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JUNEAU (AP) — The Alaska Legislature has passed a measure to formally recognize tribes in the state. The House on May 18 voted 37-2 to accept a Senate version of the bill that passed a week earlier on a 15-0 vote. The bill next goes to Gov. Mike Dunleavy. Supporters of the bill say it is an overdue step that would create opportunities for the state and tribes to work together. Putting tribal recognition into law would allow for continuity from one governor’s term to the next so that Alaska could work toward long-term solutions to issues wit...
Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy announced Monday that Nancy Dahlstrom will be his running mate as he seeks reelection this year. Dahlstrom, a former state legislator from Eagle River who has led the state Department of Corrections under Dunleavy, submitted her resignation as Corrections commissioner on Sunday, according to a statement from Dunleavy’s office. The campaign announcement came just over a week before the June 1 filing deadline for the August primary. Candidates for governor and lieutenant governor run as a team under a new e...
On May 18, the last day of the legislative session, the House and Senate voted unanimously to change how sexual assault can be prosecuted by modernizing the definition of consent. “Alaska took a gargantuan step forward in updating our laws,” said John Skidmore, deputy attorney general for the Criminal Division of the Alaska Department of Law. He spoke during a governor’s press conference the day after the session ended. Under the bill, consent is defined as “a freely given, reversible agreement specific to the conduct at issue … ‘Freely g...
The body of a man who had gone missing for a day after swimming near a docked cruise ship in Skagway was found in the water Saturday, according to Alaska State Troopers. The man, whom troopers identified as William Anthony Rodriguez, 32, from Miami, had last been seen in the water near the cruise ship dock around 2:10 p.m. Friday, troopers said in an online report. According to troopers, Rodriguez had jumped into the water, swam to the nearby shore and stayed there a few minutes, then swam in front of the bow of the docked cruise ship. “The ind...
Silver Bay Seafoods, which started in Sitka 15 years ago, has connections that reach more than 5,000 miles across the world to Ukraine, prompting the company to reach out with sizable monetary and food donations to help those affected by Russia’s war on its neighboring country. “We were devastated by the reports and knew we needed to help, so we kicked off a donation program,” said Abby Fredrick, Silver Bay Seafoods director of communications. After only a few weeks, fishermen, employees and the company raised $130,000 to donate to the World...
Legislation that creates a roadmap for establishing tribally operated public schools has passed the Alaska Senate and House and is headed to the governor’s desk. Senate Bill 34 directs the state Board of Education to work with Alaska Native tribal entities on an agreement that would formally recognize the tribes’ authority to operate and oversee K-12 schools. “This creates an option for self-governance in the delivery of culturally relevant place-based education in Alaska, essentially empowering tribes and their communities to have a direc...
JUNEAU (AP) — A state court judge said a majority of members on the board tasked with redrawing Alaska’s legislative district boundaries appeared to have adopted a map that splits the Eagle River area into two Senate districts for “political reasons,” and he ordered a new map to be used for this year’s elections. The rejected plan put Eagle River, north of Anchorage, and Girdwood, south of Anchorage, into the same Senate district, separated by about 25 miles of uninhabited Chugach State Park. The judge said he found the board “intentio...
When Dr. Anne Zink began working as the state’s chief medical officer in the summer of 2019, she had a vision of transforming the state’s health system into one that promotes health holistically rather than one that simply responds to sickness. Then came COVID-19. At least a third of Alaskans have tested positive for the COVID virus as of the May 11 count, according to the state’s data hub, while more than 3,700 have been hospitalized and 1,235 have died. Now, two years after the pandemic overt...
It’s up to the Senate in the final days of the legislative session whether Alaskans will get a year of gasoline and diesel at the pump without the state tax of eight cents a gallon. The House by a 36-2 margin on May 4 passed the measure — which could save an average driver $30 to $50 a year in motor fuel taxes but cost the state about $35 million in lost revenues — sending it to the Senate for action in the final two weeks of the session. A week later, the Senate Transportation Committee moved the bill on May 11, sending it to its next stop,...
JUNEAU (AP) — The state Senate passed legislation last Friday to formally recognize tribes in Alaska, which supporters say is an overdue step that would create opportunities for the state and tribes to work together. The measure passed 15-0 and will return to the House, which passed a similar version last year. If the House agrees to the Senate version before the Legislature’s scheduled adjournment this week, the bill will go to the governor. If the bill is enacted, its passage would likely bump from this year’s ballot a similar tribal recog...
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. (AP) — A first-of-its-kind federal study of Native American boarding schools that for over a century sought to assimilate Indigenous children into white society has identified more than 400 such schools that were supported by the U.S. government and more than 50 associated burial sites, a figure that could grow as research continues. The report released May 11 by the Interior Department expands the number of schools that were known to have operated over 150 years, starting in the early 19th century and coinciding with the r...
A new Interior Department report on the legacy of boarding schools for Native Americans underscores how closely the U.S. government collaborated with churches to Christianize them as part of a project to sever them from their culture, their identities and ultimately their land. The role of churches forms a secondary part of the Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Report, released May 11 after a yearlong review sparked by the 2021 discoveries of hundreds of potential graves at former residential schools in Canada. Most of it...
PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — America's commercial fishing industry fell 10% in catch volume and 15% in value during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, federal regulators said last Thursday. The 2020 haul of fish was 8.4 billion pounds, while the value of that catch was $4.8 billion, officials with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said. The early months of the pandemic posed numerous challenges for the U.S. fishing industry, which has remained economically viable despite the difficult year, NOAA officials said. “It was fis...
