KCAW - Sitka

On Sitka’s Kaagwaantaan Street, overlooking a busy waterway where fishing boats unload their catches and float planes glide in to land, there’s an unassuming gabled house with faded red siding. If you peer underneath the house, you’ll see charred wood nestled next to newer lumber – evidence of a 1953 fire that damaged parts of the 19th-century structure.

The house is called Kaxátjaa Hít, or Shattering Herring House. Xéetl’ee Katelyn Stiles, who is Kiks.ádi and of the Shattering House, recently walked around it and took note of the fire-damaged wood. For her, the burn marks are part of the house’s story.

“I still see that as, you know, our history,” she said. “That’s where Xéetl’ee, my namesake, gave birth. So, yeah, I just find it all really beautiful how it is.”

Clan houses like this one have historically served as cultural centers for Lingít people – places where members gathered for meetings, ceremonies, and even to give birth. But earlier this year, Stiles – whose great-great-grandparents lived in Shattering Herring House – learned that it was slated for demolition.

“It will always be a clan house”

In Lingít tradition, clan houses are passed down matrilineally and belong to all members. In the western legal system, properties often go to a spouse or children, who don’t belong to the same clan, so houses can fall out of clan ownership. Sometimes multiple clan members are on the deed, making renovation or demolition more difficult.

Lduteen Jerrick Hope-Lang knows those challenges firsthand. Hope-Lang is of the Point House, a Kiks.ádi clan house in Sitka that was passed down via will and demolished in 1997.

In 2022, Hope-Lang worked with the Point House’s legal heirs to acquire the land. It’s now held on behalf of the Kiks.ádi clan by a nonprofit organization, the Katlian Collective, with plans to rebuild. And last year, he helped bring national recognition to Sitka’s Indian Village as a historic endangered place.

“These are precious, and they’re worth saving,” he said. “By preserving these things, we’re more able to accurately tell the history as we see it.”

The Shattering House fell out of clan ownership, but Stiles said that doesn’t change its cultural value.

“In my opinion, if it was a clan house, it will always be a clan house,” she said.

“Emotional and terrifying”

In February, Stiles learned through a meeting of the Sitka Historic Preservation Commission that the legal owner intended to sell the Shattering House to a couple who planned to demolish it and build residential housing on the land.

“It was, of course, very emotional and terrifying,” she said.

Stiles helped gather community and clan members to testify against the demolition. They reached out to the Sitka Tribe of Alaska, asking for them to weigh in. She connected with Hope-Lang, who met with his board of directors, trying to identify ways to help.

In a Feb. 27 special meeting of the Historic Preservation Commission, 18 people testified, mostly against the sale and demolition of the house.

“It really sort of brought us together,” Stiles said. “We want our, you know, grandkids and their kids to know who they are.”

During the meeting, the Historic Preservation Commission recommended against the demolition. But as Stiles learned, they couldn’t actually stop it from happening.

City and Borough of Sitka Planning Director Amy Ainslie said that under the city’s general code, the city didn’t have authority to deny the demolition permit on the basis of historic preservation. In a March 10 letter to the Historic Preservation Commission, she wrote that she approved the demolition permit “with an extremely heavy heart.”

“Everything happened so quickly”

But on April 22, the legal owner agreed to sell the property to Katlian Collective on behalf of the Kiks.ádi clan. Hope-Lang said the nonprofit was able to reroute funds intended for the Point House restoration project to buy the Shattering House.

“I think the ultimate end goal is, we’re stronger with this house standing next to ours,” he said. “So it doesn’t feel like it really pulls away at the end of the day.”

He said they haven’t figured out exactly what happens next.

“Everything was happening so quickly,” he said. “Now we’re kind of in the process phase of how it will be used, how it will be restored, and really the Katlian Collective’s goal in this is to support the clan and what it wants to do. And ultimately, we just didn’t want to see it demolished.”

