News

After studying the tides near Nikiski this summer, researchers said they’ve confirmed it would be a world-class place to put a tidal power generator.

And they said the measurements they took will help them develop technology that can withstand the harsh conditions of Cook Inlet’s tides — some of the largest in the world. 

It’s been six years since the Kilbuck school burnt down in Bethel. Since then, the students of Ayaprun Elitnaurvik, the Yup’ik immersion school, have been learning in what used to be a grocery store.

Juneau’s board of education has approved new oral narrative standards for its Tlingit Culture, Language and Literacy program. 

These are the first oral narrative standards to be developed for Lingít language to be taught to school children.

The literacy program is available to kindergartners through fifth graders in the Juneau School District. It requires an application and acceptance through a lottery process.

When warm and wet, birch bark can be folded into baskets — a container for berries or a cradle for babies. 

But when it’s not fresh off the birch tree, bark can be unyielding. And folding can be the hardest part, according to the dozen women making baskets Monday at the Dena’ina Wellness Center in Kenai.

Still, despite the technical difficulties, their instructor was singing their praises.

When the Southeast’s tribal health organization built Wrangell’s new hospital, elected officials were left with a question: What to do with the old city-owned hospital building? It’s not as simple as scrapping the facility. And at least one firm has stepped forward with interest in it.

The old, red and beige community hospital on Bennett Street sits mostly empty, nowadays, except for storing medical equipment loaned out by Hospice of Wrangell. 

With a Christmas tree lighting up her dark apartment, Nancy Barnes logs in to join her advanced Tsimshian language class. She’s the first one there, even before the instructor Donna May Roberts.

With university class Mondays and Wednesdays, Tsimshian lullabies on Sundays and Tsimshian games on Fridays, Barnes is learning the Tsimshian language, Sm’algya̱x, almost every day of the week.

Glacier Bay’s geology reads kind of like a recipe for giant waves: It’s a recently glaciated area that’s still rebounding from ice cover. It freezes and thaws. There are steep slopes above deep water in an active fault zone.

In fact, the biggest wave ever recorded anywhere was on the park’s outer coast, in Lituya Bay in the 1950s. Geologists say the conditions that can lead to landslides are only getting more pronounced in Alaska.