Alaska Native Resilience: Voices from World War II (Indigenous Confluences)

Alaska Native Resilience: Voices from World War II (Indigenous Confluences)

Winner of the 2025 Robert M. Utley Award, Western History Association Winner of the 2025 John C. Ewers Award, Western History Association Winner of the 2025 Robert G. Athearn Award, Western History Association Winner of the 2025 Caroline Bancroft History Prize, Denver Public Library’s Special Collection and Archives Finalist for the 2025 Shapiro Book Prize, Huntington Library Honorable Mentionn for the 2025 Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin Prize, American Society for Ethnohistory Alaska Native elders remember wartime invasion, relocation, and land reclamation The US government justified its World War II occupation of Alaska as a defense against Japan’s invasion of the Aleutian Islands, but it equally served to advance colonial expansion in relation to the geographically and culturally diverse Indigenous communities affected. Offering important Alaska Native experiences of this history, Holly Miowak Guise draws on a wealth of oral histories and interviews with Indigenous elders to explore the multidimensional relationship between Alaska Natives and the US military during the Pacific War. The forced relocation and internment of Unanga in 1942 proved a harbinger of Indigenous loss and suffering in World War II Alaska. Violence against Native women, assimilation and Jim Crow segregation, and discrimination against Native servicemen followed the colonial blueprint. Yet Alaska Native peoples took steps to enact their sovereignty and restore equilibrium to their lives by resisting violence and disrupting attempts at US control. Their subversive actions altered the colonial structures imposed upon them by maintaining Indigenous spaces and asserting sovereignty over their homelands. A multifaceted challenge to conventional histories, A laska Native Resilience shares the experiences of Indigenous peoples from across Alaska to reveal long-overlooked demonstrations of Native opposition to colonialism. "Through prioritizing Indigenous voices, Holly Guise’s analytical framework of ‘equilibrium restoration’ provides a provocative lens for uncovering Indigenous agency in more meaningful ways than just resilience or resistance normally reveal."―Joshua L. Reid, author of The Sea Is My Country: The Maritime World of the Makahs "Through her application of oral traditions, Guise brilliantly refutes a common assumption that Indigenous peoples were passive recipients of colonial cultures. She records a history of how Natives used military and other colonial structures to protect their land and culture and ultimately to overcome racial hierarchy and obtain civil equality."―Rosita Kaaháni Worl, Sealaska Heritage Insititute "By thoughtfully elevating the voices of Native elders and meticulously fashioning an oral history archive from which she expertly draws upon, Holly Miowak Guise has authored an essential study that redefines our understanding of wartime Alaska."―Ian C. Hartman, coauthor of Black Lives in Alaska: A History of African Americans in the Far Northwest "Holly Miowak Guise demonstrates the profound ways that Alaska Native peoples survive, resist, and refashion colonialist forces, what she stunningly conceptualizes as equilibrium restoration. Impressively researched and compellingly written, Alaska Native Resilience is a necessary read for those interested in Indigenous studies, Alaska, or World War II."―Juliana Hu Pegues, author of Space-Time Colonialism: Alaska's Indigenous and Asian Entanglements "A timely addition to the scholarly literature on the Pacific War [that] offers new, ethical, and intersectional ways of working with war memory, remembrance, archival absence, and Indigenous testimony."― Western Historical Quarterly "Our American history needs continual revisiting and reevaluation, and Holly Miowak Guise has made an important contribution. She's shown that Alaska Natives, far from being passive participants in a war brought to them, actively protected their lands and cultures―leading to strengthened tribal connections and greater equality."― Anchorage Daily News "[P]rovides readers with a crucial reframing of Indigenous-US relations and World War II in Alaska. . . . Alaska Native Resilience not only reframes 'the Good War' but challenges historians to recognize oral history methods and Indigenous Studies methodologies as imperative to their craft."― American Historical Review " Alaska Native Resilience is a groundbreaking, well-researched, ethically sound work of intersectional history. . . . The author's extensive collection and use of oral history in collaboration with Indigenous elders models the discipline's best practices for working with communities everywhere."―Western History Association Robert G. Athearn Award committee " Alaska Native Resilience has much to offer educators, especially those not familiar with this history. By crossing boundaries―between fields, between nations, and between Indigenous Nations―it offers new ways to conceptualize the single lesson or two m