Day: March 6, 2026

The Haines and Metlakatla High School boys played like their historic namesakes in a second-seed versus third-seed Wednesday night cap basketball game in front of a packed Region V 2A crowd at the Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé George Houston Gymnasium.

The  ‘mini Gold Medal’ style game featured hard-nose pressure defense like their fathers played, fast breaks and shots from distance like their grandfathers put up, and a 42-31 Glacier Bears win over the Chiefs that wasn’t decided until the final minutes.

“It means a lot,” Haines senior Colton Combs said. “I am a senior and this is the first time I have made it to the finals at regions, so it is a pretty big moment. We came out on defense from the start. All year we have only do good on offense if we start on defense, for bringing the energy.”

Metlakatla junior Cruz Lindsey it a pair of free throws for the game’s first points and after Haines senior James Stickler hit inside, Cruz hit from past the arc for a 5-2 lead, the last time the Chiefs would have the scoring advantage.

Both teams were athletic in their defensive work and the score would not be changed until halfway through the stanza. Stickler muscled inside for a basket and followed a missed shot on Haines’ next possession for a 6-5 lead. C. Combs drove the lane on Haines’ next possession and scooped a shot in for an 8-5 lead that held to the start of the second quarter.

Haines senior JC Davis stole a ball to open the second quarter and fed sophomore Isaac Jones for a layup, Stickler hit inside and junior Brady Ferrin hit from the arc for a 15-5 lead with 3:10 remaining in the first half.

Metlakatla senior Bryce Olin hit from the arc to close to 15-8, but Haines junior Wade Lloyd answered from distance to lead 18-8. Metlakatla junior Gianni Scudero-Hayward hit a free throw to close to 18-9, but Haines’ Stickler followed a missed Glacier Bears shot and tipped it in for a 20-9 lead to end the half.

Metlakatla struggled to hit shots in the first half, missing numerous attempts in the key. The Chiefs opened the second half with a shot past the arc from Olin to close to eight, 20-12, but Haines’ Stickler rebounded a missed Glacier Bears shot and put the lead back to 10 points, and teammate Davis stole the next Metlakatla possession and scored for a 24-12 lead, and C. Combs added a free throw for 25-12.

Metlakatla’s C. Lindsey hit from the arc to close the score back to 10 at 25-15. Haines’ C. Combs hit a free throw for the 26-15 score with eight minutes remaining to play.

Haines junior Kyran Sweet stole a ball and scored to start the fourth quarter, and Stickler added a free throw for a 29-15 lead. Metlakatla countered with scores from Olin and C. Lindsey to trail 29-19.

A shot past the arc by Haines’ Davis and a steal by C. Combs who fed Sweet for a score pushed the lead out to 24-19, but Metlakatla’s Cash Martinez buried back-to-back scores past the arc to trail by seven, 32-25, with 3:45 left in the game.

Haines’ C. Combs scored on an up-and-under drive through traffic and Metlakatla’s Scudero-Hayward answered from the arc to trail 36-28.

Metlakatla would be forced to foul and Haines’ C. Combs and Sweet each hit a pair to push the lead out to 40-28 with under a minute left to play.

C. Lindsey closed Metlakatla to 40-31 with 28 seconds remaining, but Haines’ Ferrin and Stickler hit one free throw for the 42-31 final.

Stickler led Haines with 12 points, C. Combs eight, Sweet six, Davis five, Ferrin and Jones four apiece, and Lloyd three. The Glacier Bears hit three shots past the arc, 12 closer in and hit 9-18 from the charity stripe.

Olin led Metlakatla with eight points, S. Martinez and C. Lindsey seven apiece, freshman Cash Martinez six, and Scudero-Hayward three. The Chiefs hit eight shots past the arc but just two closer in and were 3-7 at the line.

“That is a very first for me,” Haines coach Bryan Combs said. “And it is the very first for the boys. It is an emotional win today. We knew we could beat them. We beat them twice earlier in the year, but that just shows all the work that we put in. Defensively first, defense-minded first. That’s an effort. All effort. And we just made a few more shots than they did.”

On watching his son play, coach Combs said, “He handled it well. He dealt with the pressure, he dealt with the adversity really well, so I couldn’t be happier. And we made free throws down the stretch. It is a big win, but we have a big game Friday. That is where our heads are now. That is where our focus goes – Friday night.

Haines advances to Friday’s 4:30 p.m. championship game against the winner of Thursday’s 10:30 a.m. game between number one seed Petersburg, who had an opening tournament bye, and number four seed Wrangell who defeated five seed Craig earlier Wednesday. Metlakatla plays an elimination game Thursday at 1:30 p.m. against Craig.

