Syndicated

Guitars, mandolins, ukuleles and banjos are common enough at bars, coffee houses and folk festivals. But one Juneau music teacher has made them the standard for his elementary students at Gastineau School in Douglas, which is part of Juneau.

Patrick Murphy leads a group of energetic third-graders through a folk standard, pointing out chord changes and strumming styles.

He weaves his way around the classroom, checking that instruments are tuned and the right lyric sheets are out. The kids quickly become focused.

“This is silly, but the most difficult thing as a teacher is to get them to sit down. If I can get them seated with their gear, then in 30 seconds, we’re making music,” he said.

These kids pick up instruments pretty soon after the school year starts. That’s because Murphy wants them to get a feel for the songs before they get to the technical side.

“I do that later. I kind of have this belief that if they can make music first – sing and play – then that reference will help them when they start reading stuff on the staff and on the clef, which we do,” he said.

Students focus on guitar the first year. But the classroom walls are hung with other stringed instruments. By the end of third grade, many are ready for something new.

“In fourth or fifth grade, I kind of just let them grab an instrument. And they turn to the chord chart and they teach it to themselves. And then I teach them their role in a string band. The banjos have the thumb picking and the mandolins and ukuleles kind of chop with the snare drum and that sort of thing,” he said.

All this is very different from Murphy’s own schooling, which was mostly classical.

“I was a trained bass player. I went through the conservatory system. And it just about taught the music out of me. … And I met a bunch of guys who were cowboys. They liked to sit around campfires and play guitar,” he said.

“And I asked one of my friends to teach me. And he said, ‘I’ll teach you how to play guitar. Two rules: You can’t write anything down and you can’t ask me any questions.’”

Those rules forced him to figure things out. Pretty soon, he was teaching himself.

Murphy grew up going to a church that had lots of acoustic music. That included songs in the folk tradition, some from decades ago.

So, how does he interest students in old folk songs in 2016?

“Kids like history. They like to hear stories that are bizarre. The story of John Henry, the third-graders love that. Why would he bother to compete with a machine? The absurdness of the human spirit sometimes to a young kid is really entertaining,” he said.

Still, some come to him with more recent songs. It’s not so much Bruno Mars or Lady Gaga, but pop classics, such as “Yellow Submarine” or “Lean on Me.”

Some end up in the class songbook, which he updates every year.

Murphy used to teach middle-school band. This and other schools where he’s worked have had many years of stand-up student choirs. He’s not critical at all.

“That kind of approach is great. That high-art music takes a certain discipline to play and work on that. But I guess, from my perspective, I want them to have fun and I want them to do it on their own,” he said.

And they do. Murphy starts some days with a full musical assembly in the school commons, where everybody gets a chance to play and sing.

It’s a cacophony and it’s not always pretty. But the kids – and teachers — have smiles on their faces.

The Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority is advancing plans to mine Gulf of Alaska beach sands about 75 miles northwest of Yakutat.

The trust’s board allocated $2 million last month to create a new entity to begin developing the project on land it owns at Icy Cape.

Preliminary exploration and analysis found promising concentrations of gold, as well as garnet and other heavy minerals.

Trust Land Office Executive Director John Morrison told trustees about the project’s value at a November meeting.

“This has an exceptional potential for the trust to generate revenue from its land base, and in fact has one of the greatest potentials to generate revenue of any of the trust’s assets,” he said.

The trust land office manages its property to support mental health services for Alaskans. It usually does that by leasing property or selling resources, such as timber, for others to harvest or extract.

In this case, the trust plans to take a more direct role.

At the mid-November meeting, Morrison said the new entity would explore and develop the property through joint ventures.

“What we are proposing here is to take what we are calling phase 3, which would be a further definition of the potential resource base and the marketing efforts involved in attracting the attention to bring this resource base to market,” he said.

Garnets found in the beach sands, which stretch inland, have industrial applications. They’re used as abrasives or for filtering water.

If investors are found, then developers would need numerous government permits before moving forward. The property is within the Yakutat Borough. Manager Jon Erickson said he had not yet been consulted about the project.

A somewhat similar proposal was made by an out-of-state company for mining beach sands near Yakutat about six years ago. That effort ended after initial mineral values could not be confirmed.

Conservation and fisheries groups objected to that development, saying it could hurt salmon and other marine life.

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Editor’s note: KTOO’s building sits on land leased from the Alaska Mental Health Trust Authority. KTOO has also applied for and received occasional grants for special reporting projects from the authority.

Tlingit battle helmets were designed to inspire fear. The thick, wooden head armor carried imagery of strong warriors, fierce animals or revered ancestors.

