Western

Pilot Dolena Fox is flying a silver and blue-striped Cessna 207 to Tuntutuliak. At 26 years old, Fox is at least a decade younger than her plane.

It’s the end of Fox’s first two-week shift as a commercial pilot. She said that the first 10 days have been exhausting but interesting.

“Lots of learning, and very challenging in a good way,” said Fox.

Fox grew up mostly in Kipnuk, and a little in Kwigillingok and Bethel, too. That meant lots of flying back and forth between villages. The first time Fox remembers being excited by the idea of flying was in middle school, when she flew with a female pilot for the first time. It sparked the idea that maybe she could fly too.

“That’s kind of like when it felt real. Like it’s achievable, you know?” said Fox.

Only about 6% of professional American pilots are women. At regional airline Grant Aviation, where Fox works, only five of their 60 pilots are female.

And Fox is the first female Yup’ik pilot to work for Grant. There’s been at least one other female Yup’ik commercial pilot before her: Lindsey Jean Laraux flew commercially in the Y-K Delta from 2007-2010.

Fox’s uncle Andy Fox also works for Grant. He’s worked for them on and off for 49 years. He said he was proud of her.

“Yeah. I sure am,” Andy said.

Fox first worked near airplanes before pursuing her dream of flying them. She worked for a few years at Ravn, selling airplane tickets. Then, during the first year of the pandemic, Ravn went bankrupt and she lost her job. That was the final push she needed.

“And I was like, ‘Well, I’m just gonna go for it.’ So I did. I moved to Anchorage and I went to flight training,” said Fox.

Less than two years later, she had her private pilot’s license, her instructor’s certification, and her commercial pilot’s license.

On the way to Tuntutuliak, we chat about how the job has been. She said that the first village she ever flew to for work was her home village of Kipnuk. She said that it was a coincidence. When she landed, lots of people came to greet the plane.

Once we land in Tuntutuliak, Fox wastes no time in unloading her cargo. She passes each box to the gate agent, a man with a four-wheeler. There’s a box with a grocery store sheet cake, and another with blue sprinkle cupcakes. It’s someone’s birthday in Tuntutuliak. The agent swaps the cargo for passengers: a girl and her mom. Fox greets them and takes their luggage.

The dad who has dropped them off, Andrew Frank, said that it’s incredible to have a pilot in the Y-K Delta who can communicate in Yugtun with them.

“It’s always really impressive and makes us very proud that we see Native pilots. Elders that don’t know how to speak English can always talk to them,” said Frank.

Fox said that speaking Yugtun and flying locals around the Y-K Delta has been her dream since middle school. But she didn’t always think that dream could be a reality.

“For me personally, it was really hard to even just leave Bethel. To go to flight training and to go to school and to do something that I never saw as a successful goal. But I want more people to know that doing what they want to do is actually very achievable,” said Fox.

Helping people learn how to fly without leaving Bethel is the reason she got her instructor’s certificate. According to Grant Aviation, when there was a local flight school in Bethel there were more pilots from the Y-K Delta. Now, Fox is one of the only ones. Out of the 60 pilots at Grant, only five are from the region.

As far as what’s next for Fox, she may move on to bigger aircraft one day. But for now she’s content to fly in her home region.

“I feel like everything I have on the ground dissipates in the air. That’s all I have to care for: keeping the plane in the air. So everything else, all my problems or all my things I need to do in life, is left on the ground when I take off,” said Fox.

The federal government is suing the state of Alaska over its management of salmon fishing on the Kuskokwim River.

The lawsuit says the state is violating Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act by allowing all Alaska residents, no matter where they live, to engage in subsistence fishing of king and chum salmon when there isn’t enough fish for all uses. But ANILCA specifies that the subsistence preference is for “rural Alaska residents.”

The lawsuit was filed Tuesday in U.S. District Court in Anchorage.

For years, both the state and federal governments have managed fisheries in the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge, which covers virtually all of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.

