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Poldine Carlo, an Athabascan elder from Nulato, was in her late nineties when she performed her Denali song in 2017 at a conference in Holy Cross on the Yukon River. In a raspy, aging voice, she did her best to belt out the song. The refrain, which she sang in her Koyukon dialect, was “Say Denali. Say Denali.”

Angela Gonzales remembers hearing the song when Carlo sang it for President Barack Obama during his visit to Alaska in 2015, the summer his administration changed the name of the nation’s tallest mountain from McKinley back to Denali.

“It just felt so good,” she says. “And it was healing.”

That year, Gonzales wrote about the joy she felt over the return of the ancient name in her blog, Athabascan Woman.

“It felt like Alaska Natives were given back something taken away from us,” she wrote. “People may think colonization is just something that you read about in textbooks. It is a very real thing when you see names like Mount McKinley take over our place.”

Then, earlier this month, President Donald Trump issued an executive order to once again rename the mountain as Mount McKinley.

“We will restore the name of a great president, William McKinley to Mount McKinley, where it should be and where it belongs,” he said at his inauguration.

Gonzales says she felt hurt and angry after Trump’s order, if not defiant.

“What I call it is not going to change. And a law or an executive order is not going to change my relationship to it,” she said. “But to see it go back – it’s disappointing. Because I feel like we’re going back in a direction that we don’t want to go.”

For Gonzales, the name Denali looms large in her own family history. Her maiden name is Yatlin, which means “runner” and refers to her family’s long history of running on foot to trade goods with other peoples.

“We were people who traded everywhere,” she said. “We have artifacts that are from other locations.”

Gonzales says, even today, the name Denali stirs so many emotions, mainly the feeling of living in a great land with “untold stories from our ancestors,” stories that speak to their relationship to the mountain, even how it determines the weather around the whole region.

She says there are also stories about the vast network of trails that weaved around a group of mountains.

There is Mount Foraker, which was originally Sultana, Denali’s woman, or wife. And there is Mount Hunter, which was Begguya, their child. Like Denali, Mount Foraker — Alaska’s second-tallest peak — was renamed after an Ohio politician, Sen. Joseph Foraker.

Elders like Wilson Justin are familiar with these mountains. He grew up in Nabesna, east of Denali, which was an important landmark for hunters who sometimes had to travel far and wide to find food. He says the original names for this family of mountains explains why they are regarded as relatives in his Ahtna Athabascan culture.

From his childhood, he remembers stories about how the trail system went all the way up to Siberia and Canada and all the way down the coast to California.

“It represents something that was a part of our medicine people’s trails from as far back as we know,” Justin said.

He says there really isn’t a word for “mountain” in his Ahtna dialect, Each one was called by a given name, and they were thought of as spiritual points of light — maybe because of how the ice and snow on their peaks sparkled in the sun.

“You didn’t want to refer to those places in kind of a low way, a dismissive way,” Justin said.

He says elders spoke of them with reverence.

“Northern Lights are like, in the old stories — not the newer stories, but the really old stories of Ahtna — are messengers,” Justin said. “And in places like Denali, being a place that messengers would like to stop and touch.”

Wilson says he was taught never to act if he were entitled to the sky. For his people, Denali exists beyond space and time and is a way to connect to the universe.

“When you’re in that place, that location, the mountain will speak to the sky for you,” he said. “A really fascinating way of Indigenous people to be able to express continuity, to connect to your past and future generations.”

Attempts to dismantle that continuity are already underway. The U.S. Interior Department has begun to take steps to designate Denali as Mount McKinley, and Google is changing the name on its maps.

Justin says it may be hard for Trump to understand the heart-and-mind connection his people have with Denali, but he says that no matter what comes of the president’s orders, it won’t change how he feels.

“To me, it’s never going to be anything else,” he said. “Taking Denali down is his way of saying we don’t count.”

Over $130 million in grants allocated to clean energy projects in rural Alaska are now frozen, following one of President Donald Trump’s executive orders. The projects – which include hydroelectric dams, wind turbines and solar energy systems – aim to lower energy costs in rural communities and bring them additional revenue to support crucial infrastructure.

