A dead fin whale was pulled from the bulbous bow of the cruise ship Norwegian Joy this morning as the ship made its way toward the Sitka Sound Cruise Terminal for its port call in Sitka.
The fin whale was removed from the bow and towed by a…
The Nisg̱a’a and Tahltan Nations, together with Arrow Transportation Systems, on Sept. 9 celebrated the official opening of the Portland Canal Marine Terminal, in Stewart, British Columbia, just up the road from Hyder, Alaska, targeting ore shipments from Canadian mines.
It is the first majority Indigenous-owned port in British Columbia, “marking an important milestone in Indigenous-led infrastructure ownership, transportation and economic development,” according to an announcement by the owners.
The terminal is owned through Portland…
The salmon and the ooligan that spawn in the Unuk and Stikine rivers have no say in the expansion of mining operations in British Columbia. Neither do the Alaskan tribes that live on the same rivers.
The power lies across the border in Canada, where the mining companies and the provincial, federal and Tahltan Nation authorities have joined forces in a modern-day gold rush to expand the Red Chris Mine at the headwaters of the Stikine River. Plans are also underway to restart the idled Eskay Creek Mine on the Unuk River.
The investment of a half-billion Canadian dollars supporting the expansion of the Red Chris mine by Prime Minister Mark Carney’s government has heightened an international conflict between the Native peoples and others in southeastern Alaska and the First Nations people in Canada who support the project.
Seven tribal nations could be affected by the Eskay Creek Mine, and the Red Chris expansions poses similar threats, according to officials with the Southeast Alaska Indigenous Transboundary Commission, of SEITC, a collective of 14 Haida, Tlingit and Tsimshian nations that have united to uphold stewardship over the lands, waters and sacred sites in their territories.
“The expansion of Red Chris means more risk in the headwaters of a river that has sustained our people since time immemorial, “ said SEITC President Esther Aaltseen Reese, Eagle Tsaagweidí (Killerwhale) from Ḵéex̱ʼ Kwáan (Kake), who lives down river of the Red Chris Mine.
“We are salmon people,” Reese told ICT. “The Stikine is part of who we are. We are already seeing contamination from Red Chris entering waters that feed the Stikine, yet British Columbia approved a major expansion without consulting the tribal nations downstream whose ways of life are on the line.”
The Tahltan Nation, which has agreements in place for both mining projects, did not respond to questions about the project posed by ICT via email.
In November 2025, the SEITC filed a judicial review in the British Columbia supreme court to force “meaningful consultation” with Alaskan tribes on mining projects in the headwaters of the Unuk, Stikine and Taku rivers.
“There is no legal or moral basis for B.C. to exclude our tribes who have deep ancestral ties and relationships to land and territory on both sides of the border,” Reese said in a statement issued at the time. “We deserve a seat at the table when decisions are made upstream that could obliterate our way of life.”
British Columbia’s Ministry of Environment and Parks, which oversees major projects such as mining, pipelines and facilities, responded to ICT questions in a written statement.
“We are not expediting projects at the expense of meeting our consultation obligations or compromising our high standards of environmental protection — we are finding opportunities that can do both in our processes,” according to the statement.
In regards to concerns from Alaskan tribes, officials said, “The matter of consultation with Alaska tribes for the environmental assessment of the Eskay Creek project near the B.C./Alaska border is currently before the courts, we are not able to comment.”
Environment and Climate Change Canada, the federal government’s department overseeing environmental issues, said protection of the environment is key.
“The Government of Canada is committed to the protection of freshwater and works cooperatively with the United States to ensure careful stewardship of shared waters,” according to the statement.
Eskay Creek Mine
The Unuk and Stikine rivers are part of the transboundary watershed, a collection of rivers, streams and tributaries that also include the Taku and Salmon rivers that flow south from British Columbia into Alaska and then on to the Pacific Ocean.
The watershed is crucial spawning grounds for salmon and other fish, and provides sustenance to Indigenous people and others along the rivers.
Cindy Wagner, Haida/Tsimshian, is concerned that the rapid expansion of mining in Canada will have significant environmental impacts on the transboundary watersheds in Alaska.
Wagner, assistant executive director of the SEITC, and her husband, Louis Wagner Jr., live downstream of the Eskay Creek Mine on the Annette Islands Reserve in Alaska on the Unuk River, where she has lived and fished all her life.
She has seen first hand the impact of mining on the Unuk.
The Eskay Creek Mine operated from 1994 to 2008, and the ooligan fishery on the river was closed in 2001. In recent years, ooligan, a small fish also known as eulachon, have begun to return, along with salmon and mackerel.
