KUAC - Fairbanks

A University of Alaska Fairbanks student is out on bail after ripping almost 60 images off the walls of a university art gallery and eating some of them earlier this month.

The incident has since gone viral — prompting countless social media posts and even reaching national outlets. Lizzy Hahn, an undergraduate journalism student at UAF, broke the story in The Sun Star, the school’s student-run newspaper.

She said the incident is shaping culture and policy around AI on campus.

This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Lizzy Hahn: A student was tearing Polaroids off of an exhibit in the UAF Art Gallery and putting them in his mouth, chewing them, swallowing some bits, but spitting some bits out. This was a protest against the use of AI art, since this exhibit was made in collaboration between the artist, Nick Dwyer, and AI — like, he used ChatGPT to help him make it.

Shelby Herbert: Whoa. Tell me what happened to the protester.

LH: His name is Graham Granger. He was arrested by the UAF police and charged with criminal mischief in the fifth degree, and he was taken to the Fairbanks Correctional Center, where he was for about six or seven hours, I believe. So, he’s out on bail.

SH: That was quite a splashy headline, and that story has really sprouted wings. I’ve had folks texting me from the East Coast about it. How does it feel to see your work get so much exposure?

LH: It’s really insane to me. I am a young journalist here at UAF. I’m a senior graduating soon, so like this is my first story to go — some people have said that it’s going viral. It has definitely been picked up by multiple, multiple, multiple news sources. Art News for one, Brut America for another.

SH: I think I just saw it in the New York Post?

LH: Yeah. Just so many media sources that have taken the information and my images and spread them to their corners of the world.

SH: Tell me about where you were when you found out this was going down.

LH: That’s actually kind of a funny story. I’m in a pottery class, and it’s in the fine arts building. And as I was walking in, I noticed that there was a police car outside of the building. So, I walk into class, and then my editor, Colin, starts texting our whole staff’s Slack. And he’s like, “Hey, is anyone in the arts building? There’s a student protesting in the gallery.”

So I asked my pottery teacher, like, “Hey, do you know anything about this?” And she’s like, “Yeah, I do.” So we walk into the gallery together, and all we see is just these torn up, chewed up bits of Polaroids. The artist was there, Nick Dwyer, and he was like, “Yeah, someone came and he started chewing up my work.”

SH: And how does the artist feel about all of this?

LH: He was upset, and rightfully so. This was his MFA exhibit. It’s hard to see your art destroyed like this. He had put a lot of time and effort into this. He wanted to press charges, and he had begun to press charges. But then the next day, things had kind of cooled down, he had talked to some of the art professors, and had realized that pressing charges maybe wouldn’t be the best idea.

SH: Lizzy, you’re a journalism student and a student-reporter, but you also have a foot in the art world — you’re an art minor. Can you tell me about how AI content and tools are being received on campus, especially in the humanities?

LH: Yeah, so every teacher has an AI policy. This has been a fairly new development to the syllabi that we are getting. It’s gone from teachers saying, “You’re not allowed to use AI, don’t use AI.” But in the past year, there’s been kind of a shift towards like, yes, you can use AI, but cite it.

Then also, in the art community, we’re starting to see a little more use of AI, and that has really been because of Nick. Like, Nick is really spearheading the use of AI. Art and AI is kind of an interesting mashup because you don’t really think of them going together, but Nick has really used AI in his pottery and now in this AI art exhibit.

I don’t know that many students personally, besides Nick, who are using AI art, but I think that in the future, it totally could change and the use of AI could become more common.

SH: You’re working on part two of the story. Can you give us a little tease about what comes next?

LH: Yeah, I’m kind of looking into what is happening here at UAF, because since this protest has occurred, there has been a lot of uprise. Our student government here on campus has actually proposed a resolution to ban AI art in the department. But at the same time, the art department is creating a statement about their AI policies. So, unsure where that will go, but bright futures ahead!

About one in 500 Alaskans died of COVID-19 between 2020 and 2023. That’s according to an epidemiology bulletin the Alaska Department of Health released Dec. 9, which says there were substantial racial disparities in rates of COVID-19 hospitalization and mortality in the state.

Early in the pandemic, for instance, age-adjusted mortality rates in the state were about 3.6 times higher for Asian and Pacific Islander people compared to white people, according to the bulletin. The disparity during that period – from June 2020 to January 2021 – was greatest among American Indian and Alaska Native people, whose age-adjusted mortality rate was 5.5 times higher than that of white people.

