Yvonne Krumrey

Monday is Elizabeth Peratrovich Day, an Alaska State holiday honoring a Lingít activist who testified before Alaska’s territorial legislature in Juneau to demand civil rights for Alaska Native people.  

In the 1940s, the Alaska Native Brotherhood and Sisterhood began petitioning Alaska’s territorial governor for civil rights protection. That included equal access to public facilities and services, banning racial discrimination in businesses open to the public, and no more signs that said things like “No dogs, no Natives.”

Elizabeth Peratrovich Day marks the anniversary of the Alaska Anti-Discrimination Act passed in 1945. It was the first anti-discrimination act to become law in any state or territory in the United States and came years before the Civil Rights Movement gained momentum.

Lingít author Shaankaláx̱t’ Ernestine Hayes said Peratrovich and her legacy inspire her, especially as she reads the news today. 

“Not only are we facing the same challenges as she faced,” she said. “But we have her as a model, and if we stop and consider ‘what would she be doing right now, today?’ then we can use her example as the choices we should make.”

Hayes has written two memoirs, chronicling her life in and out of Southeast Alaska in the wake of Peratrovich’s advocacy.

She was selected as Alaska State Writer Laureate in 2016. In 2021, she was named the Rasmuson Foundation’s Distinguished Artist. Two years later, she was awarded a United States Artists fellowship.

One way Hayes thinks we can embody Peratrovich’s mission today: making sure that Alaska Native people continue to have a seat at decision-making tables. 

“We need to ask ‘Has that discrimination that Elizabeth Peratrovich fought, has it just moved out of the restaurants and into the boardroom and into the organizing committees?’” she said.

And Hayes said Peratrovich’s fight against discrimination isn’t over – especially when it comes to pointing the mirror at ourselves.

“If we speak out, demonstrate against or protest against an administration that, as policy, is trying to destroy diversity and inclusion,” she said. “Then we really should be modeling that ourselves.” 

She said having a state holiday to celebrate Peratrovich’s advocacy is a step toward deeper and more meaningful acknowledgement of the role Alaska Native people have had and continue to have in shaping our community. 

“It’s certainly not our ultimate goal, which is inclusion, but I think it’s a good step, as long as we always remember there’s no real final step in nurturing our values,” Hayes said. “There’s always more to do.”

Peratrovich’s testimony is often credited with swaying the territorial legislature. Though no audio recording of her actual testimony exists, a version of it for kids has been memorialized in an episode of the PBS Kids show “Molly of Denali.”

Federal officers detained three Juneau men for immigration enforcement and removed them from the community last year.

The Juneau Police Department says its knowledge of these incidents and its involvement with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity in Juneau is very limited. 

Listen:

Alaska Department of Corrections spokesperson Betsy Holley confirmed that three men were held at Lemon Creek Correctional Center in Juneau under federal charges for immigration detention purposes in 2025, and were then released to federal custody. They are no longer in Alaska’s correctional system.

Last May, one of the men was charged with driving without a license or insurance, according to Alaska court documents.

Juneau Police Deputy Chief Krag Campbell said his files say ICE officers detained the man. This happened in October without JPD knowledge or involvement. 

“During an unrelated investigation, JPD learned that one of the individuals had been deported by ICE,” Campbell said in an interview. 

Juneau police arrested one of the other men for driving under the influence in November. According to DOC, this man then went into federal custody, though Campbell said there is no record of immigration enforcement in JPD files.

Juneau police officers arrested the third man in December for a DUI. When officers later went to his residence and tried to serve a warrant, people there said he had been deported.

This is the first time police have confirmed immigration enforcement activity in Alaska’s capital city during the Trump Administration’s nationwide crackdown. As recently as Monday, Chief Derek Bos said he was not aware of any federal immigration activity in the area.

Holley said once the three men were in federal hands, DOC didn’t track what happened to them next. JPD doesn’t know where they are either. ICE has not responded to requests for more information. 

At Monday’s Juneau Assembly human resources committee meeting, Bos said federal agents are not required to notify local police of their activities.  

“In essence, they do not have to tell us if they’re doing anything in Juneau or not,” Bos said. “We have a great relationship with our federal partners, and so most of the time we do know if they’re coming or whatnot.”

He said the people he knew of that had been detained for immigration reasons had criminal records.

“By and large, all of those that I’m aware of, not to say there aren’t others, but that I’m aware of, who have been deported from our community have been convicted of crimes, and that has been the basis of why they’re leaving,” he said. “There may be exceptions, but I don’t know of those.” 

Nationwide, thousands of ICE officers have entered cities, going door to door to detain and deport people – some children, some with legal residency status. Protests have erupted, and last month, federal officers shot and killed two people in Minneapolis. 

