Alaska Public Media

Inside the cramped back room of an Anchorage tattoo parlor filled with colorful masks and sketches, tattoo guns steadily buzzed as artist Holly Mititquq Nordlum scrubbed down a sink.

“I’m doing a little bit of cleaning, just to make sure the space we’re working with is very safe,” she explained.

Nordlum has been at the forefront of the indigenous tattoo revival in Alaska, receiving recognition and support from major cultural institutions, including the Anchorage Museum and the Sundance Institute.

But her work has gone well beyond the boundaries of fine arts: Nordlum turned herself into a piece last year, when Greenlandic tattooist and collaborator Maya Sialuk Jacobsen tattooed her before a public audience in this same shop, stitching a design into her forearm with a needle and thread. Days later, in private, Jacobsen poked six lines down Nordlum’s chin, a design drawn from her home in Kotzebue.

More recently, she’s been preparing a month-long workshop for three Alaska Native women in every aspect of traditional tattooing, from state regulations to the history of designs and practicing on human skin.

The course should set the women up to apply for an official state license. Part of the state’s requirements for licensing tattooists is 150 hours of “practical operations” in a tattoo shop. Nordlum, who is not certified to tattoo, has started putting in that work already. And even though she’s an established artist, she’s by no means exempt from menial chores – hence the scrubbing.

“It counts towards the hours that then count toward your license for the state requirements,” she said, unfazed. “It’s just part of the process.”

Within the international community of indigenous artists and advocates working to revitalize tattooing, seeking official approval is controversial.

Some people reject that governments have any right to regulate indigenous practices that go back thousands of years. But Nordlum is of the mind that in today’s world, getting an official license is just another box to check off to facilitate the larger goal of reviving traditional tattooing as a vibrant cultural process.

“As somebody organizing the program, I feel like I should do everything in my power to be as qualified as I can be,” Norldum said. Though she thinks safety and sanitation standards are a given for serious practitioners, she thinks it builds credibility if she has the state’s seal of approval.

In spite of these aims, Nordlum was recently admonished by the State of Alaska. In a “non-disciplinary letter of advisement,” a state investigator informed her that last year’s tattoo demonstration violated state statutes; visiting artist Jacobsen’s request for a courtesy license to tattoo in Alaska was deemed incomplete.

Angela Birt, an investigator for the Department of Commerce, Community, and Economic Development, said the letter is not an official sanction. But if the same rule is broken again, Nordlum or Jacobsen could face more serious consequences.

For Nordlum, getting the letter felt like an insult. She said she’d repeatedly asked for clarity on how to meet regulatory requirements, only to be either stonewalled or shrugged off.

“All I’ve been asking for two years is someone to talk to me and work with me, because there’s obviously things that aren’t going to mesh, and there is no response,” Nordlum said.

Missionaries and colonization nearly extinguished the indigenous practice of tattooing among Alaska Natives and Inuit across the circumpolar north. Now, modern advocates and artists see the beginning of a widespread revival.

But revitalization efforts are being threatened by an unanticipated barrier: state bureaucracy.

“I’m really trying to work with the State of Alaska,” she added. “It’s my state, I live here, and I’m being roadblocked every step of the way,” Nordlum said.

But regulators with the state don’t see it that way.

Sara Chambers is with the Division of Corporations, Business, and Professional Licensing, and oversees the 43 different boards that set standards for various industries. Among them is the Board of Barbers and Hairdressers, which includes under its purview body modification and tattooing. According to Chambers, that board has clearly defined protocols to allow traditional tattooing.

The problem was not the process, Chambers said, it was the execution: Nordlum’s application for a courtesy license for Jacobsen last year likely would have been approved, but it wasn’t submitted in time.

Chambers said the division is accustomed to handling nuanced license applications given the unique challenges raised by conditions across much of rural Alaska, and she denied that regulatory requirements for traditional tattooing are unworkable. Even amid a growing number of applications over the last few years, Chambers said the division has enough staff on hand to work through issues with residents.

The state’s rules over tattoos are intended to protect Alaskans from serious risks of blood-borne pathogens and diseases, Chambers said, adding that a successful licensing process depends on applicants being well-informed about regulations.

“The casual hobbyist sometimes has to ask themselves whether they plan to meet the standards required by the legislature,” Chambers said.

But cultural practices like traditional tattooing are fundamentally different from occupational standards governing, for example, barbers and hairdressers. That’s according to a body of international law that is focused on cases like these, and puts the onus on governments to be flexible in guaranteeing access to cultural rights.

“Unfortunately, this is par for the course,” said Dalee Sambo Dorough, an associate professor of political science at the University of Alaska Anchorage, and an expert member of the United Nation’s Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues.

According to Dorough, there are numerous provisions under the UN’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples — a non-binding document the U.S. has supported since 2010 — that bolster Nordlum’s position that the state has been unreasonably rigid.

