Category: Alaska News

Attendees of the Arctic Encounter Summit, held this week in Anchorage, took a break from heavy discussions about climate change, national security, shipping safety and other pressing concerns on Wednesday night to enjoy something more fun: high fashion.

The Far North Fashion Show, now in its seventh year, showcased the work of Indigenous designers from around Alaska.

“To be honest, the Far North Fashion Show is the highlight of so many attendees’ experiences, myself included,” Rachel Kallander, Arctic Encounter’s founder, said in brief remarks at the start of the show.

The celebration, which featured a catwalk bathed in pastel lights, pulsing music and refreshments, required a lot of work to pull together, Kallander told the audience.

“We have designers and models who have put in hundreds and hundreds of hours into what you are about to see,” she said.

Beyond their good looks, the clothing on display incorporated messages. Many were about traditions. Some were inspired by the animals that are important to different Indigenous Alaska cultures. A dress designed by Jackie Qataliña Schaefer, who is Inupiaq and originally from Kotzebue, paid homage to the caribou, for example. Another dress was designed with a train that resembled a whale fluke. And models, as they took their turns on the catwalk, sometimes made moves that are part of traditional Native dances.

Some of the works shown at the event had a more somber message. They incorporated the red handprint that symbolizes missing and murdered Indigenous people.

Designers and models were from Inupiaq, Athabascan, Tlingit, Yup’ik and Aleut cultures, among others.

Along with Schaeffer, who is director of climate initiatives at the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium in addition to being an artist, the designers whose works were shown were Maria Shaa Tlaa Williams of Southeast Alaska, Marisa Taylor of St. Lawrence Island, Carlene Thayer of Unalaska, Alana Moses of Fairbanks, Reine Pavlik of Yakutat, Jeremiah James of Yakutat and Christina Waska, originally from Newtok.

The Arctic Encounter Symposium, which opened on Wednesday, runs through Friday. It has attracted attendees from 30 countries, Kallander said.

The Alaska Senate Finance committee advanced a draft capital budget on Tuesday that would put nearly $250 million toward state facilities and maintenance projects next year.

The draft budget adds $88 million to Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s proposed capital budget of $159 million, with the largest additions going toward K-12 schools and university facilities maintenance. 

That was a focused effort by the finance committee, said co-chair Sen. Bert Stedman, R-Sitka, who called funding for education facilities maintenance a “heavy concentration” on Wednesday. 

Earlier this year, students and school officials testified to lawmakers that decades of deferred maintenance has reached crisis levels — with many rural school districts in particular grappling with deteriorating facilities, failing water and sewer systems — which they say is degrading student and staff morale. Lawmakers have expressed support and increased funding in recent years, but point to Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s history of vetoes as a roadblock for funding education.  

The Senate draft includes $57.8 million in additional funding toward K-12 school maintenance through the Alaska Department of Education and Early Development and $17 million toward the University of Alaska. It also includes $5.7 million for the Alaska Court System’s facilities and $8 million for community infrastructure and workforce development programs through the Alaska Department of Commerce, Community, and Economic Development. 

The Legislature relies on state ranked lists to prioritize where to direct funding to capital projects for K-12 schools, the university system and the court system. 

For K-12 schools, the state’s current major maintenance list totals over $400 million needed for 103 school projects and repairs. Stedman said he recognized this year’s capital budget will only fund a fraction of those.

“Hopefully we get a quarter of it done, or something like that, but it’d be nice to retire the entire list,” Stedman said. 

The draft budget would fund the top 15 school projects on the list, plus funds for three other schools in need of emergency fuel tank repairs. The top projects range from roof and boiler replacements to septic systems, fire suppression and safety upgrades in schools from Fairbanks to the Aleutian Islands. 

In order to distribute funds more widely, members of the finance committee reduced funding for one project in Galena, in the Western Interior of Alaska, from roughly $35 million to $5 million for renovations to the Sydney C. Huntington Elementary and High Schools. They also allocated $17 million towards rebuilding the school in Stebbins in Western Alaska, after it burned down in 2024.

