"Crystal Dushkin"

Kudrin’s husband says his wife’s passing marks the end of an era. He calls her “the matriarch of matriarchs, the last mom from Attu.”

Alaska’s unique geography and isolation have helped some of its villages thwart the pandemic with astonishing success.

To get full funding, each Alaska school needs at least 10 students. But at the Yakov E. Netsvetov school in Atka, there are only six — meaning this could be the school’s final year.

In 1942, there were 44 people living on Attu Island, nearly all Alaska Natives. They were taken as captives to Japan, where half of them died. And after the war, the federal government forbade them from returning. In August, a group of 11 descendants finally visited their ancestral home for the first time.