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Food shortages, along with higher costs, were among the challenges experienced in Rural Alaska during the pandemic, as Rhonda McBride from our flagship station KNBA has more.
But Old Harbor on Kodiak Island had its community bison herd and gardens, as a fall back — part of longtime efforts to bring down the high cost of food to a village, accessible only by boat and airplane.
The Old Harbor Alliance — a group which includes the tribe, the city and the village’s Native corporation — bought about 40 bison in 2017 and barged them to an island across from Old Harbor.
Since then, a lot has happened. The Alliance built a processing plant to butcher surplus bison, which have filled up freezers with meat, distributed to community members at no cost, with priority going to elders.
Melissa Berns-Svoboda who manages the herd, says it’s taught Old Harbor an important lesson.
“Anything’s possible. I mean, this was kind of a pie in the sky dream that I’ve heard our leadership talking about since the early 2000, and they kept on pushing for it and we made it happen.”
The Alliance took a big step in 2020, when it added three bulls from the Fort Peck Indian Reservation in Montana to improve the herd’s genetic diversity.
The bison, which were surplus animals from Yellowstone National Park, had to travel in trucks, airplanes and barges to reach their final destination. But today, seemed to have adapted to their new home.
“They’ve got their little harems and they’ve been there for about three years. So we definitely have their offspring out on the landscape already.”
As the herd continues to grow and thrive, the bison have also fed the community’s spirit with hunts that bring families together.
Permits have also been given to those who have moved away.
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- Photos courtesy: Sitkalidak Island Bison Herd and Old Harbor Alliance
“It’s kind of a way to reconnect people to their roots and provide for them at the same time.”
Berns-Svoboda says a lot of the credit for the bison herd’s success goes to the InterTribal Buffalo Council, which has provided both expertise and opportunities to build the herd.
The Old Harbor Alliance recently added about sixty animals to its herd, barged in from another part of Kodiak Island.
The long-range goal is to use the surplus bison to grow the community’s cash economy – through visitor hunting permits and the sale of the meat.
Any profits will be used to support the meat processing plant and community gardens, as well as cultural programs, which teach children about their Alutiiq language and heritage.
The herd now has more than 160 bison, four times what it was when the program began six years ago.
A Michigan tribe has been awarded a $100,000 federal grant to study creating its own power utility.
Mark Richardson has more.
The Little River Band of Ottawa Indians will use Tribal Energy Capacity Grant funding from the Bureau of Indian Affairs to perform a Tribal Utility Authority feasibility study.
Eugene Magnuson is the executive director of the tribe’s economic development arm, Little River Holdings.
He says the tribe sees operating a power utility as a way to exercise its independence, diversify its holdings, control its energy future and reduce costs.
“Energy sovereignty, I think, is the next arena that tribes are starting to look at, and one of the ways is going through solar, wind and all those technologies that are available for tribes to get into.”
There are currently more than 30 Tribal Utility Authorities across the country, including the Saginaw Chippewa Indian Tribe of Michigan.
The Little River Band was among 18 tribal entities funded during the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ January round of grant awards.
The tribe is located in Manisee County in the northwestern part of Michigan’s lower peninsula.
The tribe’s main income enterprise is the Little River Casino Resort north of the reservation.
Magnuson says electricity to operate a casino can be costly.
“The Tribal Utility Entity was created to actually peel power off the grid. And because of the tribal sovereignty, we could procure the electricity off of the grid at wholesale.”
Magnuson says tribal leaders have not set a deadline to complete the study.
Sign at Oak Flat Campground
A group of Apache people and their allies are headed back to federal court in efforts to protect the sacred site Oak Flat in Arizona from mining.
On Tuesday, the Ninth Circuit will hear arguments again in Apache Stronghold v. United States after the court decided last fall to hear the case in front of a full panel of 11 judges.
The hearing is taking place in Pasadena, CA.
Watch the hearing live via the court’s YouTube channel
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