Western

Between decommissioned defense sites and contaminated currents, the Bering Strait Region is particularly vulnerable to toxic pollution.

That’s why representatives from Alaska Community Action on Toxics were in Nome last week. The nonprofit works to educate the public on environmental health and advocate for communities affected by contamination. This visit focused on one of the biggest toxic impacts in the Bering Strait: cancer.

On St. Lawrence Island, there has been cancer crisis for decades, according to Vi Waghiyi, an ACAT program director originally from Savoonga.

“We have come to learn that our people have six to 10 times higher PCB levels in the blood than the average American in the Lower 48,” she said.

PCBs are cancer-causing chemicals, also known as carcinogens, that were banned in the U.S. in the 1970s. Waghiyi said they’ve lingered in the environment on St. Lawrence Island because two former air force bases at Gambell and Northeast Cape have never been decontaminated.

Waghiyi said the proof is there. ACAT has tested local food staples, everything from fish and berries to crab and greens.

“We found out that our main foods — bowhead whale, walrus and seal, particularly the blubber and rendered oil — were so loaded with PCBs at levels we should not be eating,” she said.

And it’s not just PCBs from the former bases. Waghiyi said there are also high levels of pesticides and heavy metals, with contaminants coming from chemical-laden household products and air and water currents from around the world.

“We’re being exposed from so many sources,” she said. “It’s like a toxic stew.”

That has led to higher rates of cancer, miscarriages, and low birth weight for babies — not just on St. Lawrence Island, but in communities across the Bering Strait Region.

As part of continued efforts to help people learn about the toxins present in everyday life, ACAT brought Dr. Ted Schettler to Nome to visit the Norton Sound Regional Hospital and give a public talk.

“My latest project has been on breast cancer and the environment,” said Schettler, the science director of the nonprofit Science and Environmental Health Network.

Schettler’s research has found that many environmental factors play a role in breast cancer risk: diet and nutrition, physical activity, local emissions, and the chemicals people encounter daily.

“There’s no single thing we can point to that influences breast cancer risk nearly as strongly as cigarette smoking influences lung cancer risk,” he said. “Rather, there’s a collection of so-called risk factors that together create the conditions out of which breast cancer patterns evolve in our communities.”

But in educating the public on how to reduce environmental risk factors for cancer, Schettler and Waghiyi said they face difficult questions: Should people stop eating traditional foods to avoid contaminants? How can people stay healthy in their home communities without sacrificing their way of life?

Waghiyi said there’s no easy answer.

“It’s our identity. It’s our culture. We don’t have a choice,” she said. “So it’s important that we provide this data so that our people can make their own informed decisions.”

In the future, she said ACAT will continue raising awareness about toxins with the general public and health care providers as well as advocating for chemical cleanup. She said the organization will also continue collaborating with researchers like Schettler.

From the Aleutian island of Akutan to the arctic village of Kiana, 13 communities have been crowned champions of a rural energy competition. The U.S. Department of Energy recently announced that it will help these communities cut their energy use by 15 percent by training local utility providers.

In an effort to spur sustainable energy projects in rural Alaska, the Department of Energy teamed up with the Alaska Energy Authority to organize the RACEE competition.

RACEE stands for the Remote Alaska Communities Energy Efficiency Competition.

Emily Ford works with the Alaska Energy Authority. “It’s an initiative from the Department of Energy to increase energy efficiency in Alaska’s remote communities,” Ford explained.

In total, 64 rural communities applied. Each one pledged to reduce its energy consumption by 15 percent.

Phil Koontz is from the Yukon River village of Galena, one of the 13 winners.

“I’ve been involved in a biomass project to replace diesel-fired boilers with wood chip boilers for the Galena Interior Learning Academy, which is a boarding school in Galena that supports over 200 students,” Koontz explained.

Koontz started working on the biomass project a few years back. Construction will start this summer, and Koontz hopes to fire up the wood chip boilers this fall. While he wasn’t part of Galena’s RACEE application, Koontz said his community is fully committed to becoming more sustainable.