But she fears that could change with the reopening now underway of the Eskay Creek Mine on a much-larger scale. The mine received its Environmental Assessment Certificate in January.
“This is all for the Unuk River,” Wagner told ICT. “It’s a major salmon river, an ooligan spawning river, a mackerel spawning river, and vital to southeast Alaska.”
Reese says her people are concerned about a possible overflow or dam breach at the tailings ponds that collect the mining byproducts. In 2014, a breach at the Mount Polley copper and gold mine tailings dam resulted in billions of liters of wastewater spilling into the waterways. The mine is owned by Imperial Metals, which also owns a share of the Red Chris mine.
“Contamination or a failure at Red Chris could travel downstream, across the border, and through one of the most intact salmon systems left in the world,” Reese said. “The cumulative impacts of multiple large mines only magnify that risk.”
A waterway in transition
Tribes on the American side of the border have been living with the impact of mining for decades and fighting, to no avail, to stop expansion, local officials said.
On June 19, however, the province of British Columbia approved the transition of the Red Chris mine from an open-pit mine to a block cave mine that would largely be underground. On July 2, the Canadian government approved the funding support.
The Tahltan Nation in British Columbia has signed on with Red Chris mine’s owners and operators, Newmont Corporation and Imperial Metals, according to a statement from the companies.
The outlook is not as rosy downstream. The Annette Islands Reserve of the Metlakatla Alaska Native Community is Alaska’s only reservation, with other Native lands transferred to Alaska Native Corporations under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, or ANCSA.
The reserve sits on the pristine Alexander Archipelago about 250 miles south of Juneau.
Wagner has lived off the Unuk River for most of her life, and in recent years has been defending Alaska’s waterways against mining development in Canada.
“I have always been fishing, even as a child,” she said. “My parents brought us out, all four of us, on a little 35-foot boat … I met my husband. The first time I helped him was down on his brother’s boat. He was selling ooligan and he didn’t have anyone to help him, and so I helped him.”
Wagner and her husband have always watched the waters of the Unuk River, and taken note of how clean and deep they were, and how the fish changed in appearance and in number. Then, in 1999, after the Eskay Creek Mine began operating, they noticed that industrial waste was piling up in the low part of the river.
“We are way up this river,” Wagner said. “How does a rusted-up oil drum get this far? How does all this plastic and old tarps and old pallets get up here? This looks to be an important part where the moose stepped into the river to get across, and it’s blocked with junk.”
The fish noticed, too, she said.
“In about 2001, we started noticing the ooligan bypassing the Unuk River,” she said.
Ooligan are different from mackerel and salmon, which return to the waters where they were spawned. Ooligan go to where the water is best, she said.
Dramatic escalation
The Unuk River was beginning to recover after the Eskay Creek Mine shut down in 2008, Wagner said, when a mining boom began on the Canadian side, in an area in northwest British Columbia called the “Golden Triangle.”
By 2022, just two mines were in operation, BruceJack and Red Chris. But four mines were proposed, seven were under development and seven more exploration projects were underway, mostly to dig for gold, according to a provincial report on mines. The ore extracted from the ground is processed to pull out the valuable gold and copper that it can contain.
Guy Archibald, executive director of the transboundary commission and a self-described “reformed miner,” said the transition from an open-pit mine to a block cave mine at Red Chris will mean a dramatic escalation involving hydraulic fracturing, known as fracking, a controversial method also used for extracting natural gas.
Archibald said the SEITC member nations “upholding their sovereign rights and defending the transboundary Stikine, Taku and Unuk Rivers from rapidly expanding mining development occurring in the Canadian headwaters.”
An environmental chemist, Archibald has been with the commission since its inception in 2014. Before that, he worked in the uranium industry in southeastern Utah and the oil shale industry in western Colorado in the 1970s and 1980s, he said.
Archibald explained the process behind a block cave mine.
“They’ve mined out the ore body that’s closest to the surface, and in order to go deeper, they’re going to have to access it underground,” he said. “They’re going to drive a ramp underneath the ore body, and then … they’re going to fracture the ore body pretty much the same as they do hydraulic fracturing, fracking for natural gas.”
The crumbled ore falls into the ramp and is carted above ground, he said.
“They’re going to just start scooping it out from the bottom as this cavity, this cave, just naturally collapses in,” he said. “It’s just going to turn into a big crater in the earth, and that’s block cave mining.”
