North Slope government and history is now part of high school graduation requirements for all North Slope Borough schools. The borough school board passed a new policy this month making the curriculum change mandatory for students, effectively beginning with freshmen who start in 2017.
Alaska Native Arts & Culture
Native wartime code talkers are subject of upcoming SHI lecture
The Sealaska Heritage Institute is hosting a series of noon lectures honoring Native warriors — past and present. Tuesday’s lecture is about code talkers, a group of Native soldiers who helped transmit coded messages during World War II.
Tribes revive indigenous crops, and the food traditions that go with them
Members of some Native American tribes are hoping to revive their food and farming traditions by planting the kinds of indigenous crops their ancestors once grew.
Kotzebue brothers make first app for all 20 Alaska Native languages
For the first time ever, you can find all the characters for the 20 recognized Alaska Native languages in one place: a keyboard, downloaded right onto your iPhone. An app called Chert pulls in all the characters you need to spell out words in Yupik, Iñupiaq, Tlingit and more.
Ketchikan School Board discusses pilot Native language class
The Ketchikan School Board talked about implementing a new Native language program at the high school in cooperation with Ketchikan Indian Community.
Blood lines: Sealaska studies Alaska Native descendant dilemma
Subsistence marine mammal hunt threatened by lineage definition.
Alaskans travel to Standing Rock in opposition of Dakota Access Pipeline
A delegation, made up of indigenous women from across Alaska, is at the Standing Rock Sioux Reservation in North Dakota to support opposition to the Dakota Access Pipeline.
Lower 48 ivory bans hit Alaska Native carvers
This July, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s near-total ban on the commercial ivory trade went into effect. Regulatory changes are starting to bite into Alaska’s ivory market.
More than 1 million ‘check in’ on Facebook to support the Standing Rock Sioux
It’s a show of support for the tribe that has been rallying against construction of the Dakota Access Pipeline, which the tribe says could contaminate drinking water and harm sacred lands.
Native artisans worry ivory bans in other states could reverberate in Alaska
The federal government instituted a near-total ban on the domestic commercial trade of African elephant ivory, but many Alaskans are concerned the backlash from this ban is affecting other ivories. St. Lawrence Islander Susie Silook is the author of a petition to protect walrus ivory and other marine mammal by-products from various states’ legislation that would see it banned as a response to the federal ban.