Article 31 spells out that indigenous peoples have a right to “maintain, control, (and) protect” “traditional cultural expressions,” which explicitly includes design and visual arts. Article 36 specifies that indigenous groups separated by international borders, which could include Inuit of the Circumpolar North, have a right to convene for cultural practices. Not only that, but state governments are obligated to help implement this right.

“There should be some openness and willingness on the part of the state government to find a way to work with them, rather than requiring that they conform to the imposed regulatory scheme,” Dorough said by phone from her Anchorage office. In her interpretation, international conventions trump the regulatory requirements laid out by the barbers and hairdressers.

But that conclusion might not be enough for Nordlum, who is still scrambling to finalize logistics, funding, and travel ahead of the upcoming workshop, which begins in October.

She didn’t bother submitting paperwork to the state this time around, because calls to the relevant regulatory bodies didn’t shed any new light on the application process. She said she was curtly directed to get a courtesy license for Jacobsen, just like last year. After spending dozens of hours and hundreds of dollars in 2015, Nordlum said it felt like a pointless waste of time and money.

Nordlum hopes a solution will come from lawmakers or the governor’s office. In the meantime, she doesn’t understand why the state is making it so difficult to bring in a teacher like Jacobsen to share skills that Alaskans are desperate to learn.

“She’s a culture bearer,” Nordlum said. “This is a cultural practice.”

 

The Senate is likely to pass a Water Resources bill this week that would send $100 million to Flint, Michigan, to resolve that community’s drinking water crisis.

But the bill could be a plum for rural Alaska, too.

U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan said the bill includes a new grant program he championed to help small and disadvantaged communities build water projects.

Towns without household drinking water or wastewater services would be at the head of the line.

Sullivan said those communities are primarily in Alaska.

“There are other communities throughout the country but I think a lot of it is centered in Alaska,” Sullivan said. “So this is going to be a five year program, $1.4 billion. So significant sums of money authorized.”

The pending bill would establish the program with $20 million, but the big money would have to come from annual appropriation bills.

Those are the spending bills that are often bundled into a giant omnibus package. They are fiercely contested in Congress.

Still, Sullivan says he thinks it’s possible Congress will appropriate the money for the water grant program, starting with the $230 million the bill authorizes for 2017.

“I think there’s a good chance, because A. this is infrastruction and there has been bipartisan consensus in the Congress on the importance of infrastructure,” Sullivan said.

The grants would require a 45 percent match from non-federal sources.

The bill also says that if Flint can’t spend all its water money in 18 months, the balance would be reallocated to the new grant program.

A mother singing lullabies to a young child is an image that resonates with most people, but for some incarcerated women, even a simple song to lull her little one to sleep can prove problematic.

The Lullaby Project helps mothers who are in prison connect with their children.

Professional musicians work with inmates at the Hiland Mountain Correctional Center in Eagle River to write songs for the inmate’s children, which the musicians then record them onto a CD.

When the program began about two months ago, Shawn Muese, an inmate at Hiland, sat down with musician Hilary Morgan.

Muese carried a booklet she had filled with details about her seven kids and a letter addressed to them. She was ready to write them a lullaby – or so she thought.

“She actually came and had already written something,” Morgan said. “And she said, ‘This is the song.’ And I knew that this wasn’t the song, because it didn’t have her heart in it.”

Morgan said she tried to tease more out of Muese as they sat together, looking at photos of Muese’s kids and thought about the words they wanted to use.

Muese was impressed by Morgan’s ability to connect to her feelings.

“It was crazy because she could tell things I didn’t like just by my facial expressions, ‘Oh you didn’t like it. Okay, next.’”

During the five-hour-long session, they wrote about the first moments Muese spent with her children and how sorry she was to be away from them.

The goal of the Lullaby Project is to help mothers who are struggling to connect with their children and was developed by the Carnegie Foundation about 8 years ago.

Musicians have worked with teen mothers and women in homeless shelters and prisons.

This is the first time it’s been done in Alaska.

The project has three short phases – writing the songs, recording in a professional studio, then coming together to share them.

While writing, Morgan and Muese were having trouble thinking of the music behind the words, so Morgan asked Muese to sing the lullabies of her childhood.

“So she sings me this song and it’s in Samoan, and I’m like that doesn’t help. So I said, ‘That’s great. Did they sing any other songs?’ And she sings another song in Samoan, and a light bulb went on. I said, ‘Do your kids speak Samoan at home?’ She said, ‘Yeah, they do.’ ‘Do you want to write this in Samoan? And she said, ‘Can we do that?’”

After their writing session, Morgan joined with a local Samoan choir to record the piece.

When Muese sat with the other project participants to listen to the song for the first time, she erupted in sobs.

After the song ended, she tossed her arms around Morgan.

“You sound so awesome,” she said, while choking on tears. “They would never think you’re white!”

Muese knows the song won’t make up for the past, but she hopes it helps rebuild her relationship with her kids.

“What I’m hoping to get out of this is restoration, and I want to be able to see my kids,” Muese said. “It’s going on three years I haven’t seen my kids.”

