale bone). The Arctic yo-yo may have evolved on the island. Anthropologist Lars Krutak has examined the tattoo traditions of the St. Lawrence Yupik.
History
Prehistory
In St. Lawrence Island, earliest evidence of habitation dates from 2,000 to 2,500 years ago. Artifacts resemble the Okvik (oogfik) style. Archaeological sites on the Punuk Islands, off the eastern end of St. Lawrence Island, at Kukulik, near Savoonga and on hill slopes above Gambell, all indicate evidence of Okvik habitation. Okvik decorative style is zoomorphic and elaborate. Sometimes crude engraving, with greater variation than the Old Bering Sea and Punuk styles.
Okvik habitation, influenced by Old Bering Sea habitation of 2000 to 700 years ago,[8] is characterized by the simpler and more homogeneous Punuk style. Stone artifacts changed from chipped stone to ground slate; carved ivoryharpoon heads are smaller and simpler in design.
Prehistoric and early historic settlements of St. Lawrence Island were temporary. Periods of abandonment and reoccupation depended on resources along with favorable climate. Famine occurred, shown by Harris lines and enamel hypoplasia in human skeletons. With travel to and from the mainland during calm weather, the island was used as a hunting base. Sites were re-used occasionally rather than permanently.
Major archaeology sites at Gambell and Savoonga (Kukulik) were excavated by Otto Geist and Ivar Skarland of the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Collections from these excavations are curated at the University of Alaska Museum on the UAF campus.
Arrival of Europeans
Location of Savoonga, AlaskaFalse color NASA Landsat image of St. Lawrence Island
The island is called Sivuqaq by the Yupik who live there.[9] It was visited by Russian/Danish explorer Vitus Bering on St. Lawrence's Day, August 10, 1728, and named after the day of his visit. The island was the first place in Alaska known to have been visited by European explorers.
There were about 4,000 Central Alaskan Yupik and Siberian Yupik living in several villages on the island in the mid-19th century. They subsisted by hunting walrus and whale and by fishing. The famine in 1878–1880 caused many to starve and many others to leave, decimating the island's population. A revenue cutter visited the island in 1880 and estimated that out of 700 inhabitants, 500 were found dead of starvation. Reports of the day put the blame on traders' supplying the people with liquor causing the people to ″neglect laying up their usual supply of provisions″.[10] Nearly all the residents remaining were Siberian Yupik.
Reindeer were introduced on the island in 1900 in an attempt to bolster the economy. The reindeer herd grew to about 10,000 animals by 1917, but has since declined. Reindeer are herded as a source of subsistence meat to this day. In 1903 President Theodore Roosevelt established a reindeer reservation on the island.[11] This caused legal issues in the indigenous land claim process to acquire surface and subsurface rights to their land, under the section 19 of Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) as they had to prove that the reindeer reserve was set up to support the indigenous people rather than to protect the reindeer themselves.[12]
There was an exchange of shots after a Soviet fighter advised the US plane that it was over Soviet territory and should leave (the US denied that the US plane fired at all). The incident took place under heavy cloud cover and poor visibility, although the alleged violation of Soviet airspace could be the responsibility of US commanders not interested in preventing such violations.
The Soviet military was under strict orders to "avoid any action beyond the limits of the Soviet state frontiers."
The Soviet government "expressed regret in regard to the incident," and, "taking into account... conditions which do not exclude the possibility of a mistake from one side or the other," was willing to compensate the US for 50% of damages sustained—the first such offer ever made by the Soviets for any Cold War shoot-down incident.
