Southwest

A large crack runs down the center of James Berlin Sr.’s faded brick-red home. He’s been the mayor of Nunapitchuk for 16 years, and a pillar of the community. His house needs a new porch and a new foundation.

“The best choice would be to build a new house,” Berlin Sr. said. “But right now it needs to be repaired.”

Some houses in Nunapitchuk sit on their own little hills as the soil erodes around them. Whole neighborhoods have sunk as seeping sewage mixes with the soil of the melting tundra. One long bridge on the southwest of town is blocked off now with a set of wooden planks. All of the houses in the neighborhood it once connected are abandoned.

Not far from the Johnson River, Natalia “Edna” Chase’s two room plywood home is one of the houses in especially urgent need. For the last decade, the ground beneath her house has been giving way.

Gaps form between the plywood floor, letting in frigid wind and blowing snow. Each time someone opens the door in the winter, Chase goes behind them and puts paper towels into the gaps with a butterknife. The floor is always moving, sometimes sloping upwards, tripping up her brother, who had a stroke and shuffles, and her partner, who struggles to balance since losing an arm.

“I’ve been trying to move around furniture because this side is sinking faster than before,” Chase said, pointing to the sagging floor under the kitchen. “We usually have rainwater coming in before winter and I have no place to put it, so we’re using buckets to bring the water in. For drinking and all that.”

Water pours in when the snow melts too. When there are sunny days in the spring, Chase stays up all night vacuuming the water gushing in from the corner of her floorboards and putting the water in a row of large buckets. Chase estimates that about 500 gallons of water flood into their home in the spring.

“I usually try to keep furniture up by using two by fours so the air can circulate under,” said Chase. “We have to keep it about 80 degrees every day to keep the floor dry. Sometimes I have five fans going on when it’s really wet outside to keep the floor from getting too moldy.”

Every week, despite her chronic back pain, she moves every item and appliance and gets on her knees to clean underneath them. When she hasn’t kept up with constant cleaning, she’s seen mold patches that look like flowering orchids grow to the size of a football.

“This mold, it sticks on clothes, it sticks on the bed, the mattress, everything. That moldy smell,” Chase said. “I have to rewash every clothes. I’ll wash clothes. If I leave them out, they start stinking and I have to wash them again.”

Her partner has developed a chronic respiratory illness and recently her 14-year-old had to get an inhaler.

“It gets very depressing. Most days I can’t shake it off until I, I don’t know, maybe get mad and it will shake off. But we’re trying to deal with it,” said Chase.

Except for school for her son, they rarely leave the house. All of her time is devoted to taking care of the house and family. Chase worries about how her own health issues might mean she won’t be able to keep up with all the work.

“I wouldn’t want them to go through what I have been going through all this time with this house. It’s very debilitating, especially when you’re disabled. To see your partners cough away. And that black mold. I have to get started even though I’m hurting so much.”

The lots next to Chase’s home are empty, filled with abandoned chests of drawers and washers, heavy items that made the homes sink faster. Her neighbors knocked down their houses and moved in with nearby relatives because of the flooding and increasingly unstable ground.

Chase wants to move, too, but there’s nowhere to go. There’s no land in Nunapitchuk that’s good enough to build on anymore. That means a lot of houses are overcrowded. James Berlin Jr. recently moved in with his dad.

“Practically everybody here, practically every family you know have multiple families living in houses now,” Berlin Jr. said. “Living conditions, with our water and sewer system, it’s causing health issues that we normally wouldn’t be seeing.”

Berlin Jr. said that he thinks their house is sinking because the nearby sewage lagoon is seeping out. Many residents point to the toxic chemicals in the multiple sewage lagoons dotting the center of town, soaking into the soil and speeding up the already rapidly-melting permafrost.

When we walked around, Berlin Jr. pointed at the large number of snowmachines gathered by properties for different members of households. Overcrowding was one reason Nunapitchuk was one of the first places in Alaska to see the coronavirus run rampant.

“I’m not saying everybody’s sick, but you know, it’s more common to see people going to the clinic for respiratory issues like colds, head colds, flus, sore throat,” said Berlin Jr.. “You know, all kinds of common flus and stuff that you see, but it’s more so here in Nunap[itchuk] because we have multiple family units living in small spaces.”

