![]() ![]() The only means of communicating with the outside world was by so-called "Bush Phone," provided through the Alaska Communication System station in Nome. The primary language at the time was Inupiat, and students were also taught English. The annual walrus hunt was a major source of supplies and income and required the help of all inhabitants. Teaching took place throughout the holidays and also on some weekends in order to complete the 180 days of schooling before the walrus migration started in Spring. The school year 1953–1954 on Little Diomede Island was adapted to better serve the local needs. According to one of the survivors, Oscar Ahkinga, after 52 days of internment and interrogation, the Iñupiat were banished and told not to come back. When people from Little Diomede went too close to the Russian side or tried to visit their relatives on the neighboring island during World War II, they were taken captive. Īt the beginning of the Cold War in the late 1940s, Big Diomede became a USSR (Soviet Union) military base, and all its native residents were removed to mainland Russia. The local schoolteachers on Little Diomede counted 178 people from Big Diomede and the Siberian mainland who visited the island within six months, between January and July in 1944. ![]() Despite being officially forbidden, the Inuit from both islands occasionally visited their neighbors, sometimes under the cover of fog, to meet their relatives and exchange small gifts. The communities on both islands were separated by politics but connected by family kinships. ĭespite being separated by the new border after the Alaska purchase in 1867, Big Diomede had been home to families now living on Little Diomede, and the people living on the American side of the border were close relatives to those living on the Russian side. Between July and October, half the population went to Nome to sell their carvings and skins and trade for supplies. Winter travel was limited to neighboring Big Diomede due to weather conditions. In summer time, they traveled with skin boats equipped with outboard motors to Siberia or Wales, Alaska. After dark, people spent the rest of the evening telling jokes and stories. Recreational activities included skating, snowshoeing, handball, soccer and Inuit dancing. During the winter, they used fur parkas and skin mukluks made out of hunted animals to protect themselves from the cold and wind. They caught fish such as bullheads, tomcods, bluecods. 1940s Īccording to Arthur Ahkinga, who lived on Little Diomede island at the turn of the 1940s, the Iñupiat on the island made their living by hunting and carving ivory that they traded or sold. People from Diomede arrived in umiaks and stayed in Nome for the summer, trading and gathering items before they returned to their isolated village. Huts were mostly built of stone with skin roofs ĭuring the Nome gold rush at the turn of the 20th century, Diomede villagers traveled to Nome along with the gold seekers, even though Nome was not a native village. The village was perched on the steep rocky slope of the mountain, which has sheer drops into deep water. ![]() 1880s–1920s Īccording to naturalist John Muir, who visited the Diomede Islands in the 1880s, natives were eager to trade away everything they had. A new boundary was drawn between the two Diomede Islands, and the Big Diomede was left to Russia. The United States purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867, including Little Diomede. Diomede, who was celebrated in the Russian Orthodox Church on that date. The first European to reach the Diomede Islands was Russian explorer Semyon Dezhnev, in 1648 the next was Danish navigator and explorer in Russian service Vitus Bering, who re-discovered the islands on August 16, 1728, and named the islands after martyr St. It was originally a spring hunting campsite and the early explorers from the west found the Iñupiat (Inuit) at Diomede had an advanced culture, including their elaborate whale hunting ceremonies. The current location of the city is believed by some archaeologists to have been inhabited for at least 3,000 years. Its native name Iŋaliq means "the other one" or "the one over there". The population is 82 people, down from 115 at the 2010 census and 146 in 2000. Diomede is the only settlement on Little Diomede Island. All the buildings are on the west coast of Little Diomede, which is the smaller of the two Diomede Islands located in the middle of the Bering Strait between the United States and the Russian Far East. state of Alaska, legally coterminous with Little Diomede Island. Diomede ( Inupiaq: Iŋaliq, Russian: Диомид) is a city in the Nome Census Area of the Unorganized Borough of the U.S. ![]()
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