Emergency Crime Scene and Biohazard Cleanup in Metlakatla, AK

Metlakatla (Tsimshian: Maxłakxaała) is a census-designated place on Annette Island in Prince of Wales-Hyder Census Area, about 16 miles south of Ketchikan.

At the 2020 census Metlakatla had 1,454 residents, up from 1,405 in 2010, living in 529 households.

Metlakatla is the major settlement of the Metlakatla Indian Community of the federally recognized Annette Islands Reserve, the only remaining Indian reserve in Alaska.

The name comes from the Tsimshian word Maxłaxaała, meaning 'saltwater passage where the wind dies down,' and the site was once a Tlingit hunting ground known as Taquan.

In 1887 a group of Tsimshian followers of the missionary William Duncan arrived on Annette Island after leaving Metlakatla, British Columbia, and laid out the town in a European-style grid with a church, school, cannery, and sawmill.

Congress granted the community a reservation on Annette Island in 1891, and Duncan remained at Metlakatla until his death in 1918.

In the 1970s Metlakatla voted to opt out of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, retaining the reserve and its sovereign immunity, with exclusive commercial and subsistence fishing rights in the surrounding waters.

The Annette Islands Reserve covers 132,000 acres of land and water.

During World War II the United States built a military airfield on Annette Island under a treaty with the community; the airfield was garrisoned by Canadians and later became a United States Coast Guard search and rescue base.

The cross-island road promised in the wartime treaty was finally built from 1997 to 2007 by a joint military task force.