Sometimes their rules conflict. For instance, in June of 2021, the state declared the lower Kuskokwim open to subsistence gill nets while federal managers said it was closed, to protect the resource.

Kevin Whitworth, interim director of the Kuskokwim River Inter-Tribal Fish Commission, sees the lawsuit as beneficial to tribes and rural residents.

“The fish commission is heartened to see the federal government basically stand up to protect salmon and the importance of federal management,” he said.

Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s office referred questions to the state Department of Law. The department’s spokesperson, Assistant Attorney General Grace Lee, said the state’s management is based on sound science and input from local stakeholders.

“This ensures that there are adequate subsistence opportunities for Alaskans while adhering to the sustainability principle enshrined in the Alaska Constitution,” she said in an email.

The conflict over subsistence has been brewing for a few decades. The heart of the problem remains the same: Federal law mandates that rural residents’ subsistence needs come first in times of scarcity. State law doesn’t allow a rural preference, the state Supreme Court decided in 1989.

When the Legislature would not change state law to conform to ANILCA in the 1990s, the U.S. government took over management of fishing on federal land and adjacent rivers. But it delegated much of that management to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

The lawsuit names Fish and Game Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang and his department as defendants.

KYUK reporter Olivia Ebertz contributed to this story from Bethel.

The city of Nome has settled a lawsuit with a former police dispatcher after officers mishandled her sexual assault report, her attorneys announced today.

In March 2017, Clarice “Bun” Hardy, an Iñupiaq woman, reported to the Nome Police Department that she’d been sexually assaulted. Lawyers for Hardy say the Nome Police Department took more than a year to investigate Hardy’s report. A year and a half after her report, her alleged assailant had not been charged.

In 2020, Hardy sued the city of Nome and two police officials, alleging they mishandled her rape accusation. Today, Hardy says her case represented more people than herself.

“I quickly realized I wasn’t the only one Nome Police Department disregarded,” Hardy said. “Hundreds of other people were ignored, too.”

The hundreds of cases she mentions were actual cold cases that were backlogged in the Nome Police Department, many of which were sexual assaults reported by Alaska Native women. Hardy was represented by American Civil Liberties Union attorneys.

As part of the settlement, the city of Nome paid Hardy $750,000 and issued an apology.

“The NPD’s failure to respond, as it should have, caused Ms. Hardy to suffer unnecessarily, and we are deeply sorry,” city officials wrote in the settlement.

Hardy thanked advocates, community members and attorneys who brought attention to her case.

“It’s been a long painful journey today, but I’m healing and trying to move forward,” Hardy said.

Both the police officer who handled Hardy’s case as well as the department’s chief at the time have since resigned from the Nome Police Department. According to Hardy’s attorneys, in the years since she filed suit against the city, the Nome Police Department has largely reduced its backlog of cold cases.

On March 14 in Bethel, a fire burned a family’s house near H-Marker Lake. There were no fatalities and only minor injuries.

Earl Polk had just finished lighting his wood stove and stacked a load of wet wood close to the stove to dry. He was settling in for the night and getting ready to put his daughter to bed.

“I went to go to the bathroom, and was in there less than a minute, and I heard a weird noise,” said Polk. “Then I turned and looked, and my daughter was coming out [of the room].”

Polk said that he saw flames moving through the air, quickly spreading throughout his home.

“It moved so fast. To me it looked like it was alive,” Polk said about the fire. “I was totally awestruck. The thing looked to me like it was literally alive. It looked like it was almost trying to take us, but push us out.”

As the flames consumed his house, Polk and his daughter moved quickly. The extreme heat of the fire caused the light bulbs above their heads to explode.

“And one of them burned into the back of my head and melted into my hoodie,” he said.

He grabbed his daughter and started running toward the door, carrying her. The heat was so intense, he had to crouch down and crawl on the floor with her. He felt two hot blasts of air and heard propane bottles exploding around him. He was unable to gather any belongings as he rushed to vacate the house.