“It matters because … at the end of the day, what we would like to get to is that there are no disparities based on race for the various disease processes and vulnerabilities that people may have,” said Jacoline Bergstrom, the executive director of health services for Tanana Chiefs Conference (TCC), a nonprofit tribal organization based in Fairbanks that aims to advance the health and social service needs of its 42 members, 37 of which are federally-recognized tribes.

Bergstrom read the state bulletin and said the results didn’t come as a surprise, since officials were tracking data during the pandemic. Other studies have also observed similar disparities nationally. But she said the report’s comprehensive look back at COVID-19 in Alaska makes it a useful resource.

“Because when we were in it, we were in it, right? And we were tracking real-time,” Bergstrom said.

The 33-page document splits the pandemic into seven distinct eras and reviews multiple topics, including the disparities, but also the spread of the virus, the state’s response, the efficacy of vaccines and gaps in pandemic preparedness.

The magnitude of the racial disparities for hospitalization and mortality rates in Alaska fluctuated in the different phases of COVID-19 analyzed in the bulletin. But it says that the disproportionate impacts “continued for the entirety of the pandemic in Alaska,” and concluded by saying more research is needed to grasp the underlying social and structural issues.

Bergstrom also said the causes behind the disparities are numerous and complex, but she said limited access to running water in some parts of Alaska is one example. That’s because it impacts people’s ability to take preventative measures, like hand-washing, she said.

According to the Alaska Division of Water, more than 3,300 homes in Alaska don’t have modern plumbing, and a study during the pandemic linked limited water resources with increased risk for COVID-19 in Alaska villages. Bergstrom said the new report offers more evidence that improving those resources would be a boon to public health.

“Just seeing this data … it’s another really important factor where we can show – and say, ‘Hey, we need to get water and sanitation to our rural communities,’ because we know, we’ve seen some of the impacts during the COVID-19 pandemic,” she said.

Through Megan Darrow, a state department of health spokesperson, the state section of epidemiology declined an interview request about the bulletin, saying emailed questions would be routed to the appropriate “subject matter experts.”

In a written response to questions, health officials wrote that the disparities in Alaska COVID-19 amplified pre-existing inequities, and that contributing factors likely include housing conditions, limited access to timely or speciality healthcare, and higher prevalence of underlying medical conditions associated with severe COVID-19.

The response also said that “[r]educing disparities in a future pandemic will require both long-term structural investments and strengthened public health systems,” including culturally grounded outreach, expanded access to care, modernized disease surveillance systems, as well as a clinical a public health workforce “capable of sustaining prolonged, high-intensity responses.”

Fairbanks-based Alaska Native filmmakers from Deenaadàį’ Productions are bringing an award-winning 1993 book to the screen for the first time.

“Two Old Women” is an adaptation of Velma Wallis’ novel of the same name – and in the new film, the story is told entirely in Gwich’in. It premiered in Hawai’i last month, with homecoming showings scheduled in Alaska in December.

Wallis’s 1993 book is based on an Athabascan legend and takes place in a time before colonization. The story follows a pair of elderly women, Ch’idzigyaak and Sa’, who are left behind by their tribe, which faces starvation amid a harsh winter and shortage of food. The main characters then battle against the elements, relying on their ancestral knowledge and each other to survive in Alaska’s wilderness.

Filmmaker Princess Johnson remembers when she first read the book as a teenager, and she said adapting it for the screen is something she’s been wanting to do for more than 20 years.

“I felt that, when I initially read it, I could see it. You know? I could visualize it,” she said. “And, at that time, I was still very early in my filmmaking career and my filmmaking journey.”

In the years since then, Johnson has worked as a creative producer on the PBS Kids series “Molly of Denali” and produced six episodes of the latest season of HBO’s “True Detective.” Now, she’s added to her resume writing, directing and producing the 14-minute short for “Two Old Women,” a proof-of-concept for what she hopes to develop into a feature film.

In the screen adaptation, Ch’idzigyaak and Sa’ speak to each other in Gwich’in. In fact, the film is entirely in the Athabascan language, which is considered severely endangered.

Johnson said she got some pushback early on from production companies and others who thought the language piece would be a hard sell, but she said that part was non-negotiable.

