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U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland experienced what Alaska Natives in remote villages experience all the time Tuesday.
Rhonda McBride from our flagship station reports.
Merrick Garland got weathered out of a flight to Huslia, a tiny community on the Koyukuk River in Interior Alaska.
U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), who traveled with Garland, says she’s not in the habit of wishing visitors to Alaska bad weather.
“But it was a reminder that when something happens when there is a tragedy, or a threat or something that requires public safety intervention in a community that is not accessible, and weather shuts in, there is no plan B.”
Rain and strong winds cancelled Garland’s flight to Huslia, which is only accessible by air and water.
Garland says the challenges of Alaska weather was not something he could have fully understood without experiencing it.
“We had a United States Marshals plane, we had a United States Air Force plane and still with the weather, we weren’t able to get there. I can’t imagine what would happen in the circumstance, if there was an emergency.”
Garland was able to meet with tribal leaders in Galena, another Interior Alaska community.
He also attended a roundtable hosted by the Alaska Federation of Natives in Anchorage, where he announced $22 million in funding for the Alaska Native Justice Center to help tribes improve their public safety and justice systems.
The meeting was closed to the media, but Michelle Demmert (Lingít), a longtime tribal court judge, says there was a lot at stake for Alaska Natives who experience some of the highest rates of violence in the country
“Alaska tribes have not gotten the same resources across the board when it comes to essential governmental services and it’s time for them to pony up.”
Demmert is the Not Invisible Commissioner of the University of Alaska Fairbanks Tribal Governance Program.
She called the meeting groundbreaking, because Garland acknowledged Alaska tribes as democratic institutions and their importance to the nation.
*This story was updated to correct the federal funding amount awarded to Alaska. It was reported $70 million, when in fact it was $22 million.
Allen Baca works on pruning the dead branches of the trees at the Walatowa Red Rocks tourist site in Jemez Pueblo, N.M. on June 22nd, 2023. (Photo: Emma VandenEinde / KUNC)
The land and its waterways have long been sacred to Indigenous people. And they know how to care for it well.
Now, some groups are recruiting Indigenous youth to restore and protect these areas.
Emma VandenEinde of the Mountain West News Bureau visits a pueblo in New Mexico to see how one crew is doing that.
“So, yeah, just cut loose branches, any low-hanging branches.”
It’s a hot, sunny morning in Jemez Pueblo.
Allen Baca, a crew member from the Forest Stewards Youth Corps, is giving instructions for their project at a trailhead near a red rock formation.
“The site is going to be anywhere within the grounds, don’t worry about those outside the boundaries.”
They start cutting and sawing.
Branches overflow in the pickup truck bed, but Baca makes sure they take care of every tree.
“Sam, if you want to head down to that tree right there and just prune that one, and me and Mell are going to go around collecting.”
Behind each branch is a lesson to these Indigenous youth about giving back.
“It’s not just for the benefit of me. It’s for the benefit of the community and then our future as well, our future kids and our future governors.”
The Youth Corps summer program is for 15-to-25 year olds like Baca.
Five crews across New Mexico are trained on natural resource careers, all while restoring the land.
The Jemez Pueblo crew, which joined in 2020, is the only one on Indigenous land.
For a little over two months, they work on a variety of projects, like thinning forests to slow wildfires or removing invasive trees by streams.
One of their projects is by Jemez Springs.
On the side of a cliff is an image of a woman wearing a shawl, which is spiritually important to the Jemez people.
Baca says work like this is much more than cutting down trees.
“We just have deep connections with our own lands as well. And just, you know, taking care of your land just feels like you’re just taking care of, you know, yourself as well.”
There are other Indigenous conservation groups in the Mountain West, like Ancestral Lands Conservation Corps. Their crews work on habitat restoration projects on tribal lands in New Mexico, Arizona, and Wyoming.
But Chas Robles, the director of Ancestral Lands, says recruitment has been challenging.
Along with factors like low pay, there’s another barrier: trauma.
Indigenous people used to inhabit and manage these lands, but the federal government forced them onto reservations. And that history hasn’t always been acknowledged in natural resource jobs.
“To totally ignore the Indigenous people who inhabited those lands…it’s a huge injustice.”
Tune in tomorrow to hear how successful the program has been in tribal communities despite these barriers to recruitment.
This story was supported by The Water Desk, an initiative from the University of Colorado Boulder’s Center for Environmental Journalism.
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