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- [00:07]
Senator Lisa Murkowski
This is about respecting the original stewards of the land who gave this fitting name.
- [00:15]
Casey Grove
In her latest disagreement with President Trump, Senator Murkowski calls for re renaming North America's highest peaked Denali. From Alaska Public Media, this is statewide news on Alaska News nightly for Tuesday, December 9th. Good evening. I'm Casey Grove. Also tonight, researchers develop a new sea ice forecast tool that could help subsistence users seeking a safe, solid platform.
- [00:36]
Ben Townsend
We're really trying to make something that's.
- [00:38]
Casey Grove
Actionable, not just doing research for research's sake. Those stories and more tonight on Alaska News Nightly.
- [00:48]
The federal government's official name for North America's tallest peak is Mount McKinley. At a U.S. senate hearing today, Alaska's senior senator argued that it shouldn't be. Alaska Public Media's Liz Ruskin reports.
- [01:00]
Senator Lisa Murkowski
President Trump changed the mountain's name on day one of his second term with an executive order entitled Restoring Names that Honor American Greatness. But Senator Lisa Murkowski is trying to re restore a much older name. We have called it this mountain Denali in Alaska for decades. Generations the Koyukon Athbaskan have called it referred to it as Denali. For millennia. Murkowski has sponsored a bill that would nullify Trump's executive order as it applies to the mountain and change the official name back to Denali, often translated as the Great One. At the hearing, she said Alaskans feel strongly about it. This is about respecting the original stewards of the land who gave this fitting name. President William McKinley has no particular connection to Alaska and never visited. A prospector named the mountain for him and it stuck for the rest of the 20th century. Despite a petition from the state of Alaska in the 1970s in favor of Denali. The Alaska delegation to Congress sponsored Denali bills year after year, but the delegation from McKinley's home state, Ohio, blocked them. President Obama finally stepped in and ordered the name changed in 2015. That held for a decade until Trump changed it back. Murkowski says her Denali bill is not meant to diminish President McKinley or his contributions to the country. And she says he won't go unhonored. You've got the McKinley National Memorial, the National McKinley Birthplace Memorial, the McKinley Presidential Library and Museum. You've got got statues in Ohio, Hawaii, Illinois, among others. So this is nothing against our former president. An Interior Department witness at the hearing said the administration opposes the name restoration because it conflicts with Trump's executive order on the mountain's name. Senator Dan Sullivan co sponsored Murkowski's bill, as did three Democratic senators. It could be negotiated into a package of bills containing the home state priorities of other Sen. But if Trump insists on keeping the name McKinley, it's not clear a sufficient number of Republicans in Congress would cross him. Reporting from Washington, I'm Liz Ruskin.
- [03:31]
Casey Grove
Republican officials in the Matanuska Susitna Borough have proposed a field of six conservative Alaskans for two vacant seats in the Alaska House of Representatives. The Alaska Beacon reports that on Sunday, local Republican Party officials delivered their suggestions to replace Kathy Tilton and George Rauscher, whom governor Mike Dunleavy appointed to fill two vacancies in the Alaska Senate. Those Senate vacancies occurred when Republican Wasilla Senator Mike Schauer resigned to run for lieutenant governor and Republican Palmer Senator Shelley Hughes resigned to run for governor to replace Tilton. The Republican leaders of House District 26 nominated Chickaloon Tribal Police Chief Donna Anthony, veterinarian Sean McPeck and former Tilton aide Steve St. Clair. Anthony, McPeck and St. Clair have each filed to run for the seat in next year's elections. For Rauscher's former seat, Republican leaders For House District 29 picked Chickaloon tribal police officer Lucas Howard, local community council member Gerald Garrett. Nelson and former police officer John James. Nelson had previously filed a letter of intent to run for the seat next year. The nominations are advisory only. Dunleavy may pick anyone who is a Republican, lives in the appropriate district and meets the constitutional requirements for state House. Under state law, the governor has until December 29th to make his picks. Anyone he chooses must be approved by a majority of the House's 21 Republicans in order to be seated.
- [05:08]
A program that helps boaters use buoys to track weather conditions wrapped another successful season this fall. Advocates of the Backyard Buoys program say it increased safety for fishermen in the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta region and helped hunters in the Arctic land Wales. Alaska desk reporter Alyona Nydin has more.
- [05:27]
Alona Knighton
Several years ago, seven boaters went missing in the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta region and were never found. The laws motivated residents to find ways to better understand their changing waterways. Nalokuk is an organization that integrates Indigenous knowledge into research in the region. The company joined a nationwide initiative called the Backyard Buoys Project and deployed three buoys in the area for the first time this year. Lynne Marie Church is Nalakok's chief executive officer.