WRANGELL  61, CRAIG 43

The number four seed Wrangell Wolves ran with the number five seed Craig Panthers and then ran away with a 61-43 win to open their 2026 Region V Basketball Tournament on Wednesday at the Juneau-Douglas High School: Yadaa.at Kalé George Houston Gymnasium.

Craig freshman Tate Arndt scored the game’s first point on a free throw, but Wrangell junior Everett Meissner answered with back-to-back baskets and the Wolves would never trail again.

The Panthers kept it close in the first quarter pulling within a point at 4-3 as senior Josh Bennett scored on a drive.

Wrangell’s Aadyen Gillen hit two free throws for a 6-3 lead and Craig’s Arndt answered for 6-5.

Wrangell sophomore Kai Wigg scored on a steal for 8-6 and Craig pulled to within one point for the last time as Arndt scored on an inbounds play for 8-7.

Wrangell would pull to a 15-9 lead after eight minutes and inch into a 22-13 lead midway through the second stanza on scores by sophomore Lucas Stearns, Powers and Gillen.

Craig stayed in the contest with an Arndt shot off glass and a shot past the arc by senior Adam Vickers to trail 22-18.

Wrangell would close the first half on a 15-2 run that included a final trio of baskets of steals by senior William Massin (one) and Stearns (two) all within 25 seconds that gave the Wolves a 37-20 lead at the break.

The Wolves pushed out to a 51-36 lead after three quarters and coasted to the win.

Powers led Wrangell with 23 points, Gillen added 12, Stearns 10, Meissner five, Ben Houser and Massin four apiece and Wigg three. The Wolves hit two shots past the arc, 21 closer in and were 10-18 from the line.

Bennett led Craig with 15 points, Arndt 11, Vickers 10, freshman Jack Conaster five and senior Aiden Goheen two. The Panthers made four 3-point shots, 11 closer in and hit 9-16 at the line.

“It feels really great,” Stearns said.  “It means we are working our way towards the state tournament. Just defense and getting stops was important. Stopping them from getting set up in their offense.”

Wrangell advances to play top seed Petersburg at 10:30 a.m. Thursday. Craig plays an elimination game at 1:30 p.m. Thursday against Metlakatla.

This story was originally published by the Juneau Independent.

The post Haines tips Metlakatla in ‘mini Gold Medal’ as 2A Region opens appeared first on Chilkat Valley News.

Tlingit master weaver Lily Hope will use a $50,000 national fellowship she was awarded this year to help organize the first Northwest Coast Textile Symposium in Juneau. 

“The perpetuation of Northwest Coast textiles is my life now and into the future,” Hope said. “My dream life is continuing to vision and fundraise and connect the humans and artists and changemakers to continue to lift Chilkat and Ravenstail weaving.”

The United States Artists awardees for 2026 is nomination based, and Hope said she was first nominated six years ago. She remained in the pool by reapplying every year. The fellowship money is unrestricted and can be used to support the artist however she wishes. 

Hope said she is using it to make history.

Eighty to 100 robes are expected altogether at the “Gathering of the Robes.” The textile symposium is scheduled for April 14-17, 2027, at Centennial Hall. A website launched in February and is accepting interest forms and donations. 

“The Gathering of the Robes will bring together the largest dancing collection of both curvilinear Chilkat weaving and geometric Ravenstail weaving in the history of the world,” Hope said. “Many, many students of my own and of my mother, students of my students. Multiple generations deep of the people that I have taught are now teaching also, so we’ve got that depth of mentorship.”

Hope held a small gathering of 22 Chilkat robes in the past, and a separate event for nearly 40 Ravenstail robes in 2024. Both events were celebrations of the revival of the traditional craft. But Hope said both styles of textiles haven’t danced together as they will at the 2027 symposium.

“I know what it’s like to have Chilkats dancing in one place, and we experienced the joy of having Ravenstail together,” she said. “But this has never happened where we have the ancestral memory of Chilkat work and the woken-up memory of Ravenstail in the same space. The spirit being, or the ancestral resonance that is present when these works are dancing, is deeply felt by any person present.”

Hope said the emotional resonance living in the robes is difficult to put into words. 

She said the most exciting thing about next year’s symposium is three days of dedicated time to gather and share knowledge in a large space. Tables will be set up for vendors and weavers can throw down robes that are works in progress. 