Assembly member Maureen Hall said at the meeting that she has heard from residents about possible ICE activity in Juneau and that immigrants in the community are afraid. 

“Just from awareness of what’s happening all over the country, they are pretty terrified, so (they’re) reluctant to report minor fender benders or engage in any way,” she told Bos. “So if you have any suggestions on how we can help reassure them that Juneau Police Department is not ICE.”

Bos said Juneau residents can trust police to protect them.

“If you’re the victim of a crime, you have a lot of protections, and our job is to enforce those protections,” he said. “So especially as victims, we encourage people to still come to us and talk to us. We don’t have to report that you’re a victim to a crime and you’re illegal in the country. We don’t have to report that to ICE.”

That is, unless that person has a criminal detainer order, which is like a warrant from the federal government, Bos said.

“We do have certain requirements where we have to notify, you know, if there’s a person that we contact who’s on a criminal detainer, we have to notify them, and we do,” he said. “That’s federal law, so we follow that.” 

Campbell said there is no indication in police files that JPD alerted ICE about any of the three men who were detained. The files don’t mention immigration status, he said. 

He said people do have to comply with any orders from federal officers.

“Anytime you have law enforcement coming into town, whether they’re local, state or federal, they have a mandate,” he said. “You have to comply with it. Especially if they have things like warrants.”

KTOO requested records related to the three men from JPD, but has not yet received them.

Even though Juneau has not seen immigration enforcement like larger cities in the Lower 48 have, Assembly member Hall said in an interview that residents still need to be informed about what’s happening here.

“It gives the opportunity for those in the community that are involved in this to review our readiness to deal with potential full scale ICE activity,” she said.

As breweries in Alaska adjust to a legal ruling that could allow them to have unlimited live shows, a different sort of industry is also celebrating: musicians. 

Until last month, breweries were limited to hosting four live shows a year. Before 2024, they were banned from having them completely. Now, breweries can host unlimited live music performances. 

The ruling comes right on time for musicians and businesses to start planning for the Alaska Folk Festival in April. 

Marian Call is a Juneau musician and, as executive director of MusicAlaska, she’s also spent the last few years organizing other musicians across the state to advocate for the industry. She said the recent Alaska Superior Court ruling opens doors for musicians and performers. 

“This regulation was ultimately a regulation about when and where musicians can work,” Call said. “It was essentially putting a limit on how often and in what locations we can do our job.”

The ruling argued that the regulations that limited live shows at breweries suppressed free speech. The lawsuit didn’t specifically include distilleries, but at a recent Alaska Alcoholic Beverage Control Board meeting, board members said they believe those businesses will fall under the same ruling, and be able to have unlimited live music as well. 

“It makes sense for the government to regulate various industries. But the thing that was so difficult about this particular regulation was that they were not intending to regulate the music industry,” Call said. “They were intending to regulate the alcohol industry.”

She said musicians are a force in Juneau. More performances in town don’t create a zero-sum game, economically. Call said MusicAlaska researches the economic impacts of music in communities.

 “Generally, what we see is that more music breeds more economic growth without necessarily undermining other sectors,” she said. “We come into a space where there was no economic activity and create it kind of out of thin air.” 

If the ruling holds, this could open doors – financially and creatively – for musicians during the city’s biggest music event of the year, Call said.

“I think Folk Fest excites me the most because it’s really an invitation, not just for everyone to come out and listen and enjoy, but also for everyone to play,” she said. “And I can’t wait to see people feeling free to play anywhere without worrying about it.”

Avery Stewart is a guitarist, vocalist, and writer with local band the Rain Dogs. He said he thinks former limitations have dampened Juneau’s creative spirit during Folk Fest.

“I was just recalling past Folk Fest, seeing signs on the walls of distilleries because they had to put up these signs, like, ‘do not play music here,’ which I thought was so silly,” Stewart said.

He said that impromptu jam sessions are an inherent part of the festival, and now, there’s no risk of businesses or musicians facing fines for them.

“It’s like a communal experience, rather than a performance,” he said. “Just a sharing of music, in its purest forms.”

The Rain Dogs Frontwoman Anna Mahanor said she’s excited to have more places to play in Juneau, and different venues to suit different kinds of shows. She said she wants to be able to play for broader audiences. 

“I think that our sound is evolving in a lot of different ways, and we’re experimenting with playing in different places,” Mahanor said “There’s a certain energy that you bring to when you’re playing at, like a bar or a dive bar.”

And a lot of the Rain Dogs shows meet that energy — loud and rowdy. But Mahanor wants to play in quieter venues, too. 