Hope-Lang said he hopes to get Sitka’s clan houses listed on the National Register of Historic Places. He envisions a future where all the houses in Sitka’s Indian Village have been restored.

“I think it’s not outside the possibility of the 43 or 44 clan homes that existed there, that they couldn’t all be restored or rebuilt,” he said.

Stiles said she hopes to see the city and tribal governments collaborate on historic preservation of clan houses. She said it’s a “huge relief” that Shattering Herring House won’t be demolished — and that her young son will have a cultural space to grow up in.

“He’s, you know, learning to sing and drum,” she said. “I’m so happy that he will have a clan house and know that he’s a part of that.”

Enough signatures have been gathered to put a cruise limit ballot out to Sitka voters in a special election this spring.

If approved by the voters, the ordinance would set an annual cap of 300,000 cruise passengers, a daily cap of 4,500 passengers, and limit port calls to six days a week. It would also require permits for cruise ships and require the city to administer permits and fine cruise ships for violating the new rules.

Municipal Clerk Sara Peterson said her office certified the petition on Thursday afternoon. The city’s charter says that if enough signatures are gathered, a special election must be called within 40 to 90 days.

“So the 40 to 90-day clock starts as of yesterday,” she said. “In order to have that special election according to the charter, 613 valid signatures were required, and they did get more than 613.”

The special election will be similar to a typical municipal election, with both precincts voting at Harrigan Centennial Hall and the same early and absentee voting options available.

Peterson has tentatively set the date for the election for Friday, May 30, pending Sitka Assembly approval. She said she chose that date because it works for code, and she worked with building staff to find a day when Harrigan Centennial Hall would be less busy. The building also serves as the delivery point for cruise ship passengers in the summer months.

“Both of our voting precincts are at Harrigan Centennial Hall, and in looking at all of this, I was looking at voter accessibility — where our voters are used to voting in Sitka,” she said. “Obviously, for the regular election each year, I’m reserving those rooms and everything. As soon as we’ve certified the October election, I’m already planning for the next one. So obviously, with this, we didn’t have any rooms reserved at Harrigan, and so I worked with staff there, we determined some dates that might work, and ultimately, the driving force behind choosing May 30 was to ensure that we could have the greatest voter accessibility at Harrigan Centennial Hall.”

In a press release Friday, the petition organizers said they were unclear whether the May 30 date aligned with charter requirements and said they were “looking to clarify” the city’s interpretation of code.

The initiative to limit cruise tourism was the fourth proposed by a local advocacy group, Small Town SOUL, in December. The first three failed to make it through the city’s legal review process.

Sitka has seen record numbers of cruise passengers over the last three years. With the unprecedented growth have come community frustrations over congestion, safety, and environmental impact.

The industry growth also brought an economic boom – new businesses have cropped up in response to the growth, and the city’s sales tax revenue is up. In response to the initiative, a pro-tourism group, Safeguard Sitka’s Future, formed, ran a “Decline to Sign” campaign, and hosted information sessions throughout the signature-gathering process.

Until now, those groups have been advocating without the requirement to register with the state. Now that the election is certified, any advocacy group must register with the Alaska Public Offices Commission.

The assembly will hold a special meeting on Tuesday, March 18 to consider approving the ballot ordinance, which will require two readings.

A hydroelectric project in the remote Southeast Alaska community of Angoon is on pause following the federal grant freeze announced in late January by the Trump administration. The project was scheduled to start construction in just a few months.

The Thayer Creek Project has been in the works since 1980, when Angoon’s village corporation, Kootznoowoo Inc., negotiated the rights to develop hydropower on the creek as part of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, or ANILCA. Last year, the project finally received $27 million in federal funding through the U.S. Department of Energy to construct a small plant that would supply power to the remote Admiralty Island community.

Kootznoowoo CEO Keith Greene said construction was slated to start this May. Now, the project is on hold indefinitely.

“At this point, without that federal funding, there’s not much we can do, because that’s what we’ve been working towards,” he said.

