Aleut people (ⁱ/ˈæli.uːt/) are the indigenous people of the Aleutian Islands of Alaska, United States and Kamchatka Krai, Russia.

The name "Aleut" comes from the Aleut word allíthuh, meaning "community." A regional self-denomination is Unangax̂, Unangan or Unanga, meaning "original people." The name Aleut was given to the Unangan by Russian fur traders in the mid-18th century.

Тhe Aleut people were distributed throughout the Aleutian Islands, the Shumagin Islands, and the far western part of the Alaska Peninsula, with an estimated population of around 25,000 before contact with Europeans. In the 1820s, the Russian-American Company, which administered a large portion of the North Pacific during a Russian led expansion of the fur trade, resettled many families to the Commander Islands (currently, within the Aleutsky District of the Kamchatka Krai in Russia) and to the Pribilof Islands (currently in Alaska), where there are currently established majority Aleut communities. Their numbers have dwindled to about 2,000 as a consequence of disease and disruption of traditional lifestyles, though people with partial Aleut descent may number around 15,000.

Alaska Natives are indigenous peoples of Alaska: Inupiaq, Yupik, Aleut, Eyak, Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian, and a number of Northern Athabaskan cultures.

Ancestors of the Alaska Natives are known to have migrated into the area thousands of years ago, and established varying indigenous, complex cultures that have succeeded each other over time. That developed sophisticated ways to deal with the challenging climate and environment. Europeans and Americans began to trade with Alaska Natives in the nineteenth century. New settlements around trading posts were started by Russians, British and Americans.

In the 1800s and In 1971 Congress passed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, which settled land and financial claims for lands and resources which they had lost to European Americans. It provided for the establishment of 13 Alaska Native Regional Corporations to administer those claims. Similar to the separately defined status of the Canadian Inuit and First Nations, which are recognized as distinct peoples, Alaska Natives are in some respects treated separately from Native Americans in the United States. An example of this separate treatment is that Alaska Natives are allowed the harvesting of whales and other marine mammals under the Marine Mammal Protection Act of 1972.