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Photo: Tali Stone. (Matt Faubion / Alaska Public Media)

The Alaska House of Representatives has passed a bill that would help protect foster kids from unnecessary stays in acute psychiatric care facilities.

It’s likely to become law. And if so, kids will have the right to a court hearing within seven days of entering a facility to determine if the placement is necessary.

Almost 70% of foster kids in the state are Alaska Native or American Indian.

Alaska Public Media’s Rachel Cassandra has more.

Tali Stone was nine years old when her foster mother brought her to North Star, an acute psychiatric facility in Anchorage.

Stone says during the intake, her foster mom exaggerated her behavior and lied that she was seeing ghosts.

“Even the staff said, themselves, ‘I’m not sure why you’re here.’ And I was like, ‘I’m not sure either.”

Stone was at North Star for four weeks, according to her psychiatric records. And over the next two years, she was admitted to North Star a total of four times, each of them several weeks at a time.

Stone is one of the thousands of kids under the care of the Office of Children’s Services (OCS) in Alaska who have spent time, sometimes unnecessarily, in acute psychiatric facilities.

OCS is under-resourced, with a high staff turnover rate, and a serious shortage of foster families.

But Amanda Metivier, who runs the nonprofit Facing Foster Care, says that lack of placements means foster kids stay in psychiatric facilities for too long.

“So, they do an intake at a hospital, they get a diagnosis, and then they linger there.”

Right now, kids have the right to a court hearing within thirty days of admittance, but the bill passed by the state House would reduce that timeline to seven days.

According to the bill, at the Alaska hearing, all people invested in the kid’s care would have to be there – birth parents, foster families, tribes, behavioral health care providers, and OCS.

Every kid over ten would also have their own lawyer who could advocate for them being in the least restrictive setting appropriate.

State Rep. Andrew Gray (D-AK) sponsored the bill. He says there’s a lot at stake.

“The absolute human rights violation of [voice breaks] having your freedoms completely taken away and no one coming to help you, that alone is enough that we have to fix it.”

Metivier worked with kids in foster care to help draft the bill. She says it would add a sense of urgency to the process of assessing the care.

“We need to act quickly on either identifying, again, a higher level of care or different therapeutic intervention, or releasing them.”

Tali Stone says she never got a hearing at all to assess whether she should be there. She says she really hopes this bill passes.

She wants foster kids in institutions to know they’re not forgotten.

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) on Tuesday announced increased resources to Indian Country to investigate violent crimes, including related to missing and murdered Indigenous people.

According to the department, the FBI will send 60 personnel to temporary assignments over six months to support 10 field offices, including in Albuquerque, N.M., Denver, Phoenix, Portland, Oreg., and Seattle.

The FBI will work with the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) and tribal law enforcement.

The personnel will work with the BIA’s Missing and Murdered Unit.

In a statement, Attorney General Pam Bondi said crime rates in American Indian and Alaska Native communities are unacceptably high.

She says by surging FBI resources and collaborating closely with U.S. Attorneys and tribal law enforcement to prosecute cases, the DOJ will help deliver accountability these communities deserve.

According to the DOJ, at the beginning of Fiscal year 2025, the FBI’s Indian Country program had about 4,300 open investigations. That includes death investigations, child abuse, domestic violence, and sexual abuse investigations.

U.S. Sens. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), chair of the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, and Brian Schatz (D-HI), committee vice chair, are leading a hearing Wednesday on Indian education.

The hearing in Washington, D.C. will examine federal programs.

Witnesses include leaders of the National Indian Education Association and the American Indian Higher Education Consortium.

Educators in Indian Country and tribal leaders are among those who’ve been raising concerns about Indian education under Trump administration policies.

Watch The Hearing

 

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The most recent chapter in a federal civil rights case in Alaska is coming to an end.

Lawyers in the case announced last week that the final member of the Fairbanks Four has agreed to settle his wrongful conviction suit against the city and four of its police officers.

KUAC’s Patrick Gilchrist reports.

The agreement comes more than seven years after the Fairbanks Four sued the city in federal court, claiming Fairbanks police had manufactured evidence to convict them for a murder they didn’t commit.

The city will pay Marvin Roberts $11.5 million, says Fairbanks City Attorney Thomas Chard.

“It was a pretty intense negotiation. And it involved a very experienced mediator that helped parties come to that.”

The settlement means Roberts’ claims against the city and four of its police officers won’t go to a jury for trial, which was scheduled for December.

Once all the terms are finalized, Chard says it will close out a lawsuit that’s been ongoing since late 2017.

That’s when the four Indigenous men, coined the Fairbanks Four, first filed the civil rights lawsuit.

They were convicted for the 1997 murder of teenager John Hartman.

The four were released in late 2015 after another man, William Holmes, confessed that he and a group of men had killed Hartman.

Multiple witnesses corroborated that confession. And one, Arlo Olson, said Fairbanks Police Department officers had coerced him to give a false statement against the Fairbanks Four.

Mike Kramer is Roberts’ lawyer.

“It’s just – happy to see Marvin finally get justice. That’s all he’s been asking for since he was first wrongfully arrested and accused back in 1997.”

Roberts couldn’t be reached directly for comment, but he said through a press release from his lawyer’s office that no amount of money can make up for his time in prison.

“This settlement, however, gives me freedom with my life, and most importantly, more time with my daughter and my parents, who supported me throughout this nightmare.”

The other three members of the Fairbanks Four – George Frese, Kevin Pease and Eugene Vent – settled with the City of Fairbanks’ insurer in 2023.

They agreed to drop their portion of the federal civil rights lawsuit for about $1.6 million apiece.

Neither settlement required the city to admit fault or issue a formal apology.

Six tribes have formed a coalition to protect Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in southern Utah.

As David Condos reports for the Mountain West News Bureau, the group is working to conserve tribal homelands.

President Donald Trump shrunk both Grand Staircase-Escalante and nearby Bears Ears National Monument in 2017 during his first term. And some people worry history could repeat itself.

Hank Stevens is a member of the intertribal coalition and part of Utah’s Navajo Nation.

“With a new administration coming in, you know, there’s concerns that we’re probably gonna have the two monuments being shrunk again.”

The new Trump administration issued an order to review national monuments as part of a push to expand gas production and mining on federal lands.

Stevens is optimistic the federal government will collaborate with the coalition and make sure Native voices are heard.

A Native woman has been named the sole finalist in the search for president for Fort Lewis College in Durango, Colo.

Heather Shotton (Witchita and Affiliated Tribes, Kiowa and Cheyenne descent) would be the first Indigenous person to lead the institution.

According to the college, her selection comes at a critical time as the college continues to reconcile with its past as a former Indian boarding school.

Shotton currently serves as Vice President for Diversity Affairs and Acting Dean of Students. She has more than 20 years of experience in higher education.

The board of trustees is expected to make a final decision on the finalist on April 11.

 

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