All but seven of the 56 books the Matanuska-Susitna Borough School District removed from school libraries must be reshelved by next week, pending a trial next year, ruled U.S. District Court Judge Sharon Gleason on Tuesday.
The banned books, including well-known titles like Toni Morrison’s “The Bluest Eye,” Kurt Vonnegut’s “Slaughterhouse-Five” and Khaled Hosseini’s “The Kite Runner,” were removed from schools last year without individual consideration of their content after parents and community members complained of “LGBTQ themes” or sexually explicit content in district meetings.
Gleason’s order said the district’s action violated students’ constitutional rights and “raises the specter of official suppression of ideas.” That caused irreparable harm, and would continue to do so if they stayed off library shelves until trial, her order found. The order is a preliminary injunction; the books’ ultimate fate will be determined in a trial scheduled for April of next year.
The Oakland Museum of California has housed the Kadashan cane for the past 65 years. Now, with help from the Central Council of the Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, the five-foot cedar cane is due to arrive in Wrangell in the coming days.
Lu Knapp, a direct descendant of Chief John Kadashan, was thrilled when she learned of the cane's imminent return.
"It just gives me a really good feeling hearing that it's coming back," Knapp said. "It was my great-grandfather's!"
While any repatriation is a success for Indigenous communities, the Kadashan cane is returning at an especially significant time.
Dr. Amy Phillips-Chan is Director of Alaska State Libraries, Archives, and Museums.
Stronger Together, a book that catalogues Nome’s COVID pandemic experience was celebrated by the community that created it last week at the Richard Foster Building.
Dr. Amy Phillips-Chan, former director of the Carrie M. McLain Memorial Museum and editor of the book, returned to Nome to host the event for a group of a couple dozen Nomeites.
Mayor John Handeland gave introductory remarks. Dr. Phillips-Chan spearheaded the effort of the oral history project and worked with RB Smith to record interviews with community members during the pandemic.
“It was a wonderful opportunity to connect with community members and artists across the region. Draw in these really deep roots of culture and history that exist here,” Phillips-Chan spoke of the process of creating the book.
The Pratt Museum has been grappling with urgent roof repairs, stemming from years of deferred maintenance that have led to severe structural issues. The estimated repair cost has skyrocketed to $1.3 million.
To secure the necessary funding, the Pratt Museum applied for a grant and is seeking support from the state. The Homer Society of Natural History, which operates as the Pratt Museum, requested funding from the Alaska Legislature for a capital project in the next fiscal year.
Although the Legislature included $250,000 for the project in this fiscal year's capital budget, Gov. Mike Dunleavy vetoed it from the final version.
At the Grand Entrance to Celebration each June, dancers from around Southeast Alaska entered Centennial Hall, wearing button blankets with hand-beaded clan crests, hats woven from strips of cedar, and carved formline headpieces depicting clan emblems.
Celebration only lasts a few days, but in that time, over 5,000 Lingít, Haida and Tsimshian people bring cherished regalia, often handmade by loved ones or renowned artists, to Juneau.
After the drumbeats die down at the end of the week, many attendees start working on making or collecting regalia for next Celebration. But some of the items they bring get left behind. When that happens, it ends up in Sealaska Heritage Institute’s basement, where archivists have been carefully storing and cataloging the lost and found from Celebration over the years.
A 2022 science cruise to the Aleutian Islands to learn about ancient storms and tsunamis has generated a traveling museum exhibit and video series that highlight the research and how scientists and Indigenous Alaskans worked together.
Main components of the traveling museum include 10 information panels and three videos. Nine of the panels explain specific aspects of Aleutian storms and the research. The 10th panel is a timeline of key human and environmental events in the region.
The month-long voyage aboard the research vessel Sikuliaq was led by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, with involvement of scientists from the University of Alaska Fairbanks and University of North Carolina Wilmington. The National Science Foundation funded the research, which includes the exhibit and videos effort.
A Wasilla cultural resource management firm will lead the City of Kodiak's Historic Preservation Commission's efforts to update an inventory of Kodiak's historic and cultural resources, and bring the community up to date with current historical preservation protocols.
Using public input, museum archives and research and a survey of known historical and cultural resources, True North Sustainable Development Solutions, or TNSDS will oversee creation of the first historic preservation plan for the city.
One of the company's first objectives is to create a local historic properties roster. TNSDS founder Robert Meinhardt said that involves talking to people.