“With the idea of there being kind of more listening-room-style, it’s like a little bit more intimate,” she said. “And you can be a little bit more personable with the crowd, you know, and interact and have just a more intimate, vulnerable experience”

The Alaska Alcohol and Marijuana Control Office has until Feb. 14th to appeal the decision. 

Alaska’s largest professional theater indefinitely postponed a run of its show in Anchorage this spring due to financial concerns. 

Perseverance Theatre had originally planned to bring its newest production, opening in Juneau later this month, to Anchorage. For the past decade, the theater has regularly run productions in both the capital city and Anchorage. But staff say the decision to postpone the latter leg came after a period of financial pressure on the national and local level.

Artistic Director Leslie Ishii said Juneau has been feeling the impacts of federal job cuts and economic strains, so less people have money for entertainment.

“Many, many jobs are gone, besides just being laid off,” she said. “So we’re feeling the effects of that as we all look around and see some shops are no longer there, or restaurants are having to cut back hours.”

The nonprofit – which relies on a number of funding streams for its budget, including support from the city, state and federal governments – considered other factors as well. That includes an upcoming $10 to $12 million budget shortfall at the city level, plus ongoing instability with the Trump administration’s efforts to cut arts spending. All of this informed the decision to not take its upcoming show, “Pueblo Revolt,” to Anchorage. Ishii said it would have cost about $60,000. 

“The good news is we’ve been able to say we want to produce this show here,” Ishii said. “We were able to keep that funding in place. But just the added cost of transferring it to Anchorage is what made it difficult to say we can still do this.”

She said so far, the theater has only seen minimal reductions in their current grants. Moving forward she is expecting that funding from all government levels will be greatly diminished. 

On a positive note, she said the Mellon Foundation – a private funder of arts and humanities programs – just renewed a two-year $500,000 grant to Perseverance. And Ishii said theater leadership is working with a financial management company that specializes in helping arts organizations budget and plan for the future. 

The theater hopes to take “Pueblo Revolt” to Anchorage later this year instead. 

Kylie Ferguson manages community partnerships with Perseverance. She said postponing the show’s run in Anchorage was a decision to maintain the theater for the future. 

“Sometimes the play doesn’t have to go on,” Ferguson said. “Sometimes it gets delayed by a few months, but it’s in service of keeping this wonderful organization around for the next generation.”

Ferguson said the Juneau community — which values its performers and the work they do — will be here to appreciate it. In 2024, Juneau was ranked third of small cities nationwide for having a vibrant arts community by SMU DataArts. 

A Juneau jazz musician canceled a show that was meant to be a part of a festival in town this week. The show was advertised as a fundraiser for the ACLU of Alaska, but the organization who planned the festival said it didn’t agree to that.

Spencer Edgers plays the saxophone with other local musicians in the Dream Band. Local nonprofit Juneau Jazz and Classics tapped his band to play a show during its annual Jazz Fest in town.

But recent national events — like immigration enforcement ramping up efforts and shooting civilians — led him to decide to approach this show differently.

“Knowing I had this show coming up, I personally felt uncomfortable promoting a show taking up bandwidth on the internet during a time where people are sharing resources and looking out for each other,” Edgers said. 

So Edgers decided to make the show a fundraiser for the ACLU of Alaska. The rest of his band were on board, and he cleared it with the venue — the Alaskan Hotel & bar — which was paying the band.

“The plan was to have our tip jar, pass it around to people,” he said. “The tip jar was going to go to the organization.”

He also planned to pass around flyers with links to report immigration enforcement activity, and resources for forming safety plans. But Edgers didn’t clear it with Juneau Jazz and Classics. He said the organization hadn’t really been communicating about the event. 

“I assumed that they would not have a problem with it,” he said. “And did not seek the consent for that collaboration.”

Edgers said festival leadership called him and expressed concerns about bringing politics into the festival. But Interim Director Alex Serio said fear of political pushback was not part of their concerns. 

“This went to the board,” he said. “And the board decided that we’ve never had any outside fundraisers before.”

Serio said the board also expressed frustration at not being informed of the fundraising aspect. But if Edgers chose to ask for donations for the ACLU on stage, and not in advertising, that would have been his right. 

“Everybody has freedom of speech,” Serio said. “Everybody can voice what they believe in, and we respect that.”

But the organization’s board didn’t want their branding on the same poster that advertised an ACLU fundraiser, Serio said. 

“We just didn’t want the two of them together saying that we formally endorse an outside fundraiser,” he said. 

So the board asked Edgers to remove its logo from the poster, but said he could carry on with the show. 

