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In a cluttered downtown Anchorage workshop, Leon Misak Kinneeveauk pondered what to do with small walrus skull on an afternoon in late October.

“I think I’m gonna make a mask out of that,” he said.

For the third year in a row, the Sitka Tribe of Alaska partnered with the Forest Service to grow Tlingit potatoes. Alaska Natives have cultivated these tubers in Southeast for several hundred years. Now, the Tribe is trying to raise the profile of the crop both as an important cultural link and as a potential tool in its drive for food security.

WASHINGTON – The U.S. Senate agreed to spend $6.5 million to tackle the epidemic of missing and murdered indigenous women.

It’s a small line-item within a massive spending package, but it’s one Sen. Lisa Murkowski is proud to have included.

“That opens up funding to go … to investigate cold cases and just really put some energy behind this issue,” Murkowski said.

Sewing atasuaq, traditional baby parkas, was almost a lost skill until a Yup’ik Elder helped revive it. And the result? An atasuaq, sewed with bird skin, from the coastal village of Toksook Bay.

Some Southeast Alaska tribal communities who were excluded from forming village corporations in the 1970s continue to push for a land settlement. Residents and descendants of natives in Wrangell, Petersburg, Tenakee Springs, Ketchikan and Haines call themselves landless tribes. The effort backed by Sealaska Corporation, has released a series of maps with acreage they’d like sliced out of Tongass National Forest.

Most fluent speakers of the Lingít language are elders. But the instructors of an immersion classroom in Juneau have high hopes: to raise a new generation of Lingít speakers.

When you step inside the Haa Yóo X̱ʼatángi Kúdi classroom, two rules are immediately clear: shoes off, and Lingít only. At least for the adults.

Haa Yóo X̱ʼatángi Kúdi means “our language’s nest,” or “our language nest.”

With a poor start for ice forming in northern Alaska waters this season, the latest climate forecasts predict sea ice may not reach Western Alaska until December.

Atkiq Michelle Ilutsik-Snyder and Diane Wetter are trying out a new way to learn Yup’ik during a conference at the Bristol Bay Campus in Dillingham.

"All right! So we’re looking at the Yugtun app. Lesson three: foods. So we’re going to learn," Ilutsik-Snyder said, starting them off.