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There’s a new marker along Anchorage’s Coastal Trail.
It says Nuch’ishtunt, which means “the place protected from the wind” in Dena’ina Athabascan.
The sign is part of the Indigenous Place Names Project and is a reminder that Dena’ina people were and continue to be part of Anchorage.
Jeremy Hsieh reports from Alaska Public Media in Anchorage.
At a ceremony celebrating the new signpost, Aaron Leggett shares an anecdote about meeting other young Alaska Natives when he was 19 working at the Alaska Native Heritage Center.
“And I told them that I was Dena’ina. They said, ‘Well, what’s that?’ Then they said, ‘Well, where’s your village?’ I said, ‘We’re from here.’ They said, ‘No, where’s your Native village?’ I said, ‘We’re from here.’ ‘What do you mean?’ I said, ‘Well, Eklutna is 26 miles from downtown Anchorage.’ And some of them who had grown up in Anchorage said, ‘Well, I didn’t know Native people lived here.”
He says he realized Dena’ina were largely invisible and he wanted to work on reclaiming who Dena’ina are as a people.
That was more than 20 years ago.
Now, Leggett is the president of the Native Village of Eklutna and a curator with the Anchorage Museum.
He’s been working on the Indigenous Place Names Project since its inception in 2018.
The “Nuch’ishtunt” sign is the effort’s fourth installment.
Dena’ina people used to set up seasonal salmon fishing camps near this point, up until federal officials banned commercial fishing here in the 1950s.
“Indigenous place making deepens the connection we have to place.”
Beth Nordlund is the executive director of the Anchorage Park Foundation, another organization working on the project.
“This is bigger than signs. It’s a movement.”
Project supporters eventually want to put up 32 of these sculpture signs in high visibility areas around Anchorage and Eklutna.
They each feature iron artwork representing a fire bag, a pouch used to carry materials for starting a fire.
It’s also a symbol of living outdoors and sharing.
Poarch Band of Creek Indians Magnolia Branch Wildlife Reserve. (Photo: Lance Cheung / USDA)
A new report shows forests managed by tribal communities are extremely underfunded. And that’s affecting lands they rely on for economic, social, and cultural resources.
The Mountain West News Bureau’s Kaleb Roedel has more.
The report was done by the Indian Forest Management Assessment Team.
It calls on the federal government to increase funding to tribes by nearly $100 million each year.
That would match the per-acre funds that agencies like the U.S. Forest Service receive to manage forests.
Cody Desautel is president of the Intertribal Timber Council and member of the Confederated Tribes of the Colville Reservation in Washington State.
He says wildfires have burned almost 700,000 acres of their forestlands since 2015.
“And in places that we likely would have had treated ahead of time to reduce that post-fire severity if we had more funding and staffing.”
He says tribes need those now – as climate change fuels more frequent and severe wildfires.
“We’d like to do considerably more prescribed fire to combat some of the post-fire impacts we’ve seen and protect our communities.”
In 2019, tribal forests covered more than 19 million acres in the U.S.
The Mechoopda are recognized in a Chico State University entry hall display that includes tribal artifacts, biographies of the first two Mechoopda graduates, and a listing of all Mechoopda who have earned degrees. (Photo: Jason Halley / Chico State University)
Tribal leaders and state lawmakers in California are pressing California State University officials to return Native American human remains and artifacts to tribes.
Leaders and lawmakers plan to gather at the state capitol next week to discuss an auditor’s report released this summer with CSU representatives.
Tribal leaders and lawmakers citing the report say CSU is failing to return the remains and cultural items, which is failing to comply with federal and state laws.
According to the audit, only around 6% of CSU’s nearly 700,000 remains and items have been repatriated.
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