Sorted by date Results 151 - 175 of 501
Whether brown, yellow, black or spotted like a leopard, slugs all have one thing in common: They can devastate a garden. Growers in Wrangell have many suggestions on what works to control the slimy mollusks, but they all agree it comes down to garden maintenance. "Slugs are actually a good creature. They're the cleanup crew of the forest," said Kim Wickman, IGAP technician with the Wrangell Cooperative Association and board member with the Wrangell Community Garden. "They clean up all the...
The Friends of the Library recently received a $950 donation from the Juneau Community Foundation toward our ongoing effort to digitize every page of the Wrangell Sentinel, 1902 to present. The plan is to put the easily viewed images online for researchers, family members, students and all the curious people who want to look through the community’s history. The project started several years ago and received a big boost in 2019 when the Wrangell Cooperative Association contributed to the effort as it secured an $8,250 grant for the work from t...
August Schultz Jr. was born June 23, 1960, in a hospital that's now an apartment building in Wrangell. He grew up in a house up behind that hospital, surrounded by family. Schultz, known to friends as Augie, still lives in the same house, though alone, being the last living member of his immediate family. Though it's been hard, he has found healing through the town's history in the form of a Facebook page. At his therapist's suggestion, Schultz created "Wrangell yesterday - place where old...
Culturally significant objects formerly in collections of the Portland Art Museum arrived in Juneau on June 8 on their way back to Wrangell, whose Tlingit artisans had fashioned them. After years of negotiations following a claim originally filed in 2002 and accepted by the museum in 2019, the objects, including a Killerwhale Hat, have been repatriated to the Naanya.aayí clan in Wrangell, where they had originated. COVID-19 complications delayed the transfer until now, according to a museum...
A group of 6-, 7- and 8-year-old kids poured over the rocky beach near City Park on June 8 like a bunch of young Indiana Joneses, looking for artifacts. But this group, unlike Dr. Jones, was looking for shells as part of a Beach Explorers program to use in a science experiment. During last week's exploration, children were given a cup, guided to the beach, and instructed to find two intact seashells. "It's fun," said Bo Ritchie, 6. "We find stuff like glass. That's what my sister does. She...
Work on an outdoor deck at Chief Shakes Hot Springs up the Stikine River has been delayed until next spring, after federal funds the Forest Service expected for the project have yet to arrive. The site, which consists of two hot tubs — one indoor and one outdoor — was supposed to get a facelift this month, favoring a higher river and tide levels for easier access at this time of the year. The project, which had been estimated at $190,000, received $81,200 from the Great American Outdoors Act — or so the Forest Service had been told, Distr...
Pickling and fermenting, pressure-canning and freezing were among the topics covered over three days of courses last week as members of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Cooperative Extension Service taught food preservation classes in Wrangell. Wrangell Extension Days were held from May 24 to 26 and offered nine workshops and a Certified Food Protection Manager exam. Attendees at each workshop varied in skill level, with some just beginning their preserving journey to others who have been...
An award and scholarship ceremony held May 13 at Wrangell High School lauded the achievement of many students and presented seniors with scholarships to further their educations. Teachers Lisa Brooks, Jack Carney, Winston Davies, Ann Hilburn, Donna Massin and Tasha Morse all presented various students with certificates and plaques to commemorate their accomplishments for the year. Community members presented a bevy of different scholarships to the seniors, such as Virginia Oliver, who presented...
A cleanup of abandoned pieces of old harbor floats the tribe was trying to get done this spring may be delayed until October. Project lead Kim Wickman said the high tides they need during daytime hours won't occur until then. Though the full effort will have to wait, Wickman, the Indian General Assistance Program technician at Wrangell Cooperative Association, and Valerie Massie, IGAP coordinator, tied off three large chunks of the old floats at Shoemaker Bay beach on May 18. The pieces are 40-...
A Ketchikan nonprofit has helped the Wrangell tribal council secure a $1 million federal grant toward domestic violence and sexual abuse prevention, and advocacy for survivors. Agnes Moran, executive director at Women in Safe Homes in Ketchikan, helped Wrangell Cooperative Association apply for the grant from Indian Health Services. The entirety of the $1 million is for Wrangell, tribal and non-tribal, at $200,000 a year over the next five years, she said May 10. The goal is to create two job...
Paula Rak and the WCA IGAP program would like to thank LNM Services, Wrangell IGA, City Market, First Bank, the city and borough of Wrangell and the Wrangell Cooperative Association for their donations and continued support for the Wrangell Community Cleanup....
The annual Stikine River Birding Festival has a busy first weekend planned. It starts up Friday with a 1 p.m. virtual storytime at the Irene Ingle Public Library, then continuing the educational fun agenda with a Birding 101 class at 6 p.m. Friday at the Nolan Center, led by Bonnie Demerjian. The library event will present an Earth Day theme, with activity kits available for pickup at the library. The meeting ID for the Zoom event is 935 4298 0052, passcode 8743535. There are three events on Saturday’s calendar. A community cleanup is p...
Tribal members can apply for a fourth distribution of federal pandemic relief funds administered by the Wrangell Cooperative Association. This round of financial aid is limited to $2,000 per household. The application period closes May 16. Tribal members can select to receive the assistance for utilities, groceries, heating fuel or gasoline, or a combination of any of the four choices in increments of $500, $1,000 or $2,000 if the applicant prefers that the aid go all to one category. Previous rounds were limited to covering utility bills or...
