HOPE Coalition
Dear Editor: Supporting the health and well-being of Sitka’s youths and families takes a collaborative effort. Doing this is the mission and goal of the HOPE Coalition. HOPE stands for Healing Our People and Environment. The purpose of the HOPE Coalition is to establish and strengthen collaboration among individuals, organizations, and Tribal and non-Tribal governmental agencies operating at the local, regional, state, and national levels. Through this collaborative effort, the goal is to prevent and reduce substance misuse among youths, young adults, and over time, older adults. The HOPE coalition believes this would be achieved by reducing the risk factors in our community which support substance misuse, while increasing protective factors which reduce substance misuse and support positive social norms, attitudes, and behaviors.
In its history, the HOPE Coalition has partnered with other entities in Sitka like SEARHC, Sitka Tribe of Alaska, Sitka Homeless Coalition, Sitka Police Department, Sitkans Against Family Violence, Youth Advocates of Sitka, and others to bring change to Sitka by establishing the Elizabeth Peratrovich memorial bench, creating tobacco-free work sites, and gathering data through the Youth Substance Use Survey in 2022, specifically for Sitka.
The HOPE Coalition hopes to continue to create evident and impactful change in Sitka by inviting others to the table to discuss community needs and concerns. The Coalition meets the second Thursday of every month from 3:30 to 5 p.m. at the St. Peter’s Episcopal Church See House and is open for anyone (youths included) who would like to join the conversation about improving and supporting Sitka.
Anastasia Stefanowicz
with the HOPE Coalition
Native Navigation Unit
Dear Editor: Blatchley Middle School’s seventh-grade teaching team integrated the Native Navigation Unit into five subject areas and I don’t think I have heard of that happening anywhere. This means each seventh-grade team teacher took a part in teaching it. To start off, Steve Johnson came into Alexander Allison’s class and told the old Kiks.adi Kaax’achgóok story to each class about long ago hunters blown out to sea for over a year who made it home.
Next, Meghan Devine’s science class looked at the many science components of the story like Pribilof fur seal migrations, Gulf of Alaska currents, wind direction etc. We also looked at the parts of a NOAA nautical chart, abbreviations on navigation markers and started latitude and longitude. Next Ashley Nessler in social studies class spent two full days learning how to find latitude and longitude from NOAA chart locations and one day on compass reading. The next two days were spent in Ms. McCarty’s PE classes getting azimuths off Sitka Harbor bearings and attempting triangulation. Lastly Ms. Mullin’s class worked on creating a sailing plan, measuring distance, finding headings and thinking about distance, rate and time.
The whole seventh-grade class got to go on one of two Native Navigation Allen Marine boat field trips and practice their navigating skills. The idea was for students to “navigate through the story” recording Native place names from the story as they passed them and going to the place where the lost hunters returned.
On the field trip cultural teachers Jamie Bradley, Erin Rofcar, Kassey Littlefield, and Chuck Miller came aboard one or both boat trips to point out Native place names as we passed them and to share Kaax’achgóok’s (over 300 years old) song that he wrote while he and his nephews were lost. To make this happen, it took a lot of people behind the scenes to pull it off.
First, Juel LeBlanc at SNEP helped by providing funding for SNEP cultural staff and even came on one boat to support the students.
Next the BMS administrators and staff worked really hard at supporting the seventh-grade team and all the students in so many ways. Diana Fulton is one of the best administrators I have ever worked with. She attacks every problem with a smile and logical solutions! She and the “rock star” office staff click to make good things happen for students and teachers! There were so many hurdles to jump over but the BMS teaching staff and administration were all about team work. But when it really comes down to making things happen for kids, it is the wonderful BMS parents that stand up and give their support by sending in donations to cover the reduced school discount that is requested and showing up to be team leaders on the boat!
Gunalcheesh to the parents who came aboard to lead a team! Also thanks to Jarret Hirai for coming and sharing your knowledge and encouraging the students. Teachers can dream up engaging activities that motivate students to keep learning until the end of school but there are key components that always make the dream come true. In this event there were two key components.
The first one is the Kiks.adi story that brought meaning to all the hard work that comes with learning navigation in seventh-grade in the land of the Tlingit. Gunalcheesh to the Kiks.adi clan for holding onto this remarkable story and sharing it so it can inspire us to never give up, be brave, dig our paddles way down, when things get tough!