The practice is not new, but in the past, miners would use drilling. With this project, they’ll use fracking.
“Block cave mining has been around for a long time,” Archibald said. “The only difference I see with the way Red Chris is doing it is by doing the hydraulic fracturing from the surface, drilling down and then pumping high pressure water into the ore body to break it up.”
The introduction of fracking to the block cave operation is a major concern to the SEITC. Officials say the mine can’t contain its current tailings, which already end up in the groundwater.
“The studies have been showing the tailings dam leaks into the groundwater 26 percent of its volume every year,” Archibald said. “Those tailings have to be constantly covered with water so that they don’t oxidize and turn acidic. We already have downstream pollution problems in groundwater and surface water…Using more water to frack this ore body is not going to help that situation.”
‘A critical step’
The Red Chris mine operation is a joint venture partnership between the Newmont Corporation, which owns 70 percent, and Imperial Metals, which owns 30 percent.
The Red Chris was one of 18 major projects named by Canada’s Major Projects Office, the new federal department created by the Carney government to push forward his “Build Canada Strong” strategy. The half-billion-dollar investment may be just the beginning.
“With the authorizations granted by the province and the support of the Tahltan Nation, the stage has been set for the development of Red Chris into a Block Cave mine,” Imperial President Brian Kynoch said, following the approval of the British Columbia government. “These approvals are a critical step in advancing a final investment decision by the joint venture partnership.”
Newmont officials welcomed the news in a statement promising that the project would not only increase Canada’s copper production by an estimated 15 percent but that the infrastructure could be a hub for mining for decades.
“The project is expected to extend the life of the current Red Chris mine by approximately 14 years and sets the foundation for decades of potential additional mining,” Newmont stated. “It represents a significant opportunity to create long-term value for Newmont’s shareholders, strengthen critical mineral supply chains, and deliver long-term benefits for local communities, Indigenous partners, British Columbia, and Canada.”
Canada’s Major Projects office is promoting both production and Indigenous participation, stating that the project was “developed in close collaboration with the Tahltan Nation, whose Traditional Territory overlaps directly with the mine site” and that “the project supports reconciliation while strengthening Canada’s role as a reliable supplier of critical minerals.”
Provincial leaders have changed the laws, however, to eliminate participation of U.S. tribes when it comes to environmental impacts. The province passed Bill 15 in April to amend the dispute resolution processes in British Columbia’s Environmental Assessment Act to limit participation of tribes in the U.S. and exclude them as “participating Indigenous nations.”
Archibald says the moves have raised concerns for taxpayers as well.
“Subsidizing the Red Chris just furthers the privatization of profit while transferring the risk on to the taxpayer,” he said. “If Newmont and Imperial Metals can’t afford their own infrastructure, what assurance do we have that adequate funds will be available for long-term tailings management, closure, and cleanup to protect the Stikine River for hundreds of years into the future?”
The Eskay Creek Mine, owned by Skeena Gold + Silver, is an open-pit gold and silver mine that is being redeveloped with a projected 12-year mine life.
In approving the mine’s expansion, British Columbia Premier David Eby hailed the relationship with First Nations.
“Today marks success for yet another multibillion-dollar investment in our province that will deliver prosperity, jobs and stability for all British Columbians, achieved in true partnership with the Tahltan,” Eby said in a Jan. 27, 2026, press release. “Congratulations to all who were involved in this important work. Those who want to end our work with First Nations would not have delivered these thousands of jobs, period. Following their advice would leave us poorer, tied up in court and in a place of uncertainty.
Kerry Carlick, president of the Tahltan Central Government, issued a statement in the same press release.
“This is a hugely important day,” Carlick said. “TCG’s decision to consent to the Eskay Creek Project reflects a historic, precedent-setting process that affirms Tahltan Nation’s authority over development in our Territory, recognized by the Province and Skeena Gold + Silver.”
When asked to comment regarding concerns of Indigenous Alaskans about environmental concerns, a spokesperson for Skeena Gold + Silver responded that they had answered those concerns.
“We have already addressed many questions regarding concerns from the Alaskan groups, as we were going through our permitting process,” Galena Maleger, the vice president of investor relations told ICT in an email. “There is a significant amount of information available online as to how Eskay Creek is adhering to the highest standards in environmental management.”
Looking ahead
Downstream on the Unuk River, Wagner and her husband are already seeing more and more boats hauling material north to the dam site. They can only imagine the size of the massive project based on the garbage that piles up in the river.
Wagner has a message for the Tahltan Nation whose members will profit from the two mines.
