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At a site near the Southwest Alaska village of Quinhagak archaeologists are racing against time to uncover Yup’ik artifacts before the effects of climate change cause them to erode into the sea. The old village continues to reveal artifacts that give a glimpse into the daily lives of Yup’ik people hundreds of years ago.

The crowning artifact found this season, says Rick Knecht, the lead archaeologist and a professor from the University of Aberdeen in Scotland, is a mask half human, half walrus, in nearly perfect condition. It’s wrapped in several layers of plastic as Knecht keeps the mask damp and cool in a refrigerator at base camp.

“It’s got amazingly lifelike contours with the cheek bones, and the nose, and the forehead and so-on. Beautifully carved out of wood, and as you can see it’s got two little conical tusks that represent that transformation into a walrus. And these are in fact made out of walrus ivory. It’s got a little beard here, and half of it are human hairs and then on the other half are sea mammal hairs, maybe walrus whiskers,” said Knecht.

Knecht says the mask could have been a used by a Shaman. He unearthed it, about five miles outside Quinhagak, on the edge of the Bering Sea, where archaeologists have spent the six field seasons scraping dirt from the remains of a 500-year-old Alaska Native sod house. Today’s discovery of a wooden bowl gives another clue about how Yup’ik people lived.

“On the bottom of the bentwood bowl is an ownership mark left by the person who carved that and these ownership marks were inherited between families. We have about six or seven ownership marks we see consistently throughout this site, which we believe was a very large sod house divided up into compartments which were domestic spaces for women and children,” said Knecht.

His team has found tens of thousands of household items, jewelry and weapons, among other things. The dig is composed of what’s left of an entire village at the site of the ancient community of Arolik.

The objects look much younger than the centuries they’ve endured. That’s because they’ve been encased in permafrost. Wood and leather items can survive for hundreds of years. The oldest objects date as far back as seven hundred years.

Unseasonably warm temperatures at the dig site– nearly 80 degrees- create another set of variables for the crew to deal with. Conditions that Knecht say are driving the crew to work as fast as possible before more washes away.

In the early 1600s, right around the time that Shakespeare was publishing plays and poems in England, Knecht says, these people were crafting art too: carving intricate ivory jewelry and weaving baskets. Then, in the middle of the 17^th Century, says Knecht, their communal, sod house was attacked and burned.

Carlotta Hillerdal is a co-investigator with Knecht on the project. Back at the dig, she points to a burnt orange streak running along the dark soil of the dig’s dirt wall.

“This site was abandoned around 1640. So that’s where we have the kind of orange and black soil that you see in the wall over there that we dug. That’s the roof of the last phase of the structure that stood here that was burnt down and abandoned,” said Hillerdal.

The evidence at the site corresponds with local Yup’ik lore about the ‘bow and arrow wars,’ a time of fighting between tribes during an earlier climate change that strained resources.

Those are stories that Yup’ik elder Annie Cleveland knows. She says, when she was a girl, she remembers walking on the beach just outside of her village and finding old spears and human remains along the shore.

“When my grandmother and I used to walk down the beach to get some driftwood or pick berries we used to find spear-anek (spears) and maybe a human bone and skull and we used to put the bones back up there and dig a little bit and cover them,” said Cleveland.

That spot where she and her grandmother kept reburying things has turned into the dig called Nunalleq, meaning ‘old village.’ Cleveland says the project is bringing to life history for Yup’ik people in her village and giving them a sense of pride. The Native corporation in Quinhagak eventually wants to develop ecotourism around the site, but rapid erosion has made getting artifacts out the priority.

As they dig, researchers are finding that the village is larger than expected. With the new discoveries they’ve tacked on another season of fieldwork to unearth more history before it’s too late.

The archaeologists will ship the artifacts to Scotland for study and preservation before they return them to the region. Tribal leaders say they will eventually display them either in Bethel or Quinhagak.

A $3 million Tlingit tribal house is being constructed on the shore of Bartlett Cove in Glacier Bay–likely the first time the National Park Service has funded a tribal house.

Three carvers are chipping away on an Eagle moiety pole that will go outside the red cedar tribal house with a Raven. The crest of a Wolf, Porpoise, Brown Bear and Thunderbird are starting to form, representing the clans in the area.

Gordon Greenwald, the lead carver, says it’s taken over a month to get this far on the totem and it’ll likely be six more before it’s finished.

“Now we could complete it faster than that if we used some machines. Chainsaws and so forth to do some of the major cutting but we’ve chosen not to do it that way. We’re trying to do it all by hand.”