He said he’s optimistic that funding will be released eventually. But either way, Angoon residents will be waiting on hydropower for a while longer.

“If it frees up later this year, it’s still going to be a 2026 start date,” he said. “So until we know for sure, we’re just having to wait it out.”

Angoon residents currently rely on diesel or wood to heat their homes, both of which are increasingly expensive and in short supply in the isolated island community. Angoon Mayor Peter Duncan said that hydropower would mean stable energy costs and more jobs.

“We were moving forward, you know, in a positive way that was going to cut our electrical prices for life and and all of that, and put people to work,” he said.

He said it’s hard to not feel disappointed when the project was so close to becoming a reality.

“How would you feel if you were pushing forward and things started to happen for you, and then somebody took that all away from you?” he said.

Greene said the people of Angoon have already overcome decades of obstacles on the Thayer Creek Project — and they’re not going to give up easily.

“They’re very much in it for the long haul,” he said. “They will continue to go forward and fight for what they believe in and what they feel like they deserve.”

In the meantime, he said Kootznoowoo will be ready to jump into action as soon as the funding is released.

The City and Borough of Sitka’s admission that a police officer euthanized several animals by gunshot at the local shelter last summer has generated a strong response from the community’s veterinarians.

Seven vets in the Southeast Alaska town – both practicing and retired – dispute the administration’s claim that shooting the dogs and cats was an acceptable practice under guidelines of the American Veterinary Medical Association.

In the meantime, everyone involved is hoping to ensure that the episode is never repeated.

Earlier this month Sitka’s municipal administrator, John Leach, published an investigation into animal shelter operations. It revealed that local police euthanized two dogs and four cats by gunshot last September after taking over day-to-day management of the shelter.

Sitka’s animal shelter is under the umbrella of the police department, but in years past, day-to-day operations have been managed by an animal control officer with the support of volunteers. But last July, the volunteer group, Friends of Sitka Animal Shelter or FOSAS, was barred from the building. When then-animal control officer Olivia Magni went missing in late August and did not return to work, pets were left in the care of police.

FOSAS President Kristina Tirman says the administrator’s investigation confirmed what her group feared.

“We had suspected that gunshot was the method of euthanasia for the dogs based on information we heard from community members, but we did not have confirmation on that until this report was released,” Tirman said. “Seeing that in writing was difficult, and we also did not have any information regarding the cats, so that was also new, and again, very hard to read.”

What frustrates Tirman and the volunteers is how preventable the situation was. She says when they found out Magni was not managing the shelter, they reached out to offer police their help, but the offer was declined.

“We had volunteers there ready to help,” Tirman said. “If we had known that this was going to be the outcome, and the police department didn’t have the time to care for these animals, we would have done everything we could to get them out of the shelter (and) adopted into homes. I think many people would have adopted them if they had known that this was going to be the outcome.”

Leach’s report was also hard to read for Sitka’s veterinary community – none of whom were consulted before the animals were euthanized. Like Tirman, Dr. Toccoa Wolf said if any of them had been contacted by police ahead of time, things would have been different.

“There’s practicing veterinarians that have always been available for help, we’re always here to support the city. We’re always here to support our community,” Wolf said. “And so I wonder why none of us were asked to help, and why that relationship has been, you know, severed?”

Wolf said she’s glad the report was released to the public and appreciates the transparency, but disagrees with some of its findings. Wolf and six other vets in Sitka penned a letter to the local Assembly on Thursday. The vets say the investigation’s conclusion that the pets were euthanized following AVMA guidelines is incorrect.

The association’s guidelines say (on page 42) that gunshot can be considered an acceptable form of euthanasia under some circumstances. But Arleigh Reynolds, another vet who signed the letter, says the Sitka situation never qualified.

“Those limited circumstances are if the animal is an immediate threat to someone,” Reynolds said. “Like if it’s aggressive or is a rabies suspect, or if it’s so injured that moving it would cause more harm than euthanizing it in place. But other than those two instances, it’s not okay.”

