KNBA - Anchorage

An Alaska-based theater company is putting a Tlingit twist on a holiday classic.

From the opening carol, viewers will notice a particular Southeast Alaska flavor to “A Tlingit Christmas Carol.”

Vera Starbard is the playwright-in-residence for Perseverance Theatre and adapted the story.

“If you enjoy a “Christmas Carol” like I do … you’ll recognize the story,” Starbard said. “It definitely plot-wise has a lot of the things — obviously not exactly the same, but you’ll definitely recognize the story.”

The production will be in five roughly 20-minute episodes, or “staves,” live streamed through Perseverance Theatre’s Facebook page and YouTube channel, each Friday until Christmas Day, Dec. 25. And available to rewatch until Jan. 7, Russian Orthodox Christmas.

As the first episode begins, viewers and theater patrons will recognize the story. Scrooge is a successful CEO of a Native corporation subsidiary in an unnamed town. He’s also a boarding school survivor – though Starbard said that element is intentionally subtle.

“I didn’t want to obsess on that, because I think that ultimately I didn’t experience that and I don’t have the right to tell you that story without someone who’s been there. But I did want to allow a look into that, and a look into our Scrooge is the way he is,” she said.

And Scrooge hates Christmas. Even when his niece Freda, played by Isabelle Star Lablanc, tries to invite him over to celebrate Russian Orthodox Christmas.

The character of EB Scrooge is played by Ed Littlefield, who’s Tlingit, and serves as the music director as well, Starbard said.

“He’s a wonderful Tlingit musician who just makes this absolute magic,” she said. “The songs started out actually very sort of Western Christmas … they started out a little bit more like what you think of Christmas music. And the further you get into the staves, there are more trinkets and there’s more delicate language and there’s more delicate sounding drums and rattles. You’ll hear some rattles. And there is just such a magical thing to hear sort of the familiar noises and a new kind of medium.”

The performances also give subtle nods to the present day, particularly the use of video-conferencing that’s seen a rise in popularity since the COVID-19 pandemic began.

The production’s critically acclaimed stage director Madeline Sayet is Mohegan and probably best known for “Where We Belong,” a solo performance written in response to her time in the United Kingdom studying Shakespeare.

The largely Native cast and crew includes representatives from a variety of tribes and nations – Yupik, Inupiaq, Osage, Metis Cree and more.

“We’re all bringing our culture and our values into how we’re creating this in the first place,” Starbard said. “And yes, that’s reflected in the story itself as an Indigenous person who wrote it. But you see it in the acting and the choices that are made for the music.”

Starbard said that Perseverance is a leader in the number of Native shows it produces.

“Perseverance Theater has definitely been trying to bring in Native culture, Native people, Native talent more and more and since 2014, 2015,” Starbard said. “One of their primary goals was to actually reflect the community. And it does sort of get this reputation as a very Native-friendly theater because by-and-large, Western United States theater or really just Western theater is not very open or friendly to Native people.”

Starbard said the access to other theater artists and communities also creates opportunities to change the industry.

“I love exploring and indigenizing the process of theater. So you have this very westernized process of ‘here’s how you build the play.’ If you can go in there and say, as Indigenous people who’ve been doing performing arts for thousands and thousands of years on this land, how have we built plays, how we got these performing arts piece’s and you start to actually attack just how you even get to the sort of finished product of a play that people are seeing. It comes out very different. And that’s where. The perspective of someone like Maddie will bring in is we’re not going to do this like everybody else, although at this point was in theater, I don’t think there are any rules at all.”

In the time of coronavirus, Juneau-based Perseverance will be offering performances virtually.

Starbard said the theater industry largely shuttered nationwide to prevent the possibility of spreading COVID-19. The shutdown left a lot of theater artists and writers out of work, but it also sparked a boom in online productions.

“If you have a whole bunch of creative people in the whole industry, they immediately, without hesitation went into, OK, now what do we look like?

“Because we’re not going to stop creating. We’re not going to stop putting our art. And it’s been difficult for some people to sort of be in this very stressful pandemic era, but also be creating art.”

Starbard said going virtual opened up more opportunities to connect with other artists, as well as offering productions to remote villages.

“We need also keep working on the Zoom or working on whatever technology comes out of it, because the accessibility of what we’re doing right now is so much more than what we’ve been able to do before,” Starbard said. “But I can now say, welcome to ‘Christmas Carol.’ You’re going to be able to this whenever you want from wherever you are, literally anywhere in the world. And that’s exciting for me.”

