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The indigenous people of Alaska (including but not limited to the cultural groups Inupiat, Yupiit, Sugpiaq, Unangan, Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, Athabascan) who have inhabited the land since time immemorial. Alaska includes over 230 tribes, each of whom are sovereign entities and have unique traditions and ways of life. Their strength and perseverence in not only surviving but thriving in their environment has endured, and collectively they remain a significant and ever present population of the state of Alaska. Despite over a century of colonization, forced assimilation, disease, discrimination and cultural, linguistic and phsyical genocide they remain resilient and proud. This historical trauma, however, often creates debilitating social problems in villages of rural Alaska, that are compounded by the fact the state of Alaska that does little to support it's rural residents. But this is not the defining trait of Alaska Natives. They are indefinable; each Alaska Native individual, family, village, government unique. They are not a people trapped in the past, nor disappearing into a bleak, uncertain future. They are descended from incredible men and women who worked collectively to create a better future for their children and children's children, who continue to shape what it means to be Alaska Native today. At the heart of it all, they are human, perfect in their imperfection, capable of mistake, and with a great capacity for love and compassion, just as we all are.

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