But helmets also played a ceremonial role, representing clans or helping shamans scout behind enemy lines.

When Alexander Baranov led Russian fur traders into Southeast in the late 1700s, he met some fierce resistance.

The Alaska State Museum’s Steve Henrikson said Tlingit warriors appeared one night within their camp.

“He has a very vivid description of how terrified this made everybody seem because these big figures just materialized in the middle of their camp. Because of the layers of padding, they were all really big and tall. The helmet might add another 6 to 8 inches,” he said.

But they were exceptions. Henrikson, the museum’s collections curator, said most warriors did battle with little to protect them, beyond animal hides.

The carved, painted helmets, bentwood face shields and wooden body armor was just too bulky.

“The types of battles that they had often required lots of quick movements and if you’re wearing that armor, it’s fairly heavy and bulky and it restricts your movements. So it would only be employed in very strategic ways,” he said.

Henrikson presented images and information at a Dec. 1, 2016, Sealaska Heritage Institute lecture, Terrifying Visages:  Armored Warriors of the Northern Northwest Coast, at the Walter Soboleff Building in Juneau.

He showed examples of helmets adorned with sea lion whiskers and animal skins.

“Some helmets used the headskin of a bear, a brown bear stretched over a plain, wooden form,” he said.

Battle helmets were thick, made out of burls and other off-grain pieces of wood, which were harder to penetrate or crack.

Henrickson said the origins and ages of many are not known. But one whale design points to a possible origin.

“This one has a seal in its mouth and that may point to it being from the Killer Whale Chasing Seal House of Angoon,” he said.

Henrikson and his fellow researchers have tracked down nearly 100 helmets in museums in the U.S. and overseas.

And sometimes they just show up at an auction. That was the case for one recent find, which appears to represent a merganser, a crested duck with a serrated beak found in Alaska waters.

“Again, no documentation. It was just found in a castle in France. But it’s purely Tlingit,” he said.

He said there’s no question Southeast’s Haidas and Tsimshians made armor too. But so far, most examples are Tlingit.

Armor was made of wood, animal hides or both, sometimes held together by sinew or yarn.

Henrickson said they were strengthened by other materials, including outdated Chinese coins brought in by Russian fur traders.

“They were able to get a good deal on them and they brought them out here and Northwest Coast Natives used them for decorating their regalia but also to maybe make the armor more impermeable to bullets and buckshot,” he said.

That only worked for a while. Early firearms were often weak and inaccurate. As guns gained strength, armor became no match.

But it still had ceremonial use, which continues to this day. And, a number of modern artists have created their own versions for display or use in dance groups.

Hear the full lecture Terrifying Visages: Armored Warriors of the Northern Northwest Coast, with Alaska State Museum Curator of Collections Steve Henrikson.

The Alaska Marine Highway System is changing the way passengers pay for sailings on one southern Southeast route.

Spokesman Jeremy Woodrow said the change impacts those riding the small ferry Lituya, which sails between Metlakatla and Ketchikan.

“You pay round trip when you’re going one direction and then it’s a free trip going the other direction,” he said. “This seemed like a good solution because, when you’re driving in the Lower 48 on toll bridges, it’s not uncommon to have a fee going one way and then (it’s) free in the other direction on toll bridges and actually toll roads as well.”

The Annette Island Ferry Terminal, which serves Metlakatla, is unstaffed, so travelers can’t buy tickets there.

Woodrow said the Lituya’s crew is too small to handle sales.

The system tried to find a contract vendor in Metlakatla without success, he said. That left few options.

“While they can still do it online, many of the customers who travel from Metlakatla to Ketchikan use cash primarily as their main way of purchasing tickets,” he said. “So they can’t actually purchase their tickets until they get to Ketchikan where they can go into the terminal.”

The 180-foot-long Lituya is the ferry system’s only one-route ship. It sails five days a week. The annual passenger count is about 30,000 a year, about 15,000 each way.

Woodrow said the new ticket policy will probably go into effect in January.

Metlakatla has about 1,500 residents.

What’s officially called the Metlakatla Indian Community is the region’s largest Tsimshian city.

Ferry officials are still looking for a solution to a similar problem affecting Angoon and some other small port communities.

Those towns also don’t have staffed terminals. And sailings head to multiple ports, so the Metlakatla solution won’t work.

Woodrow said ferries serving those communities have enough staff to take tickets. But problems remain for those without computer access.

“So the purser will meet them at the top of the vehicle ramp, take their names if they don’t have a ticket already, and then make sure to find them on that route,” he said. “Obviously, we would prefer to have people paying in advance.”

He said the ferry system is looking into installing ticket kiosks in some communities.

What makes a modern warrior?

