Alaska's size and diversity strain the imagination. Distances between communities often exceed 1,000 miles. We only have six communities above 6,000, and some two hundred villages that are home to 60,000 Alaska Natives. Our history goes back thousands of years for aboriginal inhabitants, a few hundred for others. A place of such extremes that it is rightly said to be oxymoronic.
People mostly feel apart from the rest of the country, from the rest of the world.
We are in it, for better or for worse. Our community, close to 9,000 in population, is on Baranof Island, named after the governor of Russian America. Sitka, an established community wrested by force from the Tlingit Indians, was its capital. It lies in the Tongass National Forest, the largest in the nation and part of the world's northernmost temperate rainforest. Until recently, clearcutting of old-growth trees kept a pulp mill humming in Sitka, providing a focus for several kinds of controversy and community divisiveness.