Yvonne Krumrey

It’s been a tough couple of years for the LGBTQ+ youth that come by Juneau’s Zach Gordon Youth Center.

“We have seen just significant struggles with mental health, like kids that are struggling to stay in school, they’re struggling to maintain relationships and take care of themselves,” said Ty Shae, a youth program coordinator for the Zach. “And I think kids are just living through some really dark stuff… And they’re really doing their best, but like, it’s rough out there.”

The youth center is place where young people in Juneau can drop in and socialize or play games. It also offers support services, like help finding jobs and housing. And with activities like chess club and karaoke night, it’s a special space for Juneau’s queer kids.

This was the third year that the center has hosted an in-person Youth Pride Party. It’s one of the events that kicks off Pride Month in Juneau. About 65 kids showed up on June 4 with pride flags painted across their faces or draped over their shoulders. There were games and dancing through the rainbow balloon arch at the front door.

But the event came during a slew of anti-LGBTQ legislation nationwide, including a bill in Alaska that would have banned trans girls from playing on girls sports teams had it passed.

“I think it is important to acknowledge that the general messaging in the world right now is not super inclusive to trans youth, in particular,” Shae said. “And even if it doesn’t directly impact these kids, like even if the trans kids we’re seeing are not in sports or whatever, that is still super harsh messaging to hear.”

Lee Orozco came to the party with a nonbinary heart sticker on their face.

“We need a lot more safe spaces. For queer people in Juneau, especially children,” Orozco said. “Because year-round, most of the queer spaces are for adults, because they’re like drag shows at the bars, which is a little frustrating.”

Grayson Ashley agreed that the lack of LGBTQ+ events for young people feels limiting.

“I think that kids aren’t able to express themselves as often as most adults are,” they said.

It makes events like these all the more impactful by showing LGBTQ youth in Juneau that there is room for them, they said.

The rest of this month has seven more Pride events, and some are all ages, but the Zach Gordon Center’s party is the only event that caters to youth alone.

Correction: An earlier version of this story misspelled Lee Orozco’s last name.

Juneau’s Riverbend Elementary is now called Kax̱dig̱oowu Héen.

Tuesday night, the board of education passed the proposal to give the school a Lingít name.

Kax̱dig̱oowu Héen translates to “going back to clear water.” It’s used to refer to a part of the Mendenhall River.

Unlike other Juneau schools, the name won’t be added to the end of “Riverbend” but will replace it entirely. 

Students have been practicing the new name for months. It was proposed to the district Board of Education in April. 

Kax̱dig̱oowu Héen is now one of six schools in Juneau with a Lingít name. There are another seven schools in the Juneau School District that don’t yet have proposed name changes. 

There are over a dozen Pride events planned for the month of June in Juneau. 

The events range from celebratory to silly. And there are events that highlight the oppression and mistreatment LGBTQ+ people have faced, both here in Juneau and across the world, including a showing of the film “Blue Ticket,” which tells the story of the banishment of gay men in Juneau in the 1960s. 

Many events are open to all ages. 

“We wanted to have a little something for everyone,” said Abi Spofford of the Southeast Alaska LGBTQ+ Alliance, or SEAGLA.

She says the community expressed a strong interest in events the whole family could join. That includes Juneau’s four-legged friends too. On Tuesday, SEAGLA is hosting a Proud Pet Parade at Sandy Beach.

“People in Juneau are in love with their pets, so we didn’t want to exclude those,” Spofford said.

A Pride prom dance on Saturday is for all ages. It’s a chance for LGBTQ+ people to attend a prom in the way that they may have wanted to but were unable to when they were in high school. This time they can show up with their partner of choice and their clothing of choice, even — and especially — if their outfits are nongender conforming. 

“Basically just an opportunity for queer people to re-experience prom, if they didn’t have a great time the first time,” Spofford said. 

Other events include a game night, scavenger hunt, Pride trivia night, pub crawl, Pride picnic and a tea dance. The tea dance is an event that memorializes afternoon gatherings of the 60s when gay men would drink tea instead of alcohol since it was illegal to serve alcohol to known gay people. 

Last weekend, on National Trails Day, a Juneau trail maintenance nonprofit gave residents a chance to give back to the trails that helped keep them connected to nature during the pandemic.

At the Lemon Creek Trailhead, about 30 volunteers picked up shovels, saws, mattocks and pulaskis and headed out. Smaller groups formed at problem spots, like where a rotting tree stump took over half a trail or a downed log forced hikers to climb over it.

Trail Mix, Inc. executive director Ryan O’Shaughnessy says days like these are an opportunity for trail users to see what goes into maintaining Juneau’s outdoor spaces — and to give back. 

“I just think that our trails are an invaluable community resource, and it’s really, really cool to see people coming together and appreciating them and improving them and contributing to our community,” he said.

June 4 was Trail Mix’s first open call volunteer day in nearly three years. On open call days, volunteers — no experience required — work on smaller maintenance projects that don’t need a full trail crew.

While a trail crew might take on big jobs like uncovering sections buried by landslides, volunteer days address smaller problems — like water flowing across a trail or downed trees blocking the way.

Dan Parks of Southeast Alaska Independent Living, who leads the Outdoor Recreation Community Access program, hadn’t volunteered with Trail Mix before. But he’s spent a lot of time on Juneau’s trails, and he says he appreciates the work Trail Mix’s crew does.