His team has been carving the pieces to go in the 2,500-square-foot Huna Tribal House for about five years. There’s a constant flood of cruise ship tourists in and out of the shed, asking questions and marveling at the handiwork. But Greenwald says he doesn’t mind.

“For people that are new to this area, it gives them a chance to learn about our people. Going away knowing  Tlingit people, knowing what our life was like. And for local people, they can stop and see something is being made in our homeland,” he says.

An interior and exterior screen is already complete. So are the house posts of the four clans that identify Glacier Bay as home: Wooshkeetaan, Chookaneidí, Kaagwaantaan and T’akdeintaan.

Tom VandenBerg, the chief of interpretation at Glacier Bay National Park says the clans are an inextricable part of the story of Glacier Bay.

“But there’s no physical sign of their history here unfortunately,” he says.

Bartlett Cove is the site of the new tribal house. It’s where the clans originally resided until an encroaching glacier forced them to relocate hundreds of years ago to what’s now called Hoonah. In 1925, Glacier Bay became a national monument and federal laws limited what the Huna Tlingit could do in their homeland.

“It’s difficult, you know. The parks service represents the stories of our nation. And it seems like some of the Native stories have been missing from some parks.”

VandenBerg says there are places like Sitka National Historic Park with Southeast Native totems, but “there’s not much in the way of Alaska Native stories being told in parks.”

The National Park Service received a request from the Hoonah Indian Association back in 1992 to build the tribal house. VandenBerg is unaware of anything else like it: a ceremonial house paid for by concessioners fees from businesses that operate within Glacier Bay.

Tlingit elder and park management assistant Ken Grant says it’s going to be an emotional day when the tribal house is finished.

“Our people really have a strong tie to the homeland. The feeling of being left out has been with our elders for a long time. Like they say in our language: they were buried with a sorrow in their hearts,” Grant says.

He hopes that it’ll provide a space for young Huna Tlingits to learn about their roots and enhance language and cultural preservation.

Gordon Greenwald says it’s been a long time for the project to come fruition.

“But now I’m looking back on it, I’m wondering why this hadn’t happened in all the other parks long ago,” he says.

Back at the shed, carvers Owen James and Herb Sheakley are singing a song about one of the Huna clans.

When Sheakley started this project five years ago, he says he didn’t know all of the stories and he didn’t know how to carve. He’s been practicing at home, making ceremonial hats out of spruce and working on the Eagle pole.

“It’s stuff like this that keeps me going. I can actually create this now,” he says. “Before I could look at this and say, ‘Hmm, I couldn’t do that.’ Making the knives, listening to my boss teaching me the formlines, this is the kind of thing I’m making now.”

Greenwald says he owes teaching to his mentors; passing on the knowledge so it doesn’t stop with him.

“On all of this work, none of us will sign it because none of this work is about us as individuals; it’s about our people,” Greenwald says.

The Huna Tribal House is expected to be dedicated next August.

Walking amongst the old sod and whalebone houses on the edge of the Bering Sea, it’s easy to let the world around you fade away. We’ve come to Point Hope, Alaska, one of the oldest continuously inhabited communities in North America, 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle.

The barrier between the old abandoned town site and the new community is the airport, which sees multiple small-plane departures and arrivals each day, though today is a bit different. Today a pearly white plane is parked on the runway. On the side it reads “United States of America,” which feels like a million miles away from where we are.

The official aircraft came all the way from Washington DC to made good on a request from local. Leonard Barger, Transportation Director of the Native Village of Point Hope, wrote to the Secretary of Veterans Affairs, Robert McDonald, last year requesting a visit to honor the community’s veterans.

Barger explained the importance of McDonald’s visit to the 49^thstate. With the highest number of veterans per capita in the country, even the most remote communities throughout Alaska have vets. Along with Point Hope, Barger acknowledged the veterans in communities like Barrow, Point Lay, and Unalakleet. “All these people in Alaska, they’re going to Afghanistan,” Barger said, “they’re leaving their family, but they’re serving their country, they’re sacrificing their lives for us.”

Along with visiting Point Hope, McDonald also held a listening session that day in Kotzebue. It took Walter Sampson, a Vietnam vet living in Kotzebue, 11 years to get serviced by the VA in Anchorage, a 500-mile journey and a $600 plane ticket away from home. Sampson made sure to remind McDonald of the unique challenges that many of Alaska’s vets face in accessing the benefits they’ve earned.

“Remember that we’re in bush Alaska,” Sampson said, “We’re in roadless communities.” While Fairbanks and Anchorage have the clinics, the VA officers, and the hospitals, he stressed that, “for bush Alaska we’ve got nothing at all.”

