Category: Alaska News

One in five Americans would sooner take cooking advice from a “food-fluencer” than from their own mom (18%), according to new research. A survey of 2,000 adults found that for many, social media is overtaking traditional ways of learning to…

Mary Goddard has been eating wild and foraged foods her whole life. Last summer, however, she took it to another level, creating the “90-Day Native” challenge for herself — a time in which she only ate traditional Alaska Native foods.

Deer? Yes. Berries? Yes. Dryfish? Yes. Nettles? Yes. That tomato grown in a local garden? Didn’t make the cut.

Goddard is Tlingit and of the Kaagwaantaan clan, out of Klukwan. She grew up in Yakutat and now lives in Sitka. For many years, she has been thinking about food systems, and about how what we choose to eat not only shapes us, but the world around us. She also works in film and knew from the beginning that she would want to document the challenge and to track its impacts.

“When we were discussing, for months, what TV shows we were going to do, all of it was culturally based and around food systems,” she said. “My business partner, Dave Fedorski, said ‘You want to do this anyways, TV show or not. Why don’t you just do it?’”

They documented the challenge on Goddard’s Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube, @alaskamary. It was “a new experience to be that vulnerable with people,” she said.

Goddard had three mentors throughout the challenge: Naomi Michalsen of Ketchikan; Rob Kinneen, known as “The Tlingit chef;” and Steve Johnson, a hands-on Sitka mentor.

Michalsen has a deep knowledge of Alaska Native plants, Goddard said. Kinneen has deep knowledge of traditional foods and how to prepare them. Johnson took her out gathering seaweed, herring eggs and fishing. 

Friends and people she connected with on social media were also helpful. One person suggested getting birch syrup from the Anchorage area, which was a game-changer midway through the challenge. Another sent her muktuk. A friend brought her smoked octopus.

Several foods, she ate for the first time — two different kinds of gumboots; uni, or sea urchin; sea cucumber. She gathered mushrooms. She made a whole cupboard of teas from different plants that grow in Sitka.

Dryfish was her version of fast food, she said, and “salmon was a staple. I had salmon nearly every day,” she said. “Just eating salmon you can feel the difference in your body. It’s so satisfying.”

The challenge wasn’t easy socially. She couldn’t eat birthday cake at family birthday parties. Instead of eating from a food truck, she drank water at a local music festival and ate salmon when she got home. She had to be intentional even about how she cooked her food. Frying in olive oil, for example, was a no — instead, she used seal oil.

With limited carbohydrates, there was the challenge of getting enough calories.

A doctor and a nutritionist at SEARHC, Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium, tracked her health along the way. At first, they were concerned with her rapid weight loss.

“I really don’t know how to eat any more food on this diet,” she says at week seven.

On the plus side, she had no stomach issues over the 90 days. As someone who has celiac disease, an autoimmune disease that causes the body to attack the small intestine when a person eats gluten, she has been dealing with stomach issues for years.

A key difficulty she dealt with was living her normal life while doing the challenge, which was very time consuming to both find and prepare foods.

 “Life is always going to have twists and turns and challenges,” she reflects at one point, asked if she could have chosen a better time. “I think if it’s something you want to go for, you should go for it.”

Looking back on the experience, “One of the common themes was guilt,” she said. “I’m filling my freezer with this mindset of ‘will I have enough?’ but I should share with Elders, and I wanted to share with an upcoming ku.éex’ — potlatch. There was a lot of guilt in the beginning.”

“Eight months later,” she continued, “I actually don’t have guilt when it comes to eating — thoughts like ‘Oh, I shouldn’t eat that.’ As a result of this challenge, it’s not there.”

Goddard is now offering 3-day Native food challenges for anyone interested in participating, raising money to create a full-length documentary on 90-Day Native, and speaking in schools about Native Alaskan foods and Alaska’s food system.

“This challenge is not about perfection. It is about curiosity, connection, and taking one meaningful step toward understanding Alaska Native food systems that have nourished our communities for generations — and finding our way back to the foods, knowledge, and relationships that continue to sustain us,” she writes on her website.

“Food is culture,” Goddard says. “In foodways and systems like this, you understand that everything is interconnected. As we have changed our food systems, we have changed the way we live with the world around us. Eating Native foods — maybe it seems traditional, or culturally relevant, but really it’s getting you to see how you work with the world around you, versus systems that don’t take that into consideration.”

Mary Catharine Martin is the communications director at SalmonState, which works to keep Alaska a place where wild salmon and the people whose lives are interconnected with them continue to thrive.

The post The ‘90-Day Native’ food challenge appeared first on Chilkat Valley News.

