The People of the Cook Inlet

It is not known exactly how long Native peoples have lived in Cook Inlet. It is believed they arrived with the melting of the glaciers that covered the area until about 10,000 B.C.

It is believed that by about A.D. 500 to 1000, Athabascan-speaking Dena'ina arrived in the region. The earliest Dena'ina likely lived in nomadic bands and eventually developed permanent homes and communities, tracing their ancestors through their mothers and grandmothers.

Like the Dena'ina, the nearby Ahtna Athabascans of Southcentral Alaska took advantage of the teeming plant and animal resources, as well as the climatic conditions to develop an astonishing degree of sophistication and complexity in their culture.

At the time of the Russian arrival into the region in the late 1700s, it is believed that there were 3,000 to 5,000 Dena'ina living in dozens of settlements. Diseases cut down many Native people, and Native populations declined by nearly 50 percent.

Today, CIRI is owned by more than 7,300 Alaska Native shareholders of Athabascan; Tlingit, Tsimshian, Eyak and Haida Indians; Inupiat and Yup'ik Eskimo; and Aleut and Alutiq peoples. While at least 40 percent of CIRI shareholders are of Dena'ina and Ahtna descent, CIRI is the corporation of Alaska's urban center, where many Alaska Natives relocated from other regions. In addition, several of CIRI's villages include Native peoples from other backgrounds. Thus, CIRI has a unique cultural diversity.

Athabascan Indians are from the state's Interior and Southcentral Alaska. Generally nomadic in nature, Athabascans were known as hunters and gatherers, living on moose and caribou, plants, berries, and fish.

Aleuts and Alutiiqs were primarily maritime people, living on sea life and land mammals. Today, many Aleut and Alutiiq peoples live on the Pribilof Islands, along the Aleutian Chain, on Kodiak Island, and the Alaska Peninsula.

Traditionally, many Yup'ik and Inupiat Eskimos lived on the shores of the Bering Sea and Arctic Ocean. They subsisted on whale, walrus, and seal, and were known for their ivory carvings and grass and baleen basket weavings. The peoples who lived inland made extensive use of the caribou.

Tlingit, Haida, Eyak and Tsimshian Indians are from Southeast Alaska. Traditionally, they were fishers, hunters, artists, and carvers. Towering totem poles, dance masks, and decorative button blankets are representative of their clans.

Today's CIRI shareholders represent a cross-section of all these cultures. Some CIRI shareholders still live traditional subsistence lifestyles or hold contemporary jobs in traditional village areas. Others have become business owners, corporate executives, physicians, lawyers, educators, and social workers, representing a cross section of employment in the larger society.

Approximately one-third of CIRI's shareholders live in Anchorage, one-third in other parts of Alaska, and one-third in other states across the continental United States.