KYUK - Bethel

On Friday, a bill that would pave the way for improved and equitable high-speed internet in rural Alaska passed out of its final House committee. Next, the bill will head to the House floor for a vote. Its Senate counterpart is still in committee.

Earlier this year, the U.S. passed a federal infrastructure bill that set aside $65 billion for broadband projects in the U.S. It prioritizes unserved and underserved communities. This state bill sets up systems that would make Alaska eligible for that funding.

The representative who wrote the bill, Bryce Edgmon, said that Alaska stands to gain at least $1 billion to $2 billion in federal funding for broadband infrastructure. He said that when you account for broadband dollars headed to tribes, that actual amount will likely be much higher.

Edgmon’s bill does three main things. First, it creates a broadband office. Second, it sets up an advisory board. And third, it sets up a broadband “parity fund” to equalize costs.

The broadband office would be in charge of applying for, receiving and distributing federal dollars. But first, it will have to create a map that shows where Alaskans have limited or no access to high-speed internet.

The advisory board would include nine governor-appointed members. Two of them would have to come from unserved or underserved communities.

The bill also aims to make high-speed internet affordable for all Alaskans. It would set up a broadband parity fund that would keep costs in rural areas similar to the costs in urban areas. Edgmon said that the money for this program would come from the federal government.

This would be a change from how things are now. In rural areas of Alaska, residents with low-speed internet can pay hundreds of dollars per month on their bills. Alaskans in urban areas pay far less for high-speed internet.

The bill also requires that the office be “technologically neutral.” That means they can’t favor one type of internet technology over another, like satellites over fiber-optic cables. As long as the technology is high-speed, it’s good to go.

Two callers from the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta called in to provide public testimony on the bill: Chief Mike Williams Sr. of Akiak, from the Kuskokwim Tribal Broadband Consortium, and Mark Springer, a consultant for the same organization. Both advocated for the bill.

“We want to allow everyone to have equal access to the funds, especially our tribes,” Williams Sr. said.

Akiak is the first community with high-speed internet in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, having set up satellite internet over the summer.

The House vote for the broadband bill is not yet scheduled.

On Monday, the Alaska Senate passed its version of a bill that would clear the way for the state and tribes to begin work on education compacting.

In tribal education compacting, tribes can tailor their students’ education to their own needs and hopefully address low rates of graduation and attendance in Alaska Native students. The Senate’s bill has been updated to give tribes more time to plan out pilot projects and will now head to the House.

Senate Bill 34 was originally written to authorize the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development to allow a series of pilot project schools. Under this version, the schools would have opened as soon as the fall of 2023.

The Senate Education Committee substituted it with another bill that gives the state education department and tribes more time to flesh out what the pilot projects will look like. 

The bill also establishes a firm deadline for tribes to sign up to be a part of the pilot program. Once the schools and tribes have plans in place, the education department will have to present its final plans to the next Legislature.

Joel Isaak, the department’s tribal liaison, said that this extra time is critical for the tribes to plan the schools they want, and to get legislators on board.

“The immediate effect is the time to scope, the time to come up with a plan, and it brings tribes directly into the process,” said Isaak.

The bill says that five schools will be chosen for the pilot projects and, if all goes well, they could open as soon as fall 2025.

Tribal-education compacting in Alaska is based on the success of tribal-compacted schools in Washington state. According to a study done by Evergreen State University, students at three compacted schools in Washington showed improvement in the following areas: graduation and retention rates; reputation; enrollment; teacher recruitment and retention; and student connection to culture.

The Alaska Senate’s tribal education compacting bill is part of a larger effort this year by the Legislature to tackle poor student outcomes in the state. 

This legislative session, House and Senate committees have considered improving student achievement through secondary trade schools, bilingual education and reading standards.

The Senate passed Senate Bill 34 with only one nay vote from Eagle River Sen. Lora Reinbold. Reinbold said that she opposed it on the grounds that she doesn’t understand how tribes get their members.

