The NN Cannery History Project won a national award of excellence from the American Association for State and Local History. The prestigious award recognizes the project - including the local team behind it - and their effort to preserve and represent the people and cultures of Bristol Bay’s processing industry.
The Diamond NN Cannery sits on the Naknek River in South Naknek, and was Alaska’s longest running processing facility. Founded in 1895, it operated for over one hundred years first as a saltry, then cannery and processor - touching the lives of workers from across the world, and instrumental to the Bristol Bay fishery.
The owner, Trident Seafoods, announced its closure in 2014. One year later, historian and former cannery worker Katie Ringsmuth launched the NN Cannery History Project.
“So our goal essentially was to document the history of the commercial fishery and the underrepresented people who participated in the fishery, and really creating a community around place-based history,” she said.
The cannery operated non-stop, processing fish through the 20th century except for two years during World War II. There were 53 buildings across a more than 200 acre campus, including a cannery, salmon storage, docks, worker housing, hospital, a graveyard and even a hotel for guests.
Prior to 1979, that worker housing was segregated including Italian, Scandinavian, Filippino, and Chinese workers, and separate women’s housing.
Those racial divisions would dissolve somewhat during the cannery coffee break, known as ‘Mug Up.’ The history project designed and curated a major museum exhibit titledMug Up at the Alaska State Museum in Juneau last year showcasing this unique part of cannery work and culture.
“Mug up is a place where you might hear ten different languages right there on the dock,” she said. “Over the course of 100 years, think of the participants who move through these spaces, starting with the Scandinavian fishermen, the Italian fishermen. Obviously, the Alaskan Native participant fishers who represent, you know, Dena’ina and the Sugpiaq people. Certainly, you have Filipinos and Chinese and one of the big surprises was just how many Mexicans have worked at this cannery at any given time. In fact, they represented some of the largest ethnic groups to work at the NN cannery.”
Ringsmuth says the project was a huge community endeavor spanning the last seven years. The initiative collected stories, historical items, oral histories and the record of Bristol Bay’s industry and impact on pre and early Alaska statehood. During the process, Ringsmuth was named Alaska State Historian.
“This one place, this cannery, and the buildings that are still standing there, still hold all this history,” she said. “And in some ways, the buildings themselves, like a library holds books, or a museum holds the artifacts, that cannery still holds the history of all of those people who move through there.”
The cannery impacted thousands - cannery workers, but also, their families, fishermen and community members - and Katie Ringsmuth herself. She worked on the “slime line,” paying her way through school, and her father was the superintendent.
“This cannery has personal significance for me because it's the cannery that my father, Gary Johnson, worked at,” Ringsmuth said. “He served as superintendent there for many, many, many years. It's a cannery where I spent much of my childhood and it's a place where we created significant relationships with the local community people like the Zimin family, for sure, who serve as caretakers now.”
Over the last several years, the NN Cannery History Project not only successfully produced the “Mug Up” exhibit, but also got the site listed on the National Registry of Historic Places, created oral histories and digital storytelling projects with Bristol Bay high school students.
Ringsmuth says with those goals achieved, the next historical or storytelling project is wide open.
“There was the sense that we can do all this history and document it, but it's so important to inspire the next generation,” she said. “So we've done all this work, and really recognized a forgotten part of Alaska history. And so I hope that at this point that the project starts new projects. As we come to a close that others are inspired to start and continue the work.”
In June, the American Association for State and Local History recognized the project with the award of excellence for achievement in the preservation of this history.
Ringsmuth says it was a community initiative that included local historians Bob King, Tim Troll, LaRece Engli, Andrew Obyo, and local and tribal government and Native corporations, schools, Bristol Bay and Naknek native corporations, the National Parks Service, the owner Trident Seafoods.
“It included so many people from all over Alaska, and it was a huge community endeavor,” she said. “And so I think that this project, and the award, recognizing it is really important because it really honors all of the people who contributed and made it a success.”
Ringsmuth will formally accept the award on behalf of the project at the history associations awards ceremony and conference in Boise, Idaho in September. A local podcast by a Wrangell historian on one of Alaska’s deadliest shipwrecks will also be honored with an award.
To learn more about the NN Cannery History project check out nncanneryproject.com
Get in touch with the author at corinne@kdlg.org.