“Tricks of the trade” will also be discussed, and weavers will have the opportunity for mentorship. Hope herself has taught hundreds of traditional weavers. 

She said during the symposium, historic Ravenstail robes rewoven by 11 students and weaver colleagues will dance once again in a ceremony, titled the Ravenstail Symbolic Repatriation project. 

Other projects are closer to completion and at Hope’s fingertips.

She and Sydney Akagi, her weaving colleague, worked on a Chilkat dancing blanket for the de Young Museum in San Francisco for nearly two years. It was dropped off at the museum on Thursday.

The blanket is a close replica of a work in the American Museum of Natural History. Akagi is a former student of Hope’s and was recently chosen by Sealaska Heritage Institute to lead the weaving of a historic Chilkat robe made entirely of mountain goat wool for the first time in more than 150 years. 

The second “Weaving Our Pride” robe, a rainbow-colored Ravenstail, is also “inches away from completion.” Hope said it will be ready to dance at this year’s Celebration in June, SHI’s biennial cultural event.

The first, a Chilkat Pride robe, danced for the first time during Celebration in 2024. The project for both robes began in 2023. Wooden cases are also being built for both Pride robes to be stored at Zach Gordon Youth Center, the same place where they are being woven in the community. For the Ravenstail, five mentor weavers, and over 20 Alaska Native and non-Native youth have woven at the youth center for over two years.

After completion, the robes can be worn by youth during the biennial Celebration, graduations, new-name parties, coming-out parties, and other events.

“Witnessing the student who had put in the most hours on this work get to help us cut it off the loom and then drape it on their shoulders — it was one of the highlights of 2024,” Hope said. “Being able to witness this person experience the completion, but also the literal pride of participating in making something bigger than themselves, and the affirmation of identity and community, love and belonging.”

Hope said the same sense of belonging applies to a “Giving Strength” robe being woven for the AWARE shelter for domestic and sexual violence survivors. It was started in 2018.

This robe is also nearing completion, with just its bottom borders needing to be finished. Heidi Vantrease inspired the “Giving Strength” robe after posting a small teal and purple weaving on the Ravenstail and Chilkat Facebook group, captioning it “I am weaving this for someone who has been deeply affected by sexual and domestic violence, and I am being intentional about putting in my strength and prayers for healing.”

Hope said, “If it’s not us personally, it is someone close to us who has been affected.” She noted the statistics for Alaska Natives experiencing domestic and sexual violence in particular are “staggering.” 

She reached out to Vantrease and asked if volunteers could weave a community robe inspired by her work for the AWARE shelter. More than 60 volunteers are creating 5-by-5-inch weavings to stitch together in a larger teal and purple robe, the colors representing sexual and domestic violence awareness. 

Hope said the “Giving Strength” robe’s collaborative style echoes a community robe her late mother, Clarissa Rizal, envisioned and executed in 2016 called “Weaving Across the Waters.” It is on display at the Longhouse Weaver Studio at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. Once the “Giving Strength” robe is finished, it will remain at the AWARE shelter.

“When else do you get to experience the strength of 60 artists on your shoulders? Imagine coming in from whatever you’ve just experienced over however long the abuse was happening, and you come into the AWARE shelter, and the first thing they do is set your bags down — ‘put this robe on,’” she said. “That’s why we do the work. Set down the grief and fear and rage and feel the strength of 60 people who say, ‘You can do really hard things.’”

Hope said the $50,000 fellowship she received is also “affording me this beautiful space of looking at my last 15 years of work and being able to contemplate what is next.” Most importantly, she said, it is allowing her to exhale while pondering future steps.

She closed her public studio last fall to recenter her artistic intentions after a conversation with weaver Shdendootaan “Shgen” George. It still serves as a working studio. Hope said she is thinking about creating a Chilkat blanket for her clan, the T’akdeintaan.

“What is the most sensible thing that helps to not just elevate Northwest Coast textiles, but continue my particular body of work?” she asked. “What happens if I get to make work for my own homeland? What if it isn’t about the monetization of ceremonial artwork? What do I make when I get to think about keeping something in my clan or family?”

This story was originally published by the Juneau Independent.

The post Master weaver Lily Hope uses national fellowship to plan largest gathering of Chilkat and Ravenstail robes in history appeared first on Chilkat Valley News.

The head of the Alaska Division of Elections will not share legal advice that led to the state’s decision to send an extended voter list to the U.S. Department of Justice.

Director Carol Beecher told state senators Wednesday that she will not waive attorney-client privilege as state lawmakers examine last year’s decision to give the Trump administration a detailed list of Alaska voters.