“There’s just such a richness and a nuance. I think we would actually lose a lot if it was in English. It wouldn’t be as believable or, like, pull us into that authenticity of a pre-contact piece,” she said.

Gwich’in has about 300 speakers in Alaska, according to the Alaska Native Language Center, and 205 in Canada, per the country’s most recent census data, from 2021.

Taa’aii Peter, a producer on the project who also helped with the translation, is an advocate of Indigenous knowledges, languages and rights. He said experiencing Gwich’in on the big screen can be a source of pride, a way to uplift the language and even an educational tool.

“Art is such a powerful medium of communication. It’s inspirational, can be life changing and transformational for people,” said Peter, who also has a background in film production and previously served as the vice chancellor of rural, community and Native education at the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Peter said the end product is just one part of what can give art that power. Behind the end product are the people – and the process – and he said the filmmakers brought together Gwich’in speakers and culture bearers so that, together, they could figure out how to best tell “Two Old Women” in a language that carried the story for thousands of years.

He said that decision “just makes complete sense.”

“And then it’s also this form of helping to make this contribution to advancing the important focus on language and language work that’s happening within our community and within a lot of other Indigenous communities,” Peter said.

The short film was shot in three days at Borealis Basecamp, north of Fairbanks, and at Gather, which is a social space downtown. But it’s been in the making for about five years. The filmmakers say, during that time, they used the project to build community in other ways, too, like running hide-tanning workshops where people could learn traditional practices while making clothing that appears in the film.

Like Peter, Johnson said the workshops, contributions and other inputs are just as important as what winds up on the screen.

“To me, like, in its best form, filmmaking can be a form of healing. It can be a form of medicine,” she said.

The film stars Margaret Henry John and Brenda K. Newman as Sa’ and Ch’idzigyaak, with Chief Galen Gilbert of Vashraii K’oo, Alaska, appearing as Chief Dajalti’. The 14-minute short will be screened in Fairbanks as part of an event at Morris Thompson Cultural and Visitors Center on Dec. 5, which starts at 5 p.m. It’ll also be shown at the Anchorage International Film Festival on Dec. 13 at 3 p.m.

It was ten below in Fairbanks on Tuesday night. Undeterred, a crowd of people flocked to a popular overlook at the University of Alaska Fairbanks campus to watch for the aurora.

Fatin Pasha stood outside his car shivering, with a fur trapper hat pulled down over his ears. He said he’d just moved to Fairbanks from Missouri, and the lights were part of what brought him here.

But in the early hours of the night, Pasha said he could only see the faintest blush of color in the skies.

“It’s just a tad reddish,” he said. “Not a whole lot, yet. I’ve seen some beautiful pictures, though. So, I’m hanging around in this negative weather, hoping to catch a glimpse.”

At first, it was hard to tell if the faint glow was the aurora, or just a trick of the city lights, the exhaust from our cars, or the fog of our breath. But about a half hour later, the pink haze deepened into scarlet, and pillars of light danced across the sky.

Those same lights were visible all over the country — as far south as the Florida panhandle.

The light show is part of what UAF scientists are calling an unusual series of x-class solar flares that started on Monday, sending out an enormous plasma cloud called a coronal mass ejection, or CME.

The event produced one unsettlingly named “cannibal” ejection, so named because it caught up to and merged with other clouds of plasma.

These x-class flares are the most intense ones — and potentially the most destructive. According to the National Oceanic Atmospheric Administration, they can disrupt satellite communications, GPS systems, power grids, and even trigger radio blackouts.

Mark Conde, a space physicist at UAF, said this three-fold hit is one of the most significant solar events he’s observed in his career. The third wave hit at around 11 a.m. on Tuesday, during Conde’s interview with KUAC. He said it disrupted the monitoring systems he was looking at and briefly prevented him from sharing data.

Conde said a smaller storm than this knocked out about 40 SpaceX satellites in February of 2022.

“They were unlucky,” Conde said. “They put them in this low altitude orbit first. And they happened to experience a storm right when the satellites were most vulnerable.”

The predicted speed of the third coronal mass ejection in the series was the highest he’d ever seen: about 870 miles per second. Conde said that although the best auroras were forecast for Tuesday and Wednesday, the lights could continue to shine for the next few days.

“We might get another one or two of these before the solar cycle calms down,” he said. “Then we have to wait another 11 years to get the next one. So the event we’re experiencing right now is certainly not an everyday event by any stretch of the imagination.”

