Yvonne Krumrey

This is Lingít Word of the Week. Each week, we feature a Lingít word voiced by master speakers. Lingít has been spoken throughout present-day Southeast Alaska and parts of Canada for over 10,000 years.

Gunalchéesh to X̱’unei Lance Twitchell, Goldbelt Heritage Foundation and the University of Alaska Southeast for sharing the recorded audio for this series.

This week’s word is geesh, or bull kelp. Listen to the audio below to learn how to say geesh.

The following transcript is meant to help illustrate the words and sentences. 

Ḵaakal.áat Florence Marks Sheakley: Geesh. 

That means bull kelp.

Here are some sentences:

Ḵaakal.áat Florence Marks Sheakley: Yakʼéi áyá geesh wán daak adustʼéix̱i.

It is good to go out fishing at the edge of the bull kelp.

Keihéenák’w John Martin: Yá yéil sh kalneegí áyá geesh daax̱ woogoodí yéil.

There is a Raven story where Raven went around the bull kelp. 

Keiyishí Bessie Cooley: Éilʼ héen yíkx̱ yaa kana.éin wé geesh.

Kelp is growing in the ocean.

Kooshdáakʼu Bill Fawcett: Dliwkát latín wé geesh líl a káx̱ eeḵooxúḵ!

Watch that bull kelp; donʼt go over it! 

Kaxwaan Éesh George Davis: Héen x̱ʼakee yoo liháshk geesh.

The bull kelp floats on the water.

You can hear each installment of Lingít Word of the Week on the radio throughout the week. 

Additional language resources:

Find biographies for the master speakers included in this lesson here.

Learn more about why we use Lingít instead of Tlingit here.

Watch a video introducing Lingít sounds here.

The Juneau Assembly has approved spending up to $200,000 to hire support staff for Mendenhall Glacier Recreation Area after federal firings left few U.S. Forest Service staff on duty. 

The heavily trafficked attraction saw about a million visitors last year and has a higher volume of tourists — and bears — on the horizon. 

The funding would go to organizations that already operate at the glacier so they can hire more staff. Those include education nonprofit Discovery Southeast and the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, which has a co-stewardship agreement with the Forest Service.

Shawn Eisele directs Discovery Southeast, which brings nature and science education programs to Juneau schools and camps. He said setting the funding aside is a common sense move.

“I think it gives us a lot more tools,” Eisele said. “I see Discovery Southeast and Tlingit and Haida both being in a position where we can bring on some folks that can ensure some of the basic stuff that people expect to see out there, particularly related to safety.”

The worker shortage is a result of national policy changes. In February, the Trump administration cut thousands of workers in the U.S. Forest Service, including most of the staff at Mendenhall Glacier. Some were rehired after courts challenged the firings, but some have taken a resignation option since.

The Forest Service has not responded to multiple inquiries about how many original glacier staff took the resignation option, and how many remain.

The agency released a plan in April that reduced the Mendenhall Glacier Visitor Center’s hours and said a handful of Forest Service employees from other offices and departments would staff the recreation area. 

Now it is staffed from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. each day but Saturday. When six ships docked in Juneau last Saturday, there were at least two Forest Service staff present at the glacier, but the agency doesn’t guarantee that will continue.

Góos’k’ Ralph Wolfe directs Tlingit and Haida’s cultural ambassadors program. Cultural ambassadors are tribal members who staff the recreation area to teach visitors about Indigenous history, language and culture. 

Wolfe said between the reassigned Forest Service staff, Discovery Southeast employees and the six cultural ambassadors, things at the glacier haven’t been out of control, yet. But he’s expecting more people — and other challenges. 

“We have been able to cover the basic necessities that are out there right now,” he said. “However, there is still, like, the anticipation of higher bear activity once the summer really starts going and more people.”

Wolfe said the tribe is already working to boost the number of ambassadors at the glacier. 

He said more staff would help ensure safety of people using the area. The first bear sighting was two weeks ago, Wolfe said, and it took half of the staff at the glacier that day to direct tourism traffic away from the bear and give it room to get away from the trail. 

“My essential concern is, I need somebody out there for bear and trail control, and I don’t think we’re seeing either of those happen too much right now,” he said. 

The ordinance passed 6 to 3. Assembly member Ella Adkison voted against the ordinance and expressed concerns about all of the areas of the Juneau community that may need support as federal funding cuts continue. 

“There will be a lot of worthy causes I think that will come up short on funding,” she said. “And this Assembly will not be able to support them.”

The Assembly is also considering budgeting extra money for Juneau’s public libraries to make up for lost federal grants. 