“You can visibly see, just by hiking the trail, whether or not they’ve been there,” Parks said. He says he hopes Saturday would be the “first of many” days volunteering with Trail Mix. 

Mark Pusich, Trail Mix’s board president, says trail use went up during the pandemic. There haven’t been open call volunteer days since the summer of 2019, but he says people have shown appreciation through financial support — the number of regular donors has risen from about 450 before the pandemic to nearly 800 today. 

And Saturday’s larger-than-normal turnout was also a good sign of the community’s desire to get involved.

After four hours, the group of 30 had cleared a boulder and a tree stump and rerouted water in three places. About a mile down the Lemon Creek Trail, a few downed trees were still lying across the path. There’s still a lot of work to be done. 

While Trail Mix doesn’t have another open call day planned right now, there are other opportunities for people to help care for Juneau’s trails. One is a new initiative called Trail Stewards, where volunteers can sign up in a group of five or more to “adopt a trail” and work on it once or twice a month.

The Sealaska Heritage Institute’s new arts campus was formally opened and dedicated on Wednesday afternoon.

Its name was announced at the ceremony — Antnané Hít, or House of Art.

Ricardo Worl, communications director for SHI, said the project was funded by over 2,000 individual donors, mostly in Southeast Alaska. 

“To us, that indicates there’s a lot of support for Lingít art or our culture: a recognition of, you know, that we’ve been here,” Worl said. 

Classes have already been happening while the building was under construction. So far, there have been classes to learn how to make Tinaa,  small copper shield pendants, and how to weave cedar hats. 

“The way the building is designed, you know, we have a metals studio, we have a textile studio, we have a wood carving studio,” Worl said.

Upcoming art courses may be halibut hooks and bracelet making. Worl also said that SHI is looking into revitalizing other endangered art forms, too.

It’s not just the material arts that SHI had in mind when designing this campus. The covered outdoor pavilion is designed for musicians and dancers to perform.

“This is just the beginning of making Juneau the Northwest Coast art capital,” Worl said. 

One theme of the opening was unity among Lingít, Haida and Tsimshian people. The totem pole that now looks over the plaza is carved on all sides, which is a first in Alaska. It’s been named the Sealaska Cultural Values Pole. 

The carver, TJ Young, is Haida and he worked with guest carvers Rob Mills, who is Lingít, and David R. Boxley, who is Tsimshian, making the pole a collaborative piece that features all three Southeast Alaska Native groups. 

The opening ended with a carver’s dance, featuring Young, his brother, and apprentices Greg Frisby and Andrea Cook who also worked on the pole. Then, the Aagóon Yátx’i, or Angoon Children Dance, closed out the ceremonies.

Disclosure: KTOO is under contract with Sealaska Heritage Institute to produce video coverage of Celebration.

There are two disc golf courses in Juneau already, and the Juneau Disc Golf Club wants to add a third.

They’ve designed a temporary course t0 be placed around the Treadwell Mine Historic Site and Trail, which means the holes — think tall, metal baskets — won’t be driven into the ground. They’re removable.

The course is similar to one at Eaglecrest Ski Area last summer.

The idea for the course, according to Shannon Crossley of the Juneau Disc Golf Club, is that it has shorter distances so it’s easier for younger and less experienced players.

“Beginners can go out and feel good about themselves and not feel a lot of pressure from the really good disc golfers,” Crossley said. 

The other courses in town get crowded with people who disc golf more regularly and with more skill.

Treadwell is a desirable location for a disc golf course because of things like bathrooms and an existing trail network. 

Crossley and representatives from the city’s Parks and Recreation Department offered a walk through of the proposed course in late May. Jake Quarstad, who lives nearby and walks his dogs along the trails multiple times a day, was on that tour.

Quarstad is a disc golfer, but he said this course is a bad idea as it’s currently planned.

Since that walk through, he’s been coming to the park with a clipboard, collecting signatures for a petition against the course. He’s worried that weaving the course in and out of mixed use trails will cause problems.

While the course is designed with kids in mind, with holes closer together than courses designed for adults or professionals, Quarstad said he’s worried many people will treat it like the bigger courses.

“I can tell you as a teenage boy, that is what we did,” Quarstad said. “We made the short holes more fun, either by going for a hole-in-one and throwing it a little bit harder to do so, or by shooting from back further.”

People will use the course how they want to, he said — either carefully or with gusto perhaps better suited for a larger course. He said that users should have the freedom to do that without risk to other park users.

“People are going to have fun the way they should have fun with the course,” Quarstad said. 

Another reason Quarstad is concerned: he worries the course will dissuade the area’s current users from going there. 

“People are just going to avoid the area if they begin to see disc golfers here. So it may not always be that there is a conflict, as much as there is just people being diverted away from the area,” Quarstad said. “And this is one of the few really accessible trails for those pushing a stroller or if you have a physical impairment or something — it’s a very flat trail to walk.”

He also said it’s only a matter of time before someone gets hit by a disc. 

Quarstad does like the idea of the course being in the Treadwell area, but he wants the course to be further off the trails. But Crossley said the course’s integration with the trails is a part of what would make it accessible. 

“I’m designing the course for a demographic that doesn’t exist, and that’s the new people,” Crossley said.

On Monday, Quarstad had collected over 90 signatures for his petition. Crossley also has a petition — gathering support for the course. She had 150 signatures online by Monday and more on paper. 

The Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee will decide whether or not to recommend the final proposal for the course to the Parks and Recreation Department during their Tuesday meeting, and have invited public comment.