Natives of alaska

Three racially different groups of Native people live in Alaska -- the Aleuts, Inuits and Indians. Experts say the presence of these different Native people shows Alaska’s position between Asia and the Americas. Experts say that modern Native Americans developed from Asiatic people who traveled to Alaska about twelve-thousand years ago. Some of those people settled in Alaska. Others traveled to other parts of North America and to South America.

Today, about six-hundred-twenty-thousand people live in the state of Alaska. Fewer than half the people who live in Alaska were born there. About sixteen percent of the state’s population are Native people.

The largest group of Native people in Alaska are the Inuit. Some people still call the Inuit people Eskimos. Many Inuit reject this name. They want to be called Inuit, which means “the people” or “real people” in their own language.

Inuit culture developed more than one-thousand years ago. Most Inuit have always lived near the sea which provided much of their food. They also hunted animals and used their skins to make their clothes and homes.

Most Inuit people in Alaska today live in small settlements. They still hunt and fish for their food. Yet much of their traditional way of life has ended. The Inuit live in wooden houses instead of the traditional ones. They wear modern clothing. They speak English. And Christianity has taken the place of traditional beliefs.

Alaska’s Native people have long claimed much of the land in the state. In nineteen-seventy-one, the United States Congress approved a law in response to these claims. The law gave almost one-thousand-million dollars and rights to about ten percent of Alaska to the state’s Native people.

Lie detectors

A lie detector is a machine that is designed to show if a person is telling the truth or not. It does this by measuring a person’s bodily reactions while being questioned. It is also known as a polygraph.

American medical student John Larson invented the polygraph machine in Nineteen-Twenty-One. “Polygraph” means many writings. The name was chosen because the machine records many body reactions while a person answers questions. The machine is based on the idea that stress produces changes in the body when a person does not tell the truth.

Taking a lie detector test involves placing several devices on different areas of a person’s body. Rubber tubes on the chest and stomach record breathing. Two small metal plates attached to the fingers measure sweat gland activity. A device on the arm measures blood pressure. The body’s reactions are recorded by another device.

During a lie detector test, an expert first asks a series of questions that show how the person’s body reacts when giving true and false answers. Then the expert asks the important questions. All this takes about two hours. Later, the expert reads the information and decides if the person answered the questions truthfully or not.

Lie detectors are used in the United States mostly by law enforcement agencies. Lawyers also sometimes use them.

There is much debate about the use of a lie detector. Some people believe it violates a person’s privacy. Many people do not believe it really can tell if a person is lying or not. The American Polygraph Association says a trained expert can tell most times if the person has lied. But even that organization admits that mistakes happen.

Polygraph results generally are not considered legal evidence in most United States courts. They are permitted in some courts and in some states. Some areas of the country have banned the use of lie detector tests as evidence. The Supreme Court has not yet ruled about the use of lie detector test results in the American legal system.