Trump signed dozens of executive orders during his first day in office, including one that freezes funding from the federal Inflation Reduction Act and Bipartisan Infrastructure Law. A section of that order mandated that federal agencies pause the disbursement of funds appropriated through those acts.

That’s created uncertainty for many Alaska projects — including two large wind turbines slated to be built in Kotzebue. Those turbines, along with the community’s existing renewable energy assets, would allow the community to produce more than half of their energy from solar and wind, said Chad Nordlum, the energy project manager for the Native Village of Kotzebue. He said it’s unclear now if the funding freeze will affect the project’s timeline.

“The freeze that Trump has put on the Inflation Reduction Act has definitely caused a lot of concern for Kotzebue for the wind project,” Nordlum said. “It puts a lot of questions out there. Right now, there doesn’t seem to be much we can do on our end. We’re just waiting for clarity.”

How freeze affects projects in progress

The Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium has partnered with tribes across the state, including in Kotzebue, to receive the federal grants. In total, they’ve been awarded contracts for about $132 million, said Katya Karankevich, a project manager at ANTHC’s Department of Environmental Health and Engineering.

The contracts covered hydroelectric dams in Old Harbor and Chignik Bay; wind turbines in Kotzebue, Toksook Bay and Chevak; and solar energy systems in Ouzinkie, Brevig Mission, Elim, Koyuk, Savoonga and Teller. ANTHC also received about $32 million for their own grant program for solar, which would cover between nine and 12 additional communities.

And ANTHC has already started spending or obligating funds with contractors on 30% of the projects, Karankevich said. With the federal funding freeze, the consortium now cannot request reimbursement for the work already started, she said.

“We will have another $19 million obligated for local contractors to perform work in the next 90 days on these projects,” she said. “While this hold is an inconvenience to us, it’s a bigger burden for local businesses who want to get paid for work already completed under these contracts.”

Energy projects benefiting local economy

In addition to decreasing communities’ carbon footprints, the projects aim to support local economies.

Because energy from renewables is cheaper than transported diesel, the projects would help residents lower their bills – a welcome factor in places where fuel can cost up to $22 a gallon.

“Not being so dependent on the outside oil markets, producing our own electricity here in Kotzebue is a big benefit,” said Nordlum with the Kotzebue village. “I think it’s a big deal.”

Because the tribes would own the energy assets, they would also be able to sell power to local utilities and invest that revenue in local infrastructure.

“We’re trying to get all off-the-road-system communities on board with the idea to do renewable energy in a completely different way,” Karankevich said. “And that is to set up the communities themselves to sell power to themselves and to use the earnings for public benefit.”

Supporting clean water access

In Old Harbor on Kodiak Island, recent funds advanced a project that residents have been working on for decades: a hydroelectric dam that would power the whole community.

Cynthia Berns, a project manager for the Alutiiq Tribe of Old Harbor, said that the tribe and ANTHC restructured the project so that, after covering maintenance costs for the dam, profits from hydro energy would pay for residents’ utilities bills.

“It’ll pay for the annual water bill and half of an average residential electric bill, which will give continued access to clean water and electricity regardless of their ability to pay,” Berns said. “We’re really excited about this.”

Many rural Alaska villages lack reliable access to clean drinking water and sewer infrastructure — some still rely on honey buckets and bottled water. And when water and sewer systems are installed, maintaining them in Arctic and sub-Arctic climates is extremely costly for small communities. Karankevich said that’s why ANTHC wanted to find ways to use revenue from renewables to keep local infrastructure running.

“Now that tribe or city owns that renewable asset, and they’re selling power to their local utility,” she said. “Then that money, that kitty, now can be used for water and sewer costs to make sure that the water keeps flowing, the sewer keeps going exactly where it’s supposed to go and that any unforeseen expenses – or regular operation and management expenses – can be taken care of.”

Karankevich said all of the projects affected by the order have feasibility studies that showed them to be cost-effective options She said that despite the funding freeze, the agency plans to keep those projects moving forward

“We have deliverables to the federal government to build them for the benefit of rural Alaskans,” she said. “This federal freeze is a hindrance, but we owe it to Alaska Native people to continue our projects in all phases of design, permitting and construction.”

