At Alaska’s Yakutat Tern Festival, Seabirds and Local Culture Soar

Vengeance leaves the harbor at around 8 a.m. The 30-foot aluminum boat is captained by Mark Sappington, the owner of Yakutat Charter Boat Company, who navigates the waters in a Carhartt jacket with the words “Fish Master” embroidered on the front pocket. Fishing lures jingle like wind chimes as the boat picks up speed, passing Arctic Terns and Black-legged Kittiwakes  on the way to Disenchantment Bay and Hubbard Glacier.

I’m aboard this vessel as part of the Yakutat Tern Festival, an annual event held in the remote Southeast Alaska village of Yakutat. Two of my fellow passengers, Wendy and Bruce Mahan, are visiting from Palmer, a small city located northeast of Anchorage. They point out basking sea lions and otters floating on the water’s surface, and we see a brown bear through the trees near Gilbert Point. “It makes my heart happy to be out in a place like this,” Wendy says. “The variety of birds, the accessibility of the small town… it’s all very enchanting.”

I’ve come to this multi-day festival to learn about the area’s migratory birds, Alaska Native culture, and local conservation efforts. Since 2022, Audubon Alaska has supported this event to boost birding tourism and benefit local economies across the state. From my perch on the boat deck, I start to see how the organizers are scaling the festival while honoring Indigenous traditions and fostering a deeper appreciation for birds, with a special focus on the locally significant and vulnerable Aleutian Terns .

Surrounded by water and public lands like the Tongass National Forest, Yakutat is currently accessible only by aircraft or boat, with no connections to the state’s highway or ferry networks. The airport is about three miles from the high school, which serves as the Tern Festival headquarters. This northernmost location on the Southeast Alaska Birding Trail is home to the Yakutat Tlingit Tribe and lies within the Tribe’s traditional lands. In Tlingit, the name Yaakwdáat means “the place where canoes rest.” It is an area without street signs, traffic lights, or reliable cell phone service, where drivers wave as they pass.

“I tell everybody I know it’s the best spot in Alaska,” says Cindy Bremner, the Mayor of the City and Borough of Yakutat and a member of the Tlingit Tribal Council. “I am a little biased.” I cross paths with Mayor Bremner while she’s visiting the high school. She tells me she was born and raised in Yakutat, then moved back years ago and still finds beauty in the landscape and community. 

Bremner recalls the first Yakutat Tern Festival held back in 2011, noting that it “started as a very small, very local little festival.” By the time I visit in 2024, the event has expanded to include activities like yoga with instructor Bailey Williams, talks by keynote speaker Denny Olson—a naturalist with Flathead Audubon Society in Montana who can imitate approximately 200 bird songs—traditional beading classes, bird banding led by licensed bird bander Denise Turley, and the second annual Tongass Trails Scavenger Hunt with prizes donated by local businesses.

Programming centers on the community, especially kids, and always aligns with the end of the school year, tern nesting, and the quiet period between fishing seasons when visitor numbers are typically lower. 

While I’m at the festival, we catch glimpses of Aleutian Terns in the distance during a permitted field trip to Ankau, Native corporation Yak-Tat Kwaan Lands where Yakutat Bay meets the North Pacific. Yakutat is the site of the largest and southernmost known Aleutian Tern nesting colony, according to Susan Oehlers, a wildlife biologist with the Forest Service. In May and June, these elusive seabirds can be seen by the hundreds along Blacksand Spit, a barrier island in the Tongass. 

“They’ve been there for at least 100 years that we know of, so we’ve been doing a lot of collaborative monitoring and research there,” Oehlers explains. “We think they’re declining rapidly statewide, so that colony is kind of a stronghold for them. It’s just really, really important to understand more about them."

Oehlers helped establish the Yakutat Tern Festival through a community-driven partnership with the U.S. Forest Service , the Yakutat Chamber of Commerce, and other local organizations to support the local economy through non-consumptive tourism. “It just seemed like the perfect opportunity to highlight Aleutian Terns, in addition to other birds and other natural resources,” she says. Now, Mary Glaves and other members of the Yakutat Nature Society organize the activities each year, partnering with a wide array of businesses, organizations, and individuals who provide financial and in-kind support ranging from travel deals to silent auction and food donations. 