“Fifteen percent energy reduction is just a short-term goal, and I’m hoping for much more than that,” explained Koontz.

Ed Sharten is from Ruby, another Yukon River community and among the 13 RACEE winners. Like Galena, Sharten says Ruby has been working on sustainable energy projects for a while now. There are solar panels on the laundromat and clinic, both of which are connected to the powerhouse by a waste heat transfer system. Sharten said Ruby has even dabbled in underwater turbines.

“Which did work,” Sharten explained, “but we did have some technical difficulties with brush, etc., getting in the turbine.”

Those technical difficulties are exactly what the Department of Energy and the Alaska Energy Authority are hoping to help with. The Department of Energy’s Pam Mendelson said by training local providers to assemble things like solar panels and biomass boilers, communities can tackle some bigger issues.

“What we really want to do is assist remote communities dealing with the impacts of climate change,” explained Mendelson.

Mendelson said the idea for the RACEE competition came from the commander in chief himself.

“When President Obama came up here last fall, he made that commitment on behalf of the administration, and this competition is a direct product of that commitment,” explained Mendelson.

Mendelson says local providers from the 13 communities will receive technical assistance on the projects of their choice. The winners are also eligible to apply for implementation grants, three to five of which Mendelson expects to hand out later this year.

Wood bison, recently reintroduced by the Alaska Department of Fish and Game into western Alaska, have been begun to roam throughout the region and spotted near Bethel.

The first sighting of wood bison calves born in the wild could mean big changes in the ecosystem of western Alaska.

The sighting last week of the newborn animals comes after Fish and Game released about 130 wood bison in 2015, an effort Fish and Game biologist Tom Seaton said has been in the works for more than 25 years.

Since the reintroduction, the herd has had its ups and downs. Though 19 of the bison born in captivity died once released, “The bison are completely functioning as wild animals and being successful at it,” Seaton said.

The true test of how well the creatures can adapt is in the survival of the calves, Seaton said.

“Most of the animals out there now spent most of their life in captivity, and they’re doing a great job of being wild bison. But they’ll never be as good as these animals that were bred and born in the wild,” Seaton said.

The deaths of the 19 bison has not been the only challenge. The bison born in captivity sometimes have trouble being independent from humans.

“First it was kind of a thrill to see them,” said Chief Ivan Demientieff of Grayling, who came home one day to find six wood bison in his yard.

“I made jokes saying that I don’t need no grass cutter anymore,” Demientieff said.

But things changed when one bison began to cause trouble.

“It got to the point where it wouldn’t leave, and I had to chase it out of the yard. Then it started living in my shop,” Demientieff said.

Eventually authorities removed the bison. But Seaton said he’s not concerned about this behavior, because the next generation of bison will most likely be more afraid of humans and able to seek out food in the wilderness instead of people’s yards.

When people start hunting the wood bison, which Seaton said will happen when and if the herd more than doubles in size, that will be the final push into the wild to make the animals feel less domestic.

The opportunity for Alaska Natives to hunt the wood bison is a big selling point, said Seaton. He hopes the bison’s progression will resemble another animal that’s become a staple food in western Alaska.

“Moose didn’t occur in western Alaska until about a 100 years ago,” Seaton said.

The animals migrated from eastern Alaska in the early 1900s.

“But today moose are a big part of the culture and food supply of people in western Alaska,” Seaton said. “And if we look 100 years in the future, it’s possible that wood bison could also be a part of the culture and food supply of people in Alaska.”

Six students from across the state competed in the fifth annual Yup’ik Spelling Bee for Beginners in Anchorage over the weekend. The contest is open to third through eighth grade and run by volunteers. It’s a lot of work. And with responsibility concentrated to a few individuals, the future of the event is in question.

“Uivenqegg. U-I-V-E-N-Q-E-G-G. It means to turn around or spin,” Daniel Hunter said, repeating his first place winning word at the 2016 Yupik Spelling Bee. Hunter is a seventh grader at Sheldon Point School in Nunam Iqua, located at the mouth of the Yukon River.