Alaska is one of 12 states that have either turned over their voter lists or have said they plan to comply with a nationwide request, according to records kept by the Brennan Center, a critic of the administration’s request.

Alaska and Texas are also the only states to have signed a memorandum of understanding that would allow the Department of Justice to pick individual voters for eventual removal from state lists of eligible voters.

Neither elections officials nor the Alaska Department of Law have explained why the state voluntarily complied with the request and signed the memo, or how compliance fits within the Alaska Constitution’s right to privacy.

Last week, Idaho became the latest state to reject the Department of Justice’s request for voter information, joining dozens of others.

That state’s Secretary of State said in a letter to federal officials that filings in a lawsuit showed that the department had shared sensitive information, including Social Security numbers, with “unauthorized persons,” and as a result, he could not guarantee that Idahoans’ identities would be safe.

In a pair of legislative hearings this week, Alaska lawmakers were unable to learn why Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom, Beecher, and the Alaska Department of Law reached a different conclusion.

Sen. Bill Wielechowski, D-Anchorage, grilled Beecher during a Wednesday hearing, pressing her to release the legal advice she received before the Division of Elections turned over its voter list.

“This is an issue of grave concern for hundreds of thousands of Alaskans, and you have the ability to provide us with those documents. You have the ability to waive any potential privilege. Would you be willing to do that?” he asked.

“At this point, I am not willing to waive that privilege,” she said. 

Sen. Elvi Gray-Jackson, D-Anchorage, asked Beecher whether the department made a mistake by sharing the voter data and signing the memo that would allow the federal government to single out individual Alaskans.

“I do not, at this juncture, believe that the division made a mistake in signing the MOU,” she said.

This week’s toughest questions came from Democratic lawmakers. Beecher and Dahlstrom are both Republicans, and Dahlstrom is also a candidate for governor in this fall’s elections.

Republican lawmakers were generally silent in this week’s hearings. 

Rep. Andrew Gray, D-Anchorage and chair of the House Judiciary Committee, said he was “in an awkward position” and reached out to a variety of experts in an attempt to avoid bias in a hearing he held on Monday.

During that hearing, Rep. Kevin McCabe, R-Big Lake, said he sees the state’s compliance as something like following the speed limit.

“When the federal government makes a law, we’re expected to follow it … it’s the federal government’s job, through whomever, to ensure that law is followed, and from what I understand, the federal government was merely attempting to make sure that Alaska followed the National Voter Registration Act,” he said.

The information transmitted to the Department of Justice goes beyond the publicly available voter information purchasable from the Division of Elections for $20. 

It contains personally identifying information, such as birthdates, driver’s license numbers and partial Social Security numbers.

In a legal analysis performed last month, legislative attorneys called the DOJ’s request “unprecedented” and said the division’s handover would be legal only if the federal government requested the information “in compliance with federal law” and used “the information only for governmental purposes authorized under law.”

As of Wednesday, three separate federal judges — in Oregon, California and Michigan — have ruled that the federal government’s request is not in compliance with federal law. 

Of the 48 states and the District of Columbia that have been asked for their voter lists, 29 and DC are fighting the federal government in court. The federal government has won none of those cases to date.

Legislative attorney Andrew Dunmire said he is also unaware of any federal law that allows the federal government to single out individual voters for removal from voter lists, as the MOU states.

On Wednesday, Beecher said the Department of Justice has not yet requested that any voters be removed from Alaska’s list. In addition, Dahlstrom said in December that the state would comply with the MOU only if the federal government’s actions are legal.

But with the Alaska Department of Law and the Division of Elections stonewalling legislators, it isn’t clear what the state considers a legal request. 

In September, the Justice Department told Stateline that it is sharing the voter data with the Department of Homeland Security, and the Trump administration has previously said it intends to input the voter lists into a nationwide registry to look for noncitizens.

The DHS tool for that effort has repeatedly flagged citizens in error, ProPublica reported last month.

Speaking to legislators this week, former Alaska attorney general Bruce Botelho advised lawmakers to continue searching for the legal advice given to elections officials by the Alaska Department of Law.

He also suggested that legislators consider filing a lawsuit to have the agreement with the Department of Justice declared illegal.

SUBSCRIBE: GET THE MORNING HEADLINES DELIVERED TO YOUR INBOX

Correction: The initial version of this article incorrectly listed the number of states that have provided voter lists to the federal government. Alaska is one of 12 states that has either turned over voter data or is planning to do so.