Kotzebue Travel Guide
COMPARE PRICES on all Kotzebue Hotels
Compare prices and availibility on major travel sites with one click
COMPARE PRICES on all Flights to Kotzebue
Compare prices and availibility on major travel sites with one click
Although its 3,082 residents make Kotzebue (kotz-eh-biew) a good-sized town, with a bank, a hospital, and a couple of grocery stores, I've heard it called a village instead. A "village," in Alaskan parlance, is a remote Native settlement in the Bush, generally with fewer than a few hundred residents, where people live relatively close to the traditional lifestyle of their indigenous ancestors. Kotzebue is a support hub for the villages of the Northwest Arctic, with jet service and a booming cash economy, but it's populated and run by the Iñupiat -- fish-drying racks and old dog sleds are scattered along the streets, and Native culture is thriving. It does feel like a village.
For visitors, this characteristic makes Kotzebue unique because you can see real Eskimo culture without leaving the comforts of jet travel and standard hotel rooms behind. Or, if you don't mind giving up some of those comforts, you can get even closer to the Iñupiat way of life. For adventurous outdoors people, Kotzebue offers access to huge areas of remote public land through which you can float on a raft or canoe. Kobuk Valley National Park, with its bizarre sand dunes; Noatak National Preserve; and Cape Krusenstern National Monument are among the largest national park units in the country, and among the least visited.
It's important to realize from the outset, however, that outside of an organized bus tour, there's absolutely nothing to do in Kotzebue. As I was told, "You have to shoot something or burn a lot of gas to have any fun around here." Kotzebue is not set up for independent travelers except those of the most intrepid ilk, and they will most likely use the town as a way to get into the remote public lands.
The dominant business in town is the NANA Corporation, a regional Native corporation representing the roughly 7,000 Iñupiat who live in this Northwest Arctic region the size of Indiana. NANA, which stands for Northwest Arctic Native Association, is a successful example of how the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act gave the indigenous people control over their own destiny. With huge land and resource holdings and the cash to develop them, NANA is making money for its Iñupiat shareholders and providing them with jobs in institutional catering and oil drilling and jobs at the Red Dog zinc mine near Kotzebue, the world's most productive. More relevant for visitors, NANA also owns the main hotel and tourist businesses in Kotzebue.
