Rashah McChesney

It has been more than a week since anyone heard from Juneau resident Doug Farnsworth. A lot of people have been out looking for him, including the Alaska State Troopers, the Coast Guard and a local canine search group.

Juneau police say they have a detective assigned to the case. Farnsworth’s older sister, Kiersten, is in Juneau searching for him now. She believes he’s dead and is asking for anyone in the community who may know something about his disappearance to call.

Kiersten Farnsworth flew up from Arizona to find him. She said she knew something was wrong when his social media went dark — she reported it on Sept. 27. 

“My brother is a very, very huge media person. He makes a ton of TikToks. He’s always on Facebook,” she said. “He called my mom and he said he was going to come home, and he didn’t.”

She’s been able to find some details about where he was on the last night anyone heard from him. 

“He called one friend around one in the morning, and they didn’t answer. He called another girl at 3:15 a.m. and tried to flirt with her, and that’s pretty much their whole conversation,” Kiersten Farnsworth said, laughing. “Then after that, it just goes silent.”

Farnsworth said state troopers have been helping with the search. Juneau police said earlier this week that they assigned a detective to the case, but Farnsworth said they haven’t been very helpful. 

“JPD actually told me, they don’t look for people that don’t want to be found,” she said. “So I wasn’t too impressed with JPD.”

The truck that Doug Farnsworth was driving was found up near the Perseverance Trail, and Kiersten Farnsworth said a lot of people have been up there looking. 

“But at this point, we don’t think that’s the area where he’s going to be located,” she said.

Farnsworth said she’s found no evidence that her brother is in that area of town. She didn’t want to get too deeply into the reasons why, but she said her family believes that he is dead. 

She said she’s driven up and down the highway out to Auke Bay looking for a place where he could be. She wants the community to know that anyone who knows something about the case should call. She says the family needs closure. 

“He could be wherever — I have no problem driving to wherever. Yesterday, I climbed down the bank of Thane and moved a tarp,” she said.  “My body hurts really bad.”

Doug Farnsworth was living with and taking care of his mother. Now that he’s gone, it’s hard for her to leave without knowing where he is. 

“I live in Arizona, and my mom lives with my brother. She really, really relied on my brother, and now she wants to come back with me. But we’re stuck at that point where she doesn’t want to feel like she’s abandoning him. Because it’s not abandonment. It’s us knowing he’s gone,” Kiersten Farnsworth said.

Kiersten and Doug grew up in Juneau, in Lemon Creek. They’re Lingít. She laughs when she talks about how many cousins they have in town. 

She said a lot of people in town know him because he was an active part of the community. 

“He brings people out of their shells. He worked at Gastineau for a long time with troubled kids, and they all loved him. He’d flip attitude straight around. He went by Dougie Fresh. He made hilarious Halloween costumes, just really animated people — people just really liked him,” she said.

She said she’s happy to see so many people come together and help look for him. 

Anyone who knows anything about where he might be can make an anonymous report to Juneau’s Crime Line online or at 907-523-7700. 

A Juneau man has been missing for more than a week. Family and friends have been posting on social media and searching for Douglas Farnsworth for several days. 

Farnsworth’s sister, who goes by Kiki Dawn, describes him as a non-stop poster on social media. “He would never stop or just vanish like this,” she wrote in a message. 

On TikTok, where he has nearly 11,000 followers, he last posted in late August.  

Juneau Police Lt. Krag Campbell said the department assigned a detective to Farnsworth’s case on Oct. 1. That detective talked to family and found out that Farnsworth was driving someone else’s truck. That truck was found near the Perseverance Trailhead area by the Flume Trail. 

“That in itself was just unusual because the keys were left in it, there were some personal items belonging to Mr. Farnsworth in it,” Campbell said.  

After the truck was found, Juneau police contacted the Alaska State Troopers to launch a search. 

“They didn’t think he was out like, hiking or anything,” Campbell said. “There [were] reasons to believe that he wasn’t doing that but maybe he had gone into the woods and may need some assistance in getting back.” 

Troopers and SEADOGS were searching near downtown on Friday and into Saturday. The Coast Guard was doing flyovers of downtown looking for Farnsworth. 

But Campbell says they didn’t find any trace of him. Campbell said SEADOGS didn’t pick up a scent.  

“Then you’re just kind of blindly searching in the woods, and it’s just such a huge area to cover. That’s not something they’re typically doing,” he said. 

So for now, Campbell said Troopers have called off their active search, though he said they can start it up again if they get new information. 

Campbell said JPD still has a detective investigating the case.  