On a sunny afternoon in early August, Atcharee Buntow was running an errand for her mom’s Thai restaurant, topping off their supply of oyster sauce. But when an unmarked vehicle pulled her over on her way home, it became one of the worst days of her life.

A U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agent approached her car, and Buntow started taking a video of the encounter on her phone while frantically trying to text her family.

Buntow says she didn’t know what was happening until after the agent put her in handcuffs.

“They did not identify themselves until they had me in custody,” she said in an interview after her release.

Buntow said she was told that she was being detained for overstaying her visa and then taken to a holding facility in Tacoma, Washington. She said she was locked in a dorm with about 60 other women, where it was hard to sleep and meals didn’t come on time.

“Some nights, we didn’t get our dinner till 10:30 p.m., or 11,” she said. “The latest night I ever got dinner was at 2:30 a.m., so I just starved that night.”

She was released on bail about two months later, on Oct. 2.

Buntow, who turns 43 this week, was born in Thailand but has lived in the United States since she was 11. She said she wasn’t aware that there had been any issue with her immigration status, especially after she got married to her first husband, an American citizen.

She’s now married to a different American citizen and is the mother of six American children — four adults and two younger kids. She said the separation was hardest for them.

“My 12-year-old, he was in and out of the hospital for asthma attacks,” Buntow said. “Now that I’m back, he is fine.”

She also has a two-year-old son who relatives say would cry every night she was gone. 

Buntow stayed in touch with family with a tablet she shared with dozens of other women in the detention center. She said those brief calls were one of her only sources of comfort behind bars.

“I was depressed,” Buntow said. “You know, what are they going to do for Thanksgiving? I cook every year. Mac and cheese, sweet potato pie and the green bean casserole. The kids love that.”

Buntow said she feels like her arrest was pretty random. But she’s been convicted of a few nonviolent misdemeanors in Fairbanks over the last couple decades, as well as a felony for fraudulently applying for the Alaska Permanent Fund dividend, according to court records.

She pleaded guilty to falsely claiming U.S. citizenship on her PFD application in 2014. Buntow said that was a mistake she made while she was filling out the PFD paperwork for her children. Now, she’s trying to get the conviction vacated so she can stay in Alaska with her family.

Over the last couple months, Buntow’s friends and neighbors, Fairbanks officials, and state legislators advocated for her release. Fairbanksans held a protest in her honor, and her family was able to crowdfund over $20,000 for her bail.

Buntow said the fundraiser remains active to help cover her legal fees while she tries to secure a green card.

Margaret Stock, an Anchorage-based attorney who is recognized for her expertise in immigration law, said she’s seen many people in Alaska face similar situations this year. And that while the Trump administration insists ICE agents are only picking up the worst of the worst, she sees a lot of collateral damage.

“What I’m seeing are a lot of people being picked up who don’t have a criminal record,” Stock said. “Or it’s something really minor, like they had an encounter with the police, but no charges were filed. In some cases, they’re picking up U.S. citizens.”

Stock said she’s even working with an Alaska military veteran to fight deportation proceedings. She said the majority of people she sees ICE detaining are eligible for a green card, and that she believes ICE is putting pressure on them to leave the country by putting them in detention centers.

But those proceedings can take years. And Stock said legal resources are stretched thin, especially in Alaska.

“It’s pretty hard to find help,” she said. “I mean, there are a few private lawyers, but we’re strapped thin. Right now, the immigration judges have more than 4,000 cases per judge. Getting a hearing with the judge can take a really long time, and you have to comply with a lot of technical rules, so it’s really difficult if you don’t have an attorney.”

That’s the route Buntow is trying to take. Buntow said she’s cautiously hopeful she won’t be deported to Thailand, which doesn’t feel like home anymore.

“I don’t know anything over there,” she said. “I’ve been living here all my life. Where would I live? Where would I go? What will I do without my kids, my husband? I’m happy that I’m back, I’m just scared of what’s going to happen next.”

Her husband, an American citizen who has never left the country before, is preparing to start his life over with her abroad if their worst fears come to pass.

Buntow remains grateful for the time she has with her family and the chance to celebrate her birthday and the holidays together. But her thoughts remain with the other mothers she befriended in the Tacoma detention center.