“The head of AFN tried to define how tribal members are brought into a tribe, and no one could give me clear guidelines,” Reinbold said.“I guess each tribe gets to bring in members how they wish. When they want sovereignty and when they wanna create their own schools, we need to know exactly what the Tribe is, what they stand for, who’s allowed to be in, etcetera.”

Several tribes from the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta have expressed strong interest in tribal education compacting. Isaak said that list includes, but is not limited to: Hooper Bay; Akiak; Akiachak and Tuluksak. He said the that Association of Village Council Presidents is also interested.

The Senate bill will now head to the Alaska House of Representatives where it will meet up with its House counterpart, House Bill 351. The House version differs from the Senate version, but the two will likely be reconciled in the House.

Both the Alaska Federation of Natives and the Alaska Department of Education support the Senate’s version of the bill.

For many Yup’ik dance groups in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, the pandemic limited their ability to gather together and perform traditional dance. Some groups are just beginning to dance together again after two years, but the village of Napaskiak remembers a longer period without the drums.

“It’s an old one. It’s about when the birds return, like the Canada goose, the crane, and then the famous crow or the raven,” said Julia Sipary, the leader of the Napaskiak Dance group, describing one of the village’s oldest songs.

It’s one of the few that remain from before the missionaries stopped yuraq in Napaskiak. That was in the 1930s. For 70 years, the drums fell silent.

Sipary was born during that time. She first saw Yup’ik dancing on television while watching a Native arts festival.

“And I wanted to start it too,” Sipary said. “I knew we were missing out.”

Her great-grandfather had been part of the last generation in the village to drum in the 1930s. She wanted to continue that tradition. When she was a young teacher at the Napaskiak school, she got her chance.

It was the year 2000. The principal asked Sipary if she would begin a dance group, but she couldn’t do it on her own. She and a group of others asked the two churches in the community, the Russian Orthodox Church and the Moravian Church, for approval first; they both said yes.

“It was surreal. Like we were able to breathe again,” Sipary said.

Sipary and another teacher, Rachael Nicolai, met with an elder who remembered Napaskiak’s dances. The elder’s name was Emma Clark. However, Clark did not want to be seen dancing.

“Tamani wani record-allraku Emma-m iirluni pilallruuq yugnun tangercecuumiinani aturpallrani wall’u yurallrani, aliingellrullilria-wa wall’u caperrsullruuuq akaarnun Napaskiarmi yuraayuirutellruata,” Sipary said speaking in Yugtun, describing how Clark taught the dances.

“So she requested a closet, and we’d be in the closet, and she would teach and record then,” Sipary said, choking up as she remembered Clark. “But I guess she felt scared or something. She didn’t want people to see her drumming, or singing and dancing.”

In all, Clark passed down six songs and dances to the community. A group from Bethel also came to Napaskiak and helped teach them to dance, sing, and drum again. Many people in Napaskiak were apprehensive about joining in after seven decades without the tradition. But, Sipary said, eventually that apprehension gave way to joy.

“Looking back, the people that were excited about it kind of spread throughout the community,” she said. “If they could do it, ‘Wow, and they’re so happy.’ They saw that, so they wanted to join,” said Sipary.

Napaskiak has been dancing now for over 20 years. Sipary has remained its main singer, drummer, and composer. It’s unusual for a woman to lead Yup’ik drumming. Sipary has also written most of the village’s songs. Many are inspired by watching her children. She’s written songs about hunting, playing basketball, and subsistence projects. One of the group’s favorite songs is about collecting punk fungus from birch trees.

The Napaskiak group consists of around 30 dancers. However, some members did not perform this Cama-i, and instead took advantage of the sunny day to go ice fishing. The group is multigenerational. Most of the members are students at the Napaskiak school where Sipary still works as a Yugtun and English teacher. She says that it’s important to pass the traditions to younger generations.

“If our kids aren’t dancing, if the kids aren’t singing, it will stop,” Sipary said.