It’s not the first time the village has seen widespread disease, but in the past, one of their protections was the spread out nature of their community and their nomadic lifestyle. Nunapitchuk resident Morris Alexie explained.

“When they brought in, they call it the Black Death. If we were all gathered in a village like we’re gathered now, I bet it would wipe out almost all of the community,” Alexie said. “But then since they were in, in tribal, in small tribes separately, that Black Death they called would leave, like, only one remaining family of that tribe.”

In late 2021, Bethel police responding to a report of an intoxicated man at a home on 1st Avenue Access found an unconscious woman on the back porch. A black windbreaker was twisted around her neck. When they removed it, they noticed ligature marks, a common type of bruising when someone is strangled or hung.

Nikki Taylor didn’t have a pulse and she wasn’t breathing, according to their report, so they started CPR until medics arrived. Taylor was revived and medevaced to Anchorage, but the 31-year-old was declared brain dead three days later on Aug. 25, 2021.

Taylor’s parents were devastated.

“That is my daughter. I took care of her,” said Timothy Evon.

The State Medical Examiner’s Office ruled the death a suicide, but Evon and Taylor’s mother, Sophie Pinder, weren’t satisfied with that explanation. Pinder said that she called the state examiner’s office.

“When I talked with the medical examiner, I told her that it’s not suicide,” Pinder said.

But the cause of death did not change, and Taylor’s case was closed on Aug 27, 2021.

“Grief has no expiration,” Pinder said. “You die with them.”

Unanswered questions

The case could have ended there, another grim statistic in a state where the suicide rate is twice the national average, but Taylor’s family kept pushing for someone to listen to them. They found that man when Bethel swore in a new police chief, Leonard “Pete” Hicks, in late 2022.

Hicks, a transplant to Alaska from Alabama, encouraged members of the community to talk to him about their concerns. So Taylor’s parents called and asked him to look at the case.

“After talking to them, I told them I would look at the report again,” Hicks said. And when he did, Hicks said that what he found was concerning.

“There were a lot of unanswered questions that should have been addressed when you’re dealing with any death investigation. The last thing you want is a report that generates more questions than answers. And that was kind of the case here. A lot of statements didn’t make sense,” Hicks said.

Hicks told officers to reopen Taylor’s case.

“I definitely think that there’s more that occurred that day than just a simple suicide. And we need to know the truth as to what happened that day for the sake of the victim, the sake of the family,” Hicks said. 

When Bethel police reopened the case, the investigator who reviewed the case, Sgt. Brandon Boyle, eventually found more than a dozen “points of contention” — essentially red flags in the initial investigation.

For one, it would have been difficult for Taylor, who was 5 feet tall, to hang herself in the spot where she was found. According to the report, there wasn’t anything found nearby for her to use as a step. The investigator said that the windbreaker found twisted around her neck would likely have come undone with her full body weight on it.

Many of the investigator’s other questions about the case revolve around Taylor’s former fiancé, a man named Walter Williams.

According to police reports, Williams was found near Taylor’s body when Community Service Patrol officers arrived at the home. Those officers later told Bethel police that he was kneeling over her body and then yelled at them and fled the scene. He was caught moments later by Bethel police and handcuffed. Then, according to their report, he told police that Taylor had tried to hang herself.

The initial investigation details that police read the heavily intoxicated Williams his rights and then questioned him. According to that report, Williams said that he and Taylor had been arguing, and that he had stepped away to talk to someone else. He told police that when he got back, he noticed she was hanging.

“Follow-up that should have been done hadn’t been done”

The initial investigating officer concluded that Williams was too intoxicated to lift Taylor off the ground and tie her up by her jacket. The officer wrote that Taylor attempted suicide. But Williams has a history of assault convictions, and Hicks said that should have been investigated further.

“You had a suspect or boyfriend that had a history of domestic violence. So there were things that needed to be addressed. There was follow-up that should have been done that hadn’t been done,” Hicks said.

