How to Tell if You’re Alaskan

By Cherie Campbell

Disclaimer: Alaska is home to very diverse and distant cultures. This cultural test heavily favors the region of Southcentral Alaska, where I grew up and where the majority of the state’s population resides. However, it will tell you little if anything about other areas of the state. A person living in the Aleutian Chain would give very different answers from me and we would both in turn be very different from someone living in Barrow. It is not easy to access these areas, and I have never been to a Bush town. Despite the fact that these tests are all in fun, I feel that this is an important thing to understand.

Note: The color scheme of this page is based on the Alaskan flag.

If you’re Alaskan…

You believe deep down in the Alaska Permanent Fund and its Dividend, (almost) guaranteed by the government and perhaps by God. Oh, and the First Amendment.
You’re familiar with David Letterman, Mary Tyler Moore, Saturday Night Live, Bewitched, the Flintstones, Sesame Street, Mr. Rogers, Bob Newhart, Bill Cosby, Bugs Bunny, Road Runner, Donald Duck, the Fonz, Archie Bunker, Star Trek, the Honeymooners, the Addams Family, the Three Stooges, and Beetle Bailey.
Add to that Scott Gomez, Benny Benson, Vitus Bering, Susan Butcher, Soapy Smith, Jay Hammond, Hobo Jim, Martin Buser, Jewel, Ted Stevens, If You Give a Moose a Muffin, the pipeline, fireweed, the Alcan, openings, William Seward and Seward’s Icebox, the Iditarod, Give Moose a Brake, ANWR, the “bridge to nowhere”, ulu knives, the Iron Dog, the Mount Marathon race, the Gold Rush, Matanuska Maid, the Fur Rondy, Balto, and (unfortunately) the Exxon Valdez.
You know how baseball, basketball, and American football are played. If you’re male, you can argue intricate points about their rules. On the other hand (and unless you’re under about 20), you don’t care that much for soccer. You might also be a bit familiar with the Native games, competitions for which are held in Anchorage each year.
Another thing you will discuss contentiously if you are young and male is which of the four snowmachine companies (Arctic Cat, Polaris, Ski-Doo, and Yamaha) is the best.
You count yourself fortunate if you get three weeks of vacation a year.
You consider yourself more aware of your vulnerability to the power of nature, and thus more respectful of it, than most other Americans. You probably also fancy the notion that you’re tougher than them.

I did, I did, I did the Iditarod Trail

You’re fairly likely to believe in God; if not, you’ve certainly been approached by people asking whether you know that you’re going to Heaven.
You think of McDonald’s, Burger King, KFC, etc. as cheap food.
You probably own a telephone, a computer, and a TV. Your place is definitely heated in the winter and has its own bathroom. You do your laundry in a machine. You might kill some of your own food, either for sport or subsistence. You don’t have a dirt floor. You eat at a table, sitting on chairs.
You don’t consider insects, dogs, cats, monkeys, or guinea pigs to be food. You know that muktuk, or whale blubber, is eaten by the Inuit people in the far north of the state, however.
A bathroom may not have a bathtub in it, but it certainly has a toilet.
It seems natural to you that the telephone system, railroads, auto manufacturers, airlines, and power companies are privately run; indeed, you can hardly picture things working differently.
You expect, as a matter of course, that the phones will work. Getting a new phone is routine.
The train system is okay but not extensive enough to take you many places. Trains don’t go any faster than cars; you’re better off taking a plane, especially if you want to visit more remote areas. Due to the lack of widespread road access, Alaskans have occasionally been called “the flyingest people in the world”.
Ferries are nothing to sneeze at, either: in the Southeast, the “Marine Highway” is a convenient mode of transportation between islands and parts of the mainland off the road system.
You find a two-party system natural. You expect the politicians of both parties to be responsive to business, strong on defense, concerned with the middle class, and committed to natural development. The Republicans are the strongest party here due to their strong affirmation of oil development; the Democrats are a bit of a joke compared to their counterparts Outside. You likely don’t think about parliamentary systems (such as Italy’s) much at all, but when you do, you may find them inefficient and comic.
You don’t expect to hear socialism seriously defended. Communism, fuhgeddaboudit. On the other hand, libertarian ideals probably have a stronger hold here than most other states, and there is the (albeit small) Alaska Independence Party, which runs on a platform of secession from the Union.
Between “black” and “white” there are no other races except Native. Someone with one black and one white parent looks black to you. Southcentral Alaska is overwhelmingly white, but more remote areas are more likely to have a mix of Alaska Natives and white people.
You think most problems could be solved if only people would put aside their prejudices and work together. You wouldn’t mind seeing more natural development take place, either.
You take a strong court system for granted, even if you don’t use it. You know that if you went into business and had problems with a customer, partner, or supplier, you could take them to court.
Sled dog racing is still a major attraction; the Iditarod Trail is one of Alaska’s most famous events, and you have perhaps gone to stand by the trail to cheer on the mushers. You know about the historical event it commemorates, the diphtheria crisis of 1925, and are unhappy if a musher not from Alaska wins. If you live in a more rural area, you might even know someone who races dogs, either competitively or for fun. You may have heard of environmentalists who protest the use of dogs for racing, and you think this is ridiculous; anyone can tell that the dogs love it. Even if abuses did take place in the past, mushers take good care of their dogs, and the checkpoints of the Iditarod and other races are regulated.
You’d respect someone who speaks French, German, or Japanese—but you very likely don’t speak them well enough to communicate with a monolingual foreigner. Unlike many areas of the Lower 48, Spanish isn’t much of an issue here.
It’s not all that necessary to learn foreign languages anyway. You can travel the continent using nothing but English—and get by pretty well in the rest of the world, too.
You think a tax level of 30% is scandalously high, even though you have no state income tax and get money from the government each year. Some places, such as Anchorage, have no sales tax either, which makes shopping nice.
School is free through high school (at least, it’s an option, even if you went to private school); college isn’t, unless you get a scholarship. The public education system is under-funded in several areas of the state, which prompts sometimes vicious debates about policy.
College is (normally, and excluding graduate study) four years long.

