42 Alaskan Science Conference 



for 79. In 1949, the Navy and Alaska Native Service housing 

 program at Barrow was completed. Total cost: $170,000. It 

 comprised 75 new houses, 49 repaired houses, and 31 additions 

 to houses. 



With the vigorous health program under way for Eskimos 

 and others (orthopedic hospital, new 400-bed TB hospital, wide- 

 spread immunization, chest X-rays, etc.) and the Housing Au- 

 thority's housing program, many sections of the west coast of 

 Alaska do not have the neglected, slowly deteriorating look that 

 they had ten years ago. The basic problem that has not been 

 approached in similarly comprehensive fashion is the future of 

 the economy of west Alaska. 



Most Alaskan Eskimos still do much hunting and fishing for 

 home-consumed food and clothing. The most nearly universal 

 source of cash income is trapping. Income varies greatly from 

 time to time and place to place as the animal populations vary 

 and as fur styles change. In the lower Kuskokwim area, more 

 than $100,000 worth of muskrat skins may be taken in one 

 trapping season now that muskrat is in demand. Not far away, 

 Nunivak Islanders, who have fox and a few mink but no musk- 

 rat, have none of this prosperity. On the other hand, they have 

 reindeer. Another widely distributed, although not so remunera- 

 tive, type of income is the Territorial bounty on eagles, hair 

 seals, wolves, and coyotes. Total appropriation for bounties 

 for the biennium beginning 1951: about $200,000. Much of the 

 hair-seal bounty will be collected by other races than Eskimo, 

 around the south coasts of Alaska where seals are considered 

 foes of the commercial fishing industry. 



Other income sources are more localized. There is, for ex- 

 ample, a good deal of seasonal lighterage employment at Nome, 

 Kotzebue, Barrow; coal mining on Meade River; gold mining 

 on Seward Peninsula and elsewhere; ivory carving by not only 

 the famous King Islanders but other Bering Strait groups; jade 

 mining in the Shungnak area; reindeer herding by a few families 

 from ten or twelve villages (elsewhere deer are herded only for 

 roundup); and cannery work for men from many villages of 

 southwest Alaska, many of whom are transported by air to 



