Friends, I am in the process of revising this manuscript.
Attempting to write a history of the many different Alaska Native Nations, all different, all with different histories, has been an incredibly difficult project. Problems include epistemology, what is history, word choice, names and terminology, and particularly, not offending anyone. Many people have told me to not even attempt it. I agree that it would be preferable to have an Alaska Native person as the author. But in the six or seven years I have been working on this, I have seen no evidence that anyone is going to take this on. And I get it. It is a huge project that relies on synthesis, not the kind of primary or detailed research that is going to get anyone a PhD or tenure. And everyone has their own projects. Which is great. But people have been complaining for years that their history is not included in any standard history of Alaska. I am doing my best.
My writing process is very slow. I write, I put it aside, for a year. I reread. I revise.
I am disabling comments on this site because I get so much spam, But I would love to hear from anyone who sincerely wants to comment. If you have comments, you may address them to me at j haigh at alaska dot edu