KCAW

The Sitka Monthly Grind is this Saturday, January 10th at the Sheet’ká Ḵwáan Naa Kahídi. The theme for the is a family-oriented variety show is “New Beginnings.” Doors open at 6:30 PM, and the show starts at 7 PM. Tickets are available at Old Harbor Books. Organizer Jeff Budd joined KCAW for the Morning Interview to discuss the event and upcoming Monthly Grinds. Listen here:

The University of Alaska Southeast’s Applied Fisheries program offers degrees, certificates, and occupational endorsements in aquaculture and fisheries management. Upcoming online classes, which are open to everyone, start on Jan. 12. They include Shellfish Hatchery and Farming Techniques, Intro to Mariculture, and Alaska Salmon Culture. A three-day lab in late April will cover various aquaculture techniques. The fall semester’s hands-on intensive program, typically full by March, covers salmon, shellfish, and kelp mariculture, and includes practical skills like boat driving and cold water safety.

Angie Bowers, assistant professor in applied fisheries at UAS, and Brenna Haakinson, mariculture education coordinator with UAS/Sitka Sound Science Center, joined the Morning Interview to discuss the applied fisheries program. Listen to their conversation here:

Youth Advocates of Sitka offers various programs for youth aged 5-24, including residential care, individual and group therapy, and a transitional living program. Juliette Langley and Barbara Quinn joined KCAW for the Morning Interview to discuss four spring semester programs: ceramics on Mondays, Heart and Soul on Tuesdays, Adventure Club on Thursdays, and Fab Friday on Fridays. Listen here to learn more:

The Sitka Assembly is looking to address an ongoing problem in Sitka: bears breaking into trash cans. But how the body will go about it is still up in the air. 

When the Sitka Assembly met on Tuesday (12-30-25), bear trash management strategies were on the group’s agenda. But one of the item’s sponsors, Assembly Member Scott Saline, was hoping for participation from key stakeholders, like residents of neighborhoods with high bear traffic, Alaska State Troopers, and Sitka’s solid waste contractor, Alaska Waste. 

“I’ve asked people to show up here and just try to re-emphasize what it’s like to live up Indian River with brown bears squishing on your front doors and kids waiting for the bus year after year with bears in the shadows,” Saline said. “So I’m just hoping that people didn’t show up because they’re shy to come before the assembly.”

Sitka has seen an uptick in bear calls over the past several years, starting in 2021 when a record 14 bears were put down either by law enforcement or homeowners. In response, the city re-established a “bear task force” which recommended bear resistant trash cans as one possible solution to the problem. The preferred cans came with a hefty price tag, and the city did not move forward with the recommendation at the time. 

Then this summer, the city started a pilot program in the Indian River neighborhood to see if a centrally located trash bin would reduce bear traffic, but Municipal Administrator John Leach said they still need to check the data to see whether or not the effort was successful. 

“I think we talk about a lot about the garbage situation, but we have a bear problem.” said Martha Moses, who sits on the Sitka Tribe of Alaska Tribal Council and was part of the bear task force. “We know bears develop habits, and we know that the bear that’s going over to the Coast Guard housing and to the Edgecumbe school area has got a habit, because he’s been going there for two, three years now. And so there’s more than just Indian River. There’s other areas that we’ve shared at the bear task force. And so when they become a problem, they should be taken care of. That’s what we really wanted to have, not just Indian River, but our community.”

Leah Mason is with the Baranof Island Housing Authority. She agreed that the Indian River neighborhood isn’t the only place with increased bear activity, and that rather than using new cans, the city should look into dealing with organic waste differently. 

“I’ve been house sitting in Biorka Street when somebody shot a bear across the road from Market Center,” Mason said. “We’ve had bears getting into the large cans at Monastery [Street]. The bears are currently opening people’s cars. We’ve had a garage door pulled off by a bear trying to get to something in someone’s garage. So there’s a lot of discussion about what would work, and we have a lot of experience of what doesn’t.”

Assembly Member Katie Riley recommended talking to Alaska Waste about cost, and with the Sustainability Commission, which she said has been looking at solid waste management solutions, especially reduction efforts. 

“Seeing if we can dovetail some of those efforts to both reduce the amount of solid waste that’s being generated, and figure out if there’s any kind of value added thing that we can do, especially with organic waste, to divert that, as like a particularly bear attractant waste,” Riley said. “And then come up with some of those neighborhood wide solutions like that could be all part of a comprehensive strategy.”

Leach said addressing the issue is complex and might require restructuring solid waste rates, renegotiating with the garbage collection contractor, and adjusting city code. 

