Akeonik is a shelter cabin and, historically, a reindeer station at the northern end of Kasegaluk Lagoon on the Chukchi Sea coast at Icy Cape, about 50 miles (81km) southwest of Wainwright and 46 miles (74km) northeast of Point Lay, Alaska. Whaling ships hunted along the Bering and Chukchi Sea coasts throughout the mid to late 1800s. By 1888 captains of the US Revenue Cutter Service, which patrolled the waters of western Alaska, had grown concerned for the well-being of the Iñupiat and Yup’ik villages that depended on marine mammals as their primary food source.

In 1890 Captain Michael A. Healy of the US Revenue Cutter Bear, who had witnessed severe starvation among St Lawrence Island Iñupiat in previous years, conceived the idea of transporting domestic reindeer from Siberia to the Seward Peninsula coast. He proposed the plan to Dr Sheldon Jackson, General Agent for Education in Alaska, then a passenger aboard the cutter. Jackson lobbied the federal government, and on March 3rd 1893 Congress established the Alaska Reindeer Service, one of the earliest federal programs created to support the economic welfare of Alaska Natives. The Alaska Reindeer Service established schools and reindeer stations along the coast and trained villagers to care for and use the reindeer.

Beginning in 1894 Sheldon Jackson recruited Sami herders from Norway to teach Alaska Natives herding skills such as driving and milking reindeer, building and using corrals, marking ears, and working herding dogs. A larger group, roughly 100 Sami men, women, and children, along with more than 500 reindeer, arrived in 1898 aboard the steamship Manitoba in what became known as the Manitoba Expedition. Relative to its original goal of a stable, Native-owned food source, the program had mixed success: herds grew quickly at first, but by the 1920s much of the industry had consolidated under commercial operators such as the Lomen family, and many Native owners lost interest, or lost their herds outright, under the cooperative ownership system introduced to manage them. Stations along the Chukchi Sea coast, including Akeonik, were eventually abandoned as herds there were thinned by harsh winters, wolf predation, and straying with migrating caribou, and as herding activity contracted to fewer, more accessible sites farther south on the Seward Peninsula. Read more here and here. Explore more of Akeonik Reindeer Station and Icy Cape here: