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Tribal and environmental advocates celebrate the first water flow down the Eklutna River in decades Oct 05, 2021

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For more than 60 years, the Eklutna River north of Anchorage had been dammed up, stifling the salmon runs that fed generations of Dena’ina people in the area. Before the damming, for hundreds of years, the area surrounding Eklutna Lake was populated by the Dena’ina people. Curtis McQueen says the inhabitants were originally more nomadic. “They settled these lands here and never left because of the rich abundance of habitat in this area,” Curtis McQueen said of the originally nomadic Dena’ina. McQueen is the former CEO of Eklutna Inc., the Tribe’s for-profit corporation. “And the Eklutna River, which was a raging, massive river at the time, has– and still has — all five species of salmon, which is not… a lot of rivers don’t have all five species.” McQueen is Tlingit, but was formally adopted by the Eklutna people. In his time working with the Tribe, he says he’d heard stories about how bountiful the river used to be. “We lost an elder recently named Alberta Stephan,” McQueen said.

Boarding school survivors, their children and allies mark Orange Shirt Day Oct 01, 2021

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Content warning: This story contains accounts from descendants of boarding school survivors that may be distressing for some readers. As the sun rose on Thursday, K’aaxnaa.at Bamby James and the Strong Women singers finished a women’s prayer song. Then they joined dozens of others waving at traffic along Egan Drive. Their bright orange t-shirts popped out against the deep blue shadows of the early morning. It was chilly, kids were running around wrapped in blankets. But warm coffee and pastries served from the back of a nearby car — and waving signs at traffic — kept people warm. James, who is Lingít, is surrounded by family. She says she’s waving because she has children. “And it means a lot to us the fact that we get to keep our kids home, and our ancestors did not. Generations have come. There’s been trauma throughout the generations. I feel like this is our way of showing them that we’re ending the cycle of violence against our people,” James said. Sept. 30 is a National Day of

Family of Ashley Johnson-Barr hopes sentencing brings some closure, raises public safety awareness Sep 29, 2021

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A man who pleaded guilty to killing a 10-year-old Kotzebue girl has been sentenced to 99 years in prison. Utqiaġvik Superior Court Judge Nelson Traverso sentenced Peter Vance Wilson on September 21st, 2021, to serve 99 years in custody in the disappearance and death of Ashley Johnson-Barr. The 10-year-old Kotzebue girl went missing in September 2018. Her father, Scotty Barr, says he was grateful for the national support as the case made its way through court. “I can't thank everybody for what they've done, what they continue doing for our daughter,” Barr said. “It's hard to put words for the people that continue helping us to pass three years. You know, those eight days were the longest days of my life, but the three years of dealing with the court proceedings has been pretty tough on our family and myself. But we got through it by our strength and from people all over continue giving us support and blessings to go ahead and go through this.” Ashley was last seen alive in September

With low stocks and closures looming, Bering Sea crab fleet braces for another blow Sep 22, 2021

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The Alaska Department of Fish and Game announced earlier this month that all major crab stocks are down. And for the first time in over 25 years, the Bristol Bay red king crab fishery will be closed . The species is world-renowned and was largely made famous by the popular reality tv show “Deadliest Catch.” In the glory days of king crab fishing, locals describe hundreds of boats rushing into the cold Bering Sea to harvest millions of pounds of the crab worth even more millions of dollars. The commercial fishery has been around since 1966. In the 55 years since then, there have been just two other closures: once in the 1980s and again in the 1990s. Now, the Bering Sea crab fleet and fishing communities around the state and the Pacific Northwest are bracing for another blow to their industry and are calling for new conservation efforts. “It’s big news, and it's hitting our industry really hard,” said Jamie Goen, executive director for Alaska Bering Sea Crabbers, a trade association

Redistricting plan could force some Southeast incumbents to run against each other Sep 18, 2021

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The last time political boundaries were redrawn, Southeast lost a senator and a House member which diminished its voice in the legislature. So there was some relief when the draft redistricting maps were published last week because the size of Southeast’s political delegation remained the same : four House members and two state Senators for next year’s election. U.S. Census data shows Southeast communities have either had very modest growth or lost population while other parts of the state grew relatively quickly. Rep. Andi Story is a Democrat now in her second term representing Juneau’s Mendenhall Valley. But the new maps released last week show her four-bedroom home on Auke Bay would be in a neighboring district that’s held by a party ally . But only by a few hundred yards — her neighbors across the street would be unaffected. “It is really suspect that they chose to break up my current street this way,” she said. It’s normal for political boundaries to be redrawn every 10 years to