A series of remembrances for former U.S. President Jimmy Carter began in Georgia on Saturday, culminating on Thursday with a national day of mourning. Carter, who died on Dec. 29 the age of 100, was known in Southeast Alaska as Nahóowoo — a name he was given when the Deisheetaan of Angoon adopted him sometime in the late 1970s.

Matthew Fred of the Daisheetan gave Carter his Lingít name. It belonged to Billy Jones, who witnessed the bombardment of Angoon by the U.S. Navy in 1882. Jones was only 13, but his account eventually became the basis for an apology the Navy secretary made to the village last October, 142 years after the bombardment.

Rosita Worl, president of the Sealaska Heritage Institute, says the Navy’s formal apology had its roots in President Carter’s efforts to bond with the people of Angoon.

“Although he was not able to do anything about their apology,” Worl said, “he was the first president, actually, that listened to their story.”

Protecting subsistence

Angoon is on Admiralty Island, or Kootznoowoo. The island’s Lingít name means Fortress of the Bear, a sacred place with the highest concentration of brown bears in the world.

In 1978, Carter used his authority under the 1906 Antiquities Act, a novel legislative tool, to designate Admiralty Island and other wilderness in Alaska as national monuments.

More protections were added when the president signed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act into law in 1980. ANILCA also doubled the size of Alaska’s national parks and refuges, classified more than 50 million acres as wilderness and created 25 wild and scenic rivers.

Conservationists hailed the legislation as one of Carter’s greatest achievements, while proponents of resource development said it locked up too much land.

Worl says Alaska Natives were caught in the middle. They wanted to develop their land but also protect it for subsistence. She says developers and conservationists both believed they had primacy over Alaska Natives, despite their long history of stewardship and ties to the land.

She said neither group understood the Lingít concept of Haa Aaní, which translates into “Our Land” but also incorporates core cultural values of reverence for the land, as well as the need to utilize it.

Worl says that’s a common theme in Alaska Native cultures that Carter appeared to understand, even though he seemed firmly planted in the conservationist’s camp.

“I believe that President Carter gained a deep appreciation and understanding of Lingít culture when he met with the Angoon Lingít traditional leaders,” Worl said. “I believe this meeting and ceremony influenced President Carter’s actions.”

The leaders, she says, were dressed in their finest regalia with crests of animals, birds and fish, which showed their close relationship to the environment and dependence on the land — a cultural experience for Carter that may have helped him recognize the need for ANILCA to address subsistence hunting and fishing rights.

“It’s not perfect,” Worl said, “but without it, we wouldn’t have had the protections we had.”

Worl says the subsistence policies outlined in ANILCA continue to be debated and litigated today, so it’s important for Alaska Natives to find new ways to protect their subsistence lifestyle.

“You have to work for your people”

Worl believes Carter’s most important legacy is the example he set as a leader, including his decades of service after his term as president.

“He cared for humanity. And he proved it by doing the work himself,” Worl said. “That’s a trait we admire.”

Worl said Carter saw leadership through the eyes of a servant, and to the Lingít, he exemplified their values.

“When a person becomes a clan leader down here, they go through a ceremony,” Worl said. “You become a leader. And then they’ll say, now you’re a worker for your people. You have to work for your people.”

Worl said Garfield George of the Deisheetaan will represent the Lingít at President Carter’s memorial service in Washington D.C. George also worked with the Navy on their apology to Angoon.

A group of homeowners in Birchwood have filed a lawsuit against the Native Village of Eklutna over a small-scale casino planned near Anchorage. The tribal gaming hall would be built on about eight acres of land, a few miles off the Birchwood exit on the Glenn Highway.

Sharon Avery, the acting head of the federal National Indian Gaming Commission, was also named in the lawsuit. Earlier this year, Avery signed off on the tribe’s plans to build the project on a Native allotment leased from the Ondola family.

“There’s a lot of horses and dog mushing, and that kind of activity out here,” said Debbie Ossiander, who lives about a mile from the site.

