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In the Sentinel 100, 75, 50 and 25 years ago. June 25, 1914: After being away for fifteen days on a prospecting trip, Richard Hofstad, Ole Johnson and C. Lauritsen arrived back in town late Tuesday evening. The boys went from Wrangell to Chichagof Island for the purpose of locating a large ledge of marble, and after the second day on the island, the marble was located and four claims staked. After the marble had been located, the boys started to look over the country and found some floaters in a small creek, and after tracing it up, located...
The Forest Service's Resource Advisory Committee voted unanimously May 9 to recommend continued funding for two prominent Wrangell events. The Stikine River Birding Festival received a recommendation for $24,000 to fund travel, printing educational brochures, public outreach, and festival supplies and rental. Wrangell Bearfest received a recommendation for $24,600. The advisory committee recommendation plays a prominent role in allocating federal Title II funds for expenditure. Projects approved at the meeting also include Wrangell Cabin...
This year's senior projects are a varied bunch. They range from a documentary movie on the Chief Shakes House rededication to middle-school wrestling programs. Whatever the subject of the senior project, whatever the personal interest of the student involved, each student almost invariably used the words “to give back” to describe their project. Senior projects with 25 community service hours are required for graduation from Wrangell High School. While the number is a bare-bones requirement, students often exceed that limit. Take Kristin Gal...
A local carving facility and cultural center is a big step closer to completion. The MJ Murdoch Charitable Trust awarded a $250,000 grant to the Wrangell Cooperative Association this week. That leaves about$100,000, or 35 percent of total cost of the building, remaining before the shed's cost is totally funded, said Tis Peterman, a grant writer and administrator with the WCA. "We're really excited about it," she said. The carving facility - known informally around town as the "carving shed," a...
Hotel reservations and empty tables at local eateries may be a little hard to come by this fall. About 250 officials and leaders from all over Southeast will descend on Wrangell Sept. 16 to 18 as the annual membership meeting of the Southeast Conference comes to town. The Conference’s mid-session meeting was held March 12, 13, and 14 in Juneau. Wrangell’s role as host borough comes after a report issued by the 2013 session, which highlighted Wrangell’s success with the so-called blue economy, a combination of fisheries and marine servi...
Dancers and speakers from several local tribal organizations re-enacted the Chief Shakes House rededication as part of what the school called Native Awareness Day, Feb. 13 The event featured traditional dress, dancing and songs, as well as a few less-than traditional songs performed by the Tlinget-Haida Headstart students. The event was aimed at commemorating the life and struggles of Elizabeth Peratrovich, a Tlinget woman from Southeast who worked to end discrimination against Alaskan Natives...
Native Alaskans will elect four of seven candidates to the Wrangell Cooperative Association’s leadership council today. The WCA is an umbrella organization for the local Alaskan Native community and maintains, among other things, the Chief Shakes House and the carving shed cultural center. The group has played an increasingly important role in civic affairs, primarily as a go-to organization to obtain funding for infrastructure projects when state or federal authorities are sometimes unwilling to foot the bill. The association appears in discus...
Between 30 and 50 yachts will depart Seattle sometime in June and arrive in Wrangell June 17. The yachts will participate in the annual Salty Dog Rally, sponsored by Boating Puget Sound, a website dedicated to yachting in the Seattle area. Once they arrive, yachters will be welcomed by local Tlingit drummers and dancers and be feted in a gala dinner with the mayor. Borough officials estimate between 60 and 150 people will participate, though they won’t have official numbers until registration for the event concludes in April. Members of the W...
In the Sentinel 100, 75, 50 and 25 years ago. January 8, 1914: Today at two o'clock the case of the United States vs. Chief Shakes in a complaint being made by A. Lemieux against Chief Shakes for criminal trespass on property supposed to be owned by Lemieux but claimed by Shakes was up for trial in the Commissioner's Court. Chas Ingersoll represented Chief Shakes and Richard Bushell the prosecution, upon motion from the attorney for the defendant the case was dismissed. According to the ruling made, no person can hold the title to Indian land...
The Chief Shakes House rededication was easily the biggest event of 2013 in Wrangell. However, the year was filled with events and news stories big and small. On the first edition of 2014, the Sentinel pauses to recollect the stories throughout the year. January An electrical fire damaged the fish tank at the Nolan Center, causing it to be removed. A 7.5-magnitude earthquake struck off of Craig Jan. 4, rattling windows and nerves in town. The quake caused no major damage in town, but...
Gov. Sean Parnell’s proposed 2015 budget does not include any capital money for Wrangell projects. The budget, released last Thursday, allots $2,360,655 for capital projects in the other constituent municipalities of what will become state House District 36 after a court-approved redistricting takes effect before mid-term elections this year, according to figures released on the Alaska Office of Management and Budget website. The Alaska legislature could revise the budget before it is enacted, though State Sen. Bert Stedman (R-Sitka) said t...