After the case was reopened, the new investigator got a search warrant for Taylor’s medical records and found no history of suicidal ideation. In fact, a note from Taylor’s doctor casts doubt on her suicide as well.

“I do not think Ms. Taylor’s injuries are consistent with hanging by a windbreaker. I am highly concerned for non-accidental trauma and possible homicide, especially since she had been assaulted within 48 hours prior to these injuries,” reads the note.

Despite the red flags, the reinvestigation of the case stalled in March 2023 when the Bethel Police Department asked the State Medical Examiner’s Office to reopen the case for review. There has been a lot of turnover at the department since then, and the case has changed hands three times.

Taylor’s father used to be in law enforcement. When he talks about this investigation, his frustration is palpable.

“The investigating officer, there’s many of them, two of them quit. And this last one right now, I told the investigating officer the only time I’ll shake your hand is when this thing is done in the court. Then I will shake your hand,” Evon said.

Now Hicks, the police chief who pushed for the case to be reopened, has stepped down too, leaving Taylor’s parents back where they were more than two years ago when she died: unsatisfied and still pushing for answers.

Williams, who is currently being held at Goose Creek for violating a protective order another woman has against him, has not been charged with anything connected to the investigation into Taylor’s death.

The District Attorney’s Office would not comment on the open case into Taylor’s death.

The State Medical Examiner’s Office would not comment either, but Taylor’s parents said that her death is still officially categorized as a suicide.

Pinder said that she doesn’t believe her daughter’s death is an isolated case. She thinks there are a lot of other families out there struggling with unresolved questions around the death of a loved one.

“We deserve justice,” Pinder said. “How would you feel if this was your child or if this was your sister? How would you feel? What would you do?”

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday rejected the state of Alaska’s request to consider its arguments for overturning a Biden administration decision that bars development of the controversial Pebble mine project.

The court, in a single line on a list of orders, denied the state’s attempt to bring the case directly to it without pursuing the complaint through the lower courts.

The administration of Gov. Mike Dunleavy had made the unusual request for direct Supreme Court deliberation in a petition filed in July.

The administration argued that the Environmental Protection Agency’s Jan. 30, 2023, determination blocking permitting of the Pebble project violated the state’s rights and would deprive the state of resource income.

Alaska Attorney General Treg Taylor, in a statement Monday, referred to those arguments.

“The EPA set a dangerous precedent when it issued a preliminary veto of a project on State land. I swore an oath to uphold Alaska’s Constitution, which requires developing and conserving all of Alaska’s natural resources for the maximum benefit of its people. Due to the national significance of the EPA’s veto, we went to the Supreme Court directly asking it to take up this case so the issue can be resolved as quickly as possible,” Taylor said in the statement.

The state will file its complaint elsewhere, Taylor continued.

“While SCOTUS did not pick up the case at this time, it does not indicate how the Supreme Court will ultimately rule on the merits. All this decision means is that we will take the more traditional route and file first in the federal district court. We will continue fighting for Alaska’s right to develop its resources through the federal court system,” he said in the statement.

Alaska Native, conservation and fishing groups that oppose the Pebble project welcomed the Supreme Court’s rejection but expressed worries about the state’s continued efforts to overturn EPA’s protections for the Bristol Bay region.

“Although we are glad to see the Supreme Court refuse to entertain Governor Dunleavy’s frivolous lawsuit challenging the EPA’s Clean Water Act veto of the Pebble Mine, we should have never gotten to this point in the first place,” Delores Larson, interim executive director of United Tribes of Bristol Bay, said in a statement. “Governor Dunleavy’s lawsuit was – and will continue to be – a massive waste of taxpayer money that only represents the interests of the company behind the Pebble Mine. The Tribes, fishermen, and local communities were just celebrating the EPA’s Clean Water Act protections for Bristol Bay, just to be thrown back into uncertainty less than a year later.”

The Bristol Bay Regional Seafood Development Association, another group opposed to the mine, also released a statement criticizing the Dunleavy administration’s legal move.

