Welcome Dr. Amy Phillips Chan, new director starting November 14
From DEED:
We are very excited to announce that we have filled the position of Division Director for the Libraries, Archives and Museums. Dr. Amy Phillips-Chan will be stepping into that role on November 14. She currently serves as the director of the Carrie M. McLain Memorial Museum in Nome (Sitŋasuaq), where she has been for the past seven years. In addition to her experience leading the museum and serving on the board of Museums Alaska, she has served in a fellowship with the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and has experience as a teacher in a rural district in Alaska.
Dr. Phillips-Chan says, “It has been a pleasure to work with LAM staff through projects in Nome and board service with Alaskan associations. I look forward to now assisting the teams in Juneau/Dzánti K’ihéeni and Sitka/Sheet'ká on innovative educational programs that promote equitable access to our state’s invaluable historical and cultural resources and meaningful engagement with Alaska’s diverse populations. I admire the vital support the Department of Education and Early Development has been providing to schools and educators during this period of unprecedented change and am enthusiastic about working in partnership with DEED to foster life-long learning and educational excellence for all Alaskans.”
Grants and Continuing Education Coordinator (Librarian 3) Deadline to apply: 10/31
We are seeking a Grants and Continuing Education Coordinator Librarian 3 to manage the planning, implementation, and oversight of grant and library statistics programs offered to Alaska’s libraries through the State Library and to coordinate training, scholarships, internships, grant applications, and activities that provide continuing education support to Alaska's library staff statewide. As a member of the Library Development unit, this position will collaborate with other unit members on projects of common concern and will consult with colleagues on how grants and continuing education may impact their projects. This position will represent Alaska at national, regional, and state meetings concerning grants, library statistics, and continuing education for librarians. Finally, the person will provide reference assistance on a limited basis and may serve on the Building Management Team, which supports the operation of the Kashevaroff Building that houses the Division in Juneau.
Canneries are a big part of Alaska’s history. Throughout the 20th century, waves of immigrants – primarily from the Philippines – came to work alongside Alaska Native people in the canneries.
The Mug Up exhibit at the Alaska State Museum in Juneau highlighted this history for the last six months...
Oscar Peñaranda moved from the Philippines to Canada and eventually to California before coming to Alaska to work in a Bristol Bay cannery in the 1960s. And he kept coming back. He worked 15 summer seasons in Alaska, before deciding to stay in San Francisco full-time.
Now, he’s a historian. He founded the San Francisco chapter of the Filipino American National Historical Society and wrote about his experiences as an Alaskero – the term for Filipinos who worked in Alaska’s canneries.
"Filipino American historian and former Alaskero recalls comradery in Alaska canneries" by Yvonne Krumrey, October 12, 2022. KTOO.org.
The Alaska Federation of Natives convention starts Thursday at the Dena’ina Center in Anchorage and runs through Saturday. The annual gathering was held virtually in 2021 and 2020, so the theme of “Celebrating Our Unity” is fitting as it returns to an in-person event.
The Alaska Federation of Natives is the state’s largest Native organization and includes 158 federally recognized tribes, 141 village corporations, 10 regional corporations and 12 regional nonprofit and tribal consortiums.
The convention operates as a forum for debate and policy development for the Alaska Native community and includes a number of cultural presentations and events.
"Alaska Federation of Natives convention opens Thursday in Anchorage," October 19, 2022. Anchorage Daily News.
Sealaska Heritage Institute has received a federal grant to expand its storage capacity for online digital collections by more than 600 percent.
The grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services will expand SHI’s storage capabilities to manage more than 300 terabytes of materials, including digitized photos, videos and other archival documents.
The new system will also streamline the process of uploading digital materials to SHI’s online database, making them more readily accessible to researchers worldwide at any time.
"SHI awarded grant to expand capacity for online digital collections," October 19, 202. KINYradio.com.
Museums Alaska announces 2022 Award Winners
Museums Alaska, the statewide association for museums, announced the winners of their annual awards this year at their recent conference.
Volunteer of the Year: Michael Marks; Haines, AK
Excellence in the Field: Kodiak History Museum; Kodiak, AK
Museum Champions: Randall Lamb and Carvel Glenn; reside in TX, but support the Sheldon Jackson Museum; Sitka, AK
President's Award for Lifetime Achievement: June Simeonoff Pardue, Alutiiq and Inupiaq Master artist; Anchorage, AK
Pictured: Kodiak History Museum staff - Audrey Lonheim, Angelika Fangonilo, Margaret Greutert, and Abbey St. Clair
[R]esidents outside Ketchikan and Saxman city limits voted not to cut funding to the Ketchikan Public Library. In the end, 56% of borough voters rejected Proposition 2, a ballot measure that would have removed the borough’s so-called “nonareawide library power.” That allows the borough to collect a 0.7 mill property tax on homes and businesses outside city limits that provides roughly $500,000 in annual funding to the Ketchikan Public Library.
