Atka

The Atka are the Aleut, or Unangax̂, people of the central Aleutians, whose principal home is Atka Island, Atx̂ax̂ in their own speech, the largest of the Andreanof Islands. Their speech is the Atkan dialect of Unangam Tunuu, the Aleut language, distinct from the eastern Unalaska dialect and the extinct Attuan of the far western chain.

Like other Aleuts they were maritime hunters and fishers, taking sea lions, seals and whales from skin kayaks among the treeless, wind-swept volcanic islands.

Russian navigator Andreyan Tolstykh became the first European to explore the Andreanof Islands in 1761, opening them to the Siberian fur trade, and Atka later became a Russian-American Company station. In the 1820s the Company resettled numbers of Atkan families on the Commander Islands and Pribilofs to hunt fur seals, and the Atkan dialect also took root on Bering Island, far to the west.