Alaska Native Arts & Culture

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More than 70 years have passed since the U.S. government forced the people of Atka from their homes to an internment camp on Killisnoo Island in Southeast Alaska.

To protect them from Japanese invasion during World War II, they were moved 1,600 miles from the Aleutian Islands to an old whaling and herring village across the water from Angoon on Admiralty Island.

They have not been forgotten. A group of Southeast Alaskans traveled to Killisnoo last weekend to memorialize the Aleut people of Atka.

While digging a hole for a memorial plaque, Martin Stepetin breaks down in tears. His wife, Ann, comforts him with a long embrace before he continues digging. He said he felt like he was digging a grave.

Stepetin is from St. Paul in the Pribolof Islands. His grandparents were evacuated in June 1942 and brought to an internment camp in Funter Bay, about 50 miles north of Killisnoo. His father was born there.

He has come to Killisnoo with about a hundred people on a Friends of Admiralty Island tour. Most are from Juneau, some are past and present Angoon residents.

Though Stepetin’s family wasn’t in Killisnoo, he feels a profound connection to the Atka people interned here.

“They’re Aleuts just like us and we’re related to them and they went through very similar hardships like we did and it changed our entire history,” Stepetin says.

Stepetin heard about the Funter Bay internment camp all his life growing up in St. Paul.

“The things that come to my mind are the stories of the babies that were born there and didn’t have the medical care to live and they were just babies and they died because they couldn’t be taken care of,” he says tearing up.

Stepetin now lives in Juneau and visited Funter Bay for the first time three weeks ago. When he heard about the Friends of Admiralty trip to Killisnoo, he immediately joined.

“Coming here is the closest thing you can do to paying your respects. It’s the ultimate way for me to put closure on it,” Stepetin says.

K.J. Metcalf helped start Friends of Admiralty Island in 1997 to advocate for the island’s cultural, historic and wilderness preservation. He was the first U.S. Forest Service ranger when Admiralty Island was designated a National Monument in 1978. Metcalf and his wife lived in Angoon for 18 years.

Funter Bay was more isolated that Killisnoo. Metcalf says the Atka Aleuts interned in the old Killisnoo herring factory had Tlingit neighbors a few miles north.

“These people were not provided any assistance at all – no medical help, no clean water, no sanitary conditions,” Metcalf says. “And the people of Angoon were incredibly important in their survival because they brought goods over and they helped take care of them.”

Dan Johnson grew up in Angoon hearing stories from his grandparents about the people of Atka and their time at Killisnoo. He says the two communities became close.

“They interacted on a daily basis so our people always talk about remembering the people that were here, and how they worked and helped each other. It wasn’t just our people helping them. It worked back and forth,” Johnson says.

While Johnson says the situation in Killisnoo was deplorable, he was told of lighter times as well.

“The happy moments, I guess, my grandparents used to talk about is that the people that were brought here loved their movies. Whenever they knew there was a new movie in town, they’d come rowing over to Angoon in their dories,” he says.

Few signs of the Killisnoo internment camp remain. The island now has a sport fishing lodge. It’s dotted with private homes, but on the south side is the cemetery where five wooden Russian Orthodox crosses mark the graves of Atka villagers.

The new memorial plaque sits atop a wooden post among the graves. It tells the story of the Atka people in Killisnoo.

When the plaque is in place, Joe Zuboff cries out a Tlingit chant. Zuboff is of the Deisheetan Clan (Raven/Beaver) of Angoon and is caretaker of the Raven House. His chant stems from the story of a crab apple tree during a big storm.

“The tide came really high and it washed this crab apple tree away and all we could do is watch this crab apple tree drift away,” Zuboff says. “And this is how we refer to our loved ones that we lose. There’s nothing we can do but watch them float into the other world.”

A history of the World War II Aleut Relocation Camps in Southeast Alaska by Charles Mobley indicates 83 people from Atka were brought to Killisnoo in 1942. Before returning to Atka three years later, 17 of them died.

Back at the cemetery, Russian Orthodox Bishop David Mahaffey of the Alaska Diocese sprinkles holy water on the memorial plaque and the area around it. He leads a blessing of the graves.

The plaque in memory of the Atka people looks east. It’s Orthodox tradition for altars and memorial graves to face the rising sun.

Are you having trouble getting ammo? Well, you’re not alone.

With the return of marine mammals and migratory birds to the Bering Straits region, subsistence hunters are still struggling to find certain kinds of ammunition.

There are several popular calibers they still can’t get in stock at the Native Store in Gambell.

