Sitka

Alaska Native Brotherhood Hall, or Sitka Camp No. 1, is significant for being the original chapter of the Alaska Native Brotherhood, an Alaska-wide... native organization. It is located on the waterfront in Sitka, Alaska, in an area occupied by Tlingits since about 20 years "after being defeated by the Russians at the 1804 battle of Indian River." According to the National Park Service: The Tlingits founded the Alaska Native Brotherhood/Sisterhood Society in Sitka in 1912 to fight discrimination against Alaska's natives and to obtain recognition of their rights and compensation for their lands. In 1914 the Society built this large frame building as a meeting hall and headquarters. It remains a symbol of the political power the group attained. The two story building is of wood frame construction approximately 40 x 60 feet, and most of its length extends out over water, supported on pilings. On the inside is an auditorium open to two stories, and front offices area on the 2nd floor. It has a tin-covered roof overhanging all four sides of the building. The roof is trimmed at front and back by plain bargeboard with "seven unadorned corbel-like supports in the form of triangular struts.
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The Sitka Historical Museum, formerly known as the Isabel Miller Museum is the city museum of Sitka in the U.S. state of Alaska. Run by the Sitka... Historical Society, it is located in the Harrigan Centennial Hall in downtown Sitka. Its collection focuses on Sitka's history from the Tlingit people, through the European explorations and Russian era and after. The museum also has extensive collections and archives not on display, accessible by staff for research purposes.
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Alaska is the largest state in the United States by area. It is situated in the northwest extremity of the North American continent, with Canada to the east, the Arctic Ocean to the north, and the Pacific Ocean to the west and south, with Russia further west across the Bering Strait. Alaska is the 4th least populous and the least densely populated of the 50 United States. Approximately half of Alaska's 722,718 residents live within the... Anchorage metropolitan area. Alaska was purchased from Russia on March 30, 1867, for $7.2 million at approximately two cents per acre . The land went through several administrative changes before becoming an organized territory on May 11, 1912, and the 49th state of the U.S. on January 3, 1959. The name "Alaska" was already introduced in the Russian colonial period, when it was used only for the peninsula and is derived from the Aleut alaxsxaq, meaning "the mainland" or, more literally, "the object towards which the action of the sea is directed". It is also known as Alyeska, the "great land", an Aleut word derived from the same root.
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