One of the last times Farnsworth was seen, he was contacted by Juneau Police on Sept. 27 about a misdemeanor Driving Under the Influence charge. But Campbell said he doesn’t think that’s the last time anyone saw Farnsworth — he said they got a report that someone saw him driving in town on the 28th. 

Farnsworth’s sister, Kiki Dawn, has been trying to organize search efforts via social media.

Now, she said she is traveling to Juneau. She says he wasn’t an avid camper or hiker. 

“We need to find my brother,” she said. 

Campbell says anyone who knows something about Farnsworth’s disappearance can contact 586-0600 or make an anonymous report to Juneau’s Crime Line. 

Juneau’s first big fall storm caused a lot of damage over the weekend, and cleanup looks like it could last through the week. 

Forecasters warned that high winds and rain for much of Southeast Alaska could cause power outages and at about 9:15 on Friday night, the lights went out for nearly everyone in Juneau. 

“The high winds from the storm that came through caused our conductors to make contact on the Snettisham line which caused Snettisham to trip off,” said Alaska Electric Light and Power’s Debbie Driscoll.

Driscoll said when Snettisham tripped, that took pretty much everyone in town down. Power was restored for that area-wide outage within the hour. 

But there were pockets of outages all over town. Driscoll said power was restored to most places relatively quickly. The one that took the longest was in the Mendenhall Peninsula area and around Engineer’s Cutoff. That outage lasted until Sunday evening. 

“That area got hit particularly hard, there were many trees that came down, broke multiple poles, tore down power lines, damaged transformers and it was just — the extent of the damage was so great, compared to what we would normally see in a storm like that,” she said.

She said the sheer volume of trees that came down made the outage there difficult to fix; the company had multiple broken power poles to repair. Images from the Mendenhall Peninsula area show trees on houses, cars and blocking roads. She says the crews were also contending with trees falling while they were working.

Juneau Police Department spokesperson Krag Campbell said Juneau police got a lot of calls over the weekend as well — most of them were for downed trees in roads. Campbell said they got a few calls about property damage too, including one home on Glacierwood Avenue.

“They had a tree fall and crush a fuel tank,” Campbell said. “I know of at least two cars that were crushed by fallen trees.”

Campbell said there were also reports of rocks falling down into the roadway out by the ferry terminal, a boat broke free at one of the harbors, and a tree caught fire out by the Shrine of Saint Therese.

One person called for help after becoming trapped in an elevator in one of the hotels in the Mendenhall Valley. Campbell said that person got out of the elevator before needing to be rescued.

He said there were no reports of storm-related injuries.

Driscoll said the first big fall storm tends to catch people by surprise. She said people should have an emergency kit ready for storms. But also asked that people call the utility’s outage-specific line at 907-586-AELP when their power goes out. That ensures that all of the information about outages goes to the right place. 

“We fielded hundreds of messages through Facebook messenger and comments, hundreds and hundreds and so it’s hard to ensure that every single one of those gets addressed in a timely manner by the one person who deals with the social media accounts,” she said.

By Monday afternoon, Driscoll said pretty much everyone in town should have their power back. 

Residents of Mendenhall Peninsula Road addressed widespread damage on Saturday after high winds brought down multiple trees which damaged cars and homes. 

Alaska Electric Light & Power addressed multiple power outages on Friday evening and through Saturday.

Most of Southeast Alaska was under a high-wind warning and flood watch going into the weekend as forecasters warned of downed trees causing outages.  That’s exactly what Alaska Electric Light & Power says happened causing ongoing outages in the Mendenhall Peninsula and Engineers Cutoff areas early Saturday morning. The company reports that a few other places are without power and are asking that anyone outside of those areas call 586.2357 to report it. 

Outage updates: Mendenhall Peninsula and Engineers Cutoff area is still out. There is significant line damage, broken poles and damaged transformers from the multiple trees that came down during the storm. It will likely take the better part of today to complete those repairs.

— AEL&P (@AELPJUNEAU) October 2, 2021

The company tweeted that significant line damage, broken poles and damaged transformers from downed trees will likely take the better part of the day to repair and restore power in those areas.  Community members also posted on social media about close calls with downed trees. Juneau saw gusts of up to 69 miles per hour — but the high winds have died down since then and the high wind warning has been cancelled. 

AEL&P said on social media late Saturday that crews would be working into the night to restore power on the Mendenhall Peninsula.

The storm that rolled through Southeast produced between 3 to 5 inches of rain in 48 hours according to the National Weather Service. Rain is expected to continue through the weekend.  Forecasters also said near Eaglecrest that rain would likely turn into snow showers late Saturday evening; though they expect little accumulation. 