- [05:58]
Various Interviewees/Experts
We wanted to understand what was going on in our ocean during the changes of seizing from spring to fall, what was going on in our community, in our waterways, especially with the changes in the environment that we've seen over the past 10 years.
- [06:15]
Alona Knighton
Backyard buoys project helps Indigenous coastal communities in Alaska as well as the Pacific Northwest and Pacific islands use wave data to support maritime activities. Buoys installed in frequently trafficked areas track wave height, temperature and barometric pressure in real time time. Residents can see their information in an app and decide whether it is safe to travel. Church says that accessing this type of data is often cumbersome. But using the Backyard Buoys app has been easy in part because of how it is designed.
- [06:49]
Various Interviewees/Experts
When you look at where the locations are, it's not by latitude and longitude, it's by place names. That's how we learn in rural Alaska and that's how we're going to to continue to do the research.
- [07:01]
Alona Knighton
Sean Gleason is the head of research and development at Nalakok. He says the locations for buoys in the Yukon Kazkokwim Delta region were chosen in consultation with local boaters.
- [07:12]
Casey Grove
We picked locations where people travel for.
- [07:16]
Various Interviewees/Experts
Subsistence or daily travel, gleason says.
- [07:19]
Alona Knighton
They ended up with three spots, one outside of Quinhog where locals harvest seals and salmon. The second location was close to Eik, where mud floods create big waves. The third spot was closer to where people go out for halibut. Gleason says the goal was also to spread out those buoys so communities in different parts of the region can use the data.
- [07:41]
Casey Grove
We're always trying to share the resources.
- [07:43]
Various Interviewees/Experts
When we can because there's no one community. Everyone's related and when you're out there, everyone is traveling from different places to different places.
- [07:52]
Alona Knighton
Gleason says that this fall residents decided to retrieve the buoys right before the remnants of Typhoon Ha Long hit the region. He says they plan to redeploy the buoys again next year. Meanwhile, in Alaska's Arctic, the project has been ramping up as well. The Alaska Eskimo Whaland Commission facilitated the installment of buoys in six communities this year, including near Gambling Sawoonga on St. Lawrence Island. Martin Edwardson is the commission's coordinator for the project. He says the commission worked with whaling captains in each community to see where they wanted the buoys.
- [08:29]
Various Interviewees/Experts
The whaling captains, they can get on the app and they look to see how big the waves are, where they potentially be hunting whales and they like seeing that.
- [08:39]
Alona Knighton
Edwardson is also a whaling co captain and the app helped his hunting this fall.
- [08:44]
Various Interviewees/Experts
I was looking at the app and seen that the waves weren't too big in the general area where we were headed, so we went out that way and we successfully harvested a whale and brought it back to our community to feed.
- [08:57]
Alona Knighton
Edwardson says the Whaling Commission is now looking for translators to allow users of the Backyard Buoys app see information in their native language. Organizers of the program in both regions say they are hearing from other communities that are interested in joining the app as well. In Anchorage, I am Alona Knighton.
- [09:21]
Casey Grove
Still to come on Alaska News nightly, birders flock to Sitka to see two birds rarely seen in Alaska.
- [09:26]
Ben Townsend
One of the people that came here had the day before he came here, driven five and a half hours from Anchorage to Valdez to see a broad winged hawk.
- [09:33]
Casey Grove
That's ahead. Stay with us. A Klawaak woman died last week after Alaska state troopers say she went for a cold plunge on Prince of Wales Island. Troopers and Klawack emergency personnel responded to a reported drowning last Tuesday at a beach on Saltchuck Lane, about four miles north of Kluoc. According to a trooper dispatch, the EMS crew performed life saving measures on 52 year old Treena Nation before transporting her to a nearby medical facility where she was later declared dead. Troopers say Nation went swimming after a run. The dispatch goes on to say that Nation has had heart issues in the last few weeks. The state medical examiner office in Anchorage has requested Nation's remains be sent for autopsy.
- [10:18]
The Kuskokwim river community of Nebuskiak has been without power for several days. Nebuskiak tribal Chief Sharon Williams said the village lost power late Saturday morning due to electrical issues brought on by the ice storm over the weekend. The whole village remains without power and attempts to restore electricity to some homes failed.
- [10:37]
Various Interviewees/Experts
First they tried turning half of the village on and then.
- [10:43]
The.
- [10:45]
Power plant couldn't take it because there was a short somewhere.