“I think they should be more aware of what’s coming down the river, because it’s not staying up there on their territory,” Wagner said. “It’s coming down on my territory, my tribe’s territory, all southeast territory, and we have to deal with it.”
This story was originally published by ICT.
The post Modern Day Gold Rush: Mining projects opposed by Alaska tribes get support from Canada, British Columbia and First Nation appeared first on Chilkat Valley News.
The Chilkat Valley News and KHNS will host a live candidate forum at 6:30 p.m. tonight in the Chilkat Center.
Moderators Rashah McChesney and Avery Ellfeldt will question four candidates for two open positions on the assembly and two candidates vying for the mayor’s seat.
You also can tune into KHNS 102.3 in Haines or 91.9 in Skagway or listen live via khns.org.
Assembly candidates are Lee Robinson, Anne Marie Palmieri, Beau Bradley…
Mary Peltola listens to a question posed by moderator Michelle Egan at a candidate forum held by the Alaska Oii and Gas Association on Aug. 27, 2026. Next to Peltola is i Sen. Dan Sullivan. Peltola, a Democrat and former U.S. House member, is challenging Sullivan. (Photo by Yereth Rosen/Alaska Beacon)
Alaska observers say it is too early to say how reports of bad behavior by Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Mary Peltola might affect the state’s closely watched election, and some supporters suggested this week that she may be subject to a double standard because of her gender.
“While it’s surprising news, I think there’s a very hefty proportion of people who go, ‘It’s a hit job. It’s typical politics,’ and kind of brush it off,” said Ivan Moore of Alaska Survey Research, a political polling firm active in the race.
“It takes a lot to swing someone over from being a Peltola voter to all of a sudden going, ‘Oh, OK, I’ll vote for Sullivan.’ So we’ll see,” Moore said.
On Wednesday, the New York Times published an anonymously sourced article documenting abusive behavior by the former Alaska congresswoman, now a leading candidate for Senate. The article said she was hostile to her staff and used slurs and profanity to privately criticize others.
The article detailed accounts from former staff members who said she required aides to feed her family’s pet chameleon and said that in 2024, she wrote that she hoped a local Planned Parenthood board member would “die of a botched abortion.”
That comment came after the group was slow to endorse Peltola in that year’s election. This year, she does not appear on the group’s endorsement list.
“Planned Parenthood has been called worse and withstood more in its 100+ years; we’ll talk with her about what was reported when she’s Senator-elect,” said Morgan Lim, Alaska state director for Planned Parenthood Alliance Advocates. “Nothing has changed in the stakes of this race and we remain laser-focused on ousting Sullivan from the Senate — making sure Alaska voters know that Dan Sullivan is an anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ fanatic who will continue to rubber stamp Trump’s judicial nominees.”
Peltola declined to talk to Alaska reporters on Wednesday evening after a meet-and-greet with union members in Anchorage.
Peltola was elected in 2022 to fill the remainder of Congressman Don Young’s term after his death that spring. She subsequently won the general election in November and served a two-year term of her own.
Her time in office coincided with a period of personal loss. Five months after she began her full term, her mother died. Three months after that, her husband died in a plane crash. She sued his employer a year and a half later, and a trial is set to begin in March.
Harry Child, a spokesman for Peltola’s campaign, said by text that the Times article is exaggerated.
“Like any person who has gone through multiple personal tragedies in the span of a few months, Mary sometimes struggled to deal with her grief. But she treats her staff with respect and care, and she maintains close positive relationships with her staff spanning her nearly 30 years in public service,” he said. “Exaggerating and outright lying about moments from the hardest period of her life, and falsely presenting them as a pattern of behavior, is wrong.”
Polling indicates Peltola, a Democrat, is in a close race against Republican incumbent Dan S. Sullivan for one of Alaska’s two U.S. Senate seats. The winner of that election may decide whether Democrats or Republicans hold a majority of the Senate.
Moore said he doesn’t know whether the Times article will affect the eventual result.
Readers of the Anchorage Press said they don’t think it will, with some labeling the Times article a “nothingburger.”
The Times found something similar in a followup article of its own. A spokesperson for the Alaska Democratic Party called the initial article “a hit piece.”
“Mary grew up working on a fishing boat and was made in the mold of great Alaskan leaders that came before her. She’s the only candidate in this race who will actually fight to lower costs and put Alaska first, and Alaskans will send her to the Senate this fall because she will deliver,” the spokesperson said.