Without the VA facilities and representatives, information has a hard time reaching vets in bush Alaska. Sampson expressed a feeling that many vets seemed to share. “As a veteran, do I really know who [the] VA is?” Sampson asked himself. “What benefits does it have for me?

Sampson is frustrated by the convoluted nature of the VA support system, which often requires multiple phone calls, website logins, and, in the end a system too complex for its own good. McDonald was quick to acknowledge those inefficiencies.

“Walter’s right,” McDonald admitted, “we’ve got too many 1-800 numbers, it’s too confusing.” With over 900 1-800 numbers and 14 websites that require different usernames and passwords, many vets get lost in the system before they ever get help. “We’re going to go to one 1-800 number, we’re going to go to one website,” McDonald promised, “it’s just too complex, we’ve got to simplify it, that’s what we’re working to do.”

But a simplified system is only one step towards getting vets throughout Alaska the benefits they deserve. With McDonald gone and many questions left unanswered, the support system that seems the most promising comes from within the state.

Chester Ballot, another Vietnam vet in Kotzebue, was trained in Anchorage as a tribal veteran representative and now works to sign up fellow vets to the VA. The Alaska VA also sent two representatives to both Point Hope and Kotzebue to sign up and inform vets of their benefits. So far the Alaska VA has sent representatives to 39 of the state’s nearly 300 villages.

Although McDonald is back in DC, Leonard Barger hopes this will not be his last visit to Point Hope. Barger and other community members encouraged him to return in the spring to take part in a whale hunt, one of the many benefits of living on the edge of the Bering Sea.

Jody Hass is only the second person in Juneau’s Golden North Salmon Derby’s 69-year history to win the top prize more than once. Ryan Beason won in 2001 and again the following year. Hass won in 2013 with a 29.2-pound king. Here’s how she landed this year’s derby winner.

Jody Hass says it might have something to do with a comfy sweatshirt, blue jeans and Xtratufs.

“I wore the same fishing clothes that I won the derby in last time, so that was my good luck charm,” Hass says laughing.

Although that didn’t work last year. Whatever it may be, Hass reeled in the big fish south of Juneau within hours of the derby starting Friday morning.

“It was really slow actually. We had gotten a couple bites and two small shakers that we threw back. Then all of sudden, it just hit and it hit hard. I grabbed the pole and I knew it was a bigger one. I didn’t know it was the big one,” Hass says.

The big king salmon didn’t fight as much as Hass expected, but it did do some running.

“It almost spooled us. We actually had to go in reverse a little bit so that it wouldn’t spool all the line off the reel. Then it just immediately stopped running and turned directly around and starting running towards the boat and it was hard to keep my reel going as fast as he was swimming towards the boat,” she says.

After getting the fish on, Hass and her family went directly to Douglas Harbor and weighed in the fish just before noon. Then, the family turned around and fished for the rest of the weekend.

“Twenty-seven-point-four is a pretty small fish and it’s surely beatable and that’s what we were expecting all weekend, for it to be beat,” Hass says.

But it never was. The number two derby fish came close at 27 pounds.

Last time Hass won the derby, her family used the $10,000 prize money to buy land in Gustavus. This year, the first purchase Hass plans to make is electric downriggers.

Treadwell Arena kicked off its 2015-2016 season by playing host to the Rocky Mountain Hockey School, which conducted a camp last week for nearly 70 players.

The Juneau Douglas Ice Association, with underwriting help from the City and Borough of Juneau’s Youth Activities Board, helped bring RMHS for its annual visit to Juneau.

Alaskans voted in 1998 to define marriage in the state constitution as only between a man and a woman. Now that the U.S. Supreme Court has invalidated that definition, Alaska and the entire country has marriage equality.

To some it may seem like things are changing fast, but Alaska’s fight for gay rights began half a lifetime ago.

In the course of Alaska’s legislative history, there have been six bills to outlaw sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination. In Anchorage, there have been at least three ordinances.

They’ve all failed.

The fight may have begun in 1975, when the Alaska State Human Rights Commission took a formal stance that sexual preference should be included in the state’s non-discrimination policy.

House Bill 125 was introduced in 1987, during the AIDS epidemic. The commission director, the attorney general and the governor all supported the bill.

“[It was] just something that seemed to me, it was time to make some noise about it,” says former Democratic Gov. Steve Cowper.

He introduced the bill less than two months after taking office. He had served in the Vietnam War and made a friend who was gay.

“They served just as well or better than other people,” Cowper said.

Cowper can’t remember why exactly he introduced the bill, but cites that personal experience as a possible reason. Old files also suggest commission Director Janet Bradley asked for his support.

“But as a general principle, people shouldn’t be discriminated against any more than you should be able to discriminate for racial reasons,” Cowper said.

