Sorted by date Results 26 - 50 of 1669
A search for a missing hunter ended Oct. 30 when search teams found his body on the hillside in Nakwasina Sound, 14 miles north of Sitka. Alaska State Troopers said Tad Fujioka, 50, an experienced hunter and longtime Sitka resident, appeared to be the victim of a bear mauling. Fujioka left Sitka on a deer hunting trip to Nakwasina on Monday, Oct. 28, and a search was started around 5:30 p.m. the next day after he was reported overdue. U.S. Coast Guard Air Station Sitka dispatched a helicopter crew who searched for three hours before nightfall....
On a cold and cloudy Friday afternoon, Oct. 25, Tlingit clan leaders stood ready to welcome guests to Angoon. For millennia, the Tlingit have lived on Admiralty Island, or Xootsnoowú, the Fortress of the Bears. Adorned in regalia, clan leaders performed a traditional Tlingit welcoming ceremony to their ancestral lands. “We welcome you with open arms,” said Daniel Johnson Jr., a leader of the Deisheetaan clan. Facing the Tlingit was Rear Adm. Mark Sucato, commander of the Navy Region Northwest, along with a handful of uniformed Navy personnel. ...
Rosita Worl, president of the Sealaska Heritage Institute, an anthropologist and cultural leader, is one of 10 Americans to receive the 2023 National Humanities Medal. Worl, 87, who is Tlingit, is a longtime leader in Alaska’s Native community, advocating for subsistence practices and promoting cultural traditions on a national level. Born in Petersburg, she has conducted research throughout Alaska, including fieldwork in the Arctic. Worl has also taught at University of Alaska Southeast. She has a Ph.D. in anthropology from Harvard U...
President Joe Biden on Oct. 25 formally apologized to Native Americans for the “sin” of a government-run boarding school system that for decades forcibly separated Indian children from their parents, calling it a “blot on American history” in his first visit to Indian Country. “It’s a sin on our soul,” said Biden, his voice full of anger and emotion at the event in Laveen Village, Arizona. “Quite frankly, there’s no excuse that this apology took 50 years to make.” It was a moment of both contrition and frustration as the president sought to...
The differences between Democratic incumbent Rep. Mary Peltola and her Republican challenger Nick Begich were on full display Oct. 21 during the final planned debate of Alaska’s U.S. House race. The Anchorage Chamber of Commerce sponsored the debate. Begich, a businessman who lost to Peltola in 2022, is again vying for Alaska’s lone U.S. House seat against Peltola, a former state legislator who won the seat in 2022 after leading an intertribal fish commission for several years. The outcome of the race could have far-reaching impacts in det...
The Alaska Federation of Natives voted to endorse the reelection of Democratic U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola and to oppose the ballot measure that would repeal the state’s open primaries and ranked-choice voting. The votes came Oct. 19, the last day of its annual three-day convention in Anchorage, which had the theme this year of “Our Children, Our Future Ancestors.” The delegates from tribes, nonprofit tribal organizations and regional and village Native corporations passed 18 resolutions on issues ranging from a call for Congress to amend feder...
Invasive European green crabs have likely found a lasting home in Washington’s coastal waters and parts of Puget Sound. The question now is whether the state can pinch down hard enough on the aquatic pests to prevent serious harm to native wildlife, shoreline ecosystems and the commercial shellfish industry. Washington’s Department of Fish and Wildlife, tribes, shellfish growers and local conservation districts are all taking part in the battle against the unwelcome crustaceans. “This is one of the rare environmental issues that every...
Four decades ago, in days before the internet and automatic voter registration, Alaska Natives turned out to vote at high levels. That participation has eroded badly, a situation that should be reversed, said Michelle Sparck, director of an Alaska nonpartisan organization called Get Out The Native Vote. Alaska Natives are not fully realizing their power if they do not vote, she said. “They say that anytime you look at a white male in this country, you know they’re a voter. We should be in that kind of category,” Sparck said in a prese...
In a brief “tele-rally” Oct. 21, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump urged Alaskans to vote for U.S. House candidate Nick Begich, saying that control of the closely divided House could come down to a single vote. “Control of the House of Representatives is so important, and Alaska, you could very well be the vote,” he said. Begich is seeking to unseat incumbent Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola, and polling shows the candidates are running close together. Most seats in the 435-person U.S. House tilt strongly Democratic or Republican; Alas...
Alaskans will vote Nov. 5 on a ballot measure that would increase the state’s minimum wage to $15 an hour by 2027 and require that workers get paid for up to seven sick days a year. To backers who collected signatures to put the question before voters, Ballot Measure 1 is about fairness for workers and overall state economic vitality. But opponents in business groups warn that the measure, if passed, would bring dire consequences. To Sarah Oates, CHARR’s president, the consequences of Ballot Measure 1 would be bad. “This is going to kill small...
The federal government board that manages subsistence will be expanded with three representatives of Alaska Native tribes, under a new rule the Biden administration made final on Oct. 16. The new Federal Subsistence Board members are to be nominated by federally recognized tribes. They need not be tribal members or Native themselves, but they must have “personal knowledge of and direct experience with subsistence uses in rural Alaska, including Alaska Native subsistence uses,” according to the rule. The term “subsistence” refers to harvest...
Alaska legislators have voted to ban large signs in the state Capitol, a move that followed large protests over Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s decision to veto a multipart education bill earlier this year. Under a new policy, visitors to the Capitol “are permitted to hand-carry a paper-based poster board or placard type sign up to 11×17 inches in the Capitol corridors and lobby.” The policy prohibits signs on sticks and posts — all signs must be held by hand. “A sign will be confiscated if it is used to disturb, or used in a manner that will imminently...