The Senate draft also adds nearly $14 million in funding for the state-run Mt. Edgecumbe High School, which has been the focus of public attention and concern after a quarter of students disenrolled this year. The additional facilities dollars include $10 million to remodel the dining hall, $3.1 million to replace dorm windows, $460,000 to replace dorm furniture, $50,000 to replace mattresses and $125,000 to replace aging laundry machines. 

Finance members added $17 million to fund the top nine projects across the University of Alaska system — three projects each within the three major campuses. 

Sen. Jesse Kiehl, D-Juneau, serves on the finance committee and his district includes University of Alaska Southeast. He described the proposed funds as a “nickel” compared to the “colossal” deferred maintenance needs of the university system. 

“That’s been built by Legislatures and Boards of Regents for 40 years,” he said on Wednesday, adding that it is a shared responsibility to put funding towards repairs and upgrades.

“The Constitution makes them a separate body within the executive branch that puts a lot of responsibility on them, too, more than the general state government,” he said “So university major maintenance is its own huge problem.”

The draft budget also includes $5.7 million for upgrades to state court facilities, mostly targeted to Anchorage and Sitka. It contains nearly $10 million for workforce development programs geared at the construction and oil and gas sectors, including for the Fairbanks Pipeline Training Center and Alaska Vocational Technical Center in Seward. 

An amendment to add $25 million to the draft budget for the Port of Anchorage, sponsored by Sen. Kelly Merrick, R-Eagle River, was voted down on Tuesday by a 5 to 2 vote. 

Before voting against the proposal, finance co-chair Sen. Lyman Hoffman, D-Bethel, said during committee deliberations the priority this year is to fund as many school maintenance projects on the list as possible, saying “schools are falling apart” and must be maintained to prevent further deterioration.

“Students that are trying to learn deserve better,” Hoffman said. “And if we are not able to provide this major maintenance, we are going to see these schools continue to crumble, and the financial burden to the state of Alaska will be hundreds of millions of dollars to rebuild schools.”

More funding for school maintenance and other capital projects could be added by the Alaska House of Representatives, who will take up the draft budget bill after it’s approved by the Senate in the coming weeks.

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A Ward Air plane went down in Lynn Canal near Shelter Island on Thursday morning, with the pilot as the sole occupant hospitalized, according to the U.S. Coast Guard.

“The Coast Guard was notified at 10:17 a.m. today of a downed Cessna plane with one person on board approximately 1.5 miles offshore Boy Scout Beach,” Shannon Shepard, a USCG Arctic District spokesperson, wrote in an email to the Juneau Independent. She said the plane belonged to Ward Air, a Juneau-based charter company that flies throughout Southeast Alaska.

“The Coast Guard issued an Urgent Marine Information Broadcast and launched a response boat crew from Coast Guard Station Juneau and a helicopter aircrew from Coast Guard Air Station Sitka. The pilot was recovered from the water by a Ward Air seaplane and taken to a hospital for medical care.”

No information was provided about the pilot’s condition or the cause of the plane going down. Ward Air declined to comment on the crash Thursday.

This story was originally published by the Juneau Independent.

The post Pilot hospitalized after rescue from downed plane near Juneau appeared first on Chilkat Valley News.

A professor at Furman University told the Alaska Legislature Task Force on Education Funding Wednesday afternoon that standardized test results might not be the most appropriate set of data on which to base education policy decisions.

During a routine presentation on the National Assessment of Educational Progress, known as the Nation’s Report Card, Paul Thomas backed a principle that legislators should not make decisions about students and schools based on a single standardized test.

“The key to understanding test data in Alaska is the information on poverty,” Thomas said.

Alaska’s NAEP scores of fourth- and eighth- grade Alaskans ranked lower than the national public in mathematics and reading in 2024. According to the Nation’s Report Card, approximately 69% of students performing below the 25th percentile are economically disadvantaged while economically disadvantaged students make up 48% of Alaskan students.

“Education policy and socioeconomic policy are really strongly connected,” Thomas said. “Test scores are a reflection of the socioeconomic status of the students.”

