News from the Division
This position offers the opportunity to do meaningful work in historic preservation, while allowing creativity and flair in managing the social media and other outreach for the project. The successful applicant will have the opportunity to work with a fun team that is passionate about this work while learning new skills, gaining project management experience, and growing their professional network through outreach and liaison work.
The Records and Information Management Services unit is a small two person team which provides training and records management consultations, records retention scheduling, best practices and regulations regarding record formats and conversion technologies, enterprise content management solution reviews, legal and discovery requirements, audits, investigations, and risk assessments. You will provide leadership and professional advice to the State Archivist and top executive staff for state departments in these areas, either directly or through your direct report, to ensure state records are more accessible to the public and government entities.
News from L.A.M.S in Alaska
Hundreds of students in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District walked out of class Tuesday morning to protest recent actions by the local school board — including the removal of the student representative from the board and the removal of books from libraries for review.
Organizers of the protest say students at seven Mat-Su high schools walked out...
Students stood outside of their schools for 56 minutes as a nod to the number of books that are under review by the Library Citizens Advisory Committee. The 56 books were removed from school libraries last spring, before the committee had begun to debate which should be removed from which schools.
Flinn, one of the student organizers of the protest at Career Tech, noted that while the previous process to challenge books included student input, the current committee does not.
Tim Rockey, November 1, 2023. Alaska Public Media.
|
Deadline: November 15, 2023
Inspire! Grants for Small Museums is a special initiative of the Museums for America program. It is designed to support small museums of all disciplines in project-based efforts to serve the public through exhibitions, educational/ interpretive programs, digital learning resources, policy development and institutional planning, technology enhancements, professional development, community outreach, audience development, and/or collections management, curation, care, and conservation. Inspire! has three project categories:
- Lifelong Learning
- Institutional Capacity
- Collections Stewardship and Access
For the FY2024 grant cycle, the IMLS invites applications that commemorate America’s 250th anniversary as part of the agency’s IMLS250: All Stories, All People, All Places initiative. IMLS believes that the semiquincentennial is an opportunity to commemorate all lived experiences through civic engagement, public programs, and collections stewardship in preparation for 2026.
|
Petersburg's Clausen Memorial Museum has a new museum director.
Maureen Floyd was hired this week for the role long-held by Cindi Lagoudakis.
"I've got big shoes to fill, [Lagoudakis] was a great director before me ... I'm hoping that I can learn through her and different people ... I am open and eager," Floyd told the Pilot.
Olivia Rose, October 26, 2023. Petersburg Pilot.
|
October is Filipino American History month, commemorating the arrival of the first Filipinos to modern-day California in 1587.
In Alaska, a new exhibit is launching at the Anchorage Museum Saturday that chronicles an oral history of Filipinos in the state. Mana is the Tagalog word for “inheritance” and the name of the project, founded by Shayne Nuesca, Tasha Elizarde and Joshua Albeza Branstetter.
Nuesca says the three of them had independently chronicled Filipino history, and the project took off when they came together to collaborate.
Wesley Early, October 27, 2023. Alaska Public Media.
|
Now that the tourist season has come to a close, the Nolan Center looks back on a successful year as it prepares for a winter of community events and holiday festivities.
In 2023, the Nolan Center had a record year for tour visitors and museum pass sales. Museum passes brought in around $13,000 more than what Nolan Center Director Cyni Crary had anticipated, for a total of around $50,000.
The center is also on track to meet or exceed its projected $15,000 in event revenues.
Caroleine James, November 1, 2023. Wrangell Sentinel.
|
The Alutiiq Museum and Archaeological Repository is hosting the world premiere Friday of a film by an up-and-coming young Anchorage filmmaker.
Joshua Branstetter's "Who We Are" is a nine-minute film that explores what it means to be Alutiiq in the 21st century. It includes interviews with community members, historic photos and songs in the Alutiiq language.
Steve Williams, November 2, 2023. Kodiak Daily Mirror.