- [10:51]
Casey Grove
The state Department of Homeland Security and Emergency Management reported the outage on Monday. They say the Alaska Energy Authority has been notified. Williams says some households are able to run on backup generators, though large appliances like refrigerators might require too much to maintain through the out. Williams says the native village of Nebruskiak declared a state of emergency yesterday after a water pipe burst now affecting the community's access to water.
- [11:18]
Various Interviewees/Experts
When the lights go back to normal, it's gonna take a while to thaw out the.
- [11:28]
Wastewater pipe. We need that one to make water. The pipes are going to have to be changed out because they bursted, williams says.
- [11:40]
Casey Grove
The stores have been closed. People in the community have been traveling the 10 miles upriver to Bethel via snow machine trails on the Kuskokwim to get food and fuel for generators.
- [11:50]
Various Interviewees/Experts
There are some people on Facebook begging if they can catch a right to Bethel to get food that saying that they're out of food.
- [12:00]
Casey Grove
The school is running on backup generators and has announced it will operate on a two hour delay through February. December 12th any students sheltering in Bethel through the outage are excused from school if reported by their families.
- [12:26]
A new sea ice forecasting tool from the University of Michigan could help coastal Alaska communities make safer decisions about traveling and hunting in the winter. But what does a university in a landlocked state like Michigan know about sea ice? As K and O M's Ben Townsend tells us, the two states, thousands of miles apart, have a few things in common.
- [12:44]
Ben Townsend
Sure, Alaska doesn't have a college football team or huge automotive factories, but the two states both have massive coastlines. In fact, Michigan has the longest freshwater coastline in the country. That's thanks to the Great Lakes. Michigan touches all but one of them and like parts of Alaska's coastline, every winter huge swathes of the water freezes, opening up the region for winter travel and commerce on ice.
- [13:10]
Alona Knighton
There are a lot of similarities in.
- [13:11]
Various Interviewees/Experts
Great Lakes to coastal oceans because it's so big.
- [13:15]
Ben Townsend
This is Ayumi Fujisaki Manome, a researcher at the University of Michigan. She's part of the Cooperative Institute for for Great Lakes Research or sigler, and.
- [13:25]
Various Interviewees/Experts
In fact we have almost decades long program going for Alaska Arctic, actually Arctic Sea Ice Modeling project.
- [13:35]
Ben Townsend
Through the program, the team at SIGLER built an Arctic sea ice forecast system known as gecas, but it's over a decade old and Fujisaki Minome says it's time for an overhaul. The new model upgrades its resolution from 5 to 1.5 km and one big.
- [13:52]
Various Interviewees/Experts
Benefit that this high resolution brings in is more detailed representation of near shore ice processes in particularly landfast ice or shore fast ice.
- [14:04]
Ben Townsend
That jump is like going from the camera on the first ever iPhone to the iPhone 11. The old camera gave you the general picture, but the new one captures the detail you need to see gaps in the ice and that's critical for travelers and subsistence users who rely on solid and safe ice. Ukulelec Okliesic is a GNOME based consultant for the project.
- [14:25]
Casey Grove
That ice has been important for seal hunting, walrus hunting as well as winter crabbing, which is an important piece and people setting putts, losing puts, losing their catch.
- [14:39]
Ben Townsend
Okliesic says sea ice is becoming more and more unpredictable and thinks climate change is the culprit. He says the way the ice is behaving defies long held traditional knowledge, making it Harder to know when it's safe to be on it. Oakley Asic was brought on to help the Sigler team imbue the project with indigenous values and priorities. He envisions the updated model working hand in hand with traditional knowledge.
- [15:03]
Casey Grove
It's a way to incorporate technology into the community. Right. And especially when we're trying to look at a forecast and maybe somebody deciding, do I set a pot, a crab pot today? And maybe what would that look like in three days?
- [15:20]
Ben Townsend
John McClure serves as associate director for the project, which is funded for three years years through the national oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. He says the team is focused on iterative engagement, incorporating feedback from local stakeholders. So the tool is practical and useful.
- [15:36]
We're really trying to make something that's.
- [15:38]
Casey Grove
Actionable, not just doing, you know, research for. For research's sake, but creating something that.
- [15:44]
Various Interviewees/Experts
That can be used and.
- [15:45]
Ben Townsend
And that can be added to kind of the current, you know, and traditional.
- [15:49]
Various Interviewees/Experts
Ways of knowing that that already exists.
- [15:51]
Ben Townsend
A prototype of the new model is already online with hourly forecasts out to three days. Eventually, the team plans to expand its forecast out to 10 days. In Nome. I'm Ben Townsend.