“Ultimately, whatever the solution is, if it’s going to cost more, it’s going to get passed on to the rate payer in some expense,” he said. “Meaning, if you don’t want the bin at your house and want to use the big one, like, how’s that going to work? Are you going to pay for both of them if it’s in your neighborhood? I don’t know.”

As for the future, Saline said he hopes to encourage more stakeholder participation at upcoming meetings. 

“[We] can’t subpoena people, but I’m going to get the paper trail going so that the next meeting, we could have people here and make this come together,” he said.

In other business, the city has allocated more than half-a-million-dollars in additional funding towards its multi-year airport renovation and expansion project. 

At their meeting on Tuesday, assembly members voted unanimously to appropriate $650,000 from the city’s General Fund towards the project. 

Phase 1 of the approximatly $57 million renovation was mostly completed in September. That included a two-story addition to house a new passenger screening check point and the island’s first-ever escalator. Phase 2 involves remodeling the existing terminal to improve passenger circulation and baggage claim, as well as new entrances and exits for arrivals and departures. Both phases are expected to be completed by next fall.

The majority of funding comes from the Federal Aviation Administration, but city staff are asking for additional funds to cover items they can’t get grants for. Staff say the upgrades are “critical for airport operations,” including a TSA accordion door and a communications room for TSA equipment. 

The assembly also authorized Municipal Administrator John Leach to apply for up to $800,000 in additional federal grants. 

From January 23rd-25th, Spruce Root will be hosting a Master Class workshop for mid-stage Southeast Alaska entrepreneurs to help them navigate running a business amidst larger global changes from climate change to emerging technologies like AI. Michael Mausbach joins KCAW for the Morning Interview to discuss more of what participants could expect from the upcoming Juneau-based workshop, as well as how one could register for the event before its deadline of January 9th.

From raptor releases to the city’s first ever escalator, Sitkans achieved new heights, and fresh starts this year. KCAW’s news team brings a review of 2025’s news highlights. Listen here:

Sitkans reject ballot prop to cap cruise traffic

Warm temps bring tuna to Sitka’s shores

You’re losing everything: One of Sitka’s fired forest service workers speaks out

Sitka legislators vote to override the governor’s veto of education funding

New animal control officer: ‘We’re starting fresh’

After five decades, Sitka’s pro bono veterinary practice closes its doors

A Sitka grocery with a five generation history goes on the market

Sitka Homeless Coalition opens first transitional housing community

More noteworthy stories from 2025:
Elfin Cove residents evacuate as slide damages homes
Highly anticipated community choir hits all the right notes in Sitka
Municipal Administrator John Leach turns in resignation notice
Lisa Gassman delivers annual ‘State of the Tribe’ address following resignation announcement
Lingít artist Mary Goddard eats only local foods in ‘90 Day Native’ challenge
Sitkans protest actions of Trump administration
Sitka High ‘Barkadas’ Club celebrates Filipino heritage

Christian Litten and Shelby Williams from Ramshackle Cabaret joined the Morning Interview to talk about their upcoming New Year’s Tease show. The event, held at Odess Theater, is a smaller, more intimate variety show compared to their main February event. It features adult-themed acts, including dance, comedy, and magic, and includes a house band, Slack Tide. The show offers two performances: an early show at 6 p.m. and a late show at 9:30 p.m., which includes a champagne toast and dancing with Slack Tide. Listen to their conversation here:

As winter break is on the horizon for many students across the country, high schoolers typically spend their final few weeks of the semester armed with pencils and laptops on their desks, studiously preparing for final exams. But this morning at Pacific High School, Jud Kirkness is leading a group of four students in removing the fur from a deer pelt to demonstrate one of the first steps in making leather. 

While Kirkness wields a ruler-esque block of wood to scrape the fur off the pelt, students equip gloves and pluck out the fur by hand, braving the pelt’s odor as a video of a roaring fireplace plays on the classroom’s large screen in the background. 

This class is part of Pacific High’s Friday Lifeskills curriculum, where students develop practical skills relevant to Sitkans, from deer skinning to boat and trail maintenance.  

“Pacific High has always tried to, with the lens of their education, is [ask] how can we better the community, or better just like real world knowledge for the students who come here?” says Hailey Rinella, a Pacific High support staff member through Youth Advocates of Sitka.

“And so I think that’s kind of where the Friday skills were born from was [asking] how can we use our partners in the community to better inform the students and educate the students?” Rinella says. “Because I think a big thing that we care about is how the students’ happiness and education in the school, but also outside of school.” 

One such community partner is Sitka Trail Works, which has been collaborating with Pacific High School to provide practical environmental education to young Sitkans for many years. Pacific High School’s principal, Matt Groen, is a board member for the organization. For Sitka Trail Work’s Programs Manager, Emily Pound, a big part of their curriculum involves drawing upon the knowledge the students already have from living in Alaska.

