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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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