“While we are relieved and happy to see the Supreme Court dismiss Governor Dunleavy’s unreasoned attempt to challenge the EPA’s Clean Water Act veto of the Pebble Mine, as an Alaskan fisherman I am concerned about the amount of public money that was wasted to push this frivolous case,” Mark Niver, a board member of the commercial fishing association, said in the statement. “Unfortunately we know that this is not the end of the attacks on Bristol Bay and we will not stop working to defend our irreplaceable fishery. We need our elected officials to work with us to pass legislation to permanently protect Bristol Bay and all that the watershed supports in order to end the uncertainty that’s loomed over us for decades.”

The proposed Pebble mine would be a huge open-pit copper and gold project located in the uplands of the Bristol Bay watershed. The Bristol Bay region holds the world’s largest sockeye salmon runs, supporting major commercial, subsistence and sport fisheries. Broad opposition to the mine focused on anticipated impacts to Bristol Bay salmon and the people and wildlife that depend on it.

To pursue the Pebble argument at the Supreme Court, the Dunleavy administration used a Virginia-based firm that is known for advocating for conservative causes. The firm, Consovoy McCarthy, was first contracted by the Dunleavy administration in 2019 to pursue a legal fight against public employee unions; it later got a $600,00 contract that proved controversial.

Consovoy McCarthy also represents the Dunleavy administration in its legal fight against the federal government rural priority for subsistence fishing in the Kuskokwim River, a place where salmon runs have dwindled. The state’s position dismayed many Native groups, and the Alaska Federation of Natives and others intervened in favor of the federal government’s subsistence management.

In his budget released last month, Dunleavy proposed another $2 million appropriation to the Alaska Department of Law for such “statehood defense” efforts. At the Dec. 14 news conference on the budget, Taylor said the Legislature has already appropriated $11.5 million over the past few years for such efforts, about half of which has been spent. Ultimately, Taylor said then, about $15 million is expected to be spent on those legal fights.

This story originally appeared in the Alaska Beacon and is republished here with permission.

Visibility was poor, the ground was slick, and the rain was more ice than wet on Nov. 15. Conditions too challenging for even Santa’s seasoned sleigh crew. Some problems require modern solutions. Enter the Alaska National Guard’s Black Hawk, a four-blade, twin engine workhorse helicopter, reliable enough to transport wounded troops out of combat zones and get gifts to good boys and girls in remote places.

There wasn’t enough room inside the UH-60L Black Hawk helicopter for the Clauses and their helpers, the gifts and a radio reporter. So we took two trips. Santa was in the second group. That didn’t dampen seven-year-old Tuluksak second grader Stella’s excitement for St. Nick’s late arrival.

“I am excited to see Santa,” Stella said.

Over a hundred students and their families packed inside Tuluksak’s gymnasium. Mr. and Mrs. Claus were greeted and treated with Yup’ik drumming and dancing.

Tuluksak School Principal Kary DelSignore welcomed the visitors. She said that the community has faced a lot of challenges the past few years.

“We lost our water plant in a fire. Last year we had pipes burst underground, and the school had no running water, no sewer. We had to have water shipped in. That was a hardship on our community. We’ve had to rearrange our school schedules and get support from the state. But this is a really exciting event for our community and definitely a very positive event for everyone,” DelSignore said.

DelSignore also said that the high cost of living and the lack of employment opportunities make it difficult for families to afford Christmas gifts.

“This is a huge event, very meaningful to our students. I just saw the backpacks that they were unloading. And I cannot wait for our kids to be coming to school with their brand new backpacks and all of the surprises that are inside of them,” DelSignore said.

Maj. Henry Graciani is the Divisional Commander for the Salvation Army, Alaska division. He said that the Salvation Army has a long-standing partnership with the Alaska National Guard to run Operation Santa Claus.

“It’s an important thing. Every child is special, right? Every kid matters. And so it’s important for children not just in the city, but in rural areas to get support to be remembered, to be thought of. And so here we are partnering with Alaska National Guard, Mattel, and Tastee Freez to help out the children of Tuluksak, and we’re just grateful to be part of it. The Salvation Army is grateful to be a part of it,” Graciani said.

In addition to Santa, hundreds of servings of Tastee Freez ice cream were precious cargo on the flight. In fact, it was difficult to tell who had more people waiting in line: Santa or Tastee Freez.