The money intended for staffing the glacier comes from marine passenger fees. There are no plans to hire just yet. City Manager Katie Koester will decide if more staff is needed if either organization says safety issues are arising at the glacier.

Thousands of new books, many by Indigenous writers, are landing in the hands of kids across Southeast Alaska this month. A series of book drops are the result of a partnership between the region’s largest tribal government and a Native-led nonprofit with roots in the Navajo and Hopi nations. 

During Thursday’s book distributions at Kax̱dig̱oowu Héen Elementary in Juneau, kids swarmed around tables piled with books.

Audri Ia, a third grader who says she loves reading, picked up a book about Ada Lovelace, a mathematician.

“I liked this one because I read the back of it and I got really interested in it, and I like science books,” she said, adding that she wants to be a scientist.

“I like to, like, blow stuff up at my house, but my mom always says no,” she added. 

Ia wasn’t the only one who had a stack of books in her arms. Throughout the common area, dozens of kids scurried around with their own finds. Some books are for kids as young as five or six years old, and some targeted older readers. The ones for elementary-aged kids were going fast. 

The Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska hosted the book drop. Special Projects Manager Tristan Douville helped orchestrate the event, and he surveyed the pandemonium with visible emotion.

“Oh my gosh. It’s so incredible. It’s like amazing. Mind blowing. Couldn’t be more exciting,” he said. “I’m like, ‘this is crazy.’”

Months ago, he reached out to NDN Girls Book Club — a nonprofit that brings books to Indigenous communities — to float the idea of book drops in Southeast Alaska. He said he knows firsthand that not all Alaska students have ready access to fun reading material. 

“I grew up in a rural community. I grew up on Prince of  Wales Island, in Craig and Klawock, and there were times when it wasn’t super accessible to even get to the library,” Douville said.

That kind of access is the point for Kinsale Drake, the founder of NDN Girls Book Club. She said she wishes there were book drops like this when she was growing up. 

Drake is a poet, and said she thinks she may have found her passion earlier if she had more exposure to Native writers. She said she was motivated to start the book club as a way for her to work against a publishing ecosystem that can exclude certain readers or communities.

“Publishers care about money. They don’t care about representation unless it’s making them money,” Drake said. “And so I think, you know, the anger and the sadness, I think, of dealing with that as somebody who wants every Native kid to be able to have books with characters that look like them, that make them feel confident, that make them feel happy and seen and loved.”

Her organization started delivering books throughout the Navajo and Hopi Nations in a pink van in 2023. Since then, NDN Girls Book Club has traveled across the United States with books in tow. 

Drake says events like these show publishers that there is a market for stories about and for Indigenous youth.

“When we come out here and we have a room full of kids who are, like, so excited to have books like this, it’s like, you know, we’re showing them in their face. This is representation. This is why it’s important. And you’re not going to tell us that it’s not important,” she said. 

The book tour will make it to villages in Southeast, too. Next, books will land in Yakutat, Klukwan and Hydaburg.

This is Lingít Word of the Week. Each week, we feature a Lingít word voiced by master speakers. Lingít has been spoken throughout present-day Southeast Alaska and parts of Canada for over 10,000 years.

Gunalchéesh to X̱’unei Lance Twitchell, Goldbelt Heritage Foundation and the University of Alaska Southeast for sharing the recorded audio for this series.

This week’s word is xóots, or brown bear. Listen to the audio below to learn how to say xóots.

The following transcript is meant to help illustrate the words and sentences. 

Kooshdáakʼu Bill Fawcett: Xóots. 

That means brown bear.

Here are some sentences: 

Kooshdáakʼu Bill Fawcett: De sá wé yaa nagút wé xóots?

Where is the brown bear walking to?

Keihéenák’w John Martin: Teiḵweidí shagóon áyá xóots.

The Teiḵweidí are the brown bear clan.

Keiyishí Bessie Cooley: Xóots, máayatee yéixʼ yatseeneit yóo dax̱ duwasáakw.

Brown bears are sometimes called “Yatseeneit” (the living thing).

Ḵaakal.áat Florence Marks Sheakley: Yá xóots ḵa yá hintaak xóodzi woosh tin has yatee.

Brown bears and polar bears are coming together.

Kaxwaan Éesh George Davis: Xóots aas daax̱ kei wdlitl’ét’.

The brown bear climbed a tree.

You can hear each installment of Lingít Word of the Week on the radio throughout the week. 

Additional language resources:

Find biographies for the master speakers included in this lesson here.