The Library Citizens Advisory Committee made its first recommendation to remove a book from the Mat-Su Borough Public Library shelves.
The newly-appointed Committee began meeting in July and voted to review the book Identical by Ellen Hopkins as its first task.
At this month’s meeting, several members cited drug and alcohol abuse and sexual deviancy as major reasons that Identical was inappropriate. According to Alaska State law, the Committee will decide if actual or simulated conduct in the book is offensive. They will use the prevailing standards in the adult community as a whole on behalf of people under 16 years of age.
The Alutiiq Museum has been closed for over a year now for a major construction project. It’s going to remain closed until next year.
Several of the building’s walls are down to their metal framing as people in high visibility vests and hard hats walk between heavy machinery. There’s still plenty of work to do before the building is ready to reopen.
“We’re not just doing cosmetic upgrades,” said the museum’s executive director, April Counceller. “We’re trying to make the facility usable for the next 20 or 30 years before anyone has to do this kind of thing again.”
Fairbanks North Star Borough residents have an opportunity to weigh in on the state's Historic Preservation Plan update that will identify and preserve historical sites. The Alaska Office of History and Archeology is spearheading the update, titled "Saving our Past for a Resilient Future." The state's plan was last updated in 2017 and was published with goals ranging from 2018 to 2023. "This is an opportunity to comment on historical preservation priorities," said Melissa Kellner, the borough's deputy community planning director.
The back rooms of the Anchorage Museum are lined with shelves and drawers. “Yeah, Anchorage Museum has a lot,” said Golga Oscar as the museum’s deputy director of conservation and collections, Monica Shah, led him through a dimly lit corridor.
Oscar is a Yup’ik fashion designer and traditional skin sewer. He was in Anchorage to look at some of the regalia in the museum’s collection for both inspiration and education.
“The reason why I came here is to observe the work, but also revitalize what was discontinued back in the day,” said Oscar.
“Tengautuli Atkuk - The Flying Parka: The Meaning and Making of Parkas in Southwest Alaska”
By Ann Fineup-Riordan, Alice Reardon and Marie Meade; University of Washington Press, 2023; 320 pages; $45.
Since time immemorial, the Yupiit people of Southwestern Alaska have thrived in one of the harshest environments on Earth, and learning to dress appropriately for the elements has been key to their success. Perhaps no article of clothing has proven more critical than parkas. The wind-, rain- and cold-proof outer jackets allow their wearers to move freely through their world, staying warm and dry while pursuing a subsistence lifestyle that still informs their lives today. Those parkas were and still serve not just as attire, but as living pieces of culture, representing who the Yupiit are as a people.
“Parkas were not only beautiful but warm,” Ann Fineup-Riordan writes in the introduction to “Tengautuli Atkuk - The Flying Parka,” noting as well that: “One’s parka not only identified one’s family but displayed their hunting and sewing skills for all to see.”
“The Flying Parka” is drawn from several meetings with Yup’ik Elders who discussed the history, creation and uses of parkas, and who provided personal memories and legends that enhance our understanding of their roles in an ancient culture. The book is a joint effort by Fineup-Riordan, an anthropologist who has worked in Southwest Alaska for over 35 years, along with Alice Reardon and Marie Meade, who provided transcriptions and translations. Fineup-Riordan carefully stresses, however, that the Elders who shared their traditions and techniques are the true authors of the book.
Singer-songwriter and college student Martin Paul uses his social media presence on TikTok and Instagram to highlight the ups and downs of life in Alaska’s remote communities. And his song lyrics are honest. These are the first few lines of one of the first songs Paul ever wrote.
“... walking down that village road, hearing them drunks yelling in their homes. We don’t need to be out this late, But who cares? I don’t, we make mistakes…”
Paul sings about garbage, unruly dogs, and the impact of alcohol abuse. He also sings about what makes a village home.
Former Fairbanksan Tricia Brown turned a long-ago newspaper feature story into a four-year-long project. The result is the book “Irene Sherman: The Making of the Queen of Fairbanks.”
She will speak at 1 p.m. on Saturday at the Noel Wien Library Auditorium and delve into the process of researching, organizing and writing the book, and the role that “dumb luck” played in the process. The presentation is free and includes a PowerPoint presentation about Irene Sherman, with an emphasis on the “story behind the story.” Brown will explain how she researched and wrote “The Queen of Fairbanks.” A book signing will follow.
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