Cowper’s friend died from AIDS years later. HB 125 never made it out of committee.

Janet Bradley left the Human Rights Commission in 1988. During the last decade of her career, she had taken an aggressive approach to more inclusive legislation.

After she left, Paula Haley became the commission’s director. She’s still the director now and she hasn’t touched the issue.

In 1989 through an LGBT advocacy group, researchers Melissa Green and Jay Brause published a statewide survey documenting the experiences of Alaska’s lesbian and gay community, including issues of discrimination and health.

Janet Bradley ended the report’s forward with a call to action: “This report then becomes our challenge; for if we believe that our vision of Alaska is marred when discrimination exists, we must commit ourselves to eliminating sexual orientation discrimination.”

In 2012, Green published her final report on a survey on LGBT discrimination in Anchorage through Identity, Inc. It was a few weeks before Anchorage voted on Proposition 5, a sexual identity anti-discrimination measure that failed. She says the report received a lot of criticism.

“It has important things to say. I hope that people might still read it, but I’m done. I’m done. I’m off on my own life,” Green said.

She’s burnt out and says she’s kind of bitter.

“It ate up a lot of my life and a lot of my time, and it had, I wouldn’t say exactly zero impact, but pretty close to that,” Green said. “Nobody really cared— outside of the [lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender] community, nobody really cared.”

In 1986, the Anchorage Daily News interviewed a gay man working at Identity, Inc., an advocacy organization. He was collecting violent and homophobic voice mail the office received for a research report on gay and lesbian discrimination.

That man’s name was Jay Brause.

“Through the AIDS crisis we started finding out how important our relationships were,” Brause said.

“We started finding out we had no rights. We were denied in so many ways.” Brause said.

He said he knew of couples who’d been together for decades and if one of them would become ill or die, often their relationship meant nothing when it came to hospital visitation, burials, military honors and home ownership.

“How do you explain that to people? It’s a potent, virulent form of discrimination,” Brause said.

During the same year the ADN published the story, he interned with the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in D.C.

Brause and his now-husband Gene Dugan applied for their marriage license in 1994. The controversial act eventually led to the 1998 constitutional amendment defining marriage.

He paid for being a prominent gay figure in the 80s and 90s in more ways.

“I felt the prejudice and the discrimination very personally and directly. In a way, you don’t know if you’re hiding or you haven’t disclosed (your sexuality),” Brause said.

Like his friend Melissa Green, he’s disillusioned about his fight and American liberties. His reaction when Alaska got marriage equality?

“I did not have the person-in-the-street’s reaction. No, not even a smile,” Brause said.

In 2006, he and his husband moved to England, where he has dual-citizenship. In September, he’ll travel back to Anchorage to clean up to the last few bits of his life in America before leaving for good.

“Thank you to every single one of us who took on that work as activists, who took chances to make a difference, and believe me, there’s more to be done.”

State Legislative Reference Librarian Jennifer Fletcher researched legislative files. This article could not be produced without her assistance.

Editor’s note: This story and audio have been updated. The number of Anchorage anti-discrimination ordinances that have failed has been qualified; there have been at least three. Also, Identity, Inc. published all three reports. Jay Brause and Identity, Inc. volunteers authored One in Ten, Brause and Melissa Green authored Identity Reports, and Green authored the LGBT Anchorage Discrimination survey report. Volunteers and community members assisted with all three of the studies. 

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Bibliography 

1975-76, Senate Bill 60, (Files 1, 2, 3, senate floor tape)

1983-84, House Bill 364 (File 1)

1983-84, Senate Bill 406 (Files 1, 2)

1983-84, Senate Bill 77 (Files 1, 2)

1985-86 House Bill 194 (Files 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

1987-88, House Bill 125 (Files 1, 2, 3, 4, 5)

The Alaska Gay and Lesbian Community Center

“One in Ten,” report published by Identity, Inc.

“Sexual Orientation Bias in Alaska,” published by Identity, Inc. 

Jay Brause & Gene Dugan v. Alaska Dept. of Health and Social Services

1998 Alaska Ballot Measure 2

Jerry Prevo,  June 6, 2009 sermon against Anchorage Ordinance 64

Jerry Prevo, March 25, 2012 sermon against transgender rights and Prop. 5

Identity, Inc.’s flag burns, article by Alaska Dispatch News

U.S. EEOC, July 2015 ruling on sexual orientation discrimination

U.S. EEOC rulings on sexual orientation and gender identity discrimination

Anchorage Municipal Mayor Ethan Berkotwitz’s 2015 transition report

Aug. 12, 2005 interview with Gov. Bill Walker

2015 Anchorage Ordinance on city’s non-discrimination policy