Nate Adams, a spokesperson for the Sullivan campaign, said by email, “Nearly 30 people close to Mary Peltola were interviewed and more than 100 screenshots informed this reporting. What the Times printed is only a fraction of it, so imagine what was left out, and what else Mary Peltola is hiding from Alaskans.”
Jim Lottsfeldt, a veteran political campaigner who is working on pro-Peltola efforts this year, said he sees somewhat of a double standard in the way she’s being treated.
Her predecessor, Young, was notorious for profane, scurrilous and even violent behavior while in office, and former Sens. Ted Stevens and Frank Murkowski were known for their hot tempers.
“Stevens blew his stack, and we were all like, ‘That’s great, because he blew his stack for our benefit.’ And then you had Don Young saying the most outrageous things occasionally, but got like tons of things passed,” Lottsfeldt said. “So when all this stuff happens with the guys, nobody really clutches their pearls, and now we have little Mary Sunshine, Mary Peltola, who may have said the word f**k when she was mad, and now we’re acting like it’s a major political story, and I don’t think it is.”
After the Times published its initial article, the Beacon contacted more than a dozen former Peltola aides in an attempt to verify its contents. Some, speaking anonymously, said they could not confirm all the incidents described by the Times but said the article matched the tone and mood of their time in her Congressional office or with her campaign.
They asked to not be named in order to offer frank opinions and because their current jobs may require them to work with Peltola in the future.
But at least some defended their former boss.
Kate Consenstein worked for Peltola in the Alaska Legislature and now runs a communications firm in Anchorage. The Peltola campaign suggested her as someone whose experience doesn’t match the Times article.
“I wouldn’t want to engage in denying the veracity or the accuracy of those people’s accounts, especially because I don’t know who they are,” she said, “but I would just say the person that I worked for, and the person that I still know, is kind, generous, and not an abusive boss.”
Current U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski is a Republican who endorsed Peltola’s 2024 U.S. House run but is backing Sullivan this year. She told reporters in Washington, D.C. on Thursday, “I do acknowledge that while she was here in her first term, she was not only thrown into a very challenging situation immediately running for campaign, but then to lose her husband in that airplane crash and to deal with all of that. That’s pressure that is hard for anybody to bear.”
Sullivan, also interviewed by D.C. reporters on Thursday, said, “I think it’s very sad, very disturbing that so many Alaskans had to get put through that kind of severe abuse, which is very disturbing, but not surprising.”
Tyson Fick, a fisherman from Juneau who worked as a special assistant in Peltola’s congressional office, said there’s no doubt that Peltola would want a “mulligan” for some of the things she said, and he feels she was frequently second-guessed by East Coast staff.
“She never, I thought, was abusive, but also she often got some inadequate staff work,” he said.
“Having been around some operations where they were a little more, you know, systematic and organized, it was hard for me. I had to get out of there. I love Mary. I’ll be with Mary till I die, but I knew I couldn’t sign up for them again,” he said.
Fick and other Alaskans interviewed for this article were particularly critical of Anton McParland, a non-Alaskan who replaced Alex Ortiz as Peltola’s chief of staff. Ortiz, who declined to comment for this article, had previously worked for Young.
In addition to the personal losses that Peltola suffered, there was also a conflict between the people Peltola brought from Alaska and the people she hired from the East Coast.
Peltola and Fick are fishermen and accustomed to salty language, he said. Someone with a trust fund may not understand it, he said.
“Sometimes you say some salty stuff just for effect, and it doesn’t reflect a cultural bias … I get that words mean things, and words hurt, and people get their feelings hurt, and maybe it’s not right, but there’s also times when you’re under super stress, and you’re grieving, that stuff comes out like in inopportune moments, and it’s like, yeah, we could communicate better, we could do better, but also we could have — I could have done better for her,” Fick said.
Tummassak, at right, an Alaska Native student who died on April 8, 1900, while attending the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania, is being repatriated to her homeland as part of the return of the remains of 12 students from Carlisle in 2026. She and six other youths boarded the USS Revenue Cutter Bear (in background) to make the two-month trip from Alaska. (Credit: Photo illustration by Charles Fox/Historical photos courtesy of the Presbyterian Historical Society)
This story was originally published by ICT.
WARNING: This story contains disturbing details about boarding schools. If you are feeling triggered, here is a resource list from the National Native American Boarding School Healing Coalition.
While everyone else in the household was asleep, Nyché Andrew worked late into the night at the computer.
An Indigenous research specialist with the Alaska Native Heritage Center, she’d been assigned the task of finding the origins and descendants of the Alaska Native students still buried at the former site of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania.