“The .300’s–.303, 2-.22’s, .243, I think,” said assistant manager Julian Apataki last month.

Mary Ungut manages the store and said not only are bullets used hunting seal, ugruk, and other animals hard to get, but they’re more expensive.

“We’ve also been having a hard time getting some .22 shells,” she explained. “It seems that the price is increasing, too.”

Gambell is hardly the only place in Alaska where it’s hard to get .22 bullets. A recent article in the Alaska Dispatch described bare shelves and early morning lines outside Anchorage stores to snag boxes the day shipments arrive. That demand downstate has created a choke point for supplying rural communities where ammo is an essential tool for subsistence.

“If we were to get, say, 30 cases of that .22 ammo—basically what we’d have to do with the 40 stores that have ordered it is we’d divide it amongst the stores. Or, if there was less, we’d divide it based on the need at the time,” said Bill Willaims, manager of distribution for ANICA, the Alaska Native Industries Cooperative Association.

The company supplies 40 native stores from the Aleutians to Kaktovik, including the one in Gambell. Part of Williams’ job is to anticipate inventory needs around the subsistence calendar, and ship the right bullets at the right time.

“We would prioritize the subsistence needs,” Williams continued, “if people are ugruk hunting and we have .223 ammo in and don’t have enough for everybody—it would go to the people that are hunting ugruks at the time. So that’s basically how we delegate it out.”

Williams has had to venture beyond his Anchorage distributors and down to Washington state for bullets bound for village stores. Rural communities are getting hit with the tail end of a shortage created after the Sandy Hook shootings in December 2012, which sparked national ammo runs and stockpiling. But because ANICA, like many other rural retailers, places bulk orders months in advance, there was a buffer.

“Two years ago we still had an order coming when all the stores in Anchorage ran out of ammunition. So we did have an insulation because we did have a big shipment of ammo coming in,” Williams said. But after the following summer and into this year inventories were almost totally depleted. “This spring has been really bad. But it’s starting to come back around.”

The shortage is easing, if not disappearing completely. Shotgun shells, .223’s, and other common calibers for subsistence are back on shelves in Nome and Gambell. But higher prices, rationing, and waiting periods have rural hunters wondering if this is the new normal for ammo.

The cause of the ammo shortages in the Lower 48 trickling up through Anchorage and finally to the Bush has been the widely speculated on, with explanations ranging from worries about gun regulation to government stockpiling.

Last winter the NRA’s official magazine, American Rifleman, released a comprehensive and well researched article on what was causing the shortage. In short, lots of people ran out to buy lots of ammo on top of a five year rise in demand not matched by increased production. Based on taxes collected on ammo purchases, the amount of ammunition purchased from 2007 to 2012 doubled. Once the Sandy Hook school shooting raised a panic among gun owners, second amendment proponents, stockpilers and profiteers, rapid runs on already exhausted inventories depleted the supply chain.

Tribal leaders from Alaska and Canada say it’s time to work together to oppose mines affecting both sides of the border. It’s part of the growing scrutiny of projects near transboundary rivers.

Parts of Southeast Alaska are only a couple dozen miles from British Columbia. Historically, tribal groups from both sides have met, traded and married.

“Tlingit, Haida, Tsimshian people who live in Alaska all have tribes, clans and relatives on the other side,” says Richard Peterson, president of Southeast’s Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska.

He says over the years, many of those connections have been lost.

Now, he says, they’re coming back.

“I’m really excited that we could remove these invisible barriers, this invisible line that they call the border, that somehow successfully separates us so well. We’re doing away with that line,” he says.

Peterson spoke at a recent program in Juneau about traditional life and changes coming to parts of northwestern British Columbia.

The main issue was large mine development, which is being closely watched by tribal leaders.

“We don’t want our livelihood destroyed. We don’t want our watershed destroyed. And it’s a very sacred place to us,” says Annita McPhee, president of the Tahltan Central Council, in northern British Columbia.

Tahltans have brought their message to Southeast Alaska for a number of years. But McPhee says most were not aware of possible impacts on rivers that cross the border. She says a meeting held this spring changed her perspective.

“One of the things I’m prepared to do is go back and carry that message. Back to our people and back to other tribes. And definitely talk to people in industry and say, just because people are on the other side of the border does not mean that it doesn’t impact them,” she says.

Much of the recent focus has been on the KSM, or Kerr-Sulphurets-Mitchell mine. It’s a gold and copper prospect, roughly 80 miles east of Wrangell, planned by the Canadian firm Seabridge Gold.

