Before Sitka was Alaska’s first capital city, the Kiks.ádi Tlingit people inhabited the place. To trade with them, the Russian-American Company established a settlement at Sitka Sound. Bountiful woods and waters empowered the Kiks.ádi to resist exploitation, at least until Russian reinforcements arrived and seized Sitka by conquest.
As a US territory, the boarding school in Sitka became a contact point for Native people from all over Alaska. Thus, Sitka was the cradle for the Alaska Native Brotherhood’s struggle for civil rights. December 1971 saw two epochal changes for Sitka: the city and borough unified to create the largest US municipality by area, and the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act authorized the creation of regional and village corporations. Shee Atiká, an urban corporation for tribal members in the incorporated city, carries on the legacy of the Kiks.ádi and other Indigenous clans. Steve Karpstein and Larry Garrity, as board chair and vice chair, are entrusted with tending the corporation’s m
