Indigenous Cosmopolitanism

The Alaska Native Heritage Center (ANHC) is a living heritage center located in Anchorage, Alaska. Although there are many tourist destinations in Alaska, Denali National Park for example, Anchorage should be thought of as the cosmopolitan center of Alaska, its largest and most populous city. The Alaska Native Heritage Center is an expansive site with indoor and outdoor components focusing on history and contemporary culture. The Heritage Center was initiated and curated by Alaska Natives as opposed to anthropologists or historians. The site as a whole can thus be understood as authored by Alaska Natives. The visitor experience, story of the center, and location provide many ways to bridge the site with the concept of cosmopolitanism. As I have experienced the site as a visitor, I will consider the center in relation to the notion of cosmopolitan curiosity, particularly in conjunction with scholar Natasha Eaton’s concept of cosmopolitan nostalgia. The ANHC serves as symbol of contemporary self-de nition of Indigenous peoples. By placing the center in Anchorage, the Heritage Center founders were making a conscious choice to share their history and culture with non-natives. This enacts their sense of belonging in the world relating to cultural theorist Anthony Kwame Appiah’s central thesis of cosmopolitanism in Cosmopolitanism: Ethics in a World of Strangers (2006). Although not everyone has the opportunity to visit Alaska, those who do are likely to travel to Anchorage and once there to visit the ANHC. Due to colonization, indigenous peoples of the United States make up an extremely small percentage of the population, yet by no means are they—as outmoded anthropological monographs attest—‘disappearing’. By highlighting a contemporary example of indigenous living culture, I would like to consider how cosmopolitanism as a concept can incorporate this Indigenous mode of being into its larger global story. We need these traditions, not only to know who we are, but to know who we can become. Margaret Nelson, the former President and CEO of the Alaska Native Heritage Center (ANHC), made the above statement in Qayaqs & Canoes: Native Ways of Knowing, a 2001 publication detailing a yearlong collaborative boat-building project at the center. The ANHC is a nonpro t heritage center located in Anchorage, Alaska, created to celebrate the cultures of Alaska’s Indigenous peoples, known as Alaska Natives. Nelson’s statement demonstrates the perspective that tradition should be instructive and futureoriented, making a place like the ANHC especially important for Alaska Natives. That said, the Alaska Native Heritage Center thrives as a site for non-Native tourists visiting Alaska. For its tourism and traditional teaching functions and the particularity of its founding, the ANHC should be understood as a site of indigenous cosmopolitanism. Today more than 100,000 Alaska Natives live in Alaska and comprise roughly 10 percent of the state population, making them an important minority population. Although it opened to the public in 1999, the Alaska Native Heritage Center was conceptualized much earlier; the center was the result of a decade of planning. The Alaska Federation of Natives, the largest and most powerful statewide organization representing Alaska Native interests, approved by unanimous vote the concept for a culture center for Alaska Natives from all over the state in 1987. The Alaska Native Heritage Center (ANHC) was formally founded in 1989 as a nonpro t and from 1989 to 1999, the ANHC raised a total of $14.5 million in funds from local, state, federal, and private sources. According to its website, “A 30-member Academy comprised of Elders and Tradition Bearers was formed 1