Chelsea’s Ben Seymour To Present Award-Winning History Work in Alaska

Photo: Chelsea resident Ben Seymour stands beside a slide from his presentation on Little Diomede Island, highlighting the 1907 schoolhouse. Seymour recently won the Alaska Historical Society’s Emerging Scholar Award and will present his research later this month in Fairbanks. Photo by Elizabeth Seymour

When Chelsea resident Ben Seymour stepped up to the microphone at the Chelsea Retirement Community on Sept. 15, 2025, he was practicing for a much bigger stage.

Seymour has been awarded the Emerging Scholar Award by the Alaska Historical Society for his article, Breaking Storm Over the Diomedes: 1938’s Native Travel Program Across the Bering Strait. He will travel to Fairbanks later this month to present his research on Little Diomede Island in the Bering Strait at the society’s 2025 annual conference.

His wife, Elizabeth, opened the evening by telling the audience how Seymour’s project began as a teacher’s curiosity. “He thought it would be nice to write a book for other teachers, the things that he would have liked to have known about this island.”

For Seymour, the project is rooted in both scholarship and lived experience. He spent three years living on Little Diomede, where he first learned about the historic travel pass program that became the focus of his research for his award-winning article. He told the Chelsea audience that he was giving them the same presentation he would be giving to the Alaska Historical Society at its annual conference.

The Islands at the Edge of Two Worlds

Seymour explained that the Diomede Islands are “right in the middle. And there are actually two of them, and the International Date Line runs right between them. One Island, Big Diomede, belongs to Russia, or at the time that this story took place, the Soviet Union, and the smaller island belongs to the United States and Alaska.”

He described how the islands were named when Vitus Bering sailed through in 1728. “Because he was a good Lutheran, and it was Saint Diomedes Day. So, he named them the Diomedes. There’s Big Diomede and Little Diomede.”

A Place Between Nations

The Indigenous Inupiaq and Siberian Yupik peoples moved freely across the strait for centuries. But that changed with the arrival of American schools in the early 1900s and the later Soviet militarization of Big Diomede. Seymour explained how, in 1938, the two nations formalized a cross-strait travel pass system. “The American government was very clear that this was not a passport program. They didn’t want it to be a passport. It was a travel pass.”

The passes allowed Native residents to visit relatives across the strait, but under restrictions. “You can’t bring religious objects, you can’t bring written objects, and you can’t bring commercial quantities of goods that you’re going to trade,” Seymour explained.

The 1948 Detention

Tensions deepened after World War II. On Aug. 5, 1948, 18 Little Diomede residents crossed with proper papers but were held by Soviet soldiers. Seymour recounted, “On the third day, interrogations started. The Little Diomeders are held for 52 days. Seventy-seven years ago today, the Little Diomedes were on Big Diomede.”

Relevance Today

Seymour concluded that the Diomede story is still unfolding. “Judging by what people on Little Diomede, who I’m in contact with now, are seeing, there’s a lot of activity on Big Diomede. It’s been stepping up. I don’t know what that means.”

Seymour closed by reminding the Chelsea audience that the Bering Strait holds significance not just for Alaska, but for American and international history as well. For him, the story of Little Diomede is also deeply personal.

For more information on Alaskan history, visit https://alaskahistoricalsociety.org/