She said the song and the words in Samoan also give her pride in her culture.

“The language is so beautiful. And just one line? It has a lot of meaning and that’s why I love my culture,” Muese said. “I love my language. You can just say one word in my language and it means a lot of things. I came in here all sad, but when I heard that, it’s like angels from heaven.”

She translated the words in the chorus as “angels from above, precious to my heart.”

“And that’s what I believe in. My kids are angels from above. God gave me my kids as precious angels,” she said, pausing. “I know I’m gonna get my angels back, I just gotta do me right now.”

All of the lullabies will be performed by the musicians and some of the inmates during a public concert at Hiland Mountain on Sept. 24 and will be available on a CD.

The funds go straight back into the project through the nonprofit Keys To Life so another group of women can also write their children a lullaby.

The Central Committee of the Alaska Republican Party voted to remove one of its members over the weekend, and several other party officers resigned, all so they can publicly support Joe Miller.

Miller is trying again to unseat Republican U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski.

He jumped into the U.S. Senate race last week, as the Libertarian nominee.

Six years ago, the Miller-Murkowski race divided the party. This time Republicans describe their differences as a friendly separation.

Shannon Connelly of Palmer was, until this weekend, vice president of the Valley Republican Women, and she was chair of the District 11 Republicans.

Opposing abortion is big for her, and Connelly said she was never comfortable with Murkowski’s moderate voting record on the issue.

But Murkowski won the Republican nomination in August, and Connelly figured it was enough for her to just stay silent on the U.S. Senate race.

“Then as Joe came into the race, I realized it wasn’t enough. I had a candidate that I did believe in, who is pro-life, which is a major thing for me,” she said. “And I thought I can’t just sit back. I have to stand for what I believe in.”

Connelly knew Republican rules don’t allow a party officer to support a candidate from another party, and Miller is running under the Libertarian banner this time.

“I realized I could not openly support him due to my positions,” she said.

State Party Chairman Tuckerman Babcock knew this would be an issue.

“As soon as Miller got in the race I sent all the Central Committee (members) a memo reminding them of the rule, and suggesting the honorable thing to do is to resign, if that’s what you’re going to focus on,” he said.

Babcock said the party couldn’t just look the other way and let its officers campaign against a Republican.

“There are a lot of individuals in the Republican Party and we respect that. But we do have a line,” he said. “You cannot publicly support the non-Republican candidate. That’s a line you can’t cross.”

So Connelly did resign, as did four others on the 80-member Central Committee. Another, Dave Bronson of Anchorage, put it to a vote of the Central Committee, which decided 36-23 to remove him.

A party Rules Committee member also resigned to support Miller.

Babcock made it clear there’d be no hard feelings.

“What I told them was: Go with my blessing as the chairman. And if your local district re-elects you or re-appoints you, then you’d be welcome back,” he said.

As for him, Babcock said he’s with Murkowski: “I think that 72 percent of the Republican Primary voters picked Lisa Murkowski and I’m going to do everything I can to get her re-elected to the U.S. Senate.”

Connelly said she plans to volunteer for Miller, but she also says she’ll continue to support her local Republican candidates in the Mat-Su.

Police in Anchorage say they’ve taken a man into custody after an early morning shooting in a residential area near downtown left one person dead.

According to the department, Tommy Rumph surrendered peacefully to police about 2 hours after the incident was first reported.

Rumph posted a distraught video on his Facebook page around the time of the shooting that appears to show him walking through the dark, alluding to violence and being “done for life” after someone disturbed his home.

“I feel like I let everyone down,” he said.

The shooting happened at the corner of 15th Ave. and E St.

Two schools nearby, Chugach Optional and Central Middle School were immediately closed.

School district spokeswoman Heidi Embley said the decision to close both schools came after close and rapid consultation with the police department as soon as information started coming in.

“We continued to stay in contact with the police throughout the morning until they had the suspect apprehended,” Embley said.

A handful of students and staff were already at the two schools when police put up a perimeter around the intersection of 15th Ave. and E St., which bumps up against school property.

All students were diverted to a nearby high school for pickup, Embley said.

“So there are no buses that go to Chugach Optional, but for Central Middle School we sent all the buses out on their normal bus routes to pick up students who may not have received information about school being closed,” Embley said. “And in total there were about 20 students who were transported over to West High.”

Embly sadi those two schools will remain closed for the rest of the day to not interfere with the crime scene, but schools will reopen Wednesday.

This is the 26th homicide in Anchorage this year, and happened just a few blocks from the site of a recent double homicide in Valley of the Moon Park.

One man is dead after his float plane crashed Saturday into a residential neighborhood on Anchorage’s Hillside.

Anchorage police have identified the deceased as James Hefty, 75. He was the only person onboard.

Emergency crews responded to the crash site about 4:30 Saturday afternoon on Crooked Tree Drive.

The cause of the crash is currently unknown, and the National Transportation Safety Board is investigating.