Rhonda McBride

For most Alaskan voters, ranked choice voting is like a big mystery box. What is it? How does it work? Will it change Alaska politics?  So many unknowns. But on Tuesday’s Juneau Afternoon, Professor Benjamin Reilly from the University of Western Australia will try to answer those questions. He’s this week’s speaker at UAS’s Egan lecture series on Friday. Reilly will talk about his country’s experience with ranked choice voting, a system it’s had for more than a century.

Also, on today’s show:

•    After a year off due to COVID, Brewfest is back. What’s on tap this Saturday.
•    And another popular event returns, the Battle of the Burger, a fundraiser for the Thunder Mountain Swim Team

Listen to all the interviews:

Part 1: Benjamin Reilly, a political science professor from the University of  Western Australia, is researching Alaska’s move towards a ranked choice voting system next year.

Part 2. Andy Mills and Ann Metcalfe from the Rotary Club of Juneau are on the planning committee for this year’s Capital Brewfest, which will be held outdoors this year. They’re working to bring back what people enjoy the most about the event, sampling more than 20 different locally brewed beers, while balancing COVID-safety precautions.

Part 3. Jamie Heidersdorf, Nancy Liddle and Karthik Saguni, three team captains from the Thunder Mountain High School swim team, talk about the “Battle of the Burger,” an annual event that raises money to cover the team’s costs for travel.

Rhonda McBride hosted Tuesday’s Juneau Afternoon.  Catch the show, Tuesday through Friday, at 3:00 p.m. on KTOO Juneau 104.3, online at ktoo.org, and repeated at 4:00 p.m. on KRNN 102.7.

 

 

There’s no title for the screenplay yet, but now X̱’unei Lance Twitchell has a fellowship from the Rasmuson Foundation to realize a longtime dream — to bring a true story to life, about how Native boarding schools systematically tried to kill indigenous languages.

Twitchell says this dark chapter in history has recently pushed into the mainstream consciousness, but he’s heard stories for years, from elders like the late Marge Dutson.

“They tried everything. They tried to beat it out of me. They tried to scare it out of me. They tried to shame it out of me. But they couldn’t get my language away from me,” he said she once told him.

She also shared a story about her first day of class at the Juneau Bureau of Indian Affairs school, when her teacher grabbed her by the hair, lifted her off the ground and shook her violently to punish her for speaking Lingít.

Twitchell said these stories of courage still inspire him today, but when he set out to record them years ago, a linguist — the late Michael Krauss, who worked to preserve a number of Alaska Native languages, some of which have disappeared — encouraged him to get elders to share them in Lingít, because it would better preserve the details of what they experienced.

That’s when he decided to tell the story — in Lingít — of two boys who ran away from their boarding school.

“Torture, abuse of all different kinds was going on in these places – and then to sort of have that from the perspectives of two young people, who are birth speakers of Lingít and who are there as siblings and can communicate with each other and make a decision to get out of that, I think it has a lot of potential power.”

The boys used their traditional knowledge to guide them home from Oregon. It’s a story he heard from several members of the same family, who have since passed, except for Florence Sheakley. Sheakley’s father, Willie Marks, is the boy who ran away from the school with his brother.

Twitchell says the springboard for the screenplay will be a high quality film of the elder telling her story in Lingít. Twitchell will receive $18,000 for his work and will share some of it with Sheakley.

He says it won’t be easy to write the script entirely in Lingít but the words of Marge Dutson remind him why it’s so important.

“Él i tóoch ulchéeshiḵ wáa sá eeshandéin yoo haa kaawashóo chʼu tle tlél ḵáa tuwáa ushgú haa yoo x̱ʼatángi,” he said. “And she said it’s impossible for you to feel how much we suffered when people didn’t want our language.”

Twitchell hopes a screenplay in Lingít can capture some of that feeling. He says subtitles can be used if the script is ever turned into a movie.

The Rasmuson Foundation also awarded two other Juneau Lingít artists project grants: poet Ishmael Hope and Sydney Akagi, a Lingít weaver and photographer, who will each receive $7,500.

A previous version of this story mentioned that Twitchell was working on a play. The project is a screenplay. The headline has been corrected.