Everybody knows that:

They’re called snowmachines, not “snowmobiles”. Likewise, a device that creates artificial snow (which Alaska hardly needs) is referred to as a snow maker. “Anchorage” is always pronounced with two syllables. You know where the Slope is and what goes on there, and might be acquainted with a Sourdough or two. “The Bush” has nothing to do with shrubbery, and Outside, when capitalized, means anywhere that is not Alaska. The contiguous United States is more specifically referred to as the Lower 48. You’ve probably even slipped up at times and stated that you’re “going to the US” for a vacation.
Mustard comes in jars. Shaving cream comes in cans. Milk comes in plastic jugs or cardboard boxes, and occasionally in bottles.
As with the rest of the US, the date comes second: 3/27/64. (And you know what happened on that date.)
The decimal point is a dot. Certainly not a comma.
A billion is a thousand times a million.
World War II was a just war, and (granted all the suffering of course) ended all right. It was a time when the country came together and did what was right. And instead of insisting on vengeance, the US very generously rebuilt Europe instead, with the Marshall Plan. This war was vital to the development of your state; among other things, the Alaska-Canada Highway, or Alcan, was built by the military, allowing for road access to Alaska from the Lower 48 for the first time.
You expect marriages to be made for love, not arranged by third parties. Getting married by a judge is an option, but not a requirement; most marriages happen in church. You have a best man and a maid or matron of honor at the wedding—a friend or a sibling. And, naturally, a man gets only one wife at a time.
If a man has sex with another man, he’s a homosexual (and other more vulgar terms).
Once you’re introduced to someone (well, besides the President and other lofty figures), you can call them by their first name. Alaskans are generally quite informal; even the press has taken to calling the husband of a female governor the “First Dude”.
If you’re a woman, you don’t go to the beach topless. You typically wouldn’t go to the beach in anything less than pants and a windbreaker, anyway.
A hotel room has a private bath.
You’d rather a film be subtitled than dubbed (if you go to foreign films at all).
You seriously expect to be able to transact business, or deal with the government, without paying bribes, unless you are a high-ranking member of VECO Corporation.
If a politican has been cheating on his or her spouse, you would question his or her ability to govern.
Just about any store will take your credit card.
A company can fire just about anybody it wants, unless it discriminates by doing so.
You like your bacon crisp (unless it’s Canadian bacon, of course).
Labor Day is in the fall.

Hey Hollywood, we’re over here!