Ossiander is co-chair of the Birchwood Community Council and supports the lawsuit. She says the council worries that the Eklutna Tribe’s project will destroy the rural character of the area.

“People are fearful of what kind of a traffic impact that would engender. It would be a draw certainly,” Ossiander said. “People would drive from Anchorage and all over the valley to come to this locale.”

Ossiander says there are some other big unknowns, like the impact of drainage from the casino’s parking lot into nearby Peter’s Creek, a salmon spawning stream. Ossiander says she’s also frustrated about the lack of information about the project.

The lawsuit was filed on behalf of eight people who live in the Birchwood Spur Road neighborhood, next to the proposed gaming hall. They are represented by attorney Don Mitchell, a longtime opponent of tribes in Alaska.

Mitchell would not comment for this story, but his lawsuit questions Eklutna’s tribal status as well as the existence of tribes in Alaska.

Aaron Leggett, the president of the Native Village of Eklutna, said in a statement that the litigation is disappointing.

He said Mitchell’s claim that there are no tribes in Alaska has repeatedly been rejected by the courts.

As for the complaints from neighboring landowners about the potential impacts on the Birchwood community, Leggett said the public will have a chance to comment on the project during a federal environmental review.

The land in question is under federal control on a Native allotment awarded to Olga Ondola in 1963. It’s also within the Eklutna Tribe’s traditional territory.

In 2016, the Eklutna Tribe asked the U.S. Department of Interior to make the property eligible for gaming under the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. It also sought approval of the Tribe’s lease of the land from the Ondola family, but in 2018, the Department issued a decision against the Tribe and concluded that the property did not constitute “Indian lands.”

That decision was reversed earlier this year following a new interpretation of the law from Bob Anderson, the solicitor of the U.S. Interior Department.

Anderson, the agency’s chief legal officer, ruled that the Eklutna tribe has jurisdiction over the Ondola Native Allotment, which opened the door for the tribe to win approval from the National Indian Gaming Commission in July. The Bureau of Indian Affairs has not yet issued the final permit, pending an environmental assessment.

The lawsuit against the Eklutna Tribe cites a long legal history, going back to 1884. It cites past decisions from Congress and previous Interior Departments against tribes in Alaska.

Tribal proponents say the courts have long put those claims to rest. They point to a Federal Register which lists 574 tribes and Alaska Native entities, including the Native Village of Eklutna.

Tribal leaders like Richard Peterson say the lawsuit’s claims about the lack of tribal status in Alaska are ridiculous. Peterson is president of the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, the largest tribe in the state.

“When you attack tribes, you are attacking Alaska,” said Peterson, who called the lawsuit short-sighted.

He believes the community will benefit in the long run from the gaming hall, based on the Eklutna Tribe’s track record for environmental stewardship and its clean-up of abandoned military sites and other projects.

“They’re doing wonderful things for their community,” he said. “This has implications on all tribes. All 229 should get behind Eklutna,” Peterson said.

The Eklutna Tribe may face opposition from another quarter. Gov. Mike Dunleavy recently put out a list of priorities in preparation for the incoming Trump administration. One of those calls for reversing Anderson’s recent decision to greenlight the Eklutna Tribe’s proposed gaming hall.

Opponents of the project say Native allotments are not subject to state and local taxes and worry that they’ll have to shoulder the burden for paying for the potential impacts of the gaming hall, such as the need for increased public safety services and road upgrades. But supporters of the project say the Tribe could be an ally in bringing more services and road improvements to the area.

The Eklutna Tribe has said there will be two phases of the project, which will be called the Chin’an Gaming Hall. Chin’an means “thank you” in the Dena’ina Athabascan language.

On its website, the Tribe says it plans to open as a modest 50,000 square foot facility on about six acres of land. It would have no card or table games and but will start out with 350 to 550 electronic gaming machines and expand to 700. There would also be a full-service restaurant with plans to eventually apply for a liquor license.

Marnell Companies, a Las Vegas based firm run by the Marnell family, will design, develop and manage the gaming hall.

