The Surprising Way Cruises Can Actually Benefit Alaska Indigenous Communities

It’s not the first time a totem has awed me, but it’s the first time one hit me so much in the feels.

Although I grew up in Alaska and have seen much of it, it’s my first time visiting the village of Klawock, on Prince of Wales Island in the southeast, near Ketchikan. There’s a totem park here (one of the largest in Alaska, in fact, with 21 totems lining a hillside), but on the road into town there are two separate totems: one honoring the contributions of first responders, and the one that made me tear up a bit, which is dedicated to Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW).

There are two birds—an eagle and a raven—on the totem, both with tears coming from their eyes. The two birds represent the Eagle and Raven moieties of the Łingít (anglicized as Tlingit) People. Between them, the figure of a woman, faceless, represents the loss of each individual woman’s loss to her clan and community, but also recognizes the sheer number of MMIW: each unique, whose loss is uniquely mourned. At the bottom of the totem is a copper breastplate, a hope for strength and protection.

MMIW isn’t the only loss faced by Native communities in rural Alaska. The communities themselves are facing population loss as residents trickle away to seek opportunities elsewhere. Klawock and the neighboring town of Craig were never big communities: Klawock’s population is just over 700; neighboring Craig adds another 1,000, but they, like other smaller communities in Alaska, face the risk of depopulation as economic opportunity declines.

But I’m not just here to see totems. I’m here to see how one Native corporation is hoping to replicate a business model that turned another southeast Alaska village into one of the few in the state that’s actually a growing population. As another Alaskan (although I’m not Indigenous) who left for better opportunities, it also hit my feels to see Alaskans working so hard to keep their communities together by whatever means they can muster.

Alaska is an Indigenous Place

But let’s back up a bit first. There’s a lot of ground to cover—like what a Native corporation is. Alaska is the most Indigenous state in the union—nearly 22% of Alaska’s population is Indigenous (number two, Oklahoma, is 16%). Collectively, Alaska’s Indigenous people are “Alaska Natives.” In this massive state, Alaska Native communities are also massively diverse. The Łingít people and language are one of more than 20 major groups, comprising over 200 federally recognized tribes spread across thousands of miles. In Klawock, we’re 1,300 miles from Utqiagvik, where the people and language are Iñupiat. In Anchorage, the state’s largest city, they’re Dena’ina (although Anchorage is also something of a gathering place for Alaska Natives from virtually all tribal backgrounds).

After Alaska achieved statehood in 1959, Alaska’s diverse Native groups formed the Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN), and set about working out a settlement on their collective land claims with the federal government. They hammered out the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) in 1971, which largely rejected the reservation system used by Native Americans outside Alaska (one group in southeast Alaska opted out of ANCSA to keep their land claims).

ANCSA formed regional corporations and village corporations with a mix of land titles and cash. The corporations, whose shares are only available to members of the federally recognized Alaska Native tribes, were designed to provide shareholders with the cash flow to sustain subsistence communities if they so desired.

Huna Totem Corporation (HTC) is a village corporation under the umbrella of the Sealaska Regional Corporation, and it operates three cruise facilities in Alaska: Icy Strait Point near Hoonah, Port Klawock near Klawock, and a new “turnaround” cruise terminal near Whittier, which welcomed its first ship arrival in 2024.

Cruising Into Southeast Alaska

Cruise tourism is still growing in Alaska, and most of it is still concentrated in southeast Alaska’s Inside Passage. Many residents here are dependent on the cruise industry, and a recent attempt to put more limits on cruise ships was overwhelmingly rejected by voters in the city of Juneau.

Twenty years ago, HTC saw an opportunity for new ports of call in Alaska as they saw the continued popularity of Glacier Bay—their ancestral homeland. The tribe’s oral traditions recount the people fleeing glacial advance in the 18th century, and tribal members still act as guides to tourists in the Glacier Bay region today.

HTC also felt that Hoonah would be a great port for visitors—picturesque, with lots of wildlife (including a wealth of whales), and right on the channel, the cruise ships were already sailing through en route to Glacier Bay National Park. The town also needed an economic boost: large-scale timber and fishing operations had largely closed by the end of the 20th century, leaving the town’s economy in need of replacement activities.

But what they wanted to try hadn’t been done before. Most of the ports popular with cruise lines were cities, the smallest of which still had several thousand residents to help support tourism infrastructure. Hoonah (Xunaa in the original Łingít) by comparison, was tiny, with less than 900 residents, and a real fear that the cruise industry would overrun the town.

