http://arcticcircle.uconn.edu/HistoryCulture/Aleut/Jones/preface.html

The Pribilof Islands have been inhabited by a small group of Aleuts - 200 at the beginning of this story in 1867 and about 650 at the time of telling it in 1978. The human tragedy these Aleuts experienced was stark and pervasive. But why, the reader may ask, is it important to read about a tragedy that affected so few people when contemporary problems affect millions? The story is significant not because of the number of people involved but because it shows the extremes to which even an enlightened democratic government can and did go, the totalitarian condition it established and continued until recently. Moreover, as an extreme case, the Pribilof story highlights some of the processes of deprivation and oppression that operate less visibly in other parts of the United States - in urban ghettos l and rural backwashes where people are held in fixed economic and social traps.

As a side note, my family was directly effected by this, it’s not a left wing conspiracy or exaggeration. My family was relocated and sent to wrangell, alaska and kept there for several years. Some of my cousins died while there. Some of my family was born there while my aunties and grandparents were in the internment camps.

After being released, they returned to their villages and finding no jobs and no homes they scattered to the “lower 48.”

A documentary was made about these events and my family was asked to attend the premiere in hollywood; which we did. We even brought the aunties and my grandmother. My grandmother, though she couldn’t see well and is ill, was so moved that she cried. After the documentary we were introduced to the audience, who had no idea any of this happened as it’s not discussed in history class or remembered.