Sorted by date Results 326 - 350 of 7939
At least 973 Native American children died in the U.S. government’s abusive boarding school system, according to the results of an investigation released July 30 by officials who called on the government to apologize for the schools. The investigation commissioned by Interior Secretary Deb Haaland found marked and unmarked graves at 65 of the more than 400 U.S. boarding schools that were established to forcibly assimilate Native American children into white society. The findings don’t specify how each child died, but the causes of death inc...
The Oakland Museum of California has housed the Kadashan cane for the past 65 years. Now, with help from the Central Council of the Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, the five-foot cedar cane is due to arrive in Wrangell in the coming days. Lu Knapp, a direct descendant of Chief John Kadashan, was thrilled when she learned of the cane's imminent return. "It just gives me a really good feeling hearing that it's coming back," Knapp said. "It was my great-grandfather's!" While any...
The Wrangell Elks Lodge has been around since 1935, putting on community programs for kids, veterans and others over the years. But it’s just as well known for Friday night hamburgers and Saturday night steak dinners. As popular as the dinners have become over the years, the Elks are not immune from the same problem confronting many other community groups in town — they need volunteers. It takes at least three volunteers to staff the Friday burger night and at least two for the Saturday steak night, said Dawn Angerman, who co-manages the lod...
On June 1, at Sandy Churchill's retirement party from Head Start, attendees learned that fellow staff member Dawn Welch would take over as lead teacher for the preschool program. "I actually found out the day before," Welch said. Two months later, on Aug. 2, she was in the midst of giving a makeover to the Head Start building with the help of friends and family like her little cousin, Ava. "She likes to organize things," Welch said. "I'm like, 'I got a job for you.'" School starts Aug. 27. One...
The Meyers Chuck dock is in despair, kept floating mostly by barrels Meyers Chuck residents installed themselves. The borough is responsible for maintaining the floating dock, and plans are underway to build a replacement. The borough took in the small community, about 50 miles south of town, when Wrangell expanded to a borough from a city in 2008. The state turned over the dock to the borough in 2014. The most recent census estimates there are 20 full-time residents of Meyers Chuck. Regardless...
It was a close finish in the Bearfest half-marathon, with one minute separating the top two finishers of Carter Howell, at 1:51, and Steven Ditgen, with a time of 1:52. Ian Fuller was the runaway winner of the full marathon at 2:49, with Wrangell High School alum Galen Reed coming in second at 3:25. The 26.2-mile marathon drew nine runners, with 11 racers in the half-marathon on the last day of Bearfest on July 28. Reed, a 2008 graduate of Wrangell High School, planned a family trip from Grand Rapids, Michigan, to run in the marathon. His...
Need a secure, dry place to stash your stuff? John Esther and Phillip Mach may have a solution, it just might be a while. The business partners are working to get a rezone from the borough that would allow them to build a storage facility on their Zimovia Highway lot, midway between TK’s Mini Mart and Panhandle Trailer Court. According to Mach and Esther, the project “would include three metal buildings with lighting, security cameras and locked gates.” The buildings would be constructed one at a time, as Esther and Mach would need to wait...
Gov. Mike Dunleavy has vetoed five bills passed by the Alaska Legislature after the constitutionally mandated date to end its session. The vetoed bills include bonding authority to build a new cruise ship dock in Seward, a bill allowing licensed 18-year-olds to serve alcohol at bars, a measure that would prohibit insurance companies from denying coverage to elected officials, legislation to eliminate duplicative registration requirements for boats, and a proposal that would have allowed employers to pay workers with short-term electronic...
The borough assembly has taken the first step in allowing American flags on veterans’ gravestones to remain up for the month-long stretch between Memorial Day and the Fourth of July. After approving the change in first reading at the July 23 assembly meeting, there will be a second reading of the ordinance at the Aug. 27 meeting, with a public hearing before assembly members vote whether to adopt the change. The current version of the law states: “No temporary decoration, marker, or monument, may be placed upon or near the grave … except on th...
Financial documents published July 31 by the Alaska Permanent Fund Corp. show the fund lacks enough spendable money to immediately pay for items in the state’s annual budget, a sign that the state’s top source of general-purpose revenue is on course for a future crisis. This year, lawmakers and Gov. Mike Dunleavy approved a $1 billion transfer from the spendable portion of the Permanent Fund to the constitutionally protected principal, to help the principal keep pace with inflation. As of July 1, there was only $571.7 million available for tha...
The National Indian Gaming Commission has approved plans for a casino-style tribal gaming hall proposed by the Native Village of Eklutna for a site near Anchorage. The decision, published this month by the commission, follows an Interior Department decision in February that reinterpreted the legal status of Alaska Native trust land, reversing decades of precedent. The gaming hall, which is expected to hold rows of electronic gambling machines, is similar to the Southeast Winds Casino in Metlakatla but would be a first in the state’s p...
All of the seven attorneys who have applied for appointment to fill the latest vacancy on Alaska’s Supreme Court are women. After the governor selects the next justice, the court will be majority-women for the first time in state history. After one of the seven is seated on the court, three of the five members will be women. The seven applicants were announced last month by the Alaska Judicial Council, which screens and nominates applicants for judicial positions. The governor then fills a judicial vacancy from the nominees provided by the coun...
The Alaska Legislature recently increased state funding for domestic violence and sexual assault efforts, but a leading advocate says the effort doesn’t go far enough to meet the need. One of the main federal funding sources for Alaska’ domestic violence and sexual assault prevention efforts and programs has dropped over the years, creating a hole in service providers’ budgets as state funding has remained the same for seven years. Lawmakers plugged part of the that hole with a $3.7 million budget boost this year for the Alaska Council on Domes...