The second key component is giving the students the opportunity to practice navigating on a boat. A boat trip motivates students learning in the classroom like nothing else.
Since I wrote the first grant to do this in the ’90s, Allen Marine has charged us the same incredible educational discount price all these years (since 1998)! When it comes to supporting Sitka students learning traditional Native place names and how to navigate Sitka waters, Allen Marine shows up for our kids, even fitting us in during their busy tour schedule! They provide the best captains and crew for us AND after our Sitka kids grow up, they provide them wonderful training and job opportunities!
Gunalcheesh to Allen Marine for all the educational support for so many BMS students for so many years! It is especially fun to get to work with former students working for Allen Marine that actually got to go on a Native Navigation field trip when they were at BMS!!
I feel so grateful to live in a community with such hard-working supportive educators, parents, and community members that step up for our children. A team of wonderful folks managed to revive the Native Navigation study out of the pandemic craziness for our children, because they want them to be safe on the water this summer and have an opportunity to apply what they have learned this year!
Gunalcheesh to everyone!
Patty Dick, Sitka
Summer Music Festival
Dear Editor: For all the folks attending the 52nd annual Sitka Music Festival I do hope that it has been another glorious experience.
But it is not yet over. If you haven’t attended, do join me. You will be amazed. Sitka is so fortunate to have this remarkable Festival with performances by world class musicians.
This is also a special year for the Sitka Music Festival Foundation. Over the last 40 years, the foundation, an endowment fund which exists solely to support the festival, has contributed almost a million dollars to help fund the Festival’s annual expenses. As I am sure you all understand, expenses keep rising.
Our hope is to grow the foundation so that we can ensure that the festival lives on for all to enjoy, at reasonable prices, for Sitka, our children and all who enjoy fine music.
World-class music in Sitka is not cheap. We are now working to raise $50,000. We’ve been offered a challenge which expires Aug. 31. Every donation to the endowment through Aug. 31 will be matched dollar for dollar up to $50,000 for an increase in the endowment of $100,000.
Please join me at the festival AND please contribute to the foundation. Meet the challenge. Learn more about us at our website, Sitkamusicfoundation.org. You can donate online or mail your donation to: 104 Jeff Davis Street.Support the foundation!
Susan Carlson, M.D., President,
Sitka Music Festival Foundation
ConocoPhillips Alaska
Dear Editor: The full-color, back-page thank you on Wednesday from ConocoPhillips to Senators Murkowski and Sullivan and Representative Peltola was a slap in the face to Alaskans.
We in Alaska include 100 villages requiring relocation because of melting sea ice, rising oceans, melting permafrost, and increases in severe weather associated with global warming. We in Alaska are challenged to develop renewable sources of energy for electricity generation, heat, and transportation. We in Alaska have average temperature increases double that of much of the lower 48.
The ConocoPhillips Willow project will produce 30-year greenhouse gas emissions equivalent to 70 new coal-fired power plants. This is a carbon bomb for the world in the face of scientists telling us that we need to stop all new fossil fuel infrastructure and keep fossil fuels in the ground to have any chance of keeping global warming within 1.5 degrees centigrade. At 1.1 degrees, we are already inhaling dangerous smoke from Canadian forest fires and suffering from heat waves, droughts, floods, and diminishing fresh water supplies.
This ConocoPhillips thank you to our federal elected representatives documents that the oil and gas industry and our investment industries (banks and insurance companies) control our political policies.
This week’s Climate Connection discusses that the majority of Americans accept that global warming is caused by human beings. Despite this public consensus, our voices are not consistently reflected in federal policy by either of our polarized political parties.
The indicators of impending climate disaster are all increasing: average CO2 levels, global mean temperature, frequency of severe weather, costs of billion dollar storms, etc.
What is to be done? We can imagine and discuss a different world of governance and economy that serves and protects all of us in the world, a sea change from our current systems that enrich the few at the expense of the rest of us. We can start locally to protect ourselves from the devastation that is coming as the Willow projects of the world come on line – food security, local self-sufficiency in a circular economy, and building respectful relationships among those who are presently divided. We have to start now.
Barbara Bingham, Toby Campbell,
Kay Kreiss, Lisa Sadleir-Hart
and Carol Voisin, Sitka
