Anchorage Science Pub - The Truth of Oral Tradition
Channel: alaska commons
Date: 2016-05-15

All history is constructed from evidence at hand, whether texts, artifacts, or long-told tales, and these sources – so different in character – are challenging to piece together. In Alaska, ancient stories of remarkable events – wars, migrations, famines, geological cataclysms – are preserved in the oral traditions of Arctic and Subarctic peoples. What happens when these unwritten accounts of events that took place centuries ago are compared to evidence from archaeology and geology? The results of this historical detective work, carried in collaboration with indigenous communities, highlight the extraordinary persistence of oral narrative. Presented by Dr. Aron L. Crowell Arctic anthropologist and Alaska Director of the Smithsonian Institution’s Arctic Studies Center