An official with a U.S. Department of Agriculture program that has awarded more than $820,000 to the Wrangell borough, Forest Service and tribe said more could be on the way. The Wrangell Cooperative Association was awarded $620,000 from the Southeast Alaska Sustainability Strategy, part of a $25 million federal grant program intended to help diversify the economy of Southeast communities. The borough was awarded $100,000 to manage lands for the improvement of wild blueberry harvests and $103,000 for trail upkeep. The program also provided...
The Wrangell Cooperative Association announced the four winning candidates from its March 8 tribal council election. Results posted March 9 show Frank Churchill Jr., Heidi Armstrong, Edward Rilatos and Lavina “Lovey” Brock were elected to the eight-member council, which also consists of Xúns', Richard Oliver; Michelle Clark; Jason Clark; and AAnshaawasnook, Lue Knapp, speaker of the Naanyaa.aayí clan house. Elections are held every year, and each councilmember serves a two-year term, Councilmember Knapp said Monday. Brock, Churchill Jr. and R...
March 16, 1922 So rapid has been the growth of the city library, established only a few months ago, that additional bookshelves were requested by the Library Board at the March meeting of the Civic Improvement Club. A box of fine reference books was received recently from the Washington State Library and new books are being purchased by the club each month. The last to be ordered are “The Empty Sack,” by Basil King, and “The Profiteers,” by Oppenheim. During January, seven new cards, 36 magazines and 15 books were issued. The receipts were $11....
Raven learned the hard way that you don't mess with women. High school and middle school students performed a shadowbox play of "Koodigwási Shaawát (Fogwoman)" on March 8 in honor of Women's History Month and Elizabeth Peratrovich Day, illustrating stories of strength and resolve. By the end of the play, the character Raven was alone and hungry due to the treatment of the woman he loved. "The moral of the story was, don't hit your wife," said Xwaanlein, Virginia Oliver, Tlingit language t...
It’s looking like April for archeological field work to start at the former Institute property — or so the borough hopes — as it awaits a response from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the State Historic Preservation Office on a draft plan submitted March 3. The borough last September tasked Ketchikan-based R&M Engineering to help it figure out a plan for searching the former Native boarding school site for any human remains or cultural artifacts. The Bureau of Indian Affairs operated the school 1932 to 1975. The federal government in Ju...
Public officials, community leaders and businesspeople from Wrangell and Juneau met online Feb. 11 to discuss possible solutions to Wrangell’s lack of child care options. Representatives of the Wrangell Cooperative Association, Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, the Wrangell borough, SEARHC, Sealaska Corp. and Little Eagles and Ravens Nest (LEARN) talked through the problems. WCA IGAP Coordinator Valerie Massie, one of the meeting attendees, said she and others “saw child care and housing as the two main hur...
The Wrangell Cooperative Association was told last month it will receive $620,000 in federal funding from the Southeast Alaska Sustainability Strategy, a $25 million U.S. Forest Service investment to diversify the economy of Southeast communities. The tribe plans to spend $500,000 on a project to carve new totem poles, $60,000 on a cultural symposium and $60,000 toward cultural preservation, such as promoting traditional, healthy foods and adding the Tlingit names to signs around town. WCA plans to hire a master carver and obtain the logs to...
The Wrangell Cooperative Association has announced the candidates for its March 8 tribal council election. There are 11 candidates for four seats on the eight-member council: Heidi Armstrong, Lavina Brock, Robyn Byrd, Samuel Campus, Frank Churchill Jr., Caroline Demmert, Timothy Gillen Sr., Olivia Main, Edward Rilatos Jr., Amber Lynn Wade and Asia White are on the ballot, according to a list provided by tribal administrator Esther Reese last Friday. Rilatos, Churchill and Brock currently serve on the council. Voters are instructed to vote for n...
Parents, community leaders, borough and tribal officials are talking about what can be done to help solve Wrangell’s lack of child care options. Valerie Massie, of the Wrangell Cooperative Association, said she and others at a recent meeting all see the lack of child care and housing as the biggest hurdles to economic and community development in town. Lack of child care keeps people out of the workforce, and it seems there isn’t an employer in town without job openings. Part of the problem in establishing and running a child care center is...
The temporary, pop-up mobile towers have been ordered for the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska's pilot project that will provide wireless internet service in Wrangell, but it will be later in the year before the system goes live. Chris Cropley is a network architect at Central Council, which is setting up the federally funded broadband service named Tidal Network. He's been there since last April. His job is a mix of disciplines - part technical, part...
The Wrangell Cooperative Association wants to move the Chief Shakes Island footbridge to allow better access for buses coming to the popular site and possibly setting aside an area for selling Native crafts. The plan would be to move the bridge access point to create more room at the harbor parking lot, along with rebuilding the decade-old wooden walkway to the island. “They envision the new access to not only clean up the former harbor parking lot but create an in/out access for buses and a place to potentially sell Native goods,” Carol Rus...
Elizabeth Peratrovich Day is Feb. 16, honoring Native rights activist Elizabeth Wanamaker Peratrovich of the Tlingit Nation who championed equal rights and whose testimony paved the way for the Alaska Anti-Discrimination Act passed by the territorial Legislature in 1945. In Wrangell, Tlingit storyteller and language expert Virginia Oliver is teaching schoolchildren at Evergreen Elementary, Stikine Middle and Wrangell High School about Peratrovich, who was born in Petersburg in 1911, and lived part of her life in Angoon. “Alaska Native children...