Alaska Rep. Don Young has introduced legislation that would return the census deadline to Oct. 31.

Young introduced the bipartisan and bicameral legislation — 2020 Census Deadline Extensions Act, or H.R. 8250 — with Rep. Ruben Gallego (D-Arizona), Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii).

Young said in a news release that if census takers are unable to provide a thorough and accurate census count in Alaska, then “billions in federal funding will be left on the table over the next decade. We must extend the Census deadline.”

The release goes on to say, “Alaskans deserve to have their roads, schools, recreation areas, and other public services fully funded; our field staff need more time to complete this critical task.”

In early August, the Census Bureau announced it would move the census deadline up to the end of September — out of concerns about the coronavirus. But various advocacy and Indigenous groups decried the decision, saying it would lead to a drastic undercounting of people.

Then on Sept. 5, a federal judge in California issued an injunction ordering the Census Bureau to stop winding down its operations until a hearing on a preliminary injunction on Thursday, Sept. 17.

Two days after the judge’s decision, the Census Bureau began halting the layoffs of door-to-door census takers.

At a time where virtual platforms are becoming the norm, many Alaska Natives are entering a new era of content creation. Recently I sat down with Alice Qannik Glenn and Jenna Kunze to talk about their new Indigenous-centered project on climate change.

You may know Glenn from her podcast “Coffee & Quaq,” but she’s recently partnered with Kunze, who is a journalist by trade, to create an audio-and-print collaboration that investigates climate change on the North Slope.

“Jenna and I flew up to Utqiaġvik for a couple of weeks to interview community members about climate change and the adaptability and resilience of the Iñupiat in the face of climate change.”

“Alaska Natives on the Front Line” was funded by a grant from the Pulitzer Center. Kunze, who is not Alaska Native, reached out to Glenn to see whether she wanted to sign on.

At first Glenn was nervous about the prospect.

“It’s not some place on a map, it’s my hometown,” Glenn said. “I felt very particular about that. I kind of wrote back like, ‘first of all, this is what I’m concerned about,’ then if she wasn’t going to receive that in a way that I wanted, I was going to be like, ‘OK, moving on.’ But she was really gracious, and she was open to learning, so I felt so much more comfortable after that first interaction.”

Kunze’s written part of the project — an article titled “What Choice Do We Have?” — is an overview of the work the two accomplished.

“Alice’s accompanying piece will be the audio,” Kunze said. “We did eight interviews together, and then I did some additional interviews in my remaining time there. I think it will be a really good pair, because you can read the written piece and then you can listen to the audio. It’s a very interesting way to approach a journalistic piece, because you are seeing the bare bones.”

While doing preliminary research for the project, Kunze came across Elizabeth Arnold’s work, which examines the language mainstream media has used to talk about the Arctic over a five-year period.

Arnold found that most stories about climate change in the Arctic weren’t about Indigenous people at all, and if they were, people were often portrayed as disappearing or victims.

Kunze calls that kind of reporting frequent and damaging.

Glenn says “Alaska Natives on the Front Line” actively works against the vanishing Native stereotype by going directly to the community.

“I think it’s just irresponsible,” Glenn said. “It’s irresponsible to talk about people in that way and not think that it’s going to affect them. Jenna and I were just really excited to talk to residents, and to people who are involved or have opinions, because it is straight from the community.”

The project reframes discussions about climate change and places Indigenous voices from America’s northernmost city at the forefront.

“Yes, there are changes,” Glenn said. “Yes, it’s happening rapidly, but we’ve undergone change already. So this isn’t anything new to the Iñupiat. We’re going to be here. We’re going to be able to meet challenges head on. We are adaptable. And we are resilient.”

Alaska Native people have entered a new age and now have many outlets to share our contemporary voices. The collaboration between Glenn and Kunze is a good example of bringing voices from the Arctic forward.

“I just hope that people can understand and start to think about the people that are actually undergoing the change, rather than just think of it as some kind of phenomenon that’s happening in the world,” Glenn said. “It’s easy to be removed from something that you can’t see, or if you don’t know the people, but Jenna and I want to provide that human side of climate change.”

For information about “Alaska Natives on the Front Line” go to the Pulitzer Center’s website or coffeeandquaq.com.

The 2020 annual convention of the Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN) will go virtual out of safety concerns over coronavirus. The decision was announced Wednesday in a news release from AFN.