“I would say in less than two minutes the whole place was engulfed,” Polk said.

Polk and his daughter escaped with few injuries. Polk suffered from burns on his hands and his daughter, who has Down Syndrome, had a minor burn on her head and some emotional trauma.

“I have to keep things at an even keel for her. This whole thing had her just really messed up there for a while. But she’s okay. She’s emotionally coming back to Earth,” said Polk.

Polk and his daughter were not dressed for the below-freezing weather outside. Polk said that he’s thankful to a man in a white Ford F-150 truck who let his daughter stay warm inside the man’s heated cab. Polk waited outside for emergency responders to arrive.

Polk is trying to find this man with the truck. Polk wants to personally thank him, and Polk believes that he lost the keys to his four-wheeler inside the truck. The four-wheeler is Polk’s only transportation, and is now one of his few possessions.

“Everything. We lost everything. They’re all gone. My clothes are all gone. My phones, everything. Literally everything was lost in the flames. So we’re in a rough spot right now. But, you know, but at the same time, very thankful that we got out,” Polk said.

Polk and his daughter are staying at his brother Warren’s house. Warren lost his home in a house fire nearly three years ago.

“And so this is our second family involved in fire,” said Polk. “And right now, I’m, you know, I’m trying to figure out what I got to do next.”

Russia’s war against Ukraine is pushing crude oil prices up. That means residents of Western Alaska bush communities could see an increase in the price of gas, stove and heating oil. And that price may not come down any time soon.

Mike Poston, marketing director of Vitus Energy, which services much of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, said recent events have driven the price of oil up a wall. He said that soon, customers could be paying up to $1.50 more per gallon compared to last year. He also said the price change will be swift.

“Dramatically, in an instant. It’ll be like flicking the light switch after the barge comes in,” Poston said.

Poston said two factors contributing to that hike are the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the recent federal ban of Russian oil sales in the U.S.

Poston says Vitus will purchase fuel for its first fuel barge shipment to Western Alaska soon. And as fuel prices trend upwards, Poston said customers will be locked in at a higher rate. That’s because many local companies buy from Vitus in bulk, so what they pay up front is the price they’re locked into for the rest of the year.

Poston said that communities on the road system won’t see high prices locked in for as long because those communities buy fuel in smaller amounts and more frequently. Instead, he said, road system gas stations experience shifts in prices at the pumps as market trends change.

Vitus customers can expect to see those high prices reflected in stove and heating oil, as well as in gasoline for the rest of the year. Poston said that key companies that Vitus services in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta include many Native corporations, tribes, and businesses.

And Poston said the price hikes won’t just be at the pump. Higher fuel prices also mean more expensive barging and shipping.

“It’s not just the fuel you consume. It’s every other good. Western Alaska is gonna see this, these costs impacted,” said Poston

And fuel price hikes could be reflected in energy bills, too. The Bethel operations manager of Alaska Village Electric Cooperative, Lenny Welch, said all AVEC customers will likely see a price increase.

“The way the war and stuff is going, I can’t imagine it not increasing this summer,” Welch said.

Welch said customers will probably see their bills go up starting in September, and that rate will last until they get a new fuel barge next year. Welch said that AVEC buys from Crowley Fuels at a set rate, so as with Vitus, that price will be locked in.

For customers purchasing fuel from Crowley directly, pricing isn’t as clear cut. A spokesperson from Crowley Fuel said that the price of fuel can still fluctuate after the barges come in. He said that Crowley’s prices are tied to several factors, including inflation and COVID-19.

The higher prices will be especially deeply felt for rural residents, who already pay far more for energy, fuel and food. And those who live in areas where the Power Cost Equalization program is applied will still see their energy prices rise.

At a press conference on March 8, Gov. Mike Dunleavy said the permanent fund dividend check was the best way to mitigate against fuel price hikes in rural Alaska. But that check would be the same for rural and urban Alaskans.