Description
Thomas Michael Swensen is assistant professor of ethnic studies at the University of Utah. Charlotte Coté, Tseshaht/Nuu-chah-nulth, is a professor in American Indian Studies at the University of Washington. She is the author of Spirits of Our Whaling Ancestors: Revitalizing Makah and Nuu-chah-nulth Traditions (University of Washington Press, 2010). Coll Thrush is professor of history at the University of British Columbia.
Alaska’s past is often told through Russian and US imperial histories. In The Great Land author Thomas Michael Swensen overturns those narratives by reconstructing Alaska’s history from Indigenous perspectives, showing how Native communities forged the region’s political, economic, and cultural foundations. He constructs a timeline based on Indigenous archives, oral traditions, and Native-authored sources—what he terms first space.
Beginning with Indigenous encounters with Russian expeditions in Unangan territory in the 1740s, Swensen traces how key features of modern Alaska emerged from Indigenous labor and knowledge. The book demonstrates that after being drawn into coercive relationships with the Russian American Company, Native people navigated the territory’s transfer to the United States in 1867 and engaged democratic institutions to pursue citizenship and political influence by the early twentieth century.
Across more than two and a half centuries, Alaska Native communities defined the region and state’s cultural and political life—from designing the state flag to leading movements that culminated in the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. The book details that through statehood, Cold War tensions, and the Exxon Valdez oil spill, Indigenous people articulated cultural beliefs and practices that are central to Alaska’s political life.
By framing Alaska as an Indigenous homeland rather than a colonial frontier, The Great Land offers a powerful new understanding of how Native peoples shaped the modern Alaskan state.