“Do you want any toppings, chocolate, or caramel?” Tastee Freez representative Linwood Stowe asked an eager patron.

This reporter counted, and there were more people waiting for a Tastee Freez sundae than to sit on Santa’s lap.

Stowe said that he served over 200 sundaes in about an hour.

“Yeah, I love it. Coming out here, seeing the kids’ faces, even the adults, or adults are probably more excited for ice cream than the kids. So it’s pretty awesome to see,” Stowe said.

Once everyone’s hands were all sticky, it was time to see Santa and Mrs. Claus.

Santa said he likes to get out early in Alaska. The terrain and the weather are good practice runs.

“Operation Santa Claus works really early because it’s like train up for all the elves, you know. So we always have a training program. And sprinkling this around sort of helps people turn toward Christmas and be thinking about some really good things in their lives and appreciation for each other,” he said.

Santa was elusive when asked about their age or specifics regarding Operation Santa.

“Santa Claus was right there from the big very beginning at St. Mary’s mission all those years ago. It seems like a galaxy far away, but it was a lovely thing. Mrs. Claus and I have been a couple for, we’ll just leave it at decades,” Santa said.

But not everyone was excited about Santa.

Some of the kids cried when families took pictures of them with Santa and Mrs. Claus, but Mrs. Claus remained unfazed.

“We love the children. We love the Elders. We even like the little ones who scream their heads off. We love them all,” Mrs. Claus said.

She felt that Operation Santa was a success.

“The kids all got their presents. They all got pictures, and sundaes, and candy. And we don’t have to deal with a sugar high,” Mrs. Claus said.

The Clauses and all of the helper elves retreated back to the Black Hawk. They traveled to Golovin on Nov. 30, then to Fort Yukon on Dec. 1, with a final stop to Koyuk on Dec. 15.

Olinka Arrsamquq Michael of Kwethluk, known as “Matushka Olga,” died more than four decades ago, but she may soon become a household name among Orthodox Christians across the world. In a recent meeting of the Orthodox Church in America, she was selected to be the first female saint in North America, and the first-ever Yup’ik saint.

The late Orthodox missionary and scholar Fr. Michael Oleksa played a key role in compiling the accounts of holiness essential to the official process of Olga’s glorification. Oleksa spoke to KYUK shortly before his death in late November 2023.

“She’s the first saint who didn’t go on a great missionary journey, didn’t publish any theological books, had not become a nun or a monastic, had not been martyred for the faith,” Oleksa said. “She’s proof that as long as you’re true to your Christian calling, living a good Christian life even in the humblest circumstances, as we could certainly say hers were, that’s good enough.”

Fr. Oleksa was born in 1947 in Allentown, Pennsylvania. He said that he first met Olga and her husband, Fr. Nikolai Michael, when he served as deacon in the Kuskokwim River village of Kwethluk in 1972.

“I was welcomed to the village at the home of Uliggaq and Arrsamquq, their Yup’ik names,” Oleksa said. “And I had my first akutaq there, what’s called Eskimo ice cream in English.”

Olga is known to have lived a humble life as a midwife and the wife of a priest, denoted by the honorific “matushka,” literally meaning “little mother.” Born in 1916 in Kwethluk, Olga gained a reputation throughout her life for compassion when it came to women who had suffered abuse. Upon her death in 1979, this reputation continued to spread.

An extraordinary account

About a decade after publishing an account of Olga in his 1993 book “Orthodox Alaska,” Oleksa said that a stranger reached out to him to share an extraordinary account.

“I got a letter from a woman who wasn’t Christian, wasn’t Orthodox for sure, married to a Hindu from upstate New York,” Oleksa said. “And she said, ‘I’ve had this vision, this dream of a woman who came out of a birch forest and signaled for me to follow her.’”

The woman went on to describe being led into a house that looked like a hill, illuminated within by stone oil lamps. She was told to lay down on a bed of moss where, despite not being pregnant, she was treated as if giving birth. She said that the pain of sexual abuse suffered as a child left her body. She was led outside, where the northern lights danced in the sky, and was given a hot drink that fit the description of tundra tea, known more commonly as Labrador tea.

