News

Ten years ago, the Army Corps of Engineers released a report that detailed the impacts of erosion in Alaska Native communities.

Don Antrobus is the Program Manager for the Village Infrastructure Protection Program at the Denali Commission, and helped guide an updated report that documents erosion and other environmental threats facing the communities: erosion, thawing permafrost, and flooding. Antrobus says that all are made worse by climate change.

A large Alaska Native non-profit in Anchorage is suing its insurance company for million of dollars in what it alleges are unpaid claims over damages from last year’s earthquake.

The U.S. Board on Geographic Names has approved changing the name of a bay in Southeast Alaska following a petition from tribal leaders complaining of its association with military aggression.

Saginaw Bay had been named after a U.S. warship that destroyed three communities in 1869.

Sea ice forming in the Chukchi and Beaufort seas is starting to close in on Utqiagvik, leaving a lot of open water currently through the Bering Strait. One research cruise taking advantage of the favorable sailing conditions with little ice in Arctic waters, is the Sikuliaq, a University of Alaska Fairbanks vessel.

In her small backyard in Anaktuvuk Pass, Nasuġraq Rainey Hopson opens the hatch to a wooden box.

Inside, a flurry of teenage chicks looks up in surprise. “They’re like little dinosaurs,” Hopson says with a smile.

Hopson eats the eggs and meat and uses the chicken poop as fertilizer for her garden. She says growing food locally just makes sense in a place where a one-pound cabbage can cost $12. But it’s not exactly common.

Orutsararmiut Native Council calling the federal planning process for how 13 million acres of public land is managed in the region “woefully inadequate.” U.S. Bureau of Land Management says that it's taking more steps to reach out.

At a federal subsistence meeting in Bethel in November, Bonnie Million reassured Tribes that BLM always open to government-to-government consultation.

Sealaska Corporation announced its biggest dividend in decades to shareholders with ties to Southeast Alaska. Thousands live in the Inside Passage and there’s a tradition to take shopping trips to larger communities. Gaps in ferry service means many aren’t able to make the trip.

In the constellation Cassiopeia there’s an unnamed start orbited by a colossal gas giant the size of Jupiter, star HD 17156. At 255 light-years away, it’s something astronomers call an exoplanet: a planet that’s outside our solar system. Now, the International Astronomical Union is holding a competition to give them a name — with the public casting votes for the top three finalists.