You’ve probably seen Star Wars, ET, Home Alone, Casablanca, and Snow White. If you’re under forty, add Blazing Saddles, Terminator, Jaws, and 2001; otherwise, add Gone with the Wind, A Night at the Opera, Psycho, and Citizen Kane. Speaking of movies, you’re probably rather irked that most films taking place in “Alaska” are actually made in Canada.
You know the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Elvis, Chuck Berry, Michael Jackson, Simon & Garfunkel, and Linda Ronstadt. If not, you know Frank Sinatra, Al Jolson, Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Tony Bennett, and Kate Smith.
You count on excellent medical treatment. You know you’re not going to die of cholera or other Third World diseases, though tuberculosis has been a bit of a problem in some areas of the Bush. You expect very strong measures to be taken to save very ill babies or people in their eighties. You think dying at 65 would be a tragedy, but know that Alaska is not a kind place for elderly people.
You went over Alaskan and US history, and some European, in school, but not much African, Chinese, or Latin American. You couldn’t name ten US interventions in Latin America. You did study just a bit of Russian history though, since Alaska was colonized by the Russians.
You expect the military to fight wars, not get involved in politics. You may not be able to name the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Ever since the Second World War, the military has had a large presence in your state. Its location made it a strategic point for the battle against Japan and the Cold War afterwards. Today, many military bases remain and part of the missile defense system is in Alaska.
A small part of your state has been conquered by a foreign nation—the Japanese took three Aleutian islands during World War II.
You’re used to a wide variety of choices for almost anything you buy, but not as much as in the contiguous states. There are fewer stores and chains; many goods either don’t make their way up here or are hard to find outside of Anchorage.
You still measure things in feet, pounds, and gallons.
Unless you live in the Mat-Su Valley, you are certainly not a farmer.
Comics basically come in two varieties: newspaper comics and magazines; the latter pretty much all feature superheroes.
The people who appear on the most popular talk shows are mostly entertainers, politicians, or rather strange individuals. Certainly not, say, authors.
You drive on the right side of the road. You stop at red lights even if nobody’s around. If you’re a pedestrian and cars are stopped at a red light, you will fearlessly cross the street in front of them. Alaskans tend to be slower and more cautious drivers than people in the Lower 48. Going for a drive when you are Outside can be a bit of a shock at first if you’ve been in Alaska for a long while.
You think of Canada as a pleasant, peaceful, but rather dull country, which has suddenly developed an inexplicable problem in Québec. You probably couldn't explain why the Canadians didn’t join the other British colonies in rebelling against King George. Your state shares a very long border with Canada, but you rarely think about them unless you are in the Southeast, or are a musher who competes in Canadian sled-dog races.
You consider the Volkswagen Beetle to be a quite small car and an example of a vehicle that is totally impractical for use in Alaska. Alaskans seem to have more large vehicles than most areas in the Lower 48; trucks and SUVs dominate the highways. It’s much easier for small cars to get stuck in the winter.
The police are armed, but not with submachine guns.
If a woman is plumper than the average, it doesn’t improve her looks.
The biggest meal of the day is in the evening.
The nationality people most often make jokes about is the French.
However, you more often make fun of other Alaskans: if you are in a relatively developed area, you probably make jokes about those deeper in the woods than you. Vice versa if you live deep in the woods. Almost everyone outside of Anchorage makes fun of the people who live there; Anchorage inhabitants are the closest thing here to “big city types”.
Texas is also the butt of some jokes, since they seem to labor under the illusion that their state is huge. Ha! You know that if Alaska were divided in half, Texas would be the third largest state in the Union.
There are parts of Anchorage you definitely want to avoid at night, but most other communities are too small to harbor such goings-on.