A totem pole carved over half a century ago by Chilkoot artists is coming home. It has started on a cross country trip and will arrive in the Chilkat valley in the near future. The totem was property of a national airline company, and has sat in Georgia for decades.
Work on the totem pole was documented in an old black and white photo. It shows a group of carvers hunched over the pole, apparently putting the finishing touches on a large face. A sign reads Chilkoot Indian Carvers, the picture is dated March 1969.
Alain d'Epremesnil, November 1, 2023. KHNS.org.
|
Kodiak's Little Free Libraries collection is growing, with four recently being added in popular locations...
"We like to encourage reading at all ages, and this is a way of getting books out there," Kodiak Public Library Association trustee Marylynn McFarland told KDM. She's leading KPLA's revival of the six-year-old program.
Kodiak's first Little Free Library was built and placed at the Kodiak Community Health Center by retired doctor Mark Withrow. Counting the new arrivals, Kodiak is now home to 13 locations.
Steve Williams, October 27, 2023. KHNS.org.
Staff from a museum in Germany traveled to Anchorage this month to stoke interest in reconnecting Alaska’s Indigenous communities to artifacts in its archives.
Two representatives from the Berlin Ethnological Museum spoke at the Alaska Federation of Natives conference about its work with Chugach Alaska Corp. and nonprofit Chugachmiut to make accessible hundreds of items removed from the region in the 1880s.
“We are open to welcoming Native people wanting to connect and reconnect with their cultural belongings,” said Ute Marxreiter, curator of education for the Berlin Ethnological Museum, to the AFN audience last Saturday.
Marc Lester, October 28, 2023. ADN.
|
Kodiak History Museum is breaking into its archives for a new temporary exhibit scheduled to open Friday.
"Objects Uncovered" features 14 objects — from a traditional Filipino garment and a kayak constructed in the early 1900s to worker documentation from the 1964 tsunami cleanup and essays written by Kodiak residents.
Museum Curator Lynn Walker says the pieces in Objects Uncovered were originally collected between 1957 and 2012 and selected for this exhibit for a specific reason — to symbolize an event or era in Kodiak's history.
October 30, 2023. Kodiak Daily Mirror.
A man, Kevin T’aawyaat Callahan, crouches, swings his head, and growls through a wooden vocal magnifier in the small round doorway of Wrangell’s Chief Shakes Tribal House.
He wears a grizzly bear mask, Xoots L’axkeit, one of the two-dozen items returned to Wrangell clans in recent years from museums across the Western U.S. – the Burke Museum in Seattle, the Portland Art Museum, the Denver Art Museum and others.
His performance was part of a celebration, a ku.éex’, to welcome the items home to the Naanya.aayí that took place in early September. Vydell Baker, L’uknax̱.ádi dachx̱án (grandchild of the L’uknax̱.ádi) filmed the scene and shared it with KSTK.
Sage Smiley, November 1, 2023. KSTK.org.
|
Other Announcements
Although the [U.S. Department of the] Interior’s 2022 investigative report of assimilation institutions throughout the United States counted 21 schools that operated in Alaska, [Indigenous Researcher at the Alaska Native Heritage Center, Benjamin] Jacuk-Dolchok said his current count is over 100, and still incomplete.
Not only did Jacuk-Dolchok find evidence of institutions first opening in Alaska, but also that the methods of assimilation made infamous by Carlisle Indian Industrial School, often regarded as the nation’s first off reservation boarding school, began in Alaska, too.
Sheldon Jackson, a presbyterian missionary with ties to Carlisle’s eventual superintendent, Richard Pratt, first came to the state on a mission in 1877. By 1878, he had founded the Sitka Mission to assimilate Alaska Native boys, the precursor for the Sheldon Jackson College, a year before Carlisle opened, according to the Alaska Native Knowledge Network...
Later, Sheldon Jackson became the General Agent of Education in Alaska, where he recruited Alaska Native children and began what would become a legacy of relocating Native children to boarding schools across the country.
Jenna Kunze, October 21, 2023. Native News Online.
|
|