The vets’ letter points to another section of the AVMA regulations (on page 44) that says gunshot should not be used for routine euthanasia of animals in municipal pounds or shelters. A second letter from a local attorney also calls the legality of the euthanasia into question.

Reynolds has spent years working in rural communities around the state with limited access to veterinary care where the practice is more common.

“They call it culling, where they actually have dog kill days, and they will send a notice out to everybody, either tie up your dogs or put them inside, and any dog that’s found unattached is shot,” Reynolds said.

But in those remote communities, according to Reynolds, it takes a toll.

“And that is incredibly traumatic, of course to the dogs, but to the people doing the shooting,” Reynolds said. “A lot of those village safety officers leave their job because of that. It’s also really traumatic to the communities, you know, for just hearing the shots and knowing this is going on. And in several communities, there have been some really bad outcomes afterwards because of things like this.”

While the local vets disagree with the administrator’s interpretation of AVMA euthanasia guidelines, they do agree that Sitka is due for a code change and a restructuring of Sitka’s animal services.

“This was a house ready to crumble to begin with, because our code is so outdated,” Wolf said. “The city administrator does highlight in his report that code needs to change, I think that is one of the most urgent things. I think that a code needs to change that will prevent these from happening in the future.”

“The city has supported the shelter, but it’s not an official thing. It’s not in their code, and and the code was written back in the ’70s, right? So it’s 50 years old,” Reynolds said. “Times have changed. Our values have changed, and our ability to take care of animals has changed during that period of time. And so I think we need to update the code to really cover the way that folks here in Sitka would like to see animals cared for.”

In response to the vet’s letter and widespread concern over how police handled the euthanasia, Leach said he’s open to reinvestigating – and ensuring that the treatment of animals is consistent with community standards.

“If the Assembly desires to put an independent investigator on it, in terms of whether or not the AVMA standards were followed, that’s fine. We’re very open to that,” Leach said. “But my overall message is moving forward and making sure it doesn’t happen again. That’s really my focus at this point.”

Changing city code will take some time. In the interim, the city and FOSAS have reached a tentative agreement on shelter operations for the next year, pending Assembly approval. The timing lines up with the hiring of Sitka’s new animal control officer who starts work this month.

Four cats and two dogs were euthanized by the Sitka Police Department following a break-down of shelter operations last summer that left police supervising the facility without an animal control officer or volunteers. These details were included in an internal investigation emailed to the Sitka Assembly last weekend.

KCAW obtained a copy of the report from Municipal Administrator John Leach through a public records request.

The city’s operation of its animal shelter has been under scrutiny since July. That’s after the volunteer group, Friends of Sitka Animal Shelter, or FOSAS, was abruptly barred from entering the facility due to what police have called “security concerns” which the volunteer group has denied. A month later, the city’s animal control officer went missing for two days while looking for her dog on Katlian Bay Road. She was found safe, but had an accident on the trail and did not return to work.

Police then assumed animal care responsibilities at the shelter. The city’s investigation revealed that all six of the pets were euthanized by gunshot in September, confirming rumors that led to public outcry late last year. The euthanasia was carried out by Lt. John Achee under the direction of Police Chief Robert Baty, who was also present.

While the administrator found that the euthanasia was legal under Sitka General Code and carried out by trained personnel, the investigation noted that the, “lack of transparency, consultation, and clear policies regarding shelter operations contributed to significant public concern and eroded trust” between the city, police, shelter volunteers, and the public.

The release of the investigation comes as the city is continuing to negotiate a contract with animal shelter volunteers that would allow them back in the building. A draft contract is currently under review by FOSAS and will be presented at the February 25 assembly meeting.

In the report, Leach makes several recommendations, including establishing formal policies and communication structures between volunteers, police and the city, restoring volunteer access, and evaluating whether the city can ultimately transition shelter management to the volunteer group under a lease agreement.

Editor’s Note: This is a developing story and will be updated.