I also dropped into Icy Strait Point to see how it turned out, and what they’ve built over the last two decades is impressive. They took a 1912 vintage salmon cannery right on the water and repurposed it as the port. There are restaurants, shops, and performance pavilions. Guests coming off ships at one of two cruise docks can order a Bloody Mary topped with a crab claw and an appetizer-sized portion of crab meat, peer at some of the original salmon-canning equipment, or do a bit of shopping.

And it’s not just plush moose and t-shirts (although I love a plush moose). I stop into the Dei L’e.aan shop, where there’s lots of Native art ranging from wood carvings to jewelry. Most thrillingly for me, however, is Tlingit Botanicals, which has a range of salves and balms made from local botanicals, including Devil’s club, the bane of the Alaska hiker’s existence, with its pungent aroma and stinging needles. I never thought Devil’s club would have anti-inflammatory properties (my run-ins with it have always left me, well, inflamed).

The Łingít proprietor knows better and laughs. “I use welders’ gloves to harvest it,” she says. “And then I boil down the inner bark. Here, try some.” I open the container and smell—yup, it smells like home.

We spend the rest of the rainy day walking the grounds. Johan Dybdahl, Icy Strait Point’s Director of Special projects, who grew up in Hoonah, tells us stories with a deeply personal bent. In between the waterfront cottages that once housed the managers of the fish cannery is a small cemetery, and he shows us where his own father is buried, in a plot with a view of the strait.

The cannery was an ideal site for tourism development, he noted, because it was already a half-mile outside the town. Even today, the tourist site remains relatively well-contained, and it makes for a better visitor experience and a better living experience. The town stays a town without being overrun by tourist shops and restaurants. Icy Strait Point also had 379 employees in 2024—152 of those were Huna Totem shareholders, other Alaska Natives, or local Hoonah residents.

In between rain showers, we feast on battered halibut, crab dip, and reindeer chili shoulder-to-shoulder, with visitors streaming off two Carnival ships in spite of the downpour. They come ashore for a host of excursions ranging from bear-viewing trips into the forest, cooking demonstrations, or Icy Strait Point’s 100% guaranteed whale-watching tour. If visitors don’t see whales on the tour, they get their money back.

“We have a very dusty stack of cash sitting in the safe,” Dybdahl says. “We put it there when we ran the first tour in 2004 and we’ve never once—in 20 years—had to pay it out.”

Right in Icy Strait Point, they can also take gondola rides through the forest canopy or up the side of the mountain or take one of six ziplines back down.

Over dinner in Juneau, Huna Totem President and CEO Russell Dick speaks with pride about Icy Strait Point’s impact on the community. A longtime Huna Totem board member, he also left Alaska to pursue education and opportunities “Outside” (Alaskan parlance for “outside Alaska”) but felt drawn back to help grow opportunities in Hoonah and other Alaska communities.

In addition to the Alaska Cruise ports, Huna Totem is also developing other opportunities in Alaska and has recently taken a stake in Chukka USVI, a shore excursion operator in the Caribbean.

One of his current projects is responding to visitor feedback for more Indigenous cultural activities at Icy Strait Point. When they first opened, the focus was on wildlife viewing and outdoor activities, but Dick says that guests have been increasingly asking about Indigenous culture during their visits, and a handful of them even walk into Hoonah from Icy Strait Point just to see the town.

Opportunity in Klawock

Port Klawock is being developed with that in mind. During our visit, the last of six ships for the inaugural summer season is in port, tendering guests to a floating dock on a recently cleared plot of land (the black-tailed deer we passed on our way out of the port didn’t seem to get the memo—they were still nibbling on some of the remaining shrubs by the roadway).

The port itself is a large tent made cozy with wooden benches, a gift shop, coffee, and free cookies from a local bakery. Outdoors, there’s a fire pit and an open-air bar station serving Alaska brews and hard seltzers. In the indoor seating area, where amenities like umbrellas and space heaters are thoroughly welcome, is a large info panel celebrating one-time local resident and Alaska Native rights activist Elizabeth Peratrovich. A Łingít woman, she was instrumental in the passing of legislation in 1945 in the then-Territory of Alaska that prohibited racial discrimination.

I also visit a totem carver, a craft fair set up in the local community center (where I acquire a delightful tin of local smoked salmon), and go whale-watching, where we see several humpback whales gliding in and out of the water.

But most tellingly of the community impact is a conversation I overhear between one of the tour guides and a cruise ship passenger back at the totem park. He fields the usual questions about the totems and life in rural Alaska, noting that in addition to being a tour guide, he’s also a fisherman who’s been living in Washington State.

But then comes the kicker.

“But because of the new port, I’m in the process of moving back here.”

It’s the second time that morning I’m hit in the feels, and I don’t mind a bit.