More than a thousand athletes will descend on Juneau next August for the for the city’s first Ironman competition. The Ironman franchise is billing it as an “epic adventure” — with a 2.4 mile swim, a 112 mile bicycle race, and a 26 mile run through the rainforest.

On  Friday’s Juneau Afternoon, how the city economy stands to benefit.

Also:

• Humpback whales and reduced cruise ship traffic.
• From Juneau to Afghanistan with love: A meal with a mission.

Listen to all of the interviews:

Part 1. Liz Perry, executive director of Travel Juneau, gives an overview of the inaugural Ironman Alaska triathlon coming to Juneau next August.

Part 2. Dr. Heidi Pearson, a UAS marine biologist, and Dr. Suzie Teerlink, a marine mammal specialist with NOAA, talk about how the pandemic has afforded a rare opportunity to study the impact of cruise ship traffic on humpback whales.

Part 3. From Juneau to Afghanistan with love. Kaila Buerger and Sima Shoja talk about a fundraiser to help Shoja’s family in Afghanistan.

 

 

Catch  Friday’s Juneau Afternoon with Rhonda McBride, live at 3:00 p.m. on KTOO Juneau 104.3, online at ktoo.org, and repeated at 4:00 p.m. on KRNN 102.7.

 

Alyssa Quintyne describes herself as a Bajan – an American from the Caribbean Island of Barbados, but she’s here in Alaska now, working as a community organizer.

In this Thursday’s program from the Black Awareness Association, Quintyne talks with Christina Michelle and Kelli Patterson about how she uses her Bajan culture to reach out to people, how it’s helped her make a difference in helping voices who are not heard in coming to the forefront.

Catch Culture Rich Coversations, a weekly show produced by the Black Awareness Association of Juneau on Thursdays at 3:00 p.m. on KTOO Juneau 104.3, online at ktoo.org, and repeated at 4:00 p.m. on KRNN 102.7.

With his slogan “Give a hoot. Don’t pollute,” Woodsy Owl seems ageless. But the mascot for the U.S. Forest Service turns fifty on September 15. On  this Wednesday’s Juneau Afternoon, a look at how this milestone will be celebrated at the Mendenhall Glacier.

Also on Juneau Afternoon:

• Juneau Makerspace’s fundraiser to make space for artistic passion projects
• And how the very act of writing about passion has become profitable for one Juneau writer. Lindy Miller will talk about her latest romance novel, which is about to become a movie.

Sheli DeLaney is your host on this episode of Juneau Afternoon, which airs Tuesday through Friday at 3:00 p.m. on KTOO Juneau 104.3, online at ktoo.org, and repeated at 4:00 p.m. on KRNN 102.7.

Listen to the whole show:

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

The past, the present and the future are all connected for Mischa Jackson, a longtime voice for change Alaska Native education.

Whether it’s acknowledging the complex history of the impact of Western education on Native children or creating space for Native ways of knowing and indigenous perspectives, Jackson says the first step in reinventing education begins with acknowledgement. On Tuesday’s Juneau Afternoon, Jackson talks with KTOO’s Sheli Delaney about the power of acknowledgement and how it is one of the keys to success in helping Native students achieve their potential.

Also in Tuesday’s show:

• The art of being a “locavore.” How to eat more locally grown and harvested foods in Southeast Alaska.
• The world according to NPR’s Jenn White. (Note, we are rebroadcasting this interview, due to technical problems KTOO experienced when it originally aired last week).

Juneau Afternoon airs Tuesday through Friday, live at 3:00 p.m. on KTOO Juneau 104.3, online at ktoo.org, and repeated at 4:00 p.m. on KRNN 102.7.

 

Listen to the whole show:

Part 1: Meghan Stangeland and Jennifer Nu explore the possibilities of incorporating more locally grown and harvested food into our diets. How they hope a 7-day “eat local” challenge will help raise awareness about the availability of homegrown foods.

Part 2: Mischa Jackson talks about her journey as an Alaska Native educator and the need to change the way indigenous students are taught.

Part 3: NPR talkshow host Jenn White talks about her career and her current show,  A1.