State education officials led legislators through a practice test of the Alaska System of Academic Readiness, commonly referred to as the AK STAR. Each fall, winter, and spring, Alaskan students in grades 3-9 take the MAP Growth assessment and each spring, Alaskan students take the AK STAR.

Kelly Melin, who works for the Department of Education and Early Development’s Assessments and Standards Administration, said the state’s standardized tests are designed to satisfy federal requirements set forth in the Every Student Succeeds Act.

“We’ve taken the power of an interim assessment and the need for a summative assessment as was dictated through ESSA and connected those to come up with what we have as AK STAR,” Melin said.

Kelly Manning, the department’s Director of Innovation and Education Excellence, said that the purpose of assessments is to measure the state’s ability to close the achievement gap and measure students’ ability to read at grade level by the third grade.

Statewide, about 33% of students tested at or above grade level expectations in language arts and 32% in math in 2025. Students in ninth grade demonstrated the greatest need for support in language arts and math.

The esting window for Alaska students closes on May 1. AK STAR results will be available to school districts in July and statewide in the fall.

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It’s the fourth year of the Chilkat Valley’s annual spring art festival and organizers are hoping a new grant will help them grow the festival event further. 

The Alaska Arts Confluence is still raising the funds it needs to match and receive a $4,500 Alaska State Council on the Arts grant. Board members said they’re about $1,000 away from meeting that goal. The group plans to use the funds to pay artists running workshops and expand the core things it offers during the two-week Artfest at the end of April. 

“The marketplace is going to be much bigger and the parade is going to be bigger,” Alten said.

The theme of this year’s parade is “Colors of the Wind.” The winner of the most creative float will get $100 and bragging rights. 

“This year we’d really like to get a bunch of art cars in the parade – people who have painted their cars or done fun things to their cars,” Alten said. 

The ArtFest calendar changes every year, depending on which local organizations participate, but that’s kind of the idea. Both Alten and Arts Confluence board member Charlie Moody described creating a space for organizations to launch the Chilkat Valley into summer with whatever local art they’d like to produce. 

“We’re really trying to help people promote and expand what we’re offering,” Alten said. “To make it something people look forward to, that visitors come for. There’s never really been much to do in April.” 

This year on the calendar, the Haines Arts Council’s workshops include songwriting and ballet. The organization is also in its second year of running a music, art & dance camp on Sunday starting at noon at the Chilkat Center. Tracy Wirak-Cassidy is running an ArtFest workshop teaching people about marine debris and then creating a mosaic with it throughout April; several afternoon art sessions are scheduled at the Haines library and the Lynn Canal Community Players are staging a comedic spoof on an Alfred Hitchcock film called “39 Steps.” 

The Arts Confluence is sponsoring a handful of workshops on May 2, including block printing, zine making, and felt art. 

The group is also organizing Live Art on the Trails which features performers showcasing their work on the CIA Trails in Haines. That event has been pushed back a week, to April 25th, due to the snow conditions on the trails. Moody said anyone interested in showing off their skills during that event can reach out to him or Clara Natonabah to get involved. As of Wednesday, there were three spots left open. 

Events are still being added to the Alaska Arts Confluence calendar. Organizers said the best place to find more information was at the website alaskaartsconfluence.org/artfest. 

Artfest ends after a day of events on Sunday May 3, starting with the parade at 11:30 a.m. and ending with a Jackson Emmer concert at the Chilkat Center at 7 p.m. 

Ultimately, Alten and Moody said they’d like to see the annual event grow into something that brings people together to practice art of all kinds, regardless of what the Confluence can organize. 

“There’s an economic benefit,” Alten said. “We know that about art festivals. Yukon Art Festival has grown by leaps and bounds. That’s what art festivals do, they grow.” 

The post With new grant, organizers eye ArtFest expansion appeared first on Chilkat Valley News.

Since I wrote my piece comparing a lease to sharecropping, I have received quite a bit of feedback. I regret getting involved in a dispute between two parties who were not seeking resolution but dissolution of their business relationship. I was unaware of the tenant’s past-due rent, and I should have reached out to the landlord before writing what I did. For this, I am sorry.

