Western

Before they go back to school later this month, teachers and administrators have to go camping.

Organized by Nome’s Northwest Campus and funded through a grant, Educator Cultural Camp is for teachers with Nome Public Schools and the Bering Strait School District. Tom and BeeJay Gray hosted this summer’s cultural orientation — which gives teachers university credit to apply to their certifications — during the last week of August at their fish camp on the Niukluk River.

The fifth annual Educator Cultural Camp brought 20 teachers and administrators together for five days of boating, berry picking, and fishing. Educators from Nome, Gambell, and White Mountain came to get firsthand experience in subsistence — and understand the lives of their students and people around the Bering Strait region.

“I was very naïve when I first got here about what camp was,” said Suzanne Bell. “When we say back home ‘you go to camp,’ it’s usually like a summer camp. I didn’t realize they were going camping in a way — hunting and things like that. I didn’t have the right idea in my head.”

Bell is originally from Tennessee and going into her second year as an elementary teacher in Gambell. While none of the educators at camp this summer were entirely new to Alaska, most aren’t Native, and they said they’re interested in making their curriculum culturally relevant to their students.

To give them an idea of how students spend their time at camp, Tom Gray took the group seining for silver salmon and taught them to cut their catch with ulus.

After days of hands-on activity, the educators spent their evenings discussing why culturally responsive education is important and how they can include it in their classrooms.

Barb Amarok is a retired teacher from Nome Public Schools and a current member of the school board. She led the evening classes and opened one night’s roundtable by discussing the dangers of distancing Native students from their cultures at school. The group talked about the trauma Native students faced in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when mandatory boarding schools separated students from their communities.

“They were kept from their home community for years at a time, so they didn’t learn their subsistence skills,” said Amarok. “They didn’t learn their language.”

“They were stripped of their language,” said another teacher.

“They were stripped of their culture,” said a third educator.

The teachers talked about avoiding cultural disconnect in today’s classrooms and integrating Native students’ experiences into academic lessons. Amarok emphasized that “life isn’t compartmentalized. Education shouldn’t be. There can be Bering Strait Region knowledge and skills incorporated in classroom lessons.”

One idea was incorporating Iñupiat values into JROTC instruction. Another was sewing kuspuks in art class. Yet another — from Nome teacher Liz Korenek-Johnson — was to “have kids documenting their culture, doing things like digital storytelling, [and] interviewing elders.”

“They can start drawing on those skills because we know they have them,” said Korenek-Johnson. “They are Alaska Natives and they are digital natives. There’s value in all of it.”

Bell said the value of Educator Cultural Camp lies in giving teachers more context about their students’ lives. One camp won’t make all lessons culturally relevant, but Bell said it helps teachers learn how to integrate culture more often in their own classrooms.

“I’m the outsider in a new culture, and I feel that it’s my responsibility to learn that culture,” Bell said. “I’m not assimilating them to me and my culture. I’m there to learn their culture and be a part as much as I can.”

Teachers will have the chance to apply their new cultural knowledge when the school year starts later this month — Aug. 19 for the Bering Strait School District and Aug. 24 for Nome Public Schools.

Slow fall chum runs have kept subsistence fisherman from being too active on the Yukon River this past week, but as Chinook continue crossing the border, officials say their numbers are well above escapement goals.

“As far as I know, everybody’s smokehouse is empty, waiting for fall chum,” said Fred Huntington in Galena.

It was a sentiment echoed by many calling into the weekly teleconference for fishermen and managers along the Yukon last week. That wait has been going on for two weeks now—ever since fall chum officially started running around July 18, creating a midseason lull for many fishermen between summer and fall chum runs. Bonnie Borba, the fall chum research biologist for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, said the first pulse of fall chum would be making its way upriver by the end of July and into the first week of August.

In all, the fall chum run on the Yukon is expected at between 700,000 to 800,000 fish. It’s a moderately-sized run that Fish and Game’s Jeff Estensen said may be slow, but they are on their way.

“[Fall chum] certainly will be getting there,” he told callers. “They’re making their way up. I did get a chance to talk to a fisherman in Holy Cross a couple of days ago; he mentioned there are definitely signs … so by all accounts it seems like we have a pulse of fish going upriver.”

The fall chum run should be enough for escapement, subsistence and commercial needs, Estensen said; already, commercial harvesters in the lower river have caught nearly 27,000 fall chum.

But Huntington pressed managers to loosen gear restrictions for mid and upper-river fisherman who are still trying to meet their subsistence needs. Right now, he said, he has to travel downriver to Koyukuk to catch the fish he needs.

“It would be helpful to us, because (of the) price of fuel here, and the lack of fish in our smokehouses, it would help quite a bit if we were able to just go out here with our 5 gallons of gas that we could possibly have [Districts] 4B and C open for drifting,” he asked. “Get our 10 fish or whatever we want to get, rather than going to Koyukuk and trying to get a hundred.”