Hunter says the final word was an easy one for him. It’s written on the wall in his school classroom, and he says he just pictured the poster in his mind.

“I feel happy. I thought I wouldn’t come first, but I did well,” he said.

Hunter helps his family and friends with the language. He’s only 12, but he’s thinking about the future. He says he wants to learn Yup’ik to keep the language alive, so he can someday teach it to his own kids—something he says his parents aren’t able to do for him.

Savannah Strongheart is Hunter’s coach and the bilingual/bicultural teacher at Sheldon Point. She says it’s common in Nunam Iqua for only elders to speak Yup’ik. She hopes students working towards the spelling bee will reverse that trend.

“I think it’s important for them to know their language and know where they come from and who they are,” Strongheart said.

Strongheart’s students started preparing in November, practicing at home and coming in for a couple hours on the weekends, even over Christmas break.

The months of work and the necessary credentials means finding coaches like Strongheart is hard.

Freda Dan started the bee and has struggled to find coaches across the state. This year she found five. There are a lot of hoops to jump through. Dan says people might know Yup’ik culture, but they doesn’t mean they can speak Yup’ik, and few people who speak the language know how to read and write it. On top of that, Dan says, they have to be able to teach.

“It’s really hard to come across people who are familiar with the orthography,” Dan said. “There’s a good number of fluent people, but there’s not a good number of literate people.”

To help overcome those barriers, Dan sends coaches weekly teaching material and spends 20 to 30 hours a week preparing the packets. She’s researching, double checking, and reading Yup’ik, English, and French language books to figure out how to teach literacy. This effort is on her own time without compensation, and it’s all she says, so kids won’t have to teach the language to themselves— something she’s been doing for 25 years.

“I know how very, very difficult it is to figure stuff out on your own, and I think a lot of kids’ recourse is to teach themselves,” she said.

Dan is concerned about the future of the cultural education that is the essence of the spelling bee, which she considers the state’s only proficiency test for Yup’ik literacy. She doesn’t know how long she’ll be able to sustain the bee without extra support. For now, she says the kids who want to take part in learning their language, like first place winner Daniel Hunter, keep her going.

In Western Alaska, the options for socializing are limited. Most communities have a basketball court, some have a bingo hall, but there isn’t usually a place to just hang out unless you’re in Koyuk. There’s one shop in the small village where people can rent movies, indulge in junk food, and simply pass the time, but ownership of the Koyuk haven is about to change hands.

A tiny blue and white trailer glows under a single strand of twinkle lights. The trailer houses the shop known as Corinne’s. Inside, the latest top-40 tracks fill the air.

At first glance, it looks a bit like a library, but the floor-to-ceiling shelves are actually stocked with DVDs.

“On Thursdays, when we get new movies, you’ll see three or four guys come running to come get the movies,” explained the shop’s owner, Corinne Trish. “It’s kind of fun.”

Trish rents DVDs to the community of Koyuk. And the movies that are less popular? She sells those.

“And in my store, if [you] spend twenty dollars worth on movies, [you] get a free movie,” Trish explained.

Trish moved to Koyuk twenty-five years ago to work as a teacher. She had no idea what a tiny village in western Alaska would have in the way of entertainment, so she filled her suitcases to the brim with movies.

In all, she shipped up about seventy-five VHS tapes. It wasn’t long before word got out about the collection.

“There was a gentleman in our village,” Trish explained, “he knew I had a lot of videos, and he said, ‘Why don’t you start renting them?’ So, I thought, ‘Okay, I can start renting them,’” Trish said.

But there was just one problem: you’re not allowed to run a business out of school district housing. She ended up renting space in the local pool hall. She said the room was tiny.

“Then someone was selling this trailer, so I started my business in that, just with videos and pop and candy and pretzels and nachos,” Trish explained.

There was a lot of demand in Koyuk for a place like Corinne’s.

“We’ve had teen centers, but it hasn’t been consistent. They’re based on grants,” Trish said, “so when they’d lose the grant, they’d lose the teen center.”