Haines is at a critical juncture in the development of our cruise ship and tourism economy. As a local resident and business owner with over 40 years of experience in the local and international tourism industry, I would like to share some ideas that might seem “outside the box.”

Four related problems facing the upper Lynn Canal

1. Skagway is overcrowded and cruise ship visitors are 

looking for alternatives.

2. Haines doesn’t want to get…

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Economists talk about “new money” and “old money,” but not always in the sense of old, like long-time rich families, or new, like tech startup multi-millionaires. Old money can refer to dollars earned in a state that stay and circulate in that state, like plumbers who provide services to people in town and then spend their earnings at stores in town, while new money refers to dollars brought into the state.

Old money is good,…

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If you want a pair of smartglasses that will record every burp, blemish and blush of whoever is sitting across from you — while it also remembers their names — Chief Executive Mark Zuckerberg and his techies at Meta see the world the same as you. They see privacy to be dismissed and eating habits to be recorded.

Maybe it will improve table manners, though probably not. They see money to be made, which is…

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Just as a burn permit ban came into effect on Wednesday morning, firefighters got a call about a wildfire near Chilkat Lake. 

Fire Chief Zak Overmyer said four people from the Haines volunteer fire department, one from the Klehini Valley volunteer fire department and the state wildlife trooper responded to a fire that was about ⅕ of an acre Wednesday morning. 

“Crews are working on securing the edge of the containment line, chainsaw work and…

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Marilyn Jo (Ross) Huitger passed away July 20, 2026. She is survived by her husband, Tom Huitger; sister, Mary (Greg) Shipley-Smith; stepchildren, Carrie and Collins Huitger; and cherished grandchildren, Amelia and Vincent Huitger.
Marilyn and Tom proudly called Haines their home for many years, where they built and lived in a rustic cabin filled with comfort, love and lasting memories.
She served as Manager of the Haines Chamber and was a founding organizer…

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Gov. Mike Dunleavy on Wednesday introduced a new natural gas pipeline bill that he characterized as a compromise between conflicting philosophies on oil and gas taxes that he wants lawmakers to pass during the ongoing special session.

The new bill would nearly eliminate property taxes that would be charged on the operator of a yet-to-be-built gas pipeline. Dunleavy and Glenfarne, the Texas-based investment company that is now the main sponsor of the gas pipeline project, have argued in recent months that such concessions are a major requirement for the project to be built.

The special session is due to end in less than two weeks. Lawmakers are still evaluating the proposal, but on Monday members of the Senate’s bipartisan majority expressed reticence to make quick decisions on a gasline bill.

Dunleavy’s new bill contains a concession to a tax previously sought by the Senate majority. It would also impose a small corporate income tax on certain private oil- and gas-producing corporations. Those companies, also known as S corporations or pass-through corporations, are currently exempted from such taxes in Alaska law. For now, the main corporation that would be affected is Hilcorp, a privately held Texas-based company that operated the Prudhoe Bay field and other North Slope assets that used to be owned by BP. Several legislators view Hilcorp’s exemption from corporate income taxes as a loophole that should be closed.

The governor said legislators should pass his bill in what is now the third special session he has called on the subject.

“I have never been in favor of new taxes on Alaska’s producers, and I still am not,” Dunleavy said in a statement. “This bill is a compromise that removes a significant barrier to moving the gas line forward. Given the robust discussion and work that has already gone into this bill, I am hopeful the legislature can swiftly pass a bill that will help the AK LNG project get the financing it needs to start construction as soon as possible.”

The 2% tax rate Dunleavy proposed on petroleum-producing S corporations is significantly lower than the lower than tax rates  legislative leaders have previously proposed, which went up as high as 9.4%.

Officials and energy companies in Alaska and elsewhere have been pushing since the 1970s — even before oil began flowing through the Trans Alaska Pipeline System — for a second pipeline to deliver the North Slope’s vast but stranded natural gas resources to markets. None of the plans has been economically feasible, even though politicians at various points over the past decades declared that construction was imminent.

Alaska natural gas pipeline dreams stretch over half a century

The current iteration of the gas commercialization plan calls for a pipeline to run about 800 miles from Prudhoe Bay to tidewater at Cook Inlet, where the product would be liquefied for shipment by tanker to markets. The estimated price tag is $65 billion to $70 billion, according to legislators.

A bill considered during an earlier special session, House Bill 381, proposed to grant the property tax concession, but it also included several conditions for any LNG sponsor to meet, such as timeline assurances, labor protections, alternative sources of state revenue and required financial support of local school districts.

The bill also included a bracketed income tax with rates up to 9.4% on petroleum-producing S corporations such as Hilcorp — significantly higher than the 2% that Dunleavy is now proposing.

That bill passed the state Senate narrowly last month but was rejected by the House.