The US government stated that it was satisfied with the Soviet expression of regret and the offer of partial compensation, although it said that the Soviet statement also fell short of what the available information indicated.[13]
Northeast Cape Air Force Station, at the island's other end, was a United States Air Force facility consisting of an Aircraft Control and Warning[14] (AC&W) radar site, a United States Air Force Security Servicelistening post; and a White Alice Communications System (WACS) site that operated from about 1952 to about 1972. The area surrounding the Northeast Cape base site had been a traditional camp site for several Yupik families for centuries. After the base closed down in the 1970s, many of these people started to experience health problems. Even today, people who grew up at Northeast Cape have high rates of cancer and other diseases, possibly due to PCB exposure around the site.[15] According to the State of Alaska, those elevated cancer rates have been shown to be comparable to the rates of other Alaskan and non-Alaskan arctic natives who were not exposed to a similar Air Force facility.[16] The majority of the facility was removed in a $10.5 million cleanup program in 2003. Monitoring of the site will continue into the future.[17]
After the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971, the villages of Savoonga and Gambell opted out of selling their land to the federal government and joining a larger regional Native corporation. In return, they were promised full ownership of St Lawrence Island. In 2016, after completing a decades-long land survey, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management transferred permanent private ownership of the island to the two corporations representing Savoonga and Gambell.[5][4]
St. Lawrence Island made national news in April 2023 when Nanuq, an Australian Shepherd dog from Gambell, Alaska, was rescued and returned. The one-year-old dog belonged to a young Yupik named Mandy Iworrigan, who took the dog to Savoonga, where it disappeared. It was found weeks later in Wales on the Alaskan mainland. Large areas of the surrounding sea were covered by ice at the time. The dog is believed to have survived the 150-mile crossing by catching wild game. After posts about a lost dog in Wales were posted on social media, Nanuq was recognized and returned to its owner.[18]
↑ "VP-9 Mishap". June 22, 1955: US Navy Aircraft Attacked Over Bering Sea. U. S. Navy Patrol Squadrons. 24 Jan 2011. Retrieved April 7, 2011.
↑ "Aircraft Control And Warning System". DoD. About.com. Archived from the original on March 3, 2016. Retrieved April 7, 2011. A system established to control and report the movement of aircraft. It consists of observation facilities (radar, passive electronic, visual, or other means), control center, and necessary communications.
Eskimo is an exonym that refers to two closely related Indigenous peoples: Inuit and the Yupik of eastern Siberia and Alaska. A related third group, the Aleut, who inhabit the Aleutian Islands, are generally excluded from the definition of Eskimo. The three groups share a relatively recent common ancestor, and speak related languages belonging to the family of Eskaleut languages.
The Bering Strait is a strait between the Pacific and Arctic oceans, separating the Chukchi Peninsula of the Russian Far East from the Seward Peninsula of Alaska. The present Russia-United States maritime boundary is at 168° 58' 37" W longitude, slightly south of the Arctic Circle at about 65° 40' N latitude. The Strait is named after Vitus Bering, a Danish-born Russian explorer.
Cape Dezhnyov or Cape Dezhnev, formerly known as East Cape or Cape Vostochny, is a cape that forms the easternmost mainland point of Asia. It is located on the Chukchi Peninsula in the very sparsely populated Chukotka Autonomous Okrug of Russia. This cape is located between the Chukchi Sea and the Bering Strait, 82 kilometres (51 mi) across from Cape Prince of Wales in Alaska; the Bering Strait is delimited by the two capes. The Diomede Islands and Fairway Rock are located in the midst of the strait.
The Yupik are a group of Indigenous or Aboriginal peoples of western, southwestern, and southcentral Alaska and the Russian Far East. They are related to the Inuit and Iñupiat. Yupik peoples include the following:
Nome Census Area is a census area located in the U.S. state of Alaska, mostly overlapping with the Seward Peninsula. As of the 2020 census, the population was 10,046, up from 9,492 in 2010. It is part of the unorganized borough and therefore has no borough seat. Its largest community by far is the city of Nome.
Gambell(GAM-bull) is a city in the Nome Census Area of the U.S. state of Alaska. Located on St. Lawrence Island, it had a population of 681 at the 2010 census, up from 649 in 2000.
Savoonga is a city in Nome Census Area, Alaska. It is located on St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea. As of the 2020 census, Savoonga's population was 835, up from 671 in 2010.
