Eklutna Alaska Spirit Houses
Eklutna is a small Native Alaskan village about 20 minutes from my house in Palmer, it sits on the site where many Athabscan Indians lived as long as 800 years ago. This Dena’ina Athabascan village is the oldest continuously inhibited location in the Anchorage area; and the last of eight villages that existed before the Alaskan Railroad was built in 1915, bringing many new people and cultures to the area. In 1840, Russian Orthodox missionaries began arriving in the area, the missionaries started to teach the native residents. With time most of the of the Dena’ina people in the area converted to this new religion, and began to incorporate the Russian traditions with their own. Prior to the arrival of the Russian Missionaries, the Dena’ina people would cremate their dead and then place the ashes in a basket by the river or in a tree. After the missionaries arrived, they told the Dena’ina people they could no longer cr...
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