Historical archives and the Carlisle school records were often a labyrinth of frustrations, with numerous dead ends. Then she stumbled across a photo of one of the Alaska students, Tummassak, in the Sheldon Jackson Collection at the Presbyterian Historical Society.
“I stared in awe at her photograph because it instantly reminded me of the only photo of my great-great-grandmother, Mary Agugaq Avessuk,” Andrew, Skavaq Sivulliuqti (Yup’ik/Iñupiaq), originally from Anchorage but now living in New Jersey, told ICT.
What caught her attention was not simply the family resemblance or the way they both fixed their eyes away from the camera, but the tavluġun, a tattoo on her chin signifying a young woman’s transition into maturity. It was the same tavluġun she had seen in photos of her great-great-grandmother.
Then came the sudden realization that the young woman she’d been researching was actually a relative.
“Tummassak was a very special find,” she said. “As a researcher, I never anticipated finding my family members.”
The next morning, Andrew showed the photo to her mother, Jacqueline Agugaq Walluk.
“She softened at the sight of an Iñupiaq girl with a tattoo like Mary’s and remarked on how beautiful Tummassak was,” Andrew said. “We agreed that she looked incredibly similar to my sister, Farrell Agathluk Asiaq Stoudt.”
Tummassak is among more than 100 Native students still buried at the Carlisle cemetery, including 11 from Alaska, but she will soon be headed home.
Final Journey: Carlisle begins its ninth repatriation of students who never made it home
Family members and community leaders from Alaska are set to arrive in Carlisle on Thursday, Sept. 24, for the disinterment and later a ceremonial transfer of the remains of Tummassak and three other Alaska Native students whose remains will be repatriated this year – Mabel Booth, whose last name is listed as Stack or Stock in school records; Edward Angalook; and Lucy Spaulding.
The repatriations are among 12 this year from the Carlisle cemetery. The remains of three students from the Fort Peck Assiniboine and Sioux Tribes were returned home to Montana in early September, and the remains of another five students from five different tribes are set to be repatriated by mid-October.
Officials with the Office of Army Cemeteries, which oversees the Carlisle Barracks Post Cemetery where the children are buried, have not released details about which of the remaining five students have been repatriated so far.
Twenty-two graves in the cemetery remain marked, however, as “unknown” because the children’s remains cannot be identified, the result of a mix-up that likely occurred when the cemetery was moved in 1927.
Benjamin Jacuk, Dena’ina/Sugpiaq, the director of research at the Alaska Native Heritage Center, said the Office of Army Cemeteries reached out to the center in 2024 for help identifying family members of the children buried there.
“A lot of the times really the best places to look are more local,” Jacuk told ICT. “What research is, at the end of the day, is making sure that we’re uncovering every stone to figure out how to be able to bring our families back.”
Tummassak was 12 years old when she arrived at the Carlisle school on Nov. 14, 1897, and died of tuberculosis less than three years later on April 8, 1900. She is listed as Tomicock on her gravestone and as Tomiclock in Carlisle archives.
The school newspaper, The Indian Helper, recorded the details of Tummassak’s final moments in the April 13, 1900, issue.
“We are grieved to record the death of another of our Alaska pupils — Tomicock (Tummassak),” the article stated.
“She was patient, gentle and brave. She bore her illness in silence. Her smile was ready even when too weak to talk. She was conscious to the end,” the newspaper reported. “She asked Miss Barr to hold her and breathed her last while resting in those kindly arms, ever ready to help one in distress. Annebuck was her chosen friend and close companion, and the bereft child has the sympathy of all who knew the tender and sisterly feeling between the two.”
The Carlisle Indian Industrial School operated from 1879 to 1918. Established on a vacant military base, hundreds of miles from the influences and traditions of most tribes, it was the first federally funded, off-reservation Native American boarding school in the United States and served as a model for schools across the U.S. and Canada.
Almost 8,000 Native American and Alaska Native students attended the school, part of an oppressive government attempt at forcefully assimilating Native students into White civilization. Its aim was to change them forever by cutting links to their family, language and culture.
Records indicate that 232 students died while enrolled at the school, and many did not return home. Prior to 2017, when repatriations began at Carlisle, there were 186 students buried in the cemetery. Another 37 were returned to their homes for burial, nine died while on the school’s outing program and were buried near those locations, and three died while enroute home from the school, according to Jim Gerencser, associate dean for archives and special collections at Dickinson College and the Carlisle Indian School Digital Resource Center.
Of all the students who were shipped to Carlisle, none had to travel as long and as far to get there as the Alaska Native students.