An airport-style security screening checkpoint could be coming to the Alaska State Capitol, ending decades of open public access. In a public notice published Oct. 2, the nonpartisan agency in charge of Capitol administration seeks a private firm to “conduct security screening of visitors and visitors’ belongings.” The firm may also be in charge of screening incoming packages. Security officers at the Alaska Capitol do not currently screen incoming visitors, and the Capitol does not use metal detectors or backscatter X-ray machines like those...
Alaska’s seafood industry has been contending with turbulent global markets for the past two years, which have been hammering harvest values and threatening fishermen’s and processing companies’ financial stability. Prices paid to salmon fishermen crashed in the summer of 2023, prompting protests and generating headlines in national news outlets. But it’s unlikely most heard anything about black cod, which is harvested in smaller volumes — though the numbers are still significant for many full-time Alaska fishermen and processing businesses, wi...
Alaska’s Department of Health is again slipping into a backlog of food stamp applications. The news comes from state data included in a filing from the Northern Justice Project in its class-action lawsuit against the state. The suit asks the court to make sure the state issues food stamp benefits on time after years of chronic delays. Attorney Nick Feronti represents the class of Alaskans affected by the backlog in the department’s Division of Public Assistance, which manages the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for the sta...
A variety of market forces combined with weak fish returns in a rapidly changing environment caused Alaska’s seafood industry revenues to drop by $1.8 billion from 2022 to 2023, a new federal report said. The array of economic and environmental challenges has devastated one of Alaska’s main industries, said the report, issued by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And the losses extend beyond economics, casting doubt on prospects for the future, the report said. “For many Alaskans the decline of their seafood industry affec...
Alaska was the second state to adopt ranked-choice voting in federal and statewide elections, but it may be the first to abandon it. A citizen’s initiative ballot measure that would repeal the state’s open primary and ranked-choice voting system made it to the November ballot after legal challenges. As a result, Alaskans will be asked in Ballot Measure 2 to decide if they would like to repeal or keep the state’s open primary and top-four voting system. If the repeal is successful, Alaska would revert to primaries that are controlled by the p...
Alaska's two leading U.S. House candidates are offering significantly different views on the role of federal spending, a cornerstone of Alaska's economy. Speaking to members of the Alaska Chamber of Commerce on Oct. 10 in Fairbanks, incumbent Democratic Rep. Mary Peltola promoted her support of big federal infrastructure bills that have brought billions of dollars to Alaska. Republican challenger Nick Begich criticized that legislation and voiced concerns about the size of the federal deficit,...
A fire Saturday night destroyed a building in Haines that housed four businesses and four apartments. No one reported any injuries. Flames poured out of the second floor and above the roof as firefighters tried to control the blaze, which eventually took down the wood-frame building. The Haines’ Quick Shop, Outfitter Liquor, Outfitter Sporting Goods, Mike’s Bikes & Boards and the apartments occupied the two-story building across the street from the waterfront. The trouble started just before 9:30 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 5, while Dan Mahoney was...
No injuries were reported from a landslide in Ketchikan on Sunday night, Oct. 6. Officials reported the slide occurred at about 8 p.m. on a section of Revilla Road near Ward Cove, north of downtown. The landslide began hundreds of feet up the mountain north of the road and brought tons of mud and trees crashing across a stretch of the road past the Ward Lake exit, according to borough officials. Slide debris blocked all lanes of Revilla Road near the slide area, cutting off a half-dozen vehicles. There were eight people in the vehicles,...
Juneau voters have rejected the Ship-Free Saturday proposition, with 3,751 votes in favor of the initiative and 5,788 against as of Oct. 4, with several hundred more ballots still to count. The Oct. 1 ballot proposition, the first of its kind in Alaska, attracted international media coverage. It would have banned cruise ships with accommodations for 250 or more passengers on Saturdays and also banned them on the Fourth of July. Opponents of the measure, led by the cruise industry and tourism businesses, waged an expensive campaign, with...
On the morning of Aug. 9, state biologists discovered dozens of dead fish in a creek near the Kensington gold mine in northern Southeast Alaska. Scientists from the Alaska Department of Fish and Game say their observations — and the fact that the die-off occurred downstream of a wastewater treatment plant at the large mine — suggest that the event stemmed from a water quality problem. Mine workers also used an unapproved explosive at Kensington a day before the dead fish were found, according to federal officials. But nearly two months lat...
Alaska had a record number of drug-overdose deaths in 2023, with a total that was 44.5% higher than in 2022, the state Department of Health said in a report issued last week. The 2023 drug-overdose toll was 357, a number determined through the department’s data on deaths and diseases, the report said. The Alaska statistics buck a national trend of declining overdose deaths that was reported earlier this year by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Of the few states with increases in overdose deaths from 2022 to 2023, Alaska h...
The Ten Commandments and six other historical documents will be placed on permanent display in a lobby outside the Matanuska-Susitna Borough Assembly chambers in Palmer, according to a resolution unanimously approved by the assembly on Oct. 1. The display will “honor historical documents” that have influenced U.S. and state law, the resolution states. It will include the Ten Commandments, a summary of the Code of Hammurabi (a Babylonian legal text composed during 1755–1750 B.C.), the Magna Carta (written in 1215 to establish the princ...
Alaska had the biggest decline in average life expectancy of all U.S. states in 2021, a year when health outcomes were heavily influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to a recent national report. Alaska’s life expectancy in 2021 was 74.5 years, down from the average of 76.6 years in 2020, according to the report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Overall, U.S. life expectancy declined by 0.6 years in that time, mostly because of the COVID-19 pandemic and increases in drug overdose deaths and other unintentional i...