I still believe that tenants should advocate for their best-case scenarios in their leases, and if you don’t know what that is, consult a lawyer. I hired Andrew Juneau from Faulkner Banfield in Juneau. 

I was wearing my chef hat when I wrote that piece, and now I am eating it. I wasn’t considering my role at the Chamber of Commerce. What I did was a divisive act. While I thought I was defending a chamber member, I should have looked at the full picture first. When a restaurant struggles, it is usually because of multiple compounding issues, not one.

It is important to help each other in a small community, but boundaries matter. Our most meaningful impact comes from our daily work and how we show up for people. We live in expensive, stressful times — especially in rural Alaska — and it is easy to lay blame. It is harder to work together. I’ve always preferred the hard way, and I am sorry that my anger got the best of me.

Travis Kukull

The post An apology for my involvement in a landlord-tenant dispute appeared first on Chilkat Valley News.

Haines’ king salmon sport fishery is once more open to anglers, even as state fish forecasters project a smaller run of Chilkat kings this year.  

For nearly a decade, sport fishing for king salmon has been shut down in the Upper Lynn Canal — a response to historically low returns. 

From 2011 to 2018, the number of kings spawning in the Chilkat River came in below the state’s sustainability goal — also known as escapement — all but one year. 

This year, beginning on June 14, Alaskan anglers in the Haines area may catch two 28-inch or bigger king salmon per day, with no total limit for the season. 

Non-resident anglers are limited to one large fish per day and three total through June 30, then limited to one total after that date. 

The past decade of restrictions on fisheries have been effective in pulling the Chilkat run out of its decline. Whereas about 20% of the run annually was being harvested 10 years ago, the harvest in recent years has been about 5% of the run, said Alaska Department of Fish and Game biologist Brian Elliott last year. Now, the run has made escapement seven of the last eight years.

Last year’s return of 4,054 spawning-size Chilkat kings exceeded the top end of the escapement range and the pre-season forecast of 3,000 fish. 

Nevertheless, some continue to worry about the run’s long-term health.

Longtime angler and gillnetter Stuart DeWitt this week questioned the decision to reopen the sport fishery without an annual limit. 

“A run that’s been closed for so long, why wouldn’t you err on the side of caution?” DeWitt said. “I want to be able to (catch kings), I’ll take any opportunity to do it, but three fish per person for a family in a year — that’s plenty of meat.” 

The first indication of run strength will come from tagging in May, said Daniel Teske, Fish and Game’s Juneau-area sportfish biologist. With that data, he said, managers may still consider in-season restrictions, particularly on non-resident anglers.

But overall, Teske pointed to last year’s return and the recent run of higher-escapements as evidence of a run that can support this year’s opening. 

As the Haines-area sheds the stringent restrictions of the past decade, the fishery is now mostly in line with the rest of the region. 

The daily- and season-limits are the same as the general Southeast king salmon sportfish regulations, though the start of the season in Haines is delayed to June 14. This year’s two-fish daily limit for kings in Southeast doubles last year’s one-fish daily limit. 

The June 14 start date means fishing will only open toward the tail end of traditional run-timing, Elliott said, which Fish and Game hopes will minimize over-harvest.  

The new sport fish regulations follow the January release of Fish and Game’s annual preseason forecast. According to the forecast, state biologists predict the Chilkat will see 2,650 spawning-size king salmon. That number — calculated assuming zero-harvest — falls well within the escapement range, but is lower than both last year’s return and last year’s forecast. 

According to Elliott, that’s not a cause for worry. The largest proportion of spawners in the Chilkat run have been 5-year old fish, and last year’s 5-year old age class was particularly large. The forecast still exceeds the specific point goal within the escapement range of 2,200 spawners, Elliott said, leaving room for some harvest. 

On the commercial side, management is expected to “remain conservative” this season, with restrictions remaining similar to past years, said Fish and Game’s Haines commercial fisheries manager Nicole Zeiser.

The post After a decade, the Chilkat king salmon sport fishery is open appeared first on Chilkat Valley News.