Opponents say its tailings could affect the Unuk River, which flows into Behm Canal, north of Ketchikan.

Other mines could be built near the Stikine, Taku, Alsec and Chilkat rivers.

They’re part of a British Columbia government-backed mining boom.

McPhee says her council has about 250 projects to track – and that’s too many.

“Now that this big storm has come through, we are in a place where we’re getting organized, where we know what we want and we know what we don’t want. And we know what we’ll find acceptable and not unacceptable,” McPhee says.

The Tahltans have experience working with – and battling – big resource development projects on their land. About 10 years ago, they took on a Shell Oil plan to frack for gas.

Tahltan elder Mary Dennis was among those blockading a road and to protest that project.

“We had to think of our grandchildren and our great-grandchildren. So we stood up to them. We stood on the line and stopped them,” he says.

McPhee says the Tahltan council does not oppose mining. And it wants to increase economic opportunities for tribal members.

“There were some people who said, we want to work, we want this development, it’s going to pay us a lot of money. Then there were some people who said this is not worth any amount of money in this whole entire world. We don’t care. Take your money back. Our way of life, our animals, our waters, our culture is worth more than that money,” she says.

She says her council has since united on the issue.

Wade Davis is an author, anthropologist and resource consultant who lives in the Tahltan’s homeland.

“One of the things that happens is First Nations, I’m sure here in Alaska as well, are always given this false choice between poverty and economic projects that compromise their heritage. And that’s a choice that no people should be forced to make,” he says.

Tlingit-Haida President Peterson has worked with developers of mines near his Prince of Wales Island home.

He says he was willing to listen when KSM representatives spoke at a tribal meeting in Craig earlier this year. He says those representatives were not interested in listening.

“Every time anybody got up and said anything contrary to them, they snickered, they rolled their eyes, they laughed, they talked. I found them to be the most disrespectable people I’ve ever dealt with. They don’t care,” he says.

The Tlingit-Haida council and some other Southeast groups are lobbying the federal government to get involved in the transboundary mining issue. They want the feds to pressure Canadian officials to listen to tribal concerns.

They’ll take that issue before a National Council of American Indians conference next month in Anchorage. And they’ll bring along support from the other side of the border too.

Tlingit elder Harvey B. Marvin, of Juneau, has died at the age of 81.

Marvin grew up in Hoonah, worked for the public health service in Sitka and was the state of Alaska’s first Native auditor.

He was born in 1933 in Excursion Inlet to Lillian Pratt Marvin Smith, who was of the Kaagwaantaan clan, and John Marvin, of the T’ak Dein Taan clan, and a grandchild of the Chookaneidi. He was one of their 12 children.

He went to Mt. Edgecumbe High School, business school in Chicago and served in the U.S. Marine Corps in the Korean War.

Native land claims

Marlene Johnson grew up with Marvin in Hoonah.

“We were of opposite clans.  He was an Eagle and I was a Raven, but we were good friends,” she says with a chuckle.

That friendship came in handy during the years they would work together on the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.

Marvin and Johnson were among the five members of the Tlingit-Haida Central Council Executive Committee to lobby Congress. When ANCSA passed in 1971, Huna-Totem was created as the Hoonah village corporation.

Marvin was appointed corporation treasurer. Johnson was a board member.

“He was at every meeting and worked with us as we looked at the history, and doing the land claims and other important things for the corporation,” she says.

These were complicated issues. Johnson says Marvin was just the guy to explain them.

“He  was very fluent in Tlingit, so he could explain it in Tlingit to the elders that didn’t understand English that well,” Johnson says.

As they met with new shareholders in Hoonah and other parts of Southeast, she says Marvin also listened well, so he could tell the board what Huna-Totem members wanted in their corporation.

Marvin later transitioned from treasurer to board member, serving 19 years. He was a member of the Alaska Native Brotherhood and active with Tlingit and Haida. In 2005, he was named Citizen of the Year by the Central Council for what the organization called his “extreme dedication” to the Alaska Native community.

“He was with and very loyal to Tlingit-Haida Central Council since the ’60s,” says Edward Thomas, who was Central Council president at the time.

Super voters

Lisa Worl keeps the family tree for her large family. She always called Harvey Marvin great grandfather, though he was actually her great uncle.

Worl is on the Juneau School Board. Marvin and his late wife Lillian were there when she was sworn into office.

She can recite the work Marvin has done for his people through Native organizations, as a Sitka Assembly member, and other political involvement.

