Over the next several years, the City and Borough of Juneau has a lot of promises to keep with environmental regulators after racking up dozens of pollution violations at its two mains sewage treatment plants.
More than 130 inmates at Lemon Creek Correctional Center in Juneau have received COVID-19 vaccines.
Juneau city leaders are putting together next year’s budget and they want the public to weigh-in.
Officials have expressed concern about flooding along some parts of the Kuskokwim River as snowpack begins to melt.
The sudden switch to warmer spring weather broke temperature records throughout Southeast Alaska.
Most of Juneau relies on the Mendenhall Wastewater Treatment PLant to process sewage.
Alaska will join Florida in a federal lawsuit challenging the current cruise ship regulations in the U.S.
The Alaska Industrial and Export Authority has reached an agreement with regional Native corporation Doyon to conduct survey and feasibility studies on the corporation’s lands.
Concerned residents in the Southeast Alaska town of Gustavus pushed state agencies to do more testing for contaminants before major construction at the city’s airport.
An intensive search over the weekend of an area near Sitka’s ferry terminal turned up no new evidence in a missing person cold case.
Ten years after the Fukushima nuclear disaster, environmental regulators say they’re expanding radiation testing of commercially harvested Alaska seafood to include crab.
Officials say two crew members aboard the Matansuka tested positive for COVID-19 over the weekend after the state ferry left Bellingham for ports in Southeast Alaska.
The first-ever Tlingit opera will be based on the book “Russians in Tlingit America” by Nora Marks and Richard Dauenhauer. (Courtesy: Sealaska Heritage Institute.)
The first Tlingit opera in production is about the Tlingit-Russian wars at the start of the 19th century. The opera is still in the early development stages but the creators say it’s bound to be an epic production.
Sealaska Heritage Institute recently announced the opera’s development which will be based on the true story of the Tlingit-Russian wars in 1802 and 1804.
Ed Littlefield, the opera’s composer, said one word has been used to describe the story so far.
“We have been throwing out the word ‘epic,’ you know, in a lot of our conversations and that story, that real life story that happens, you know, in Lingít Aaní, in our backyard,” Littlefield said. “You know, it is a very important one. And either way it could have gone would affect, you know, the area for years to come.”
The story of those battles have been told by generations of Tlingit. But even while the source material is written, it’s too soon to say exactly what the opera will be like in detail. The creators hope to show audiences Tlingit song, dance and art in its many forms.
“It’s already built-in up and down, you know, there’s triumphs, there’s sacrifice. There’s explosions, literally, there’s explosions,” Littlefield said.
The idea for the opera started with Rosita Worl, president of Sealaska Heritage Institute. Several years ago, she was doing research on the Tlingit-Russian Wars.
“And in my mind, I could actually just see the scenes, you know,” Worl said.
Worl imagined vivid details of a battle on the beach. Like the beating of the drums, the Tlingit women wailing war cries and even the foggy weather.
“I was thinking this would be awesome to, you know, to see this visually,” she said. “And also, I wanted to hear the sounds, you know, that were ongoing, you know, with the scene.”
Worl asked Vera Starbard to write the opera. Starbard said she hopes that audiences can learn about the sophistication of different Tlingit art forms.
“There’s this dominant narrative in American culture that said Indigenous anything is less than, is more simplistic, is savage,” Starbard said. “I mean, we’ve literally grown up with that narrative, as a country. And yet, we’ve been doing Performing Arts pieces for thousands of years, and have really emphasized what we might call production value.”
Starbard said she also hopes that audiences will learn the lessons from the history itself.
“What it says about how coordination and working together as many different autonomous groups made her a successful campaign against what could be seen as a much more powerful force in just sheer numbers and literal gunpowder.”
The opera will be a collaboration between Sealaska Heritage Institute and Perseverance Theatre. Leslie Ishii is the artistic director at Perseverance Theatre.
She said the opera’s development is a years-long process.
“It’s an interesting way to produce and a great opportunity to decolonize our spaces, continue to re-indigenize and in this case, re-Tlingitize, our spaces as well.”
The first-ever Tlingit opera doesn’t have a set release date yet.
But Littlefield, said as the opera evolves, he hopes the story is shared around the state and hopefully the world.
Editor’s note: Vera Starbard is on the Board of Directors for KTOO.