A group of residents led by former assembly member John Harrington led the effort to remove the borough’s library power. They cited library books on gender and sexuality and a Pride Month event in which a drag queen read a book to a standing-room-only crowd of kids as the reason for the proposition.
"Final Ketchikan borough election results: Dial wins second term, library funding stays intact" by Eric Stone, October 10, 2022. KRBD.org.
From Alaska to California, museums are less interested in adding to the terror than furthering the connection to the planet.
The extreme weather, human migrations and exploding forest fires brought on by climate change are here, and museums are searching for more nuanced and effective ways to address the new post-climate reality.
At the Anchorage Museum in Alaska, where climate change has already led to the relocation of a whole village, the director Julie Decker has made the climate and its impact on local populations one of the institution’s core themes.
“It’s important that museums not be episodic in how they talk about climate change,” Ms. Decker said. “We need to make it part of our programs everyday.”
"Climate Exhibitions Look Beyond Declarations of Calamity" by Tess Thackara, October 19, 2021. NYTimes.com.
Pictured: A photograph by Jeroen Toirkens of a fire in 2019 in the Republic of Buryatia, Russia, part of the exhibition “Borealis: Life in the Woods” at the Anchorage Museum.
We are still collecting responses for this survey. Your collections may hold the information that Americans—both Indigenous and non-Indigenous—require to find answers about boarding schools in Alaska.
Please fill out this survey (or add it to the next year’s goals) to indicate whether you have primary sources in your collection related to American Indian and Alaska Native boarding schools and orphanages, so that we may all assist the DOI and Indigenous communities in this investigation.
Although often memorialized (in the process of writing this column, I found that most of the sources I consulted celebrated Jackson’s legacy) as the person who brought Western education and Protestantism to Alaska, Jackson was in fact a key agent in the denial, destruction, and appropriation of Alaska Native cultures.
In 1877, Princeton Theological Seminary graduate and Presbyterian missionary Sheldon Jackson arrived in Sitka on his first mission to Alaska. By 1878, he had founded the Sitka Mission, which sought to “assimilate” Alaska Native boys in the vicinity, who were primarily Lingít and Haida. The school, which changed names many times and eventually became the Sheldon Jackson College, was the first American boarding school for Alaska Natives where children were separated from their parents, punished for speaking their native languages, and denied access to their cultures.
In large part due to his efforts, Jackson was appointed the first General Agent of Education in Alaska, a position he held from 1885 to 1907. As General Agent of Education in Alaska, Jackson helped implement a plan to divide Alaska among various Christian religious denominations, so that missionaries representing different Christian faiths would have an assigned area in which to proselytize in the territory. Jackson’s efforts were pivotal in the establishment of American boarding schools for Native children across Alaska.
"Colonizing Alaska: confronting Sheldon Jackson's legacy at Princeton" by Genrietta Churbanova, October 9
The federal government has announced more than $100 million in grants to bring high speed fiber internet to many Southwest Alaska villages, part of a massive investment to close the digital divide in rural areas. The money is coming in large part from last year’s $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill.
The projects will be a leap forward for the region’s current system of internet service, which is a series of microwave transmitters with limited data transmission and vulnerability to bad weather.
The grants include $73 million for a project partnership involving Bethel Native Corporation, the Alaska Native village corporation for Bethel, and telecommunications company GCI, to deliver fiber cable to 10 villages and more than 10,000 people.
"More than $100M in federal grants headed to Bethel region to bring high speed fiber internet to villages" by Alex DeMarban, October 10, 2022. ADN.com.
Native-Land.ca was created in 2015, and the organization was incorporated as a nonprofit in 2018. The group says it's found over the years that its maps have made a direct impact on peoples' lives.
The nonprofit says it aims to improve the relationship of people — both Indigenous and non-Indigenous — with the history and sacredness of the land around them. That involves "acknowledging and righting the wrongs of history."
"We hope to inspire people to gain a better understanding of themselves, their ancestors, and the world they live in, so that we can all move forward into a better future," it says.
"Which Indigenous lands are you on? This map will show you" by Rachel Treisman, October 10, 2022. NPR.org.
Speaker: Kerry Ward, Senior Liaison Specialist, Library of Congress
Learning outcomes: Attendees will learn about the tools to conduct oral history interviews of the veterans or Gold Star family members in their lives. Following the presentation, they will know how to submit a collection to the Veterans History Project and in doing so, contribute a primary source to the Library of Congress.
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