The Biden administration has rejected a nominee for a key Alaska fisheries management post who could have tipped decisions toward the interests of tribes and conservation groups and away from the priorities of the large-boat, Seattle-based trawl industry. U.S. Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo skipped over the top choice of Washington Gov. Jay Inslee, conservation advocate Becca Robbins Gisclair, and instead reappointed the last-ranked nominee on a slate of four candidates that Inslee offered: Anne Vanderhoeven, a trawl industry employee who...
NEW YORK — Tucked within the expansive Native American halls of the American Museum of Natural History in New York City is a diminutive wooden doll that holds a sacred place among the tribes whose territories once included Manhattan. For more than six months now, the ceremonial Ohtas, or Doll Being, has been hidden from view after the museum and others nationally took dramatic steps to board up or paper over exhibits in response to new federal rules requiring institutions to return sacred or culturally significant items to tribes — or at lea...
Wrangell is not immune to the nationwide shortage of electrical transformers, and the delivery delay has pushed back the borough’s sale of 20 lots at the residential subdivision near 6-Mile Zimovia Highway until the spring. The borough wants to wait until the streets and utilities are finished at the property before opening access to the land for potential buyers to evaluate which lots they may want to buy. The transformers and buried electrical lines are part of the work. The land sale had been tentatively planned for late summer or fall, b...
So, you want to see bears at the Anan Wildlife Observatory. But maybe you couldn't get one of the limited number of permits, or you live out of town and can't make the trip, or maybe you are a little more afraid of them than you care to admit. But now, thanks to the U.S. Forest Service, explore.org and 14 Wrangell high school students in the T3 Program, anyone worldwide can view Anan's fish-crazed black and brown bears. Last week, after months of preparation, planning and prototyping, the two...
T.J. Sgwaayaans Young, a Haida master carver from Hydaburg, arrived in Wrangell earlier this month to lead a team of Wrangell-based apprentices to carve a new Kadashan totem pole. When the work is finished, the Wrangell Cooperative Association plans to hold a pole raising ceremony on Shakes Island sometime next year, Wrangell's first totem raising in 38 years. The Kadashan pole - referring to the Tlingit chief of the same name - is the first of two the WCA team will carve this year. Next month,...
Annual moorage rates will not increase this year, after the assembly on July 23 passed a resolution reversing a 3% fee increase it approved in April. The higher rates had been scheduled to take effect this month. The vote to roll back the rate increase was unanimous. “Realizing that it’s such a poor commercial fishing season, realizing that the tourism industry has struggled a bit this year, we felt we could drop the rate increase this year and come back to it next year,” Borough Manager Mason Villarma said in an interview last week. The assem...
They may be out of sight to the general public but they are never out of mind for the U.S. Forest Service. The agency maintains 35 mountaintop repeater towers within the Tongass National Forest to provide radio coverage for their field crews and first responders. A contractor is installing new repeater stations at five sites this summer in the Wrangell and Petersburg ranger districts, part of an ongoing effort to switch out older units with newer models. Of particular importance to Wrangell, a...
The assembly last week took the first step toward seeking voter approval to someday pay members for their work. The assembly on July 23 approved in first reading an ordinance that would put the question to voters on the Oct. 1 municipal election ballot; they set a public hearing on the ordinance for Aug. 27. If approved by voters, the ballot measure would not result in immediate compensation for assembly members and the mayor. Instead, it would only remove a provision from the borough charter prohibiting such payments. The assembly would need...
A $38.6 million federal grant will help lower the cost of energy-saving heat pumps for an estimated 6,100 Alaska households stretching from Ketchikan to Kodiak, including Wrangell. The money will provide rebates of between $4,000 and $8,500 per household for the purchase and installation of a heat pump. The funding is in addition to federal tax credits of up to $2,000 per household. The federal grant for coastal Alaska, announced July 22, will go the Southeast Conference, a community and economic development nonprofit for the region, and...
First it was radio, then television. Then it was video games and TikTok. Many book lovers, bookstores and parents of reading-age children feared the demise of the printed story. Yet, with just a few days to go before the end of the Irene Ingle Public Library annual summer reading program for kids, the youngsters are far ahead of last year’s pace. The program ends Saturday, Aug. 3, with prizes for readers and a party on Aug. 10. Wrangell’s young readers entering kindergarten through ninth grade in August had gone through 2,603 books as of Jul...
The WMC Foundation and SEARHC are inviting women to enjoy some "fun and frolic" golf for a good cause. The annual Rally for Cancer Care will be held Saturday, Aug. 10, at the Muskeg Meadows. Registration starts at 9 a.m.; the event begins at 10 a.m. The day will feature a luncheon, beverages, prizes, a silent auction and a golf tournament with no scoring and no skills required. "It's not even golf," organizer Patty Gilbert, board member of the WMC Foundation said. "It's 'fun and frolic' on the...
More than $600,000 was returned to the Ketchikan Gateway Borough on July 25 after the borough’s bank, Wells Fargo, successfully retrieved an electronic fund transfer that the borough made to a fraudulent account a couple of months ago. Charlanne Thomas, the borough’s finance director said the borough was notified by Wells Fargo in May that it unknowingly sent money to a fraudulent checking account at Citibank after attempting to pay for the Dudley Field turf project. The contractor’s email account had been hacked by scammers who reque...