This story has been updated. 

Content warning: This story contains accounts from descendants of boarding school survivors that may be distressing for some readers. 

As the sun rose on Thursday, K’aaxnaa.at Bamby James and the Strong Women singers finished a women’s prayer song. Then they joined dozens of others waving at traffic along Egan Drive. Their bright orange t-shirts popped out against the deep blue shadows of the early morning.

It was chilly, kids were running around wrapped in blankets. But warm coffee and pastries served from the back of a nearby car — and waving signs at traffic — kept people warm.

James, who is Lingít, is surrounded by family. She says she’s waving because she has children.

“And it means a lot to us the fact that we get to keep our kids home, and our ancestors did not. Generations have come. There’s been trauma throughout the generations. I feel like this is our way of showing them that we’re ending the cycle of violence against our people,” James said.

Sept. 30 is a National Day of Remembrance for U.S. Indian Boarding Schools. The day was born in Canada — when a residential school survivor told the story of wearing an orange shirt that her grandmother bought for her, and then having it stripped off of her when she arrived at a boarding school.

A lot of people in Juneau are wearing orange shirts with a formline ovoid blue heart and then in the center is a human face with its mouth open. It’s Mike Kanaagoot’ Kinville’s design.

He said the mouth is open to show that they’re speaking. It reads “Every Child Matters.”

Kinville has 10 children — his youngest is 7 years old. He wears his feelings on the surface when he talks about the remains of 215 children found at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia.

“Those children didn’t matter, not to the people who threw them into a grave and covered them up,” he said. “But those children matter to somebody. You know, maybe they were treated like garbage at some point, but to their families and to their people. They matter, every child matters.

Kinville said acknowledgment from the rest of the community of the facts of the past are important, that’s a big part of why so many people in bright orange shirts gathered by the side of the highway — to call attention to the buried history and trauma of residential boarding schools.

His mother told him about her experience when she was taken to Mt. Edgecumbe boarding school in Sitka at 14 years old.

“In in the first week, they went through a medical process and the dentist looked at her teeth and decided to pull all of her teeth. So that was their first day in Mt. Edgecumbe. Her second day, when she woke up, her pillow was covered with blood. She had to wait for a month and a half for dentures to be made and sent to her. That’s how she started her high school career. This pretty young lady, a very quiet, shy young woman,” he said.

Kinville and others in the crowd say it’s not just acknowledgment of facts of our shared history that’s needed. It’s also awareness of how that history is still impacting people today.

“You know, that’s her trauma affects me to this day, you know, my trauma that kind of goes through me as affected my children, you know, we try and attenuate it out and make it dampen it and make it go away. But it still lives with us. So you know, it can’t be in the past, it’s in our bones,” he said.

There are a lot of threads that tie Juneau to this trauma. One is that Alaska Native families in Juneau had their children taken from them and sent to other schools, sometimes out of state. Another is that the same order of nuns — The Sisters of Saint Ann — who taught at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia operated schools in Juneau too. There’s a street named after them on Douglas Island and a former hospital downtown.

“I don’t think that people have made that connection,” said Jamiann S’eiltin Hasselquist. She’s an organizer of the events and has been working to teach people about the legacy of schools for Indigenous students — including the Mayflower School. It’s now the Juneau Montessori School and it stands at the end of Saint Ann’s Avenue.

It overlooks a beach that Hasselquist says should be part of the community conversation around this history. A conversation about tangible steps the community can take, like calling that beach Anax Yaa Andagan Ye’ instead of Sandy Beach.

“If we say we want to change that name back, that’s what gets people a little excited,” she said. “But it’s not changing. It’s restoring its original name and recognizing that there were people and place names here before colonization came to town.”

For more information contact the Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition. You can call them at 612 354-7700.

Lawmakers are set to begin their fourth special session, but they’re getting one more weekend off first. 

Gov. Mike Dunleavy amended his original call, which had them starting this Friday. Now they’ll be set to begin on Monday, Oct. 4 at 2 p.m. 

This will be the fourth time the Legislature meets this year — and they’re limited to discussing an agenda set by the Governor.

Right now, the Legislature is limited to talking about a supplemental Permanent Fund dividend and the Permanent Fund dividend program. They can also talk about resolutions proposing amendments to the state Constitution relating to the Permanent Fund, resolutions that propose a spending-cap and measures related to increasing state revenues. 

Correction: An earlier version of this story said Monday’s date is Oct. 2. It is Oct. 4.