“I think the board hoped that there would be a compromise, that he would still be able to ask people, and he would still play,” Serio said. “We could still include community members, but he decided to do it independently, and we totally support that.”

But Edgers said continuing without the organization’s support didn’t feel right and he canceled the performance. 

“I would have not felt good about compromising my values in this way,” he said. “I would not have felt good with going through with it.”

Edgers posted about the cancellation on his personal Facebook account, and the post garnered dozens of comments, some from local musicians and artists in support of his decision and admonishing the organization’s decision. 

Edgers said he understands he sprung the change on Juneau Jazz and Classics at the last minute, and said he plans to communicate earlier in any future shows. 

But he also wants the board to consider the organization’s role in the Juneau community — and that protest is inherent to jazz. 

“One of the things I encouraged them to do is to reflect on the history of the music and the nature of it,” Edgers said. “And how it was born out of adversity and originated basically as protest music.”

Serio says Juneau Jazz and Classics plans to have conversations about that history more in the coming months. 

The Dream Band still plans to hold a fundraiser for the ACLU of Alaska sometime in March. 

Disclosure: KTOO Morning Host Mike Lane sits on the Juneau Jazz and Classics board and was not involved in producing this story.

With almost 700 participants, Juneau’s annual board game convention sold out for a second time this year. Some people traveled from as far as Indiana and Massachusetts to play at Platypus Con. And the weekend-long event stayed open late — until the early morning hours. 

A lot of players were deep in their games late-night on Saturday. In Centennial Hall, a room full of people competed in a Euchre tournament. In the main ballroom, tables of friends and strangers tried new games while local businesses ran booths selling games they could take home with them.

At one table, Tim Mikulski and friends were diving deep into the annals of capitalism with a game called Flow of History. 

“It’s a card and also a coin economy game,” he said. “So we’re progressing from ancient societies forward. Right now, we’re discovering mercantilism, and yeah, it’s a good competition so far.” 

Mikulski spent most of the day at the convention; at midnight, he was about 10 hours in and counting.  

“We’re feeling ambitious for a late night, but I don’t know if I’m going to close it out,” he said. “Two a.m. feels real far away.”

Platypus Con Creator and President Josh Warren started the convention in 2015. About 130 people attended that first year and it’s since only gotten more popular. Some people come to qualify for state and national championships in games like Catan. 

“A lot of the other board game conventions are just named after the town they started in,” he said. “And I thought that was boring.” So Warren named the convention after his favorite animal instead. 

He was wearing platypus pajamas, fitting for the late hour, but he has other outfit options as well: “I have a platypus full suit with a blazer that I should be wearing because it’s warmer than this. And I do have a platypus mascot costume”

Warren said, after the convention, he’s actually traveling to Australia and New Zealand to see the elusive creatures in person.

Back in the ballroom, Pat Race — who owns the games and comics store Alaska Robotics Gallery in downtown Juneau — ran a booth with his best friend and co-owner. The two of them played a game in between talking to attendees. 

“What a great event this is. The whole community comes out. It’s packed in here all day, and then you get these late night hours and this dwindling, sleepy crowd either hopped up on the chai from these guys over here or they’re cramming pizza,” Race said. “It’s just good, wholesome fun.” 

He said events like Platypus Con bring people together. 

“You get to spend time with people you maybe see in different contexts, and it takes away all that — I don’t know — we have these facades of professionalism, or the ‘getting through the Foodland line’ armor, and so it’s nice to have that all peeled away and just hang out,” Race said.

Barb Lake set down a very tall stack of games to return at the event’s game library, which housed all 2,540 games available to play at the convention.

Her favorite was one called Hues and Cues. 

“It’s like a color matching game,” Lake said.” So somebody has to give you the color that’s on the board, and then everybody puts their chip as close to the color as they can get. It’s really hard, because your perception of what lavender is is very different than what your friends think it is.” 

For Lake, the convention has become an annual tradition. She and her husband have come for the last five years. 

“This is the event of the year for us,” she said.

She said it’s one of her favorite ways to spend time with her friends and meet new people. Learning how to play the games with other people, she said, can bring on a lot of different feelings.

“It is all of the emotions, so it’s frustrating, it’s confusing, it’s hard because you have to figure out how to play something totally new from the rule book, or you have to try and look up a video to learn how to play it,” she said. “So that part can be a challenge, and then when you get it and you like it, it’s like elation.”

Lake said they’ve ended up buying many of the games they’ve played at the convention, and now have their own game library at home to pass the time between conventions.

“We don’t drink, so we don’t go out to the bars. We’re not really, like, into a lot of the other events that go around in town,” Lake said. “But board gaming is what we do.”