Outside the Panhandle

You feel that your kind of people aren’t being listened to enough in Juneau, let alone Washington. DC is a joke; they stubbornly refuse to allow drilling in ANWR and keep trying to lock up Tongass National Forest. The federal government already owns over half the state; do they really need to keep blocking more development than they currently are?
Speaking of capital cities: unless you live in the Panhandle, you think it’s high time for the capital to be moved from Juneau to Anchorage. Juneau is crowded and off the road system; the legislators have to flown in. Anchorage is better connected and is the base of most other organizations in Alaska. Even so, bills to move the capital have been voted down several times.
Alaska has dispensed with the (to you) odd and annoying notion of tiny counties. The state is organized into sixteen large Boroughs, which you think makes more sense than the small divisions other states use.
You wouldn’t expect both inflation and unemployment to be very high (say, over 15%) at the same time.
You don’t care very much what family someone comes from.
The normal thing, when a couple dies, is for their estate to be divided equally between their children.
You think of opera and ballet as rather elite entertainments exclusive to people living in Anchorage. It’s likely you don’t see that many plays, either.
Christmas is in the winter. Unless you’re Jewish, you spend it with your family, give presents, and put up a tree. Having a White Christmas is routine; you feel quite cheated if for some reason there is no snow, or a lack of it, during the season. You define “a lack of snow” as less than a foot or so.
And of course, the only real kind of snow is powder snow, and lots of it. You find the idea of schools down south closing when a few inches of fallen hilarious.
You may think the church is too powerful, or the state is; but you are used to not having a state church and don’t think that it would be a good idea.
You’d be hard pressed to name the capitals or the leaders of all the nations of Europe.
You aren’t familiar with Mafalda, Lucky Luke, Corto Maltese, Milo Manara, Guido Crepax, Gotlib, or Moebius.
You’ve left a message at the beep.
Taxis are generally operated by foreigners, who are often deplorably ignorant about the city.
You are distrustful of welfare and unemployment payments—you think people should earn a living and not take handouts. But you would not be in favor of eliminating Social Security and Medicare.
If you want to be a doctor, you need to get a Bachelor’s first.
There doesn’t seem to be a particularly large number of lawyers, but there are definitely a lot of tourists in the summer.

If it’s tourist season, then why can’t we shoot them?