“We do try to lead with the lens of not assuming that the youth don’t know what we’re leading,” says Pound. “[We’re] just coming from a place of saying, ‘Okay, this is your experience. What do you know? What can we learn from you?'”

In the classroom, the students learn that leftover deer fur can be used as effective compost. But one student requests the fur for a different purpose, to send to her grandmother so she can make her a hat from it. Kirkness then encourages her to take as much fur as she can carry, offering to prepare tome plastic bags for her to use. 

Progressing into the self-described “show and tell” section of the class, Kirkness passes around a variety of animal goods from a pouch made of deer stomach to various samples of leather strips, much to the Pacific High School’s staff and students’ amazement.

Rinella has been sitting in on the Friday Lifeskills class for over a year. She thinks the curriculum uniquely helps students not only develop a stronger understanding of the land they live on, but also establish a connection to and curiosity about it as well.

“Knowing where your food comes from, and having that respect for nature, I think is really important,” says Rinella, “[It’s] something that I didn’t have in my education growing up, and [the] students ask really big questions about the environment and about their place and world. And having that space, I think [it] is really important for them to have those big questions.”

As the class comes to a close and students file out for lunch, some curious students wander in to observe the pelt, which now has a large, fur-less patch. As one student picks up her promised fur to send to her grandparents, she draws another connection between the leather she got to touch in class and that in her own life–the leather purse she’s carrying. Now, she can walk away with a greater appreciation for the process behind preparing the leather that can bag like her own… as well material for a new deer hat.

International travel takes a lot of work and planning, even for a solo traveler. But for nearly 20 years a Sitka High School Spanish teacher has been taking a growing group of students, sometimes dozens, to Guatemala each spring. While the language immersion program has been a big hit, she says after this year she’s hanging up her hat.

Nearly 20 years ago, Sitka High School Spanish teacher Ariel Starbuck took her first couple of international trips with students –  first to Costa Rica, then to Spain with a popular tour company and several other school groups. But she said something was missing. 

“It was a beautiful trip, but it had a lot of components that I thought were missing from travel, like everything was really geared towards high school kids, so not a lot of cultural food, a lot of burgers and fries,” Starbuck said. “I felt like they didn’t really have to speak Spanish. They just spoke English all together.”

When she got back, her friend Davey Lubin and his family had just returned from a trip to Guatemala, and he was eager to tell her about a man they met, Rigoberto Zamora Charuc, who operates a traveling library in the country. 

Lubin connected Starbuck with Rigoberto, and the next year she hopped on a plane with around 15 students, and some funds they raised to support his efforts to open a rural school. They had dinner and met his family, then they traveled on the library bus to northern Guatemala.

“Think of like, a 1985 Detroit school bus,” Starbuck said. “Shelves are lining the sides of the busses, and there are chess tables in the middle, so they’ve taken out a lot of the seats, and it’s just this big bus full of books. Every town you roll into the kids get so excited to see the library bus coming into town, because that’s kind of their only access to books. It’s really limited.”

The trip was a hit. It became an annual tradition for Starbuck’s Spanish students– one that gave a big boost in their language fluency. 

“The kids live with families. They go to school for four hours in the morning, eight to noon, with a one-on-one Spanish teacher, which is awesome, and that just meets them wherever they are,” Starbuck said.

“It’s something I can’t recreate in the classroom, right?” she said. “I can’t give that individualized attention to each student for four hours a day, every day.” 

Each afternoon, the students meet up and they venture out into the country- visiting bustling markets, women’s weaving cooperatives and coffee plantations. Every year they hike a volcano that’s a touch warmer than Mt. Edgecumbe. 

“Sometimes they get to the top and they roast marshmallows over the lava. The very first year we went, we were able to poke sticks into the lava,” Starbuck said. “There were melted shoes all over the place.”

Traveling with teens internationally is not always easy- a lot of work goes into making sure the trips are safe and successful, and even still there have been some hairy moments, like the occasional injury and subsequent trip to the ER. One student choked on a steak at the airport and ended up having emergency surgery abroad. And once, a student mistakenly brought live ammunition in her bag. 

“Guatemala does not take kindly to that,” she recalled. “And that was a big deal. The military had to come and [we] had to talk them down about letting her go back in the country.” 

But the trips have generally gone smoothly, with the help of many volunteer chaperones over the years. Starbuck says the work has been worth the payoff. Students walk away from the experience with stronger language literacy, and a renewed appreciation of privileges taken for granted, like free education and access to books. 

“Travel is amazing, and it really opens your eyes and broadens your perspective, and gives you faith that you didn’t know you had, maybe? It just provides so many things,” Starbuck said. “And I think that’s so cool to think that I can help kids see this bigger perspective, and that they can travel.”

