explore, understand & share

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Future Location

The Museum will be located on 4.4 acres at 36th and Old Seward Highway, next to the Tatitlek Corporation building in Midtown Anchorage, on the Dena’ina Athabaskan traditional homelands, purchased by the Chugach Alaska Corporation.

Chugach Museum

The Chugach region includes the communities of Eyak (Cordova), Qutekcak (Seward), Suacit (Valdez), Paluwik (Port Graham), Caniqaq (Chenega), Nanwalek (English Bay), Taatiilaaq (Tatitlek), and Oyotu/Tuxtaq (Whitter).

The region includes more than 5,000 miles of coastline along the southern tip of the Kenai Peninsula, through the Kenai Fjords, Prince William Sound, and the Gulf of Alaska.

The museum, a 12,000-square-foot facility, will be a tangible cornerstone of the Village in the City, a 4-acre development in Midtown, located off 36^th and Old Seward Highway. It will serve as a “home away from home,” with participatory exhibitions, stories, and objects showcasing Chugach’s rich, generational history and traditions that continue to thrive today.

The museum will include:

Family-friendly semi-permanent and traveling exhibitions to be developed and shared throughout the region and beyond, creating opportunities for a variety of audiences to connect with Chugach’s heritage, values, and build community.
A hands-on workshop/classroom space for teaching and learning about boat building, beading, harvesting, sewing, song and dance, and more, bringing cultural heritage to Anchorage, creating year-round culture camp experiences in the city. As well as art residencies, public programming, school groups, and eco-tourism opportunities.
The collections, archives, and repository will be the anchor for the Museum. With now more than 25,000+ archaeological and archival objects, the Chugach Museum will manage and care for these items through co-stewardship and access for the region.
Anchorage, the largest city in the state of Alaska, is a destination for tourists. The museum has an opportunity to strengthen the Alaska Native story and be an educational gateway for the Chugach people and region in Midtown through partnerships in the city.

The Chugach Museum is proud to steward a growing collection that reflects the rich cultural heritage of the Sugpiaq/Eyak peoples across the Chugach Region. Our collections include ancestral artifacts, archaeological materials, and contemporary works of art that express the enduring vibrancy of Chugach identity.

A significant portion of our holdings consists of archaeological materials transferred from federal agencies under Section 14(h)(1) of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA). These transfers were made possible through decades of dedicated work led by John Johnson, whose collaboration with federal partners facilitated the return of culturally and historically significant items to the Chugach Alaska Corporation and village corporations in the region. This process has been essential in securing and preserving materials that speak to the deep history and lifeways of the Chugach people.

In addition to his work on 14(h)(1) settlements, Johnson has played a key role in national and international efforts to repatriate Chugach cultural heritage. Much of this work has been conducted under the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA), a federal law that enables the return of sacred objects, funerary items, and ancestral remains to their rightful communities. Through these efforts, many items have been brought home, strengthening cultural identity and continuity for future generations.

Our collections are more than objects—they are living connections to our past, present, and future.