Learn more about why we use Lingít instead of Tlingit here.

Watch a video introducing Lingít sounds here.

If you ask longtime Juneau residents what cake they want on their birthday or for special occasions, one answer comes up a lot — North Douglas chocolate cake. 

“People love this cake,” said Abigail Sweetman, a Juneau resident originally from Ketchikan. She spends nearly all of her free time coming up with new recipes in her Starr Hill apartment.

“I am a huge sugar person, and I grew up making a lot of desserts because it was something I like, something I couldn’t get much of in Ketchikan,” she said. “Most of my love of food came from baking at a young age.” 

For Curious Juneau, Sweetman asked KTOO about the cake’s origin.

While I started looking around for the people who named it, Sweetman gathered ingredients to make it at home.

“It has butter and oil, which is pretty decadent,” Sweetman said, reading aloud from the recipe. “She says to combine, basically like, most of the wet ingredients in the cocoa and bring it to a boil.” 

The recipe lives in the Fiddlehead Cookbook. The cookbook, which is older than Sweetman, is based on a restaurant that operated in Juneau for nearly 30 years. The Fiddlehead Restaurant closed two decades ago, but the cookbook — and North Douglas chocolate cake — has taken on its own life.

“It was a cake that I had in childhood,” she said. “and I’m like ‘I didn’t realize that they named a cake after North Douglas’ and I was like ‘There’s gotta be a story there.’”

The story is rather simple actually, according to Linda Zagar. She’s the baker the cookbook credits with bringing it to the restaurant. 

“My best friend’s mom made this cake, and it was called choco bake,” she said. “It has a real name. It’s a real recipe. I did not create the recipe. That’s what I always tell people. I just brought it.” 

Zagar moved to Alaska with that same best friend in the 1970s, and followed her now husband to Juneau. They’ve lived in North Douglas for decades.

She worked at the Fiddlehead Restaurant for several years, and worked in just about every role there — waiting tables, washing dishes, prep cooking — before she became the morning baker. Zagar said a lot of staff would bring in favorite recipes they had accumulated over the years. 

“For some reason, this one stuck,” she said.

Zagar added a couple of twists: she made it a layer cake, with more frosting, and added walnuts around the edge — though the nuts didn’t make it into the cookbook version. And, Zagar said, she loves chocolate, so instead of plain cocoa powder, she used dark. 

The name, however, was a savvy act of branding. 

“My boss at the time said, ‘Well, what’s the name?’ And I said, ‘choco bake’. And he goes, ‘Hmm, no.’ He goes, ‘You’re the North Douglas Baker. Let’s call it the North Douglas chocolate cake.’ And I think that’s half of it,” she said. “It has a cool name, yeah? But then it just became a thing.”

Nancy DeCherney was part of the Fiddlehead Restaurant too, as a cook and manager. 

“All of us were getting out of college, and there was money up here, and so we had the blessing of having a staff that was highly educated and full of — you know — it was the 70s,” she said. “Everybody was full of exciting ideas.”

DeCherney remembers what it was like to walk into the Fiddlehead. She described dark wood furniture and ferns, a smoking and non-smoking section.

She wrote the Fiddlehead Cookbook in the 90s and she said she loves hearing people talk about their favorite recipes from the cookbook. She’s glad it’s lived on. 

“I think partly, it’s not real difficult food,” she said. “It’s accessible. Some of it is a little unusual, but I think the average bear can cook it, and it’ll turn out okay.”

Back in her apartment, Sweetman pulled the cake out of the oven and started to assemble it. 

“I always want layer cakes to turn out a little better than they do, and then I usually get to the end of it and I’m like, it’s more important to me that this tastes good,” she said as she started frosting. 

For the record, it also looked good, with some extra decoration that wasn’t in the cookbook – edible eyeballs. 

The cake is rich and moist. You’ll probably want a glass of milk nearby. And Zagar says, it’s always better on the second day. 

A German Shepherd who was on the lam for nearly three months has been captured and returned to her family. Juneau Animal Rescue announced that animal control officers and a volunteer helped capture Jackie last week.

“This was truly a community effort, and we can’t thank you enough for all the sightings and updates you shared with us,” JAR wrote in a statement.

Jackie slipped her leash in February and since then had stolen the hearts of Juneau residents, who posted photos and videos of her caught on doorbell cameras around town.

Juneau Animal Control officers have been tracking these sightings and setting large, pain-free traps for Jackie ever since, sometimes with cheeseburgers zip-tied to the back.

Now that she’s back home with her adoptive family, JAR said they will not be sharing any further updates.