A new provision introduced with the reinstated federal Violence Against Women Act allocates funds to empower tribal governments to exercise jurisdiction on tribal land.

On March 15, President Biden signed into law a $1.5 trillion omnibus spending package that included the reauthorization of the Violence Against Women Act. The law makes it clear that Alaska tribes can act to protect women at risk in their communities.

“Alaska tribes deserve the same kind of protections and resources that other communities in Alaska and the lower 48 receive and don’t even think about it,” said Association of Village Council Presidents spokesperson Joy Anderson. “So this is really pretty historic.”

With the strong backing of Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, the reauthorization made it through the Senate long after it was passed by the House. She said that there is plenty of evidence that the current system is not doing the job of protecting rural Alaska women and children.

“One out of five Native young people has suffered from PTSD due to childhood exposure to violence; we know that the status quo is not working,” said Murkowski. “And when one in three Native villages lacks any law enforcement presence, we know that something has to change.”

Nationally, the act would allocate $5 million for the Bureau of Indian Affairs to address missing and murdered Indigenous women. But an additional $3 million was provided for some states, including Alaska, to provide for training and the needs of tribal courts. Alaska will receive the bulk of this funding through the Alaska Tribal Public Safety Empowerment Subtitle.

The provision includes two sections with significant changes to tribal jurisdiction. The first part offers clarification.

“Pprior to VAWA passing, if you had asked, ‘Do Alaska tribes have criminal jurisdiction over Alaska Natives or American Indians within village boundaries?’ you probably would have gotten a variety of answers,” said Anderson of the Association of Village Council Presidents.

Congress has now provided that answer.

“What this part of the bill does is clarify that tribes do have criminal authority over Natives within their village boundaries,” Anderson said. “And that’s not dependent on whether or not there’s Indian Country.”

The bill also establishes a pilot program for tribes to exercise what’s called special domestic violence criminal jurisdiction. This recognizes the authority of tribes to exercise criminal jurisdiction over non-Native people who commit certain crimes against a Native victim on tribal land. These crimes include stalking, domestic violence, and sexual assault.

The tribes now await the details on how to apply, according to Winter Montgomery, Tribal Justice Attorney for the Association of Village Council Presidents.

“We’re in the beginning process,” said Montgomery. “So when the U.S. Attorney gives us the full criteria, we’ll provide that to the tribes.”

But the pilot program does have stipulations.

“The pilot would be for five tribes. And that would include a group of tribes that could apply as a consortium,” said Anderson. “So five would initially be able to begin exercising that special criminal jurisdiction. And then each year, while VAWA is authorized, an additional five could be added each year.”

According to Murkowski’s deputy communications director, Hannah Ray, the U.S. Department of Justice is required to prioritize tribes that occupy villages where the population is predominantly American Indian/Alaska Native and that lack a permanent law enforcement presence. They must also make a determination that the tribe has adequate safeguards in place to protect the rights of defendants.

After nearly a month, Hooper Bay’s sewage lagoon has finally stopped leaking out onto the tundra. Hooper Bay City Administrator Sandra Tall-Lake said that by March 21, city workers had put enough sand into the hole in the sewage lagoon to stop the flow of sewage leaking out.

It’s taken so long because the hole is large — 40 feet wide by 15 feet tall — requiring a lot of sand to fill it. Plus, city employees had trouble plowing a path through heavy snow to the beach to get enough sand.

Hooper Bay residents have also continued to run water and flush their toilets in the last month because, as Tall-Lake pointed out, the community’s pipes would freeze if residents stopped using them.

The sewage has been flowing into a slough, an important subsistence location for the coastal community. But because of that, the city administrator said that the spill on the tundra hasn’t gotten bigger. Tall-Lake said that city workers will continue placing sandbags in the hole this week. It won’t completely fill the hole because the community doesn’t have enough sand.

Hooper Bay’s long-term solution will be to build a new sewage lagoon, which is expected to be completed in around three years. Tall-Lake said that the city did not yet have a plan for what to do with the existing lagoon in the meantime.