Emergency Biohazard Cleanup Services in Nightmute, AK

Nightmute is an incorporated city in Bethel Census Area, on Nelson Island near Toksook Bay, and the 2020 census counted 306 people there, living in 63 households.

The Central Yupik names for Nightmute are Negtemiut and Negta, and Negtemiut literally means the people of the pressed-down place.

Nightmute first appeared on the 1940 census as the unincorporated Native village of Nigtmuit, was spelled Nigtmute in 1950 and 1960, took the spelling Nightmute in 1970, and formally incorporated as a city on April 30, 1974.

In 1964, many Nightmute residents relocated by dogsled and founded the bayside community of Toksook Bay about 15 miles downriver, to avoid the yearly spring-winter migration between Umkumiut and Nightmute, and the two villages still connect by snowmachine trail in winter.

Nightmute's residents share ancestry and culture with the neighboring villages of Tununak, Chefornak, Toksook Bay, and Newtok, and collectively call themselves Qaluyaarmiut, which translates to dip net people.

In 2020, about 96 percent of Nightmute residents were American Indian or Alaska Native, the median age was just 21.6 years, and about 44 percent of residents were under 18.

The Lower Kuskokwim School District operates the Negtemiut Elitnaurviat School, also known as Nightmute School, in the village.

The sale, importation, and possession of alcohol are banned in Nightmute.

Nightmute is the setting of the 2002 Christopher Nolan film Insomnia, starring Hilary Swank, Al Pacino, and Robin Williams, although the film was not shot in the real Nightmute but in Squamish, British Columbia.

John Agaiak, a Yup'ik artist born in Nightmute in the 1940s, released I'm Lost in the City in 1971, an album sung in both Yup'ik and English.