While fall chum slowly move upriver, the Chinook continue moving into spawning grounds in Canada. As of last week, nearly 65,000 kings have now crossed the border. Stephanie Schmidt, the summer season manager for Fish and Game who oversaw the king salmon run, said beating the upper-limit escapement goal of 55,000 fish is a victory for everyone involved.

“This run is still well below average, well below what we used to see a couple of decades ago,” she began. “However, thanks to the tremendous conservation efforts on behalf of fishermen up and down the river, we’ve been able to achieve escapement goals on all of our Alaska drainage projects so far. And we’ve now achieved the upper end of the escapement at the border. And thanks for working to make sure these fish get on the spawning grounds so we can try and rebuild this run for the future.”

Twenty-year-old Samuel Atchak was arraigned in Bethel Superior Court Tuesday morning. He’s charged in the murder of Roxanne Smart last August. The arraignment follows an indictment by a grand jury. A public defender Tuesday entered not guilty pleas.

Atchak was arrested in July after a long wait for results from a crime lab.

According to court documents, he admitted to investigators that he killed Smart in August of 2014. His case will be back in court October 1st for an omnibus hearing.

19-year-old Roxanne Smart was found dead outside last August after being sexually assaulted.

 

An artist is creating life-sized sculptures of Alaskans to tell the story of those who struggle with mental health. Sarah Davies travelled to one of the state’s most vulnerable regions, recently for a project called, ‘100 Stone’. She’s attempting to highlight the toll that depression takes and what people can do to help those in need.

Sarah Davies is dressed in plaster-covered overalls and slathering the white, gluey substance on the 6-foot-4 frame of Chuck Herman in the art room at the Kuskokwim campus of UAF in Bethel.

“At first it felt like they were just putting a big heavy wet blanket on me and then it started getting more and more constricting. So I feel pretty immobile at the moment,” said Herman.

That’s a lot like what Sarah Davies says mental illness can feel like. She knows, as she’s struggled with physical and mental health herself, including depression, anxiety, PTSD and suicidal thoughts.

“What that means is people who experience chronic illness, mental illness, which is a huge umbrella, grief, persistent grief, suicide losses, addiction and substance abuse, trauma – those are emotional burdens that may be like the weight of a bull on our shoulders, which is what the unit of weight 100 stone represents,” said Davies.

Davies is leading the project, called 100 Stone. This is the very first casting session off the road system in Alaska. It’s a public art installation of 100 stories of personal struggles with mental health.

Alaskans suffer at rates well beyond the national average in several mental health categories.

Davies wrapped Herman in plastic, burlap and plaster. It’s kind of like a cast for a broken arm or leg, but for the whole body.

Davies has already completed about 80 body-castings on the road system. The aim of the project, she says, is to transform cultural attitudes and approaches toward those who struggle with mental health.

“Suicide awareness is one of the effects of what we are doing. What this is truly doing is speaking a truth: that we are here and we are suffering, and we are hiding in plain sight, and it is an isolating experience, and it is within that isolation that we find ourselves most at risk for things like suicide,” said Davies.

The YK Delta region has high suicide rates, especially among Native youth. The Yukon Kuskokwim Health Corporation confirms nine suicides in the region this year, four of them in Bethel.

Herman, who works with youth as a high school career counselor in Bethel, and is a member of the Bethel City Council, says he hopes to put the issue out front.

“Anything that raises awareness of mental health issues is obviously an important thing, especially in the U.S. in general, and then in this community with all the issues we’ve had, and continue to have, around mental health,” said Davies.

Davies plans to display all of the life-sized human forms from across the state on the Anchorage mudflats in December. They’ll be positioned walking into the water. Like the uncertainly of mental illness, the dramatic tides of Cook Inlet will wash some away.

“We expect some will be lost, and that matches our experience in the world. We expect some will remain, some will be recoverable but perhaps unrecognizable,” said Davies.

Davies says the scene will deliver a critical message of hope to Alaskans.

“The important truth there is that isolation and shame is what puts us at greatest risk and that when we can see each other in that special way, that part that we try to hide, that’s where we find the light,” said Davies.

Davies cast six bodies in Bethel to add to the project. She has about 20 more castings to do in other bush communities to reach her goal of 100.

 

NBA point guard Derrick Rose was first scouted at his local high school and eventually drafted by his hometown Chicago Bulls. Sixteen-year-old Wallace Ungwiluk is a big fan of Rose — and a point guard too. But basketball could carry the junior from Gambell much farther from home — more than 2,000 miles to Seattle, where he’s been recruited to play for a private high school.

This summer, Ungwiluk has a decision to make: stay home and try to win Gambell its first championship in 30 years or move to Seattle and get seen by college scouts.

According to Alvin Aningayou, there’s nothing like a Gambell home game.

“It’s a raucous, rowdy, exciting, electrified environment,” he said. “When we win, you can feel the excitement and the buzz. And when we lose, you can feel their heart breaking just as our heart’s breaking. It’s just incredible.”