One lawmaker on Wednesday said Dunleavy’s new bill, just like any oil tax legislation, should not be rushed.

“It would be wildly irresponsible to pass complex oil and gas legislation without due diligence to understand the consequences,” said Rep. Zack Fields, D-Anchorage.

Leaders of the state Senate majority caucus, in a statement on Monday, expressed skepticism about the need for any further concessions to help Glenfarne’s plan.

“For more than fifty years, Alaskans have worked to bring our gas to market, and every member who has served in this building shares that goal. The Senate has done its part in good faith, passing two bills that would let this project move forward while protecting the people we answer to,” Senate President Gary Stevens, R-Kodiak, said in the statement. “A decision of this scale will outlast all of us, and it deserves to be made with care rather than in haste. We are ready to evaluate the project further once the producer, Glenfarne, and the Administration bring us the numbers this year. These are Alaska’s resources, and they must work first and foremost for Alaskans.”

The special session is scheduled to end on Aug. 25.

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Alaska’s capital city has issued an evacuation advisory for the densely-populated Mendenhall Valley area on Wednesday as glacial outburst flooding begins. 

Officials and the public are closely watching the Mendenhall Glacier, where climate-change driven melting results in water filling an ice-dammed lake called Suicide Basin each year. That lake eventually bursts and billions of gallons of water are released down the Mendenhall River, threatening suburban neighborhoods nearby.

The National Weather Service forecasts the flooding in the Mendenhall River will peak on Thursday morning between 8 a.m. and 12 p.m.

“Evacuating is absolutely the best way to keep yourselves, your neighbors, and first responders safe as we respond to this flood,” said Ryan O’Shaughnessy, emergency manager for the City and Borough of Juneau at a news conference on Wednesday.

Scientists with the National Weather Service estimate the flooding to peak  between 16.1 to 16.6 feet. That’s similar to last year’s flood where the river peaked at a record-breaking 16.65 feet. 

The scale of flooding is uncertain, and depends largely on whether sand bag barriers erected along the Mendenhall River hold. 

In the event that water bursts through the barriers, CBJ will issue an emergency flash-flood alert to all local cell phones, similar to an Amber alert. 

Last year, local, state and federal agencies erected the new barriers along the river, where they largely prevented major flood damage. Thirty-five homes were affected by the flood, with six sustaining major flood damage. Some homes had up to five feet of flooding water in living spaces, according to city reports. In 2024, there were no barriers and flooding damaged nearly 300 homes. 

This year, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and local partners worked to fortify those sand bag barriers along the Mendenhall River. In some areas, the barriers were constructed higher, up to 16 feet. They were extended in other areas across 1.8 miles of additional riverbank, said U.S. Army Corps Brigadier General Joseph Goetz at a news conference on Tuesday. The Army Corps has also installed roughly 40 industrial pumps to control seepage, and distributed an estimated 225,000 sandbags. 

But this year officials issued an evacuation advisory for an area nearly double the size of last year’s — including roughly 1,900 homes — in case the barriers fail. Officials are calling that a worst case scenario.

Ryan O’Shaughnessy said census data shows the evacuation area includes an estimated 5,000 residents. 

“I know this community has experienced this flood before, but we can’t be complacent,” said Ken Murphy, a safety officer with the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, on Tuesday. “What happened last year may or may not happen this year.”

Residents are asked to evacuate the area by 3 p.m. on Wednesday. 

Officials said there is a risk of tree-strikes damaging the barriers and causing major flooding, and urged the public to take extra precautions, evacuate and avoid the river area entirely.

“The risk is real,” Murphy said. “Debris, erosion, unstable banks, changing water levels, and hidden hazards make the river dangerous. If you’re near the river or within the flood zone, you’re in danger. There is no safe reason to approach the water during this event. This is not a normal event, even though it reoccurs.”

Officials said they will be monitoring the river and barriers by livestream cameras and by drone throughout the flood, with emergency crews staged nearby ready to respond. 

Residents can monitor Suicide Basin through a National Weather Service monitoring page. Officials recommend signing up for emergency alerts and reviewing Mendenhall River inundation maps. KTOO Public Media has set up several livestreams to monitor the flooding event. There is an emergency shelter at the former Floyd Dryden Middle School staffed by the American Red Cross. 

The Mendenhall Glacier Recreation Area, Alaska’s most-visited tourist destination, surrounding the Mendenhall Glacier and Mendenhall Lake below is closing on Wednesday afternoon. 

A joint emergency incident command has been established to monitor and respond to the flood. That includes the National Weather Service, City and Borough of Juneau, Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, the Alaska Department of Transportation and Public Facilities, the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Alaska Division of Homeland Security and Emergency Management.

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