Siberian Yupiks, or Yuits, are a Yupik people who reside along the coast of the Chukchi Peninsula in the far northeast of the Russian Federation and on St. Lawrence Island in Alaska. They speak Central Siberian Yupik, a Yupik language of the Eskimo–Aleut family of languages.
Central Siberian Yupik is an endangered Yupik language spoken by the Indigenous Siberian Yupik people along the coast of Chukotka in the Russian Far East and in the villages of Savoonga and Gambell on St. Lawrence Island. The language is part of the Eskimo-Aleut language family.
The Yupik languages are a family of languages spoken by the Yupik peoples of western and south-central Alaska and Chukotka. The Yupik languages differ enough from one another that they are not mutually intelligible, although speakers of one of the languages may understand the general idea of a conversation of speakers of another of the languages. One of them, Sirenik, has been extinct since 1997.
St. Matthew Island is an uninhabited, remote island in the Bering Sea in Alaska, 183 miles (295 km) west-northwest of Nunivak Island. The entire island's natural scenery and wildlife is protected as it is part of the Bering Sea unit of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge and as the Bering Sea Wilderness.
Bering Strait School District (BSSD) is a school district in northwestern Alaska, United States, serving approximately 1,700 students in grades K-12 in fifteen isolated villages. All schools in the district serve students of all ages, and most classrooms are multi-age.
Otto William Geist, a.k.a. Aghvook, was an archaeologist, explorer and naturalist who worked in the circumpolar north and for the University of Alaska for much of his adult life.
The Punuk Islands are a chain of three small islets in the Bering Sea off the eastern end of St. Lawrence Island. They are located 8.5 km to the southeast of Cape Apavawook and 18 km to the southwest of Niyghapak Point.
Providence Bay is a fjord in the southern coast of the Chukchi Peninsula of northeastern Siberia. It was a popular rendezvous, wintering spot, and provisioning spot for whalers and traders in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Emma Harbor is a large sheltered bay in the eastern shore of Providence Bay. Provideniya and Ureliki settlements and Provideniya Bay Airport stand on the Komsomolskaya Bay. Plover Bay in English sources sometimes refers specifically to the anchorage behind Napkum Spit within Providence Bay but was commonly used as a synonym for Providence Bay; Russian 19th century sources used the term for an anchorage within Providence Bay.
Wien Air Alaska Flight 99 was a scheduled domestic passenger flight in Alaska to St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea. On approach to Gambell on 30 August 1975, it crashed into Sevuokuk Mountain, east of the airport's runway. Of the 32 on board, ten were killed, including the captain and first officer. The Fairchild F-27B aircraft was operated by Wien Air Alaska.
The Naukan, also known as the Naukanski, are a Siberian Yupik people and an Indigenous people of Siberia. They live in the Chukotka Autonomous Region of eastern Russia.
Annie Aghnaqa (Akeya) Alowa (née Akeya; also known as, Aghnaqa (Annie Akeya Alowa) and Annie Alowa; 25 June 1924 - 19 February 1999) was a Yup'ik elder and Alaskan environmental activist, healer, and leader in health and justice advocacy for indigenous peoples. Miller founded the Alaska Community Action on Toxics (ACAT). She was inducted into the Alaska Women's Hall of Fame in 2016.
The St. Lawrence Island famine killed around 1000 people on St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea off the Alaskan mainland during the years 1878–1880. Possible causes may have been overfishing, disease, or negative aspects of settler contact.
Florence Nupok Malewotkuk, also spelled Napaaq Maligutkak, was a Siberian Yupik artist known for her drawings of native Eskimo culture, scenes of local wildlife, and documentation of native tattoos. Her "somewhat naive" style earned her the title of "Grandma Moses of the Bering Sea." She was also a skilled artisan of beaded items such as sealskin Mukluks, toys, and slippers. Nupok's artwork has been exhibited across the United States and is in the permanent collection of institutions including the University of Alaska, the National Museum of the American Indian, the Anchorage Museum of History and Art, and the Smithsonian Institution.
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