- [16:05]
Casey Grove
After more than a century, a Tlingit clan will once again be the legal owners of a raven helmet worn during the Battle of Sitka in 1804. Non Native organizations have claimed ownership of the helmet for more than 100 years and kept it in a museum in Sitka. KTOO's Ivan Krumry spoke with some of the clan members who helped get the sacred item back, and they say its return will help future generations connect with their history.
- [16:30]
Ivan Krumry
More than 200 years ago, Tlingit and other Alaska Native people waged battles against invading and oppressive Russian colonists in Sikke. To this day, those battles are a symbol of Tlingit resistance to colonialism. A Kixadi warrior named Kahlian led the attacks, and in 1904, he wore a carved raven helmet during one of the battles. In the early 1900s, the helmet was separated from the Kixadi. It's considered ot oo a sacred living clan item. But the raven helmet has been behind glass at the Sheldon Jackson Museum since 1906. Anya Nach Ray Wilson is a Kixadi clan leader and lives in Juneau. He says that Ahtu holds spirits and clan members treat them like relatives.
- [17:10]
Various Interviewees/Experts
So when we don't have our items, we can't use them. And there it is sitting right in a museum in Sitka, and we can't use it, and it belongs to us.
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It's really hard to accept.
- [17:27]
Ivan Krumry
Wilson is 92, and he says that the colonial legacy of the last two centuries have left Tlingit people with only pieces of their history and cultural practices. But when they bring Att' u back into ceremonies, those items help restore what has been lost.
- [17:42]
Various Interviewees/Experts
The main thing is that it's coming back to help our people. We all need help. We need the culture to come back, to make our people stronger again.
- [17:53]
Ivan Krumry
According to recorded history, this is how the raven helmet ended up in the Sheldon Jackson Museum. Three KickSady men brought it to Alaska's territorial governor, John Brady. Brady co founded the Presbyterian Run Sitka Industrial and Training School, which is now known as Sheldon Jackson College. The helmet has been in the campus museum since the state bought the museum and its collection in the 1980s. But for years, Kick Saadi leaders have said that that isn't how sacred clan items are given away. They're under cultural patrimony, which means all clan members own the item, and no individual can give away sacred clan objects without the Klan's approval. So for decades, the Kixadi have been trying to get the helmet back from the state, arguing that it was not ever the state's property. And last month, the Alaska State Museum finally agreed to start the process of returning ownership to the Kixadi. Klan member Dutein Jericho has been fighting to repatriate the helmet, just like his grandmother did two decades before. He said the process involved digging into the history of how the helmet changed hands.
- [18:52]
Casey Grove
If you're asserting you have the right to anything, there must be proof. I want to see it.
- [18:58]
Ivan Krumry
The written records claiming ownership start with the Presbyterian Church, which ran the Sitka Industrial and Training School. Then the Alaska State museums bought the school's museum and its collection. In the 1980s, Hoag Lang reached out to Jermaine Roth alum. He's the director of the Presbyterian Church's center for Repair of Historical Harms and was instrumental in the fight to repatriate the helmet. He says since the handover of the helmet to the Presbyterians didn't follow proper protocols, the church never had a right to the helmet in the first place. Therefore, the church didn't have the right of possession when it sold the helmet as part of the museum's collections to the state. Decades later, Ross alum hopes righting the wrongs of the past inspires others to do the same, even if it feels like it's too late.
- [19:37]
Casey Grove
That should give people confidence to continue to engage in more acts of repair.
- [19:42]
Various Interviewees/Experts
And solidarity, no matter how big the repair job seems to be now.
- [19:47]
Ivan Krumry
Hopeling looks forward to a future when the helmet will always be in Kixotti hands. He says the knowledge of clan ownership makes a difference.
- [19:55]
Casey Grove
It changes the narrative.
- [19:57]
Various Interviewees/Experts
When you go in and you look.
- [19:58]
Casey Grove
At this piece, you're not saying it belongs to somebody else, it belongs to you.
- [20:03]
Ivan Krumry
He says young Klan members won't know the pain of not being able to claim it and to use it for ceremony.
- [20:08]
Casey Grove
And the exciting thing is for the young people below us who will become the caretakers, the future ancestors, that they won't know this trauma. This won't be passed on to them.
- [20:21]
Ivan Krumry
The Alaska State Museums said there are still several steps before the repatriation process is completed. In Juneau, I'm Yvonne Crumry.
- [20:38]
Casey Grove
Two different birds rarely seen in Sitka and much of Alaska showed up on the outer coast last month. As KCAW's Catherine Rose reports, it was exciting news for birders, leading into a big month for our feathered friends. The Audubon Society's annual Christmas Bird Count.
