Eyak

Background

NPS describes the Eyak as coming out of an interior group, moving down the Copper River to its mouth and then southeast across the Bering Glacier to the coast of the Gulf of Alaska. More powerful Chugach and Tlingit groups reduced them to two villages west of the Copper River delta. Cordova sits inside Eyak country, and the federally recognized Native Village of Eyak there says it is made up of four Alaska Native peoples, that the area has always been a place known for trading, and that the Eyak acted as middlemen for the traders. The tribe says its people have stewarded the land for more than 10,000 years. Its Department of the Environment and Natural Resources runs fisheries and wildlife research, water quality monitoring, spill response, glacier monitoring and mariculture. Its Cultural Department runs the Ilanka Cultural Center in Cordova, a museum and gift shop, and honors the heritage of the Eyak and three neighboring peoples. The center's tribal library holds prehistoric, historic and contemporary tribal artifacts from Prince William Sound and the Copper River delta. Each October the tribe puts on Mount Eccles Culture Week with the local elementary school. Students learn native dance, language and craft.

Visit and learn

Tribal lands have their own laws. Check the nation's site before you visit.

Parks on its homelands

Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve

The Eyak came out of an interior group, moved down the Copper River to its mouth, then crossed the Bering Glacier to take the coast between Yakataga and Cape Fairweather. More powerful Chugach and Tlingit groups cut them down to two villages just west of the Copper River Delta, Eyak and Alaganik, and the Ahtna had replaced them in the middle Copper Basin long before. Today the Eyak live in or near many of the same villages, as shareholders in corporations such as Chugach Alaska Corporation. Source

Programs

• Department of the Environment and Natural Resources

  A department of the Native Village of Eyak tribal government. It protects the tribe's traditional lands, manages natural resources, works to prevent or mitigate environmental damage, and preserves the tribe's subsistence way of life. Its programs cover fisheries and wildlife research, water quality and quantity monitoring, contaminated sites, spill response, glacier monitoring and mariculture. It has taken part in the United States Fish and Wildlife Service's Fisheries Resource Monitoring Program since 2001.

  https://www.eyak-nsn.gov/denr/·land

Sources

• https://www.eyak-nsn.gov/about-us/
• https://www.nps.gov/wrst/learn/historyculture/human-history.htm
• https://www.eyak-nsn.gov/denr/
• https://www.eyak-nsn.gov/cultural-department/

Checked September 2026.

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