Alaska preserves and exhibits its own culture and history in the Andrew P. Kashevaroff Building in Juneau, the home of the State Library, Archives, and Museum. With this catalog and guide, the meaning of the museum exhibits gains new depth. Our Story in Many Voices orients visitors to the museum, explains the objects, and explores the changing history and interpretation of Alaska’s story in the many voices of its telling.
 
Charles Wohlforth provides three major text sections—an introduction to Alaska, a summary of the museum exhibits, and a history of the exhibit development process—before the catalog of art and artifacts. Richly illustrated and presenting perspectives from Native and non-Native peoples, the book enhances visits to the museum and helps visitors recall and process their experiences, as well as broaden their general understanding of the state.
 
There is no single history of Alaska. Understanding the place and its peoples can be achieved only by viewing the multiple, complex, and even contradictory ways different people and groups perceive Alaska. Rather than present an official view of the state, Our Story in Many Voices contains independent and critical perspectives that use the extraordinary resources of the museum to consider Alaska’s most challenging cultural issues, reaching toward understanding and reconciliation.
 
 

Son of the famous American journalist Louis Fischer, who corresponded from Germany and then Moscow, and the Russian writer Markoosha Fischer, Victor Fischer grew up in the shadow of Hitler and Stalin, watching his friends’ parents disappear after political arrests. Eleanor Roosevelt personally engineered the Fischer family’s escape from Russia, and soon after Victor was serving in the United States Army in World War II and fighting opposite his childhood friends in the Russian and German armies.