The first two Alaska Native students were brought to Carlisle by Sheldon Jackson, who managed the western states and Alaska for the Presbyterian Board of Home Missions. He was also named the general agent of education for Alaska.
He took Fred Harris (Ko-woot-ke-ish) and Henry Phillips (Ka-ka-ish), to Carlisle in December 1887 to learn the trades of tin smithing and printing.
On Sept. 20, 1897, a group of six Iñupiat youths, including Tummassak, boarded the US Revenue Cutter Bear, an early version of an ice breaker, at the Teller Reindeer Station in Port Clarence for transport to Seattle in Puget Sound after a side trip to Siberia. Following a 2,700-mile, cross-country train ride, they arrived in Carlisle almost two months later on Nov. 14, 1897, where they were photographed in their parkas.
Though they escaped the “Great Deaths” in Alaska when flu and other illnesses wiped out entire villages, they were not as lucky in Carlisle. Laublock, or Lablok, the only male in the group, died on Sept. 15, 1899, and Tummassak died the following year. Student Cooki Glook, also known as Kokiglook or Cookiglook, died on Jan. 4, 1904. All died of tuberculosis, known as “consumption” at the time, though Cooki Glook also suffered from rheumatism of the heart, according to school records.
Laublock and Cooki Glook remain buried in the school cemetery and, according to Jacuk, are expected to be returned home in 2027.
Over the years, 127 Alaskan students attended the Carlisle school, and 14 died and were buried in the school cemetery, according to records.
Three Alaska Native students have been returned home during the Carlisle repatriation efforts prior to this year. And at least one student, Ephraim Alexander, Yup’ik, died from tuberculosis while spending his final days with Moravian missionaries in Lititz, Pennsylvania, where he remains buried in a Moravian cemetery, according to the research of Lucy Rath while at Franklin and Marshall College.
One of his best friends, Henry Rose, who was at Alexander’s bedside when he died, lies in an unknown grave in the school cemetery.
Jacuk said the Office of Army Cemeteries reached out for help identifying students because they felt they’d “exhausted the documentation in the primary source material that’s useful in trying to return home these children buried at Carlisle.”
The Office of Army Cemeteries had initially refused to repatriate children unless descendants could be found, rejecting requests from tribes that their members be released to them under the federal Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act, or NAGPRA.
The dispute prompted a federal lawsuit in 2024 from the Winnebago Tribe of Nebraska, asking the court to order the government to honor the tribe’s request to return two boys who died at the school more than 100 years ago. A judge ruled in favor of the government and dismissed the case, but an appellate court in May 2026 overturned the lower court’s decision and ruled that NAGPRA regulations would apply to the repatriation of children.The ruling allows the Winnebago lawsuit to proceed against the government.
The Office of Army Cemeteries has declined to comment on whether it is honoring tribal authority to obtain repatriation of their children while the case is reconsidered. But the need to find a specific family member for each child had created additional pressure on Andrew.
“A big part in doing this research is not just looking at the places that everyone else has looked at, it’s making sure that we are looking at the places that they might not think to look at,” Jacuk said. “And so, that’s when we really went to looking at things like baptismal records, finding names and correspondence.”
Jacuk stressed the importance of being connected to communities to weed through inaccuracies in the school records and cemetery gravestones.
“We’re here to represent all peoples of Alaska,” he said. “And so, as a result, it becomes really easy to find connections very quickly within our communities. Because if someone doesn’t know what family to talk to … they know someone who can do that for us very easily.”
Preschoolers play in the snowmelt at Hillcrest Children’s Center in Anchorage on April 18, 2024. (Photo by Claire Stremple/Alaska Beacon)
Alaska childcare providers, families and employers are under intense strain with the lack of childcare availability and funding, according to advocates. They are calling for major state investment in the childcare industry and seeking policy changes under the next governor and Alaska State Legislature.
Leaders with several non-profit groups held an online webinar Wednesday focused on barriers and potential solutions to what they called “Alaska’s childcare desert,” which included advocates with the Alaska Children’s Trust, Southeast Childhood Collective and thread, an Anchorage-based resource and referral organization.
Advocates described a patchwork funding system of federal, state and some local municipal grants for childcare providers, which has resulted in a lack of childcare spaces to meet demand, long waitlists, high costs for families and a lack of qualified childcare providers, who also work for low pay.
“It’s a battle right now,” said Candice Vialpando, marketing and communications director with thread. “But every little bit helps, and every bucket of money that we are getting, we’re just putting out into the field to try and help, and keep programs open.”