Supporters of the project say it will fit in with existing development, which includes an airport, railroad operations, a convenience store, a bar and a small wood panel manufacturing plant operated by Spenard Builders Supply.

The Tribe says it’ll use revenues from the gaming hall for scholarships, housing, healthcare, and cultural programs.

This story has been corrected. The public will have a chance to comment on the project during a federal environmental review.

President Joe Biden did what no president has ever done last Friday. He apologized for the harm done to generations of Native American children, who were taken from their homes and forced to attend federal boarding schools.

From 1878 to almost a hundred years later, Alaska had more than a hundred federally funded schools for Native children – a time in which they were punished for speaking their language, as well as physically and sexually abused.

President Biden chose the Gila Reservation near Phoenix to make his apology. He said he was glad to hear the voices of young people singing traditional songs at the start of the ceremony — voices that boarding schools had once silenced.

“I formally apologize, as President of the United States of America, for what we did,” Biden said. “I formally apologize.”

The president told the gathering that his apology was among the most consequential things he’d ever done in his whole career as President of the United States.

“It’s an honor, a genuine honor, to be in this special place, on this special day,” Biden said.

“Quite frankly, there’s no excuse that this apology took fifty years to make. The pain it causes will always be a significant mark of shame, a blot on American history. For too long, this all happened with virtually no public attention, not written about in our history books, not taught in our schools.”

Jim LaBelle sat among the boarding school survivors in the crowd. LaBelle is an Alaska Native, and a member of the National Native Boarding School Healing Coalition. He says, before the president gave his apology, he and his Interior Secretary, Deb Haaland, together hugged Jim Labelle and his wife.

“It’s almost indescribable, how to express that feeling of acknowledgement. It was just a very spiritual moment,” Labelle said. “He just understood why we were there. “

LaBelle says the president’s apology was a powerful gesture, one that stirred memories of those who never recovered from boarding school trauma and died young, from addiction and suicide.

“When I heard the apology today,” he said, “I was thinking of them, hoping their spirits will feel the words and feelings.”

During his speech, President Biden mentioned Rosita Worl, who he recently awarded the National Medal of Arts for the Humanities in a White House ceremony. He talked about how she was taken from her family at the age of six and sent to a boarding school. He called her story one of truth and healing. The president said, as a leading anthropologist, she helped to usher in an era of understanding.

Benjamin Jacuk watched the livestream of the president’s apology from his office at the Alaska Native Heritage Center in Anchorage, where he’s the head researcher for Indigenous history.

Across from his desk, you’ll find a wall covered with pieces of string connected to photographs and sticky notes, almost like what you see in TV detective homicide units.

Jacuk says the spider web of strings is, in a way, the map of a national crime scene.

“That’s exactly what we’re doing at this point, mapping out the genocide of not only Alaska Native peoples, but all, really, at the end of the day, all Indigenous peoples.”

Jacuk is currently looking at the connections between boarding schools and the ideas that flowed between them. Jacuk says it’s important to understand what shaped some of the cruel, militaristic policies that were designed to erase the children’s Native identity. Some of them, he says, stem from schools in Alaska.

Jacuk calls the president’s unprecedented apology “a big deal” but still falls short of what’s needed.

“While an apology is welcome and amazing, the work should never end right here, because this is just the beginning.”

Jacuk says without truth there can be no healing.  And without action, there is no meaningful apology.

The Alaska Federation of Natives had praise for President Biden’s apology but called for tangible steps towards healing and justice

“We appreciate President Biden’s acknowledgment of the pain and trauma caused by the boarding school policies,” said AFN President Ben Mallott in a statement. “This apology is an important step forward, but it must be accompanied by meaningful actions addressing these historical injustices’ ongoing impacts.”

AFN has called for:

• A comprehensive inquiry into the Indian boarding school era
• Revitalizing the Native languages and cultures that boarding schools nearly destroyed.
• Bringing home the remains of Alaska Native children who died at boarding schools, so they can be laid to rest with their families and in their communities.

Earlier this month at AFN’s convention, delegates passed a resolution in support of Senate and House bills that would establish a Truth and Healing Commission on Federal Indian Boarding School Policies Act. The legislation also addresses repatriation of children’s graves.