“It was a really tough decision — but the health and safety of our delegates, participants and attendees comes first,” AFN president Julie Kitka said in a statement. “The high risk factors of holding a large, indoor meeting, with lots of Elders and delegates coming in from across Alaska, far outweigh the benefits of gathering in person.”

According the news release, the virtual convention will be scheduled October 15th and 16th.

There will be no in-person portion this year, but the virtual convention will include live presentations and pre-recorded videos from Native leaders and state and federal officials.

Alaska House Speaker Bryce Edgmon will deliver the keynote address.

“Never has the need for responsive, transparent governance been more apparent than this year — with the COVID-19 global pandemic continuing to impact all Alaska communities.” Kitka wrote in the press release.

The theme for the 2020 convention is “Good Government, Alaskans Decide” — in a nod toward Census 2020 and the upcoming elections.

As 2020 Census efforts continue throughout the country, Alaska’s self-response rates lag well behind other states and territories. In fact, only Puerto Rico is keeping Alaska out of last place. And coronavirus could impact how census takers in rural Alaska fill that response gap.

More than 92 million households in the U.S. — about 62% — have already responded to the 2020 Census. But fewer than half of Alaska households have.

During a national July 28 teleconference, the U.S. Census Bureau shared updates about counting efforts among American Indian and Alaska Native communities. Donna Bach (Yup’ik) is the Tribal partnership specialist in Alaska for the U.S. Census Bureau.

“We’re continuing to work diligently to make sure that everyone in Indian Country is counted as well as provide the importance about the distribution of the power and federal funding that hinges on census participation, despite the situation with COVID.”

National organizations and agencies often use census data to distribute federal funding. Alaska Public Media reported in January that the state receives more than $3 billion annually from the federal government. That money funds services such as Medicaid, Medicare, SNAP benefits and school lunch programs.

Bach says the 2020 Census is still in the self-response phase. The next phase is the non-response follow-up phase. That’s what most people associate with the census, where census takers go door-to-door to make sure everyone gets counted.

“Census takers will be taking social distance protocols, including any of the state, local, and Tribal health and safety regulations,” said Alaina Capoeman (Quinault Nation), the Tribal partnership specialist for Washington state. “They have been issued PPE — which includes masks and hand sanitizer.”

She says each census taker will have a Census Bureau-provided cellphone to record data, as well as an ID badge and other identifiable markers.

But census partners and advocates like Donna Bach say they hope people self-respond, particularly amid the pandemic.

“During the non-response follow-up phase is where those remaining households will be invited once again to respond and to avoid essentially the knock on the door or a visit,” she said. “We’re highly encouraging and promoting a telephonic or internet response.”

Many parts of Alaska that have lower response rates – such as the North Slope, Interior and other rural areas — are also seeing an increase in coronavirus cases.

“This has also been a stresser for the field operations out of the area census office with current local mandates, or communities that have shut down or different levels of access protocols in anticipation of the non-response follow up,” Bach said. “There are challenges, but we are working together collaboratively with our area census office managers and census field staff to have the best up-to-date information so that we can mitigate as much as possible any sort of spread of COVID.”

Bach says she has been talking with boroughs, municipalities and Tribal government leaders to get up-to-date information about coronavirus from those communities. She says the Census Bureau also plans to hire as many people locally as they can, to limit potential spread.

Bach continues to hold out hope. In a later interview, she said the census is too important to Alaska to not be optimistic.

“I am a glasses half-full versus -empty type of person. I feel positive that the very basics of how to pave or shape the future is to take less than 10 minutes to do this very simple civic activity called the 2020 Census,” she said. “So much hinges on this in terms of the growing number of statistics … to track information that Alaska is going to need for the next 10 years.”

The Census Bureau will continue to work toward collecting complete field data until its October 31 deadline. For more information, go to 2020Census.gov.

A federal judge issued an injunction that prevents Alaska Native corporations from receiving part of a Tribal funding set-aside in the CARES Act.

The decision came Tuesday, July 7, 2020, as Tribal nations appeal a ruling in late June that said the Native corporations were eligible to receive the funding.

U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta had ruled against several Tribes in the Lower 48 and Alaska. They sued the Department of Treasury and Interior over the eligibility of Alaska Native corporations to receive a portion of about $8 billion.

The decision hinged on whether Alaska Native corporations could be considered Tribal governments in relation to the funding. Though he wrestled with his decision, Mehta ultimately ruled that they could.

The injunction Tuesday paves the way for Tribes to pursue an appeal in the case. But only gives them until July 14 to do so. After that, the injunction expires July 15.