Editing Nelson Lagoon, Alaska (section)

== History ==
The location where Nelson Lagoon sits was used as an [[Aleut]] summer campsite during the fishing season.<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|title = Nelson Lagoon {{!}}|url = http://www.apiai.org/tribes/nelson-lagoon/|website = Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association|access-date = October 24, 2015|language = en-US}}</ref> In 1882, the [[lagoon]] was named for [[Edward William Nelson]], a [[Natural history|naturalist]] and explorer who travelled the region between 1877 and 1920.<ref name=":0" /> From 1906 until 1917, a salmon salting facility operated at the location, which was staffed mainly by Scandinavian fishermen.<ref name=":0" /> These men married local women, and today most native people in Nelson Bay have partial Scandinavian ancestry.<ref name=":1">{{Cite book|title = Proposed North Aleutian Basin lease sale (sale 92): draft environmental impact statement|url = https://books.google.com/books?id=4T_xAAAAMAAJ|publisher = U.S. Dept. of the Interior, Minerals Management Service, Alaska Outer Continental Shelf Region|date = January 1, 1985|first = United States Minerals Management Service Alaska OCS|last = Region}}</ref>

A permanent settlement was established in 1960.<ref>{{Cite web|title = Nelson Lagoon|url = http://www.aleutianseast.org/index.asp?SEC=3F9AF4DA-4EF0-46E9-897C-F2CABADD71A5&Type=B_BASIC|website = www.aleutianseast.org|access-date = October 24, 2015}}</ref> A school was built five years later, and the settlement grew into a larger permanent community.<ref name=":0" />[[File:Edward William Nelson.jpg|left|thumb|[[Edward William Nelson]] in Alaska]]

In 1985, an [[environmental impact statement]] by the [[Minerals Management Service]] of the [[United States Department of the Interior]] was released, producing an in-depth analysis of the Nelson Bay community and its cultural, demographic, religious, political and educational atmosphere as well as predictions.<ref name=":1" /> The statement wrote about a well-organized, tight-knit community. The study reported the five-member Nelson Bay [[Town council|village council]] was formed in 1971, still consisted of all its original members, met often, and was competent and unified in its representation of the community.<ref name=":1" /> Unlike other villages, in Nelson Bay, politics were a familial affair; village councils represented the three main families in the village.<ref name=":1" />

The environmental impact statement wrote that culturally and economically, the village was much as it was at the time of its founding: small, relatively undeveloped and very isolated. The village's younger generations were reported to have developed the unique tendency of brothers of one family marrying sisters of another family, thus requiring future generations to find spouses in other communities.<ref name=":1" />

The [[Russian Orthodox Church]] was the village's dominant religion at the time, but [[secularization]] was taking place.<ref name=":1" /> Education was highly valued in the Nelson Bay, and the 1985 environmental impact statement wrote this could have been a legacy of the village's Scandinavian ancestors.<ref name=":1" />