Harvey and Lillian Marvin were Democrats and “super voters,” she says.

“It was more a matter of civic duty and always making sure the family was aware of the issues and make sure they voted. They never pushed any people but obviously they had their people they were supporting,” Worl says.

Former Juneau Rep. Beth Kerttula was one of them. Kerttula got to know Marvin when her father, Jay Kerttula, was a state senator and chairman of the Legislative Budget and Audit Committee. Marvin was the auditor.

Years later, when Beth Kerttula ran for Juneau’s downtown seat in the state House, Marvin sat her down for a tutorial on the nuts and bolts of Juneau politics.

“He had almost every twist and turn and nuance, and knew the groups I needed to reach out to and knew the people I needed to go talk to,” she recalls.

But it didn’t stop there. Both Marvins worked hard on all five of her campaigns and were in the gallery at the state capitol when she took the oath of office.

Kerttula calls him an astute politician.

“You know I think Harvey would have been governor or U.S. Senator in a different day,” she says. “He just had that kind of talent and ability.”

More importantly, she says, the Marvins set a great example of how to be good human beings.

Lillian Marvin passed away in February, just after the couple celebrated their 59^th wedding anniversary.

“The two love birds are back together,” Worl says.

A memorial service for Harvey Marvin is Saturday at 3 p.m. at Alaska Memorial Park on Riverside Drive. A private family viewing is 1 p.m.

A tribal health organization in Southeast Alaska is encouraging members to enroll for health insurance.

Through a new program, some Alaska Natives will have an opportunity to get it at no cost.
Thirty-year-old Crystal Rogers is an Alaska Native who signed up for health insurance on her own through the Affordable Care Act.

Rogers was born and raised in Juneau. As a Tlingit, she has access to health care from Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium, or SEARHC, which receives funding from the federal government. Rogers considers these resources a blessing.

“But at the same time there are some gaps and there are some needs that are not being filled,” she says.

When she went to college in Portland, Rogers realized the care she received from SEARHC didn’t travel with her. She ended up using an Indian Health Services facility in Portland, but there were still times she needed care after hours.

“It’s been a long time coming where I’ve been paying out-of-pocket myself for urgent care, emergent care, care while I’m traveling, and I just couldn’t afford it and I didn’t want to do it,” Rogers says.

Now that Rogers has health insurance through healthcare.gov, she no longer has to pay any out-of-pocket costs, like deductibles or co-payments. That’s one of the benefits of the Affordable Care Act for low income Alaska Natives and American Indians. Rogers pays only a monthly premium.

“I have more options and still also use the SEARHC facility,” Roger says. “I’m really pleased with the care I have now. It’s the best care I’ve ever had.”

SEARHC outreach and enrollment manager Andrea Thomas wants to make sure Alaska Natives know all their health care options.

“There are a lot of great opportunities with the Affordable Care Act and being able to enroll at any month of the year and depending on your income, you can get just a really tremendous deal,” Thomas says.

Around 13,000 Alaskans enrolled for insurance on healthcare.gov. In an optional section of the application, only 115 identified themselves as Alaska Native or American Indian.

These numbers reflect the general open enrollment period which ended March 31 and doesn’t start again until November. Alaska Natives can enroll during any month of the year.

Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium has partnered with SEARHC and several other Native health organizations around the state to offer a new Tribally-Sponsored Health Insurance Program on a trial basis.

The program purchases insurance on healthcare.gov for a select number of income eligible, qualified Alaska Natives, and pays all the monthly bills. There’s no cost to program participants who are encouraged to use tribal hospitals and health centers whenever possible.

Thomas says insurance helps the patient and SEARHC.

“Like any heath care entity, we bill insurance, Medicaid, Medicare, third-party insurance. And when people are uninsured, you can’t bill. So this is another way to increase the number of people that are insured, which is basically revenue coming in,” Thomas says.

According to the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, the federal government provides roughly half of what tribal medical organizations need. That’s not enough, says Thomas.

“Health care costs are rising while the money that we receive is just a fraction of what it really costs to really run effective programming,” she says.

Now that Rogers has seen the benefits of having insurance, she’s encouraging other Alaska Natives to get it as well.

“Even if it was just, let’s say, half of the people were covered. The other half of the people who are not covered will end up getting better care as well. It’s really for the benefit of all of our tribal member shareholders and these facilities that take care of them,” Rogers says.

SEARHC and other Alaska Native medical organizations are screening people for eligibility in the tribally sponsored insurance program. More than 500 Alaska Natives will be able to participate in the trial, which lasts through December.