The school’s basketball gym offers teens a place to go after class. When its doors shut, many trudge up the hill to Corinne’s for a late night snack. Despite the foot traffic, Trish said she never got into business to make money.

“In fact, I still don’t make money,” Trish admitted. “There were years that I had to use my paycheck as a teacher to pay for payroll.”

Trish has employed dozens of local kids over the years. In a community like Koyuk, where jobs are scarce, opportunities to learn skills like how to count change and fill out a timesheet don’t come around that often.

Today, Crystal Dewey is on Trish’s payroll. She says working at Corinne’s for the past decade has helped her find a routine.

“I like interacting with people and seeing everybody every day,” Dewey said. “It gives me something to do.”

Dewey was just a toddler when Trish moved to Koyuk. The two have grown close over the years. So close, in fact, that when Trish retires from Koyuk Malimiut School next year, she plans to hand the keys over to Dewey.

“I’m hoping that Crystal can keep this going when I leave,” Trish said. “Then she’ll have a business, she has a definite income, and she can still employ people as well.”

But Dewey is hesitant.

“I am worried about completely owning it, as far as taxes and everything else,” Dewey admitted, “but I think I could handle keeping it running and sustaining it, at least.”

Dewey has Optic Nerve Hypoplasia. The congenital eye disease means it hard for her to make out details like eye color and dollar bill amount. Trish said Dewey was really nervous about missing one detail in particular.

“Scratches on DVDs, because she can’t see them,” Trish explained. “That was always her fear, but she’s always done really well with money, with food, and all that stuff.”

“Now she does just about everything,” Trish said.

And with that, Trish walks out the front door. It’s just minutes before Corinne’s is set to open for the evening, and she knows Dewey will be there behind the counter. The deed isn’t set to transfer to Dewey until next year, but it’s clear that shop is already in good hands.

Healthcare in rural Alaska faces unique challenges. With few doctors and unpredictable weather, village clinics are often a community’s only local option for care. That’s the case in the St. Lawrence Island community of Savoonga, but the clinic’s highly certified health aides have earned recognition across the state.

Health aides Briane Gologergen and Danielle Reynolds had been on the job for just six months when faced with their first emergency. Someone in Savoonga had been shot and needed a chest tube.

Gologergen called a doctor in Nome. There was a chance the patient could be flown to Norton Sound Regional Hospital for emergency care. The first time she checked the weather, the skies were clear for flying.

“I went to go check again, and it was like thick ice fog,” Gologergen said. The doctor told her they would have to do a chest tube. Gologergen and Reynolds had no idea what that was, but the doctor in Nome talked them through the procedure, and the two pulled it off.

Between that emergency and a handful of others, Reynolds said she and Gologergen became a great team, something their fellow health aides appreciated.

“They didn’t mind that we were partners every single time we did something because they knew we worked well together,” Reynolds explained.

Reynolds and Gologergen said they learned a lot those first few months. When they weren’t on call or busy with patients, Gologergen said they practiced on each other. “Like TB skin tests,” Gologergen explained.

A Tuberculosis skin test involves an injection under the top layer of skin. The simple shot shouldn’t hurt.

“I made her cry,” Gologergen confessed.

“I was like ‘ahh!’, and I cried a couple of tears,” said Reynolds.

The two have supported each other through a lot of pain and long hours over the last five years. Gologergen said it started to weigh down on them this winter.

“We were all getting that ‘burnout feeling,’ like, ‘oh, I wish I could get a different job where I could spend more time with my family,’” Gologergen said.

“Or ‘I wish I could go on a vacation for, like, a month,’” Reynolds added.

“It was just a lot of little things building up, and then we got the email,” Gologergen explained.

The email revealed that Savoonga’s health aides were the recipients of this year’s Distinguished Providers Award.

The Healthy Alaska Natives Foundation sponsors the award. According to the foundation’s website, Savoonga’s health aides were selected for their resilience and strength in emergency situations, something both Gologergen and Reynolds have the scars to prove.