“And then she started to walk back into the forest. And this woman called after her, ‘Who are you? What’s your name?’ And she said something she didn’t understand, something indistinguishable: ‘Olga,’” Oleska said. “And that was the end of her vision, and she wrote to me about this.”

Oleksa said that he was shocked by the depiction of traditional Yup’ik ways of living by someone claiming to have no prior knowledge of Alaska. He also said that the woman from upstate New York ultimately converted to the Orthodox faith.

“Now this woman has come to Alaska, she herself has painted some of the first icons of Matushka Olga,” Oleksa said. “But the miracles then began multiplying.”

The glorification of St. Olga

The total amount of pollock allowed to be scooped up by trawlers in the Bering Sea will stay the same in 2024. In its Dec. 9 meeting in Anchorage, the North Pacific Fishery Management Council moved to keep the total allowable catch for pollock at its current level of 1.3 million metric tons, a move that has generated criticism from conservationists, tribes, and the trawling industry alike.

Alaska’s pollock fishery is responsible for the vast majority of salmon bycatch in the region. And amid alarming declines in returns of multiple species of salmon to Western Alaska rivers, the pollock trawl fishery has faced increasing criticism for its perceived role driving the crisis. But federal fisheries managers and the trawling industry pushed back, asserting that the claims are unfounded.

Trade organizations representing the trawl industry said during testimony at the council meeting that the decision to hold the pollock quota steady is misguided.

Stephanie Madsen, executive director of the At-Sea Processors Association, told the council the move could lead to missed opportunities to harvest increased numbers of mature pollock in the Bering Sea.

“We can’t bank them like some fish species. They will age out of the system and they will be not available to the fishery,” Madsen said.

Madsen also told the council that the industry request for a modest increase to the pollock quota, which was ultimately denied, was already a compromise.

“I would just remind you that the Russian fishery in the Sea of Okhotsk and the Western Bering Sea take more pollock than our Eastern Bering Sea pollock,” Madsen said. “So a 20,000 metric ton increase in the Eastern Bering Sea is likely to have very little impact on a global situation.”

Communities hit hard

On the other side of the debate, tribes and conservation groups representing communities reeling from salmon crashes in Western Alaska have called for reining in the pollock fishery.

“We consider the salmon that do return to our rivers are survivors of climate change, which they experience in both their freshwater and marine stages,” said Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission Programs Manager Terese Vicente. The commission is one of the groups pushing for increased tribal co-management of resources in Western Alaska.

“We ought to protect every one of them to be precautionary, to be protective with the factors we can control because they’re so vulnerable to climate-driven ecosystem changes,” Vicente said.

Dozens of tribes impacted by salmon crashes have made calls for a greater voice at the federal management table, including advocating for Alaska Native representation on the 11-member North Pacific council.

Council member Jon Kurland noted that requests from the Association of Village Council Presidents and Tanana Chiefs Conference to meet with the council ahead of the meeting hadn’t panned out.

“We have been making a lot of efforts to improve our process for tribal consultation and to try to ensure that when tribes and tribal consortia and so forth are interested in talking to us that we do that before the council takes final action,” Kurland said. “We made a number of attempts to reach out, and unfortunately were not able to make those connections.”

Both organizations are suing suing the federal government over the way the Alaska pollock fishery is managed.

Council member Anne Vanderhoeven, who introduced the motion to hold the 2024 pollock quota the same as this year, pushed back against the notion that the fishery is a significant driver of salmon crashes.

“We have heard calls and public comment to reduce the pollock TAC [total allowable catch], and recognition of the current salmon crisis in Western Alaska rivers, and the devastating impacts that crisis has on subsistence users and Alaska Native cultures,” Vanderhoeven said. “But the best scientific information available does not support the assertion that relatively small adjustments to the pollock TAC will measurably or significantly increase salmon escapement to Western Alaska.”

The pollock quota for 2024 is set, but for 2025 the quota has yet to be determined.

The council’s next meeting is scheduled for Feb. 5 to Feb. 12 in Seattle, where it plans to discuss potentially refining the environmental impact statement guiding management decisions.