Buntow is still in touch with a fellow detainee named Paula, an immigrant from the Philippines who was born in Cambodia.

“I just heard Paula got sent to Louisiana, which is worse than Tacoma,” Buntow said. “She has eight children. She’s been in there for 18 months, and her immigration case is over. She was trying to appeal it, and they denied her appeal. I really feel very bad for her. Like, I cried when she told me her story.”

ICE did not respond to interview requests before press time.

As the race to mine antimony is gaining traction in Alaska, so is the rush for the federal government’s financial backing.

Now, the Trump administration is injecting millions of dollars into an Australian company’s project about 100 miles northwest of Anchorage.

Nova Minerals isn’t the only antimony interest in Alaska hoping for investment from the feds, but this week, the Pentagon awarded a grant worth more than $43 million to the Alaska subsidiary of Nova, Alaska Range Resources. The money is intended to turn the company’s Estelle Project, located in the Mat-Su Borough, into a hub for producing munitions materials.

Nova CEO Christopher Gerteisen said the project is on a two-year schedule, and that he doesn’t anticipate that the ongoing government shutdown will affect the funding.

“And so what this grant is for is to further define our resource out there, and then to mine the material, and then … process the material, to produce the munitions-grade ‘antimony trisulfide,’ they call it,” he said in a short interview.

Antimony, which is often associated with gold deposits, has a number of possible applications, including flame retardants, solar panels, semiconductors and ammunition. The U.S. government considers it a critical mineral.

Antimony was mined in Alaska off and on between 1905 and 1986, typically in response to wartime needs or higher prices. The revived interest comes amid a push from the federal government to boost mineral production and China’s ban on antimony exports to the U.S. China has been the United States’ biggest supplier of the mineral.

The award to Nova Minerals comes through Title III of the Defense Production Act, which allows the President to approve aid for businesses that buttress productive capacity for national defense purposes. That’s a lever the Biden administration also pulled to bolster critical mineral production and reduce reliance on foreign supply chains.

Gerteisen said the award will fund what he calls a pilot phase. He said Nova hopes to later build a refinery at Point MacKenzie in Southcentral to produce more than munitions with Alaska’s antimony.

“This grant is so important for Alaska because the race is on. Other states have some antimony discoveries, and this and that,” he said. “And the race is really on as to … where is the antimony refining hub is going to be for the United States.”

Other companies with antimony projects in Alaska may have different models, goals, and stages than Nova. But, on top of the mineral they want to mine, the companies share at least one other thing in common: They’re also looking to tap the Trump administration for funds.

Dallas-based U.S. Antimony plans to recover the mineral from discarded rock waste at historic mining sites in Alaska and truck the ore down to its smelter in Montana. The company began its first small-scale antimony reclamation in Alaska in early September at the Mohawk Mine near Ester.

And last week, U.S. Antimony inked a $245 million contract with the Defense Logistics Agency to supply antimony ingots to the Defense Department’s store of critical minerals.

In response to a question about U.S. Antimony’s efforts to secure federal funding, Vice President of Investor Relations Jonathan Miller sent KUAC a link to a September investor’s conference.

During the conference, Miller said the company has been working with Pentagon officials throughout the year.

“At the DoD’s request, we put together scope papers and white papers for a grant, essentially outlining what would be needed for us to expand our operations and our claims,” he said at the time.

Miller said in the presentation that the company will likely announce a federal award of just under $30 million in the near future. That was before the government shutdown began, however, and it wasn’t immediately clear how, or if, that timeline might be affected. Miller also did not say whether the money would be directed toward the company’s Alaska operations during the conference.

In an email Wednesday, Miller congratulated Nova on their award, and suggested companies should approach the endeavor collaboratively.

“We believe it’s critical to build bridges with Nova and with all miners in Alaska who are producing, or will produce, antimony in the future,” he wrote.

Another Australia-based mining company, Felix Gold, still says it’s targeting the end of this year to start mining antimony at its Treasure Creek project just north of Fairbanks.

Similar to the other two companies, Felix Gold has also formally sought federal support for that plan, and the company is touting a visit from officials with the Environmental Protection Agency and Federal Permitting Council, saying their recent stop at Treasure Creek represents a “substantive milestone.”

In a call with investors last month, Felix Gold Executive Director Joseph Webb said the visit was “as good as you can get” and helped the company’s case, but that he couldn’t guarantee anything just yet.