This spring, Starbuck plans to lead her final trip with students- she’s taught for 21 years and plans to retire at 25. She has two kids in the Sitka School District, both with just a few years left before they leave the nest.

“I feel like this is going so fast, I don’t want to miss any of their time,” Starbuck said. “So I’m going to make this my last trip, so I can just be part of whatever they’re part of.”

The final trip to Guatemala is shaping up to be a big one- as of right now more than two-dozen students are planning to go next March. But Starbuck says there are more trips in her future. After she retires, she’s thinking about leading an adult Spanish class in Sitka that culminates in a similar international trip. No chaperones required. 

On a sleepy and snowy Thursday afternoon, powerful synth chords and upbeat drums emanate out of the pantry of Ethan Vastola’s family home, which has been repurposed into a makeshift studio. He’s seated behind a desk squeezed between two professional speakers. He has a session pulled up on his laptop, with a synthesizer and keyboard surrounding him.   

After experimenting with more sounds, Vastola then pulls up a different audio session of a song that he hopes will be part of his first production venture, alongside his producing partner and childhood friend, Dominique Smith, who is seated behind the keyboard. After reaching a good stopping point, the two trade seats so that Smith can take over from there.

Smith and Vastola originally met in Blatchley Middle School’s music program nearly two decades ago, lingering in the practice rooms alongside a mutual friend to jam out together. As they got older, the two ended up going in different directions, with Smith moving to Anchorage for work in 2019, and Vastola attending college in Bellingham, Washington, where he befriended people in the local electronic music scene. The two then returned to Sitka in 2021 and 2022 respectively, both taking jobs at SEARHC. While their passion for music has persisted throughout their lives, it wasn’t until Vastola had a near-death experience that he was inspired to pursue music full-time. 

“I was hit by a drunk driver here in town,” said Vastola. “I just think that that was kind of the main thing that pushed me to kind of realize I was not doing all the things I need to do to feel fulfilled in life… I took a trip, went and saw family and friends, spent some time in studios in LA and New York and in Seattle. And it just kind of solidified for me that this is what I want to do. So we’ll make it happen by any means.”

With Smith’s encouragement, the two quit their jobs to pursue music production full time, culminating in Sitka’s first large-scale rave this past August, and another event on Halloween. Smith said they’ve been overwhelmed with the love and support they’ve gotten across Sitka in bringing the rave to life, from partnering with local organizations like Sitka Fine Arts Camp (which helped spark Vastola’s interest in electronic music in the first place,) and Mean Queen to assist in securing a venue and drinks, to the over 400 people who attended their first event.

“A lot of people that I still come up with or come across [say] ‘I went to your last show!’ ‘I didn’t make it to the show before that,’ or ‘When’s your next one?,'” said Smith. “That’s also been a big question, but it’s just been a lot of good support from the community at large. And that’s been the nice thing about Sitka, they’re always very supportive of anything and everything pertaining to the arts.”

That’s not to say that there haven’t been challenges in bringing a rave scene to Sitka. Vastola said the delayed arrival of a haze machine — essentially a more subtle version of a fog machine — has made him unable to put his large containers of haze fluid to good use, so they’re currently shoved between his desk and the wall. And the challenges of bringing DJ and rave decorations like laser lights to a rural Alaskan town is something that Smith seconded. 

“This has been the biggest obstacle, especially this time of year, given the constant weather changes and delaying with so much stuff,” said Smith. “Even during the summertime, when we were getting set for our flagship show, we had to deal with the challenges of getting some of our supplies and our other equipment here on time.”

Despite these challenges, both Smith and Vastola agree that the joy of bringing an electronic music performance space to Sitka is deeply rewarding to them.

To further provide more creative opportunities for youth in Sitka, Vastola has begun offering DJing and music production classes at his home to students of all ages. 

“My seven year old student that I work with, he navigates this equipment like he’s been using it his entire life,” said Vastola. “Just seeing [his] eyes light up, and having him just have ideas, and playing things on the keyboard, recording it down, every moment like that for me is definitely very, very cool to witness.” 

Smith agrees with how valuable it is to have access to in-person training to work with industry-standard DJand music production equipment. 

“We taught ourselves, but I think having somebody at the helm who is a lot more experienced would definitely have benefited both of us,” said Smith.  

In response to their most highly asked question, “What’s next?,” Smith and Vastola will be DJing SEARHC’s holiday party, a full circle moment for them to return to their former workplace while pursuing their passion. Vastola also plans to continue offering his lessons, and the two are currently working on planning next year’s events and launching their music production venture. As they head into the new year with high ambitions, Smith and Vastola plan to keep the decks spinning in Sitka for a long time.