- [20:53]
Catherine Rose
In mid November, the arrival of two rare birds in Sitka caught the attention of birders from around the state. Local naturalist Matt Gough said his son, a fellow naturalist, spotted them back to back.
- [21:06]
Ben Townsend
My son was, has got ambitious about feeding birds this, this fall again, so has been putting out a lot of bird food. And he noticed a Harris sparrow in the yard, which is a bird that we've been looking for for a while.
- [21:21]
Catherine Rose
The small brown sparrow breeds in the boreal forest of northern Canada, but typically winters in the lower Midwest. The Gough had never seen a Harris's sparrow in Sitka. The bird was last spotted here in the 1990s.
- [21:35]
Ben Townsend
So that was, that was interesting. And then a few minutes later, about a half hour later, he's like, there's another unusual bird in the, in the yard. And he says, I think I remember what it is. I can't remember its name, but it's like it begins with a D and it's, it's rare. And I said a dickcissel? And he said, yeah, that's what it was. And it turned out it was a dickcissel.
- [21:52]
Catherine Rose
The dickcissel was even more unusual, Goff said. The Midwestern bird that winters in South America was last spotted in Juneau in 2004, and the Sitka sighting is the third on record for Alaska. Its arrival was so unexpected it brought even more out of town visitors, Gough said. After he posted about the sightings to the Alaska Rare Birds Facebook group, several birders from Anchorage flew down by plane of course.
- [22:22]
Ben Townsend
In fact, one of the people that came here had, the day before he came here, driven five and a half hours from Anchorage to Valdez to see a broad winged hawk, which was the first, first one of those in Alaska. So, yeah, some, some of us are mad travelers when it comes to birds, especially unusual birds.
- [22:37]
Catherine Rose
While the Dick Sissel hasn't been seen since late November, Gough said it's possible the Harris Sparrow will stick around for the winter. If it does, it could be counted as part of the Audubon Society's Christmas Bird Count. Victoria Vosberg is a retired Alaska Raptor center veterinarian, and she said it's the country's longest running citizen science initiative.
- [23:00]
Various Interviewees/Experts
Way back in the beginning, people on Christmas Day used to get together and hunt. They called it a side hunt, and it was a competition to Steve who could kill the most living things. So it wasn't just birds, it was killing everything. And then some people decided, let's do something different. Let's just count birds instead of kill them.
- [23:24]
Catherine Rose
For more than a century, the Christmas Bird Count has documented population declines and recoveries of all types of bird species, and the data collected during the count has influenced policy and conservation efforts. Sitkins began participating in the 1970s, and in just the past couple of decades, Vosberg said, they've observed a lot.
- [23:45]
Various Interviewees/Experts
I started running the bird count about 20 years ago, and just since I started doing that, we've seen swans come back to town, we've seen Anna's hummingbirds start spending the winter.
- [24:02]
We'Ve seen Eurasian collared doves come to town, population explosions disappear. And now we're watching them on the rise again.
- [24:14]
Catherine Rose
Sitka's Christmas bird count is December 20, and there are a number of ways to get involved. But if you're looking to see a Dickcissel or Harris Sparrow, it'll be a lucky break. Only one of each was spotted. Gough said that's often the case with lost birds.
- [24:30]
Ben Townsend
I think there's some speculation that what might happen in part is their internal compass, so to speak, might be off 180 degrees or 90 degrees or something like that, and they just go the wrong way because they orient differently. Then they end up someplace that is not at all what their sort of biological systems are expecting, and they're lost and they just start wandering.
- [24:48]
Catherine Rose
Gough said. Lost birds often look for birds that are local and in the know to find food. And sometimes they settle in for the winter, sometimes not. But even if participants at the Christmas Bird Count don't spot one of the rare birds, there are plenty of other birds that are counting on being counted reporting in Sitka, I'm Kathryn Rose.
- [25:18]
Casey Grove
And that's all for this edition of Alaska News Nightly. If you missed any of tonight's stories, we're on online@alaskapublic.org and wherever you get your podcasts. We had reports tonight from Liz Ruskin in Washington, D.C. alyona Knighton in Anchorage, Hunter Morrison in Katchikan, Samantha Watson in Bethel, Ben Townsend in Nome, Yvonne Crumry in Juneau, and Katherine Rose in Sitka. If you want to send us a news tip, question or comment, email us@newslaskapublic.org Our audio engineer is Crystal Hyde. I'm Casey Grove. Good night.
- [25:51]
This is statewide news on Alaska Public Media.