Native Alaskan Cultural Center

Since we are in Alaska we decided we should learn about the native Alaskan culture.  This center is really well done. 

We had a tour guide who explained what we were looking at.  She had taken classes while in High School that are meant to teach the students about their heritage. 

We learned a bit about several different people groups.  Each color on the map was for a different group of people.

The group here shared songs and dancing.  They are eager for us to learn about their culture.  We spent most of the day looking at the displays and talking with the staff.  I finally got the courage to ask where the word eskimo fits in and if it is derogatory.  Most people don't object to it but some do.  They prefer to be referred to as native Alaskan.   Eskimo is a term given the people above the Arctic Circle who eat raw whale blubber by the Russians many years ago.

After our look around the center we, Garnet and I, took a dog sled ride.  Here we are loving 1 month old puppies.  They will grow up to be sled dogs.

Here we are with the 16 dog team and the cart we rode on.  No snow so we rode on tires.  The dogs don't care, they just love to run.  Once they recognize that the musher is going to give a ride they get really excited.  It gets quite noisy and they get rather rambunctious. 

 Here are the lead dogs once the ride and photographs are over.

Here is the mother of the puppies we were loving.  She has  5 puppies and doesn't like it when a stranger approaches her pen.  While we were loving her puppies she was very aware of where we were.  Our musher Phillip, is a musher in training.  His goal is to run the Iditarod.  He does shorter winter races.  We will have to watch for him in the future.