anchorage

 The Anchorage Assembly unanimously approved Thursday, January 14, 2021, an ordinance that formally establishes a government-to-government relationship with the Native Village of Eklutna. 

The president of the Eklutna village Tribal council, Aaron Leggett, called the ordinance “a monumental achievement by both governments.”

Richard Watts moved from Philadelphia to Anchorage around Thanksgiving 1949 with his family. He was 3. His father had sold his stake in a nightclub and came a few months before his family to take a construction job, inspired by promising talk from soldiers who had returned from the territory.

“He had heard about this place called Alaska where you could make some money,” Watts said of his dad. “You had to work for it, but there was jobs available.”

By Joaqlin Estus, KNBA

A Yup’ik woman from the Bristol Bay region known as one of the people who created the Alaska tribal health system and a savvy national advocate died Tuesday [Jan. 10]. For nearly 50 years, Sally Smith played a key role in transforming an under-funded, under-staffed and ill-equipped health system for Natives into one that is a model for tribal self-governance.

The Alaska Dispatch News reports Edward Itta, a prominent North Slope leader, died Sunday of cancer. Itta was mayor of the North Slope Borough from 2005 to 2011, when Shell was seeking oil leases and permits for offshore Arctic development.