The festival’s growth coincides with a rise in birding tourism, which has boosted local economies across the hemisphere. A recent survey by the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service revealed that more than 73 million people traveled to view wildlife in 2022, with birds being the biggest draw. Nearly 300,000 birdwatchers visited Alaska that year, with Southeast Alaska attracting the most bird-loving visitors and generating the highest spending. To support this growth, Audubon Alaska and partners created the Southeast Alaska Birding Trail, a digital travel guide designed to help people plan birdwatching trips to places like Yakutat and the Chilkat Valley down to Ketchikan.

During the trip to Ankau, attendees look for seabirds along the windy edge of Ocean Cape with Melenda Lekanof-Baker and other Forest Service staff. As a Tribal Council Member and longtime Yakutat resident, Lekanof-Baker appreciates how the festival’s longevity is having a positive impact. “We have a generation of kids that know their birds,” she says, “and so I think that’s really amazing to where now they’re adults and they have their own kids, and their kids are coming to the Tern Festival. So the organizers made a great push in starting a generation of people who are self-aware and more aware of our lands.”

Back at the high school, I meet the festival’s 2024 featured artist, Chantil Bremner-Firestack, who is teaching kids traditional beading using the two-needle applique method her grandmother taught her. For Bremner-Firestack, activities that celebrate Alaska Native ways of life are essential for younger generations. “We almost lost our traditions,” she says. “Our traditions are what make the Tlingit people what we are, and so it’s important that the kids can get that connection.” 

One of the class participants, Lilli, uses the beading technique to create a flower. “You have to pick out two colors and get your thread through the two needles,” she tells me, noting that she has chosen purple and yellow. During this year’s Tern Festival, Lilli will take part in a cleanup at Cannon Beach, tie-dye a t-shirt, learn about bird sounds, and release a banded Varied Thrush. “That’s why I love it here.”

That evening, I visit the local Alaska Native Brotherhood (ANB) Hall for a fundraiser performance by Yakutat’s Mount Saint Elias Dancers. With some Elders on their way to Juneau for Celebration, one of the largest gatherings of Southeast Alaska Native peoples, younger dancers step in to take the lead. 

For Brandon Johnson, who speaks for the group that night, being part of the Mount Saint Elias Dancers goes beyond preserving Yakutat Tlingit regalia, songs, and dances. “It brings us together,” he says, “and we build trust in each other.” Their songs carry immense depth and serve as a living document of the Tribe’s time on these lands, a history that dates back thousands of years to the last Ice Age. 

Johnson describes the group’s role in the festival as “a good representation of modern times” and an opportunity to welcome newcomers to Yakutat. “And that’s priceless to me because, you know, we have to share Yakutat, right?”  

That connection to past and present is right in front of my face, immense and majestic, as Vengeance approaches Hubbard Glacier—my very first visit to a tidewater glacier. A  hushed silence falls over our group as we share a sense of awe for the massive ice wall towering hundreds of feet above the water. We watch huge chunks of ice calve into the bay—a humbling reminder of the ancient forces that shape our world and relationship to nature. 

In moments like this, I think about how there’s something timeless and ethereal about Yakutat, from the mist that envelops the St. Elias Mountains to the haunting melodies of Hermit Thrushes echoing through the old-growth forest. It’s this profound connection to both nature and culture that the Yakutat Tern Festival celebrates, encouraging a deeper appreciation of the region’s remarkable birds and Alaska Native traditions. 

I say as much to Mayor Bremner later, as we stand together in the parking lot outside the high school. “I just think that our traditional and cultural knowledge should be shared,” she says, “and I’m glad that it’s part of the Tern Festival.”  

The 14th annual Yakutat Tern Festival will take place May 29-June 1, 2025. Visit the event website  for more information, and check out the Southeast Alaska Birding Trail to help plan your trip.