U.S. Rep. Don Young cancelled a planned public appearance in Wrangell and Petersburg Nov. 6 after reporting chest discomfort, according to a press release issued by his office. Young had originally planned for a public meet-and-greet following a tour of city facilities in Wrangell with borough department heads and assembly members. He completed the tour with department heads, according to Harbormaster Greg Meissner. When media representatives and officials later showed up for the 3 pm meeting with Mr. Young, a staff representative said Young...
By Brian O’Connor Sentinel writer The borough assembly cut an additional candidate from the list of applicants for the borough manager job during a closed executive session Sept. 10. Four candidates now remain in the hunt for the position. They are: retired borough clerk and former legislative aide Christie Jamieson, current interim borough manager and finance manager Jeff Jabusch, current Alaska Commission on Aging planner Jon Erickson, and Kyle H. McCain of Shavano Park, Texas, where he was most recently city manager for just under two y...
By Brian O’Connor Sentinel writer About thirty or forty tourists packed into the Chief Shakes House last Wednesday to take in the newly renovated house and learn about the sun, the moon, and the stars. However, first they had to learn a little bit about Raven. “Raven is considered a trickster,” interpreter Lu Knapp told the assembled crowd. Raven in this case was the figure from Tlingit mythology, and the story Knapp told that afternoon concerns the chief and three boxes in the possession of a...
The 2013 Bearfest celebration came roaring back to Wrangell last Wednesday as the Shtax’Heen Kwaan dancers presented a moving and eloquent recitation of traditional Tlingit dance and language – and fed the nearly 60 visitors with fresh baked and smoked salmon dishes at the Chief Shakes Tribal House. Wrangell Cooperative Association president Tim Gillen said the sharing of food is important to the Natives of Southeast Alaska as a way of keeping ancient Tlingit culture alive. “From my persp...
The Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium partnered with the Center for Disease Control this week to hold a meeting on traditional foods – and showcased a variety of options available to Natives and others for healthy eating. The meeting was held at the James and Elsie Nolan Center starting on Monday, June 17 and is a required component of the CDC’s Traditional Foods Program and for all tribal entities receiving grant money under a federal program aimed at diabetes prevention in Ame...
For many Natives in Southeast Alaska the use of natural herbs and plants is as essential today as it was to their ancestors in years past – and whether they are used to alleviate pain, or help as a dietary supplement, the wild medicine of Wrangell’s forests and wilds are abundant. One of the most common plants in Wrangell’s pantheon is yarrow. It grows nearly everywhere on the island and is identifiable by its feathery leaves and fine-tooth hairs along the stem. It is also identifiable by its sm...
With the Chief Shakes Tribal House project completed earlier this month, and the rededication ceremony written in the history books, the main objective of the Wrangell Cooperative Associated has shifted to their next major building effort – a carving shed for traditional Tlingit woodwork. The shed, which is currently under construction on Front Street at the corner of Lynch Street, will be about 3,600 square feet in size and will have a training room, a carving room, as well as totem storage a...
It took more than a year to complete, but the Chief Shakes Tribal House came together late last week as project manager Todd White and his crew installed the newly carved Bear screen and put finishing touches on the interior of the structure. The house cost nearly $1 million to rebuild and saw a crew of adzers spend the majority of last summer carving away at monolithic planks of nearly foot-thick cedar that would go into the new construction. A part of that million-dollar price tag was a $222,000 award from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust...
On May 4, the sun rose on Wrangell Island under gray skies – though those skies would part slightly and sunshine would descend upon a place that is the spiritual heartland of the Tlingit in Wrangell as the Chief Shakes Tribal House was rededicated for the first time in more than 70 years. Last week, over the course of May 2-4, Wrangell entered the pantheon of history as nearly 1,000 visitors from the Native communities of Southeast Alaska and beyond traveled to the Borough to witness the r...
During the rededication of Chief Shakes Tribal House, Wrangell saw an uptick in retail sales and money spent by nearly 1,000 visitors on lodging, food and services, providing a much needed boost to the local economy. Ernie Christian, who is both a member of Wrangell Cooperative Association’s Tribal government and manager of Ottesen’s True Value in downtown said that although he has not crunched the numbers, the Front Street events and the numerous visitors to Wrangell were a boon to his business and others in downtown. “It was a good weekend, I...
The new Chief Shakes Tribal House did not reappear magically overnight. It took a number of years of planning, funding acquisition and construction to see it through to completion, which happened last week in Wrangell. The following stories are a look back in time during 2012 – and what it took to get from there to here – and how the new Shakes House rose in place of its predecessor built in 1940 by the Civilian Conservation Corps. Jan. 26, 2012: Over the next year, the over 70-year-old Chi...