A retired Matanuska-Susitna Borough teacher has filed to run as a Democrat for U.S. Senate in Alaska. Pat Chesbro filed candidacy paperwork with the state Division of Elections on May 11. She would join a crowded field of 16 candidates in the Aug. 16 primary that includes the incumbent, Republican Lisa Murkowski, and Kelly Tshibaka, a Republican endorsed by former President Donald Trump. Murkowski has had a huge cash advantage in the race so far. The filing deadline is June 1. Chesbro’s campaign said she spent a career in education and is on th...
The cruise ship Radiance of the Seas struck a Sitka Sound Cruise Terminal mooring dolphin on May 9 as it was preparing to dock, limiting the facility to one berth instead of two until repairs are completed in a few weeks, terminal manager Chris McGraw said. There was no apparent damage to the 961-foot ship and no reported injuries in the mishap. A dolphin is a collection of steel pilings driven into the ocean floor and used for mooring a ship at a dock. The Coast Guard Marine Safety Detachment is investigating the accident, McGraw said. He has...
The state House has passed legislation that would suspend Alaska’s 8-cents-a-gallon motor fuel tax for a year to help consumers pinched by high prices at the pump. The bill was scheduled for its first committee hearing in the Senate this week as lawmakers push toward their May 18 adjournment deadline. The measure also would suspend to June 30, 2023, the state tax on marine fuel (5 cents a gallon) and aviation gas (4.7 cents a gallon). The legislation says dealers “shall reduce the cost of fuel to the final consumer” by the amount of the tax bre...
Unless the Legislature acts, Alaska nonprofits will have to stop selling raffle tickets online June 30. The state has allowed online sales by registered nonprofits since early summer 2020, as the pandemic shut down or made difficult group events and in-person ticket sales. Temporary legislation allowing charitable groups to sell and draw winning tickets online expires in less than two months, though a bill under consideration would make the provision permanent. The legislation “will modernize Alaska’s charitable gaming program,” Deb Moore, exec...
SEATTLE (AP) — Passengers on the Carnival cruise ship Spirit that docked May 3 in Seattle say more than 100 people aboard the ship tested positive for COVID-19 and the crew was overwhelmed. Multiple passengers said they were quarantined at Seattle-area hotels after testing positive or being exposed to someone with COVID-19. Carnival Cruise Line would not confirm how many people tested positive but said there were a number of positive cases, Seattle KING5 TV reported. Darren Sieferston, a passenger on the cruise from Miami to Seattle, was in q...
Juneau voters will likely be asked this fall if they’re willing to increase the city’s 5% sales tax to 6% during the summer in exchange for exempting food from sales tax year-round. The Juneau Assembly, meeting as the Committee of the Whole, voted unanimously May 2 to have city administrators draft language for an ordinance that would repeal the food tax if voters approve the summer sales tax increase. But numerous questions were raised about exemptions for nonprofits, effects on businesses that don’t get summer tourists among their custo...
ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. (AP) - Nearly 40 law enforcement officials, tribal leaders, social workers and survivors of violence have been named to a federal commission tasked with helping improve how the federal government addresses a decades-long crisis of missing and murdered Native Americans and Alaska Natives, U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland announced last Thursday. The committee's creation means that for the first time, the voices guiding the Interior and Justice departments in the effort will...
Adorned with red handprints across their mouths and carrying signs bearing the faces of the missing, hundreds gathered last Thursday at the Capitol in Juneau. Elected officials and Alaska Native dignitaries spoke before a solemn crowd amid flags bearing the red hand symbolizing the missing and murdered Indigenous persons awareness movement. The rally was held on Missing or Murdered Indigenous Persons Awareness Day. “I think the turnout was great. The message was shared across the state. … It’s gaining more attention on national levels through p...
GOULDSBORO, Maine (AP) — A state agency in Maine has terminated an application for a 120-acre salmon farm opposed by lobstermen in Frenchman Bay. American Aquafarms, which was notified of the decision April 19, proposed a pair of 60-acre, 15-pen sites that together could produce 66 million pounds of Atlantic salmon a year. The Department of Marine Resources said the Portland-based company backed by Norwegian investors failed to find a state-approved hatchery for salmon eggs for the operation. The company also failed to prove the hatchery met r...
PORTLAND, Maine (AP)— The owner of hydroelectric dams in Maine has said it’s going to make changes to some of its operations to try to help save the final remaining wild Atlantic salmon in the United States. The country’s last wild populations of the fish are found in a few Maine rivers. Salmon counters found fewer of the fish on one of those rivers, the Penobscot, last year than in any year since 2016. Atlantic salmon were once plentiful in American rivers, but factors such as dams, overfishing and pollution hurt populations, and they are now...
Juneau-based Alaskan Brewing Co. won a platinum and a gold Crushie - symbolized by a crushed beer can in a raised fist - for two of its designs from the Craft Beer Marketing Awards, an international industry award for art and marketing. "To us it's a huge honor because we're trying to put art out," said Ryan Lange, the brewery's digital marketing specialist. The brewery won a gold Crushie for its recently released pilsner and a platinum Crushie for its Island Ale, according to the marketing...
Efforts were underway Monday to clear a road where a 300-foot-wide slide — taking down dozens of fully grown evergreen trees as well as rocks and dirt — toppled into the bay in front of Seward, covering the narrow roadway and cutting off road access for about 200 people. There were no injuries in the Saturday evening landslide about a half-mile south of downtown Seward, City Manager Janette Bower said. A private contractor was handling the removal process and planned to use heavy equipment to clear the debris at the top first, working down to...