If you are connected to the road system, you have been stuck behind a stupidly slow moving vehicle (typically a motorhome, and almost invariably operated by tourists) while driving down Alaska’s narrow, windy roads during the summer. This angers you to no end because there are few passing zones, and plenty of well-marked rest stops and overlooks. Furthermore, as plenty of road signs attest, it is against the law in Alaska to hold up more than five cars at a time. You never see this law enforced, to your great chagrin. Even so, you take grim satisfaction in counting up the number of cars that accumulate between you and the roadhog, knowing that he is breaking the law.
The road system in general is a pain; when it is not covered in ice, it is being worked on by construction crews. Every single major highway in Alaska has to have patchwork done on some part of it every year, because the roads wear down so fast from the harsh weather and frost heaves. Restriping is also commonly done due to snow cover wearing away at the paint.
Your state has four seasons, but you define them in very different ways from other Americans. They are summer, fall, winter, and breakup. Summer lasts about three months, fall is around six weeks long and starts in late August, winter goes until April, and breakup fills in the remaining gap of time. Breakup is the only point at which you would dare say that your state looks unflattering; the snow melts and reveals all the trash that has accumulated during the winter, the trees have not budded yet, and large mud puddles form everywhere from the runoff (schools try to keep the kids out of them during recess, to no avail). Every other season is pleasant enough in its own way, though you get sick of the winter after about February and cherish “signs of spring” (which is just breakup viewed in a pleasant light). As a corollary of your experience of seasons, you think that the official definitions of them (March 21, June 21, September 21, and December 21) are absolutely silly.
You are used to having at least 20 hours of daylight in the summer, and think that the long hours of darkness in winter are more than worth it. Summer is the time to get out and do stuff; who would want darkness to fall at 9:00 PM? If you vacation in the Lower 48 in the summer, you are amazed and frustrated at how dark it gets—even when the summer sun sets in Alaska, twilight lingers for long hours, so that it never truly gets dark. For some reason, Alaska still observes Daylight Savings Time in spite of this. You probably think this is inconvenient and stupid, but nothing ever gets done about it.
Besides, all that winter darkness can’t be bad, because you get to see the Northern Lights.
Because of the long summer, farmers in the Mat-Su Valley are able to grow some of the largest vegetables in the world. They present them at the Alaska State Fair in the fall (early September for your Lower 48ers) and have broken more than a few world records.
You know that agricultural products aren’t the only thing harvested in the Valley. Possession of up to one ounce of marijuana in one’s private residence is actually legal here according to state law, a fact you are probably ambivalent about. You likely know someone who smokes it, however.
Alaska has historically been based on boom-bust economies, such as gold rushes and the fur trade. The current boom is the oil industry, which has made Alaska truly rich and self-sufficient for the first time ever. You probably know someone who works for the oil companies, if you don’t yourself. You most likely want drilling to be opened up in ANWR for this reason. Even some of the Natives would like it, which provides ammunition for your argument. You might try to ignore the fact that this is a heavily contested issue even in Alaska, and that Native support is still sharply divided along tribal lines.
The other major industries are fishing and tourism (which are somewhat connected). You tolerate the tourists (unforgivable though their driving habits may be) but make jokes about them. Fishing is more serious, however; many people’s livelihoods depend on the quality of the fishing season. A poor salmon turnout can mean a difficult winter for them. Even if you do not fish as a career, you go any chance that you get, and fish and other seafood are a sizeable part of your diet.
If you are young and live in a fishing-heavy area, you have probably worked in a cannery. The pay is terrible, but there is endless overtime.
Your state was originally owned by Russia, and sold to the US in 1867. There still remain some traces of the Russian presence, such as old Orthodox churches and even small, remote towns settled by Russian Old Believers, who keep their traditions alive here.
You may feel curiously disconnected to your state’s own history, though; Alaska was settled so recently that it has undergone massive changes even in the past few decades. Alaska became a state just fifty years ago, and the last homestead was claimed only thirty years ago, which makes your state’s reputation as “The Last Frontier” quite true. You probably feel that Alaska as you know it didn’t exist until the oil industry kicked off; the time prior to that seems very distant to you if you are young or moved into the state after the 1970’s.
As a corollary of this, most (white) people are only two or three generations removed from the Lower 48. Their parents or grandparents moved here from the contiguous states, and are likely to maintain family ties to people there.
If you have lived in Alaska for a long time or were born here, the culture and values of Lower 48ers may seem rather different from your own. They move fast, are preoccupied with city life, and seem to take their mild environment for granted. They appear to understand nothing about what the North is like, and you know that some of them think you live in an igloo or something. Their billboard signs and other aggressive advertising may mystify and slightly disgust you; large signs like that are illegal in Alaska. Their cities sure are big, trashy, smelly, and noisy too. Even so, going down to the Lower 48 can be a lot of fun; they have more cultural events available there, and the fast life can be more exciting. Alaska can seem restrictive at times.
You also admire the large trees that grow down south. Most of Alaska has no trees at all or only fairly stunted ones; the Southeast is the only area that has impressive trees.
You probably think Alaskans also have a greater sense of camaraderie and helpfulness than most people from Outside. If you see someone who looks like they might be in trouble, you make sure to help them—after all, you never know when you could be the one stuck in the snowbank; most people have been in an accident of some sort at one point or another. You might know of someone who has died in a plane crash or avalanche; it’s a small world here, and you all have to face the sometimes harsh environment together. All this makes you even more amazed at the foolishness of some tourists who “want to get close to the bears” or something.
You love Hawai’i. Being just five hours straight south, it offers a fantastic refuge from the darkness and cold of the Alaskan winter, with minimal jet lag and time change. You have probably vacationed in Hawai’i for Christmas, Thanksgiving, or Spring Break (which of course is still in the middle of winter for you), or know someone who has. You especially love getting a tan and showing it off, because Alaskans turn bone-white during the winter.
Any of the facts in this section you eagerly divulge to tourists and other Outsiders interested in Alaska, to show them how interesting and different your state is.

Space and Time

If you have an appointment, you'll mutter an excuse if you’re five minutes late, and apologize profusely if it’s ten minutes. An hour late is almost inexcusable. Like in Canada though, people are much more understanding of lateness in winter.
If you’re talking to someone, you get uncomfortable if they approach closer than about two feet.
About the only things you expect to bargain for are houses, cars, and antiques. Haggling is largely a matter of finding the hidden point that's the buyer’s minimum.
Once you’re past college, you very rarely simply show up at someone’s place. People have to invite each other over—especially if a meal is involved.
When you negotiate, you are polite, of course, but it’s only good business to ‘play hardball’. Some foreigners pay excessive attention to status, or don’t say what they mean, and that’s exasperating.
If you have a business appointment or interview with someone, you expect to have that person to yourself, and the business shouldn’t take more than an hour or so.