Alaska has seen a wave of childcare centers close in recent years. Last year, one of Anchorage’s largest childcare facilities, Bright Beginnings Learning Center, closed due to rising costs and a shortage of workers, displacing 125 children and 35 staff. Since 2019, 25% of childcare facilities have closed, according to thread.
The organization estimates 50% of Alaskan families cannot fully participate in the workforce because they lack access to childcare. They estimate the average cost Alaska parents pay is nearly $14,000 per year per child.
Advocates are pushing legislators and state political candidates to make childcare a priority in this election.
“Alaska is a childcare desert,” said Blue Shibler, executive director of the Southeast Childhood Collective, which provides resource, funding and workforce development support throughout Southeast Alaska. “The good news is, advocates like us on here have been working for years on this issue, and there is quite a bit of framework systems development that could turn all of that around pretty quickly.”
She said that the state could make big changes quickly if a new executive branch and motivated legislators were open to their policy and funding ideas.
Shibler said childcare providers are struggling to recruit childcare workers and pay liveable wages, which can result in long wait lists for care.
“Childcare providers cannot charge families enough money to pay competitive wages in this labor market, and so they’re limited at how many kids they can take based on that,” she said. “So we’re working to improve that.”
This year, the Legislature approved $6.4 million to help boost pay and retain childcare workers, but Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed it.
“That really hurt us,” Vialpando said.
Dunleavy also vetoed Legislature-approved increases of $355,000 to the family support program Parents as Teachers, a $3.7 million increase for Head Start programs and a $3 million increase for infant learning programs to support children with developmental delays or disabilities.
A spokesperson for the Dunleavy administration, Jeff Turner, said by email Thursday that “substantial funding was provided,” for childcare. He pointed to the governor’s approvals in this year’s budget for $13 million in Head Start grants, $475,000 for Parents as Teachers and $12.3 million for early intervention and infant learning programs.
“Governor Dunleavy also proposed legislation for funding and opportunities to expand workforce training, unfortunately the legislature chose not to pass his legislation,” Turner said, referring to a bill that would have expanded the unemployment insurance trust fund.
For state childcare assistance grants that are paid out to providers and families, Vialpando described issues with delayed payments, which can cause children to lose their spots.
Vialpando said one issue is if families miss renewal dates, they have to reapply for assistance all over again. “It’s not just a quick renewal. It’s like a whole new application period, which takes a very long time,” she said.
“And during that application period, they’re not getting assistance, so their childcare provider is not getting paid, so they don’t have care for their child during that time. And it’s like, does this person care for the kid without getting paid? Does the child stay home?” she said. “It’s a really bad effect that is happening, so I think that needs to be addressed: prompt payment.”
Officials with the Alaska Department of Health did not respond to a request for comment on state assistance delays on Thursday.
Nonprofit groups are working to boost childcare worker support and professional development opportunities, including apprenticeship programs, and helping new providers with licensing and regulatory standards for new childcare programs.
Shibler and others said providers continue to struggle with licensing issues and regulatory hurdles, and the Department of Health could do more to ease the strain.
“A lot of the licensing regulations are just really old and outdated. They just need a review,” she said. “To figure out how many of these are really important to maintain health, safety, and quality, and which ones are just sort of extra that we don’t need to be dealing with and putting on providers.”
With support from an Anchorage initiative directing marijuana tax revenue to the Anchorage Child Care and Early Education Fund, Vialpando said thread is able to provide some childcare providers with healthcare benefits. “Which is huge in a sector where people do not have healthcare,” she said.
Teresa Wrobel, director of policy and advocacy, Alaska Children’s Trust noted childcare is becoming a priority issue for employers, as there’s a loss of hours as employees need to tend to childcare needs. She and others acknowledged lack of childcare is a major factor in some families leaving Alaska.
Wrobel emphasized the Alaska Children’s Trust – which is focused on reducing child abuse and neglect — is advocating to address childcare issues to help alleviate stress on families. “Neglect happens with families when there is stress in the family, and we just know that childcare is one of those methods that can reduce stress on the family,” she said.
Shibler and others expressed hope that future state leaders will address the state’s growing childcare gap.
“So there’s all these little band-aids out there, you know, trying to fix the problem because nobody wants to take off the big bite, which is we really need to invest $50 million into a compensation system in Alaska,” Shibler said.
“Childcare is a public good: it needs a public subsidy,” she said. “We subsidize public goods all the time. We’re just not doing it for childcare for some reason.”
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