According to Southeast Alaska’s largest tribal organization, it’s someone who fights to preserve subsistence rights or Native languages. And it’s those who work for clean water or care for other people’s children.

Four people or families were named as modern warriors by the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska during a Nov. 22  Native American Heritage Month Celebration in Juneau.

Organizers said those recognized represented many other tribal citizens who also go above and beyond to advocate, protest and protect.

Alfie Price co-leads a Tsimshian language practice group in Juneau. He’s also learning the Tlingit and Haida languages.

But when he accepted an award naming him a Warrior for Protecting our Languages, he spoke in Eyak, a Prince William Sound Native language that’s considered extinct.

“I just wanted this room full of people to hear a few words of Eyak tonight,” he said.

Price, who also is Tlingit, talked about the process of learning the language of his Tsimshian ancestors.

“An unexpected side effect of learning Sm’algyax especially is I feel my own healing,” he said. “The hurts and the things that made me bitter in my life are falling away. They’re becoming light on my shoulders.”

At the ceremony, Miciana Hutcherson was named Warrior for Protecting Our Sacred Lands and Waters.

Hutcherson is an activist who joined the Standing Rock Sioux protesting construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline. She said the campaign’s motto, “Water is Life,” is also important in her Tlingit homeland.

That includes protecting transboundary rivers from industrial development on the Canadian side of the border.

“We’re standing up for our inherent rights in a way that we’ve never seen before,” she said. “We’re giving our kids and future generations something to be proud of and ensuring that we’ll leave something behind tangible for them to hold onto and that’s each other.”

Also honored was Harold Martin, who was named Warrior for Protecting Our Traditional Harvesting Rights.

The longtime central council subsistence director led numerous efforts to continue or preserve traditional harvests of seals, otters and other marine life.

Martin, a former logger, stressed the importance of secondary schooling.

“Education opens all kinds of doors. It’s never too late to go back to school,” he said. “I was 40 years old when we decided to go back to school in 1974. And I was able to go to work and still retire.”

Veronica and Mike Hoyle were named Warriors for Caring for Our Children.

Surrounded by his large family, Mike Hoyle talked about fostering kids and taking responsibility to raise them.

“We never had any thoughts of adopting,” he said. “We just wanted to do the right thing, when people need a place to sleep. You just look out for your family.”

 

Watch the celebration program, which begins about 48 minutes into the video:

The Alaska Marine Highway System is moving ahead with plans to sell or scrap the ferry Taku. But it’s keeping its options open for a second sidelined ship, the Chenega. The vessels were discussed at Monday’s Marine Transportation Advisory Board meeting.

The Taku has been tied up for more than a year, with no plans for its return.

But the state can’t just put the 350-passenger ship on Craigslist or eBay — or run ads in newspapers or trade publications. It has to jump through some administrative hoops.

Ferry chief Mike Neussl said one “hoop” is permission from the Federal Highway Administration, a major funding source.

“We’re received that, just recently, and are now working with the Department of Law on the actual procedures necessary to declare that vessel excess and dispose of it through the proper channels, either by sale or scrapping the vessel,” he said.

The state used the online auction site eBay to sell the 230-passenger ferry Bartlett in 2003.

The price was just under $400,000.

Officials at the time said it would cost $5 million to $6 million to bring it into compliance with new safety regulations.

The Taku has been appraised for sale as a working vessel and for scrap metal. Officials aren’t releasing those figures.

The state is taking a different approach to a second sidelined vessel, the fast ferry Chenega, which tied up this fall.

Neussl says its future hasn’t been determined. But it will cost more than $1 million to bring it back to service.

“As every day goes by, additional licenses and certificates expire that will need to be updated as part of the process of bringing it back online,” he said.

He says the ship needs an overhaul and the water jets that power it need work.

Ferry General Manager Capt. John Falvey says top fast-ferry staffers also need special certifications.

“When you get a boat laid up like that, a lot of these officers and the mates and engineers, they’re gravitate to other ships. They’re going to lose those certifications,” he said.

Neussl says the state budget cuts led to a schedule that doesn’t require all of the system’s 11 ferries.

“One of the ways to reduce operating costs and not impact greatly the level of service provided is to reduce the size of the fleet,” he said.

The marine highway is spending about a half-million dollars a year tying up the two ships.

The 11-year-old Chenega is being stored in a Tacoma, Wash., shipyard. It was taken out of service because it requires more fuel, making it more expensive to run than most other ships.

It’s sister ship, the Fairweather, is still in use, but doesn’t operate as often as it used to.

The 53-year-old Taku is docked in Ketchikan’s Ward Cove. It was removed from service because of its age and it doesn’t fit into the highway’s long-term plans.