Aningayou is coach of the Gambell boys basketball team, and he said it’s Wallace Ungwiluk who has gotten the crowd going in recent years.

He is the team’s captain, point guard, and top scorer. As a sophomore last season, he averaged over 27 points per game — nearly double the production of Gambell’s second best scorer. And Coach Aningayou said he’s just getting better.

“He’s special,” he said. “He started to shine, and he’s continually trying to get better. And that’s what we need — not having players settle.”

Wallace was in Anchorage last summer for a basketball camp. He trained, worked on his game, and — for the first time — saw just how far basketball could take him.

“That was the first time I’ve really ever been coached or pushed that hard,” he said. “I went to that camp not thinking I’d get much exposure there, but I actually did and I was quite surprised. This is a big opportunity for me.”

That’s the opportunity to move to Seattle, attend a private school, and play competitive ball. The offer comes from Seattle Lutheran High School, which had a solid postseason last year and is planning for a deep run in this season’s state tournament.

But the offer comes at a critical time for Wallace and his hometown team. Gambell is looking to improve after a string of early exits from the Bering Strait School District’s annual tournament. In the last two years, Gambell has been knocked out quickly, and Wallace wants to help turn the team around and contend for the title.

“I do want to stay here in this village and win a championship for this village, because it hasn’t been done in about 30 years. But I’m not only thinking about my high school career,” he said. “I’m also thinking about after high school. I want to play college basketball, and my best chance for that is getting exposure in Seattle.”

Wallace said western Alaska is no hotbed for college recruitment, and he knows most scouts don’t make it to St. Lawrence Island. Even after writing letters to 12 colleges and making a YouTube video of his highlights, Wallace isn’t sure he can crack a college lineup if he stays in Gambell.

“No one’s really heard of me,” he said. “But Seattle — they’ve got colleges all around Seattle. They’ve got scouts there too. It gives me a better chance.”

But Seattle would also be a big change. In Gambell, Wallace gets around on his four-wheeler, often with his 12-year old brother Skyley. He loves boating, snowboarding, and doing subsistence hunting with his family. His dad Rodney has home movies of Wallace’s first whale-hunting trip, and his mom Yuka makes his favorite meal, walrus.

Life in Seattle would be different, and Wallace worries about being homesick, getting lost in a big city, and having to make new friends at school. But he takes pride in representing Gambell, and Coach Aningayou said he’ll support Wallace whether he stays in Gambell or takes his talents to Seattle Lutheran.

“If he decides to stay, I think it’s going to be a breakout year for Gambell,” he said. And if not, “he has a chance of actually making a living playing basketball — something he loves. That’d be a great success for him. For the community also.”

But either way, Wallace said he won’t leave Gambell for good.

“I want to study business, and I want to come back out here to this village because the unemployment rate is super high,” he said. “I want to be able to establish something where there could be jobs for everybody because it’s hard to live out here. And that’s one of the reasons that I want to go off to college and I’ll be coming back.”

Until then, Wallace will attend three summer basketball camps and think about his decision. His final stop will be Seattle, where Wallace and his dad will tour his prospective school and meet with the Seattle Lutheran coaches in person. He’ll make his final decision after that visit.

Four communities affected by this spring’s poor walrus harvest will soon receive 10,000 pounds of halibut from a nonprofit that supplies seafood to hunger-relief efforts.

Nearly 200 boxes of the fish were delivered to Nome July 29, according to Kawerak senior planner Donna James. She said the delivery is being sorted and will soon be distributed to Diomede, Gambell, Savoonga and Wales.

The halibut comes as a donation from SeaShare, a nonprofit based in Washington state. All four communities declared states of economic disaster after a spring harvest that Vera Metcalf called significantly worse than usual.

Metcalf is director of the Eskimo Walrus Commission and has worked with the communities through the food shortage. She said the commission reached out to the State of Alaska and the governor’s office for help through Rep. Neal Foster and Sen. Donny Olson

“Their staff (was) really good about following up with our concerns, making sure the communities were aware that the State of Alaska and Walker’s administration were aware of the situation,” Metcalf said.

The U.S. Coast Guard brought the frozen halibut to Nome free of charge, and James said Kawerak is working with Bering Air, Erickson Helicopters and Ravn Alaska to organize free freight delivery to the four communities.

Although the donation is good news, Metcalf said it’s only a temporary solution as climate change makes hunting more difficult.

“In the event that another disaster is declared, what do we do? And how do we move forward? We need to come up with a long-term plan,” she said.

For now, Metcalf said the donation will be a big help, even if it doesn’t completely solve the food shortages.

“I know it won’t fill the nutritional value that a walrus or other marine mammals provide, but it’s there and it’ll be put to good use,” she said.

The halibut will ship out as soon Kawerak can coordinate delivery with the different airlines. Kawerak will then distribute the fish equally to households in each community.