A mammoth’s life: A new study examines life of woolly mammoth that lived 17,000 years ago Sep 17, 2021

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A new University of Alaska Fairbanks study featured on the cover of the journal Science explores the life story of a woolly mammoth that lived 17,000 years ago. Thousands of years ago a woolly mammoth researchers dubbed Kik lumbered across what is now the state of Alaska. There were times when he stayed in one area, likely in a group with other mammoths. At one point Kik took off on a long trip, covering great distances of icy landscape. Researchers think that means he left his mother’s herd and struck out on his own. At 28-years-old Kik died above the Arctic Circle--likely of starvation. Lead researcher Mat Wooller said in the lab “It was kind of like watching this soap opera of this mammoth’s life emerge in front of our eyes real time.” Wooller directs the stable isotope facility at UAF. How could researchers uncover such detail about the life of a long-dead animal? They used information stored in Kik’s fossilized tusk to learn about his life. The first step was for the scientists to

ACLU wants to hold city of Nome in contempt for withholding evidence in bias lawsuit Sep 15, 2021

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The American Civil Liberties Union wants a federal court to hold the city of Nome in contempt – for allegedly withholding police audits and emails in a legal case against the Nome police department. ( Editor's note: The plaintiff’s name is publicly available via court documents. As a standard policy, KNBA does not name sexual assault survivors without their permission.) In 2017, a 911 operator with the Nome Police Department reported to her supervisors that she had been sexually assault ed. Last year, the ACLU of Alaska filed a lawsuit against Nome and the police department on behalf of the operator, who is Iñupiaq – saying the police department failed to provide equal protection in her case. The complaint said that for more than a year, Nome police did not investigate her case – and “valuable evidence was lost because of the delay.” It also said the 911 operator’s case was just one example of the department’s mishandling of sexual assault reports involving Alaska Native women. On

CARES Act data reveals disparities in payouts to Native corporations Sep 13, 2021

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Congress set aside $8 billion for tribal entities across the country as part of the federal CARES Act. But it took a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June to free up some of those pandemic relief funds for Alaska Native corporations. Then, some of the village corporations got large payouts while Juneau-based Sealaska, the corporation with the most shareholders, got the least of the 13 regional corporations. Corporation executives say they’re still trying to understand the wide disparities in disbursements. Corporations large and small had applied for the nearly $450 million in federal pandemic relief — some expecting to be able to offer some direct relief to shareholders. Don Bremner, president of Yak-Tat Kwaan, Inc., said their allocation was around $164,000. “So we thought, ‘My gosh, did we did we fill out the forms wrong? Maybe we missed something,’” he said from Yakutat, where the village corporation serves around 500 shareholders. Divvying up the federal aid would work out to about

‘This Land’ podcast unravels complexity of child welfare in Indian Country in its second season Sep 07, 2021

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The award-winning podcast “This Land” returns for a second season . This one examines the legal attacks on a 40-plus-year old federal law meant to protect Native children in the U.S. The first season of “This Land” examined two legal cases that became incredibly important to criminal jurisdiction and recognizing Tribal land. Cherokee journalist Rebecca Nagle is the host. “The podcast is about cases that are important to federal Indian law and Indigenous sovereignty that I felt like needed to be covered more.” Two cases pitted state jurisdiction over Tribal jurisdiction in Oklahoma, where the Creek people were forced to relocate from the Southeast during the Trails of Tears in the 1800s. They signed another treaty with the federal government in 1856. Oklahoma never really recognized the Mvskoke (Muscogee) Nation reservation. “Oklahoma's main argument was, ‘we haven't recognized these reservations in over a century. And so you can't possibly ask us to recognize them.’ Now, there was no

Study: Declining sea ice in Kotzebue Sound shortening subsistence hunt for seals Aug 30, 2021

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Seal meat makes up a good portion of what’s in subsistence hunters’ freezers in Kotzebue. However, the sea ice the seals haul out on is diminishing, and new research has shown the window to hunt seals is getting shorter as a result. Iñupiaq hunter Cyrus Harris has harvested ugruk, or bearded seal, his whole life. For many people in Kotzebue and the surrounding region, the rotund mammal is a dietary staple. “Ugruk, once we process it into a seal oil form and using it as a preservative for the meats, the product itself is very nutritious,” Harris said. “We may be processing this stuff in the month of June, but we’re thinking ahead to fill our Siglauq, or storage, with product that’s going to run us through the winter.” Harris says the hunting season starts in the spring, as the sea ice breaks up in the Kotzebue Sound. But he’s noticed a change in the season length. “Once the ice flows break loose and are drifting north, we’d have about a two-week timeframe to do that on a regular hunting

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