When this year’s Alaska Federation of Natives Convention gets underway in Anchorage this week, you’ll see pictures of children everywhere at the Dena’ina Center. From posters on the wall to signs at the entrance of the main convention hall, to the cover of the program guide, you’ll see lots of round, sweet faces smiling at you

Proud parents from across the state submitted these snapshots to AFN’s annual subsistence photo contest, which showcases the wide variety of wild foods that are gathered year-round.

The contest is not so much a competition as a celebration of the Alaska Native subsistence lifestyle.

This year’s AFN conference coordinator, Nikki Stoops, says every photo is sure to bring a smile.

“We had over a hundred entries,” Stoops said. “They were all phenomenal pictures that captured our convention theme.”

Stoops says the photos are meant to tug at the heart strings, to bring about a serious reflection on the status of Alaska Native children, who struggle at home, at school and in the community for a variety of reasons. Some of those include historical and intergenerational trauma, the lack of health and social services to address the high rates of suicide and mental health problems, as well as inequities in education funding, especially for rural schools.

The theme is inspired in part by the late Dr. Walter Soboleff, a Lingít leader who championed education.

A national commission named in memory of Soboleff and another Great Plains tribal leader, Alyce Spotted Bear, produced “The Way Forward Report.” Its recommendations which will be taken up at the convention.

Before Soboleff died at the age of 102, he often encouraged young people to “take care of the older person you are going to become.” He told them their own Native culture could help them do that.

The photos are intended to inspire convention-goers to think about this message. The challenge for the judges — after hours of sifting through pictures of kids picking berries and catching fish — was to decide which one best spoke to that progression from childhood to elderhood. They finally settled on four-year-old Austin Redfox, who sat on a tree stump with his hands firmly planted on his knees, as he watched his parents build a smokehouse for their salmon.

“He looked like a little old man, a little grandpa, sitting there watching the smokehouse,” Stoops said. “It just made us all so happy, just emulating probably what he sees in his hometown,” which happens to be Emmonak on the Lower Yukon River.

Austin’s mother, Lila Redfox, says her son constantly asks to help the family put dinner on the table. She listed off some of the foods her son has helped to gather. “Fish, whale, seal, moose, birds,” says Redfox, who appreciates Austin’s help, kneading the dough for her home-baked bread.

Although Yup’ik children are taught to learn through observation, Redfox was surprised that her son, at the age of one, had seen enough and was ready to pitch in.

“I was tanning a sealskin hide,” she said, “and he came up to me and grabbed the tanning tool — and tried to scrape the seal skin hide.”

Redfox says it’s important to teach children early about the sacred role subsistence plays in Native culture. She says she’s discovered that with some support and encouragement from the family, it becomes second nature for children.

“It makes me and my husband proud,” she said. “It makes us feel like we’re raising them right, doing a great job as a parent.”

For her winning photo, Redfox received two roundtrip Alaska Airlines tickets. She says she’ll use one of them to bring her son, Austin,

to the Alaska Federation of Natives convention this week.

She wonders what his reaction will be when he sees his face all over the place.

And there will be many others to see. Each, like Austin’s, tells a story.

The two other top finishers are from the Lower Yukon River. Jacklyn Andrews, also from Emmonak, won second place for her photo of her six-year-old daughter, Halle, cutting fish.

“All summer I was cutting fish to put away for the winter,” Andrews said. “Every time I’d be cutting fish, she’d ask to help. But I didn’t let her.”

Finally, Andrews gave in.

“She was crying her lungs out to cut fish,” she said. “She got so happy when I told her to start cutting. She said, ‘Mom, I’m so busy.’”

Third place went to Tanya Chikigak from Alakanuk. Her photo shows her two-year-old daughter, Christine, squinting her eyes, almost like a little elder, as she proudly presented her berries to her mother.

Chikigak says the picture was taken in July, after a two-hour boat ride to a spot where you can find lots of cloud berries.

“It was her very first, time picking berries, and those were her very first berries,” Chikigak said. “When we were done picking, she kept asking to pick more.”