KCAW

Jeremy Plank and Teal West are active in the group Safeguard Sitka’s Future, which has organized opposition to Proposition 1. They believe that limiting cruise tourism will take a heavy toll on local businesses, and the effects will ripple through the economy. The two appeared on a KCAW Special Election Forum on Thursday, May 22, 2025.

Matt Wilson is the aquarist at the Sitka Sound Science Center. Ben Hamilton is a filmmaker, and the producer of Sitka’s Hidden Wonders (which shows daily downtown at the Coliseum Theater). Hamilton has been making films in Sitka since 2008 for a variety of exhibits and organizations (it’s his film that’s playing on a loop above the baggage claim in the Sitka Airport), and over the years developed an interest in making his own film. When Hamilton met Wilson, the two found they shared a common interest in wanting to show people some of the rich biology of the area, that is not necessarily obvious at first glance.

John Leach is Sitka’s municipal administrator. In a morning interview with KCAW’s Brooke Schafer, he shared details about the Tourism Best Management Practices plan, a set of voluntary guidelines for businesses and other tourism stakeholders. As part of the plan, community members will have access to a phone and email hotline to provide feedback on tourism practices in Sitka. The hotline will be available starting next week.

Leach also shared updates on Lincoln Street closures, portable bathrooms, and plans to hire seasonal “pedestrian safety attendants.” Community members can weigh in on these issues at the upcoming assembly meeting on May 29.

Alaska Supreme Court Justice and Sitka’s former longtime public defender Jude Pate was honored by his alma mater, Lewis and Clark Law School in Portland Oregon. His address to the graduates began with bubbles and ended with a song. After his speech concluded, Pate was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters from his alma mater.

Alaska Supreme Court Justice Jude Pate began his commencement speech to the Lewis and Clark Law School Class of 2025  by sharing a traditional Lingít greeting. 

“Some of my Lingít mentors in southeast Alaska have taught me…one way to begin a public speech, and it’s to let the audience know that you mean no offense, that you come with the best of intentions,” Pate said. “Those words are ‘May my words fall like feathers on your shoulder.’ Isn’t that beautiful? Yeah, and I say Gunalchéesh to my friends and mentors, and Gunalchéesh means in Lingít, thank you.”

Pate explained to students that in Lingít culture, feathers and eagle down are often used to signify the spiritual world. He said he couldn’t bring eagle down, but instead brought a small “bottle of miracles” to share with the graduates. 

“Yes, miracles are in this bottle. And how do I know that this bottle is full of miracles? Well, that’s because it says right here, ‘super miracle bubbles'” Pate said.  

And from the pulpit on the stage, Pate pulled a tiny wand from an orange bottle and blew a handful of bubbles.

“So may my words float above you like little miracles of hope, peace, joy and love, and as long as they don’t pop, may they fall softly on your shoulders,” Pate said as the bubbles floated down on the audience.  

Pate told graduates that when was in their shoes 32 years ago, he was a bit afraid of stepping out into the big bad world as a new lawyer. And students today have it even tougher, with crushing debt, a society divided and parts of the world “literally on fire.” So how would they cope?

“I know that you’re going to refuse to accept injustice. I know that you’re going to represent those that can’t represent themselves. I know that. I don’t have to go on anymore about that. But how are you going to do that? What’s going to sustain your spirit?” Pate said. “When the news is unrelentingly grim, or at least it seems that way to you, how are you not going to become jaded and faded and and I don’t know, lose your way?”

Pate said the “little miracles” in his bubble wand– hope, peace, joy and love– would help them along the way.

On love, Pate said it’s not only about showing love to others, and loving your work, but also loving yourself. 

“Love yourself enough to be yourself. Wave that freak flag. Don’t be worried about that,” Pate said. “Who you are as a lawyer and who you now are as a human being? Those aren’t two separate things. Don’t go down that way. We need more of your humanity in the law, not less.”

On peace, he referenced his first job out of law school as a tribal court clerk in Sitka, learning from Judge William Brady. 

“He didn’t wear a robe. He didn’t sit up higher than other people when he was having court. He didn’t sit apart from them. He sat in a circle with a family that he was trying to heal, and he made sure that every time there was a hearing about that family, every person who was connected that family got notice,” Pate said. “Then when they came to the hearing, they got to speak, and they were treated with dignity and respect and patience. That is the most foundational rule that I learned right out the gate, and I learned that in tribal court. So let peace be your purpose as a lawyer.” 

Pate told the room of graduates that they must “reach out with joy” to the next generation, to improve representation in the legal field. Pate has done that by volunteering for the national Color of Justice program for the past 20 years. The annual program at Mt. Edgecumbe High School in Sitka encourages Alaska Native students from rural communities around the state to pursue legal careers. 

Pate said the last Color of Justice event in Sitka featured two former Mt. Edgecumbe students who are now attorneys themselves. 

“When they stood up as presenters at the Color of Justice, those students saw themselves. They saw the possibility, the hope. And they’re not judges yet, but you know, got to start someplace,” Pate said. “So I say, let joy be your spirit as a lawyer. Because the joy I saw in those students eyes that day was it made me tear up. It’s magic.”

The post With bubbles and a song, Alaska Supreme Court Justice addresses graduates at alma mater appeared first on KCAW.

The opinions expressed in the following commentary are those of the author, and are not necessarily shared by KCAW’s board, staff, or volunteers.

My name is Doug Borland, and my wife and I are 30-year residents of Sitka. As long-time Sitka downtown business owners, our Russian American stores employ six full-time Sitkans and up to 12 including our summer temporary staff. Today I would like to express some concerns regarding the upcoming anti-cruise ship referendum vote.

Like most of Sitka’s citizens, we are aware of, and appreciate, the “small-town ambience” and the uniqueness of our town and the surrounding areas that make us special. We too value and want to preserve that special uniqueness. 

We relocated from Anchorage all those years ago precisely because of the advantages of living in such a small coastal town. We are on the waters, hiking the trails, and avid hunter-gatherers in the mountains and forests around town. So, of course we also want to preserve these values.  

For example, in the early 2000’s, we voted against the proposed downtown cruise-ship dock in front of the Sheldon Jackson campus because it would radically change the face of our downtown.

We hear every day from visitors that Sitka is the best cruise ship stop they have made on their Alaskan trips! This is apparent, as we are decidedly different. Therefore, we have mixed feelings about the upcoming referendum and vote to severely limit cruise ship visitors.

We do recognize that the rapid increase in cruise ship tourism that the town has experienced since covid has resulted for sure in some growing pains, and those, such as traffic and pedestrian safety, certainly must be addressed.

 As main street businesses we are engaged with the City and other stakeholders regarding these issues, through an ongoing structured process encouraging input from all.

Considering this, we feel that the referendum may be a too radical approach, which in our opinion could have some serious unintended consequences that the well-meaning proponents of the anti-cruise ship vote may not have considered.

First of all, the economic impact to our city of the loss of sales tax revenues if this referendum passes is unquestionable, although what exactly the ultimate losses amount to might be debatable.

To us, as business owners, and to the town relying on us as a continuing viable economic engine, this issue is more complicated: Mainly, will the cruise ships, redirecting to other Alaskan ports if this passes, push ours and other businesses below the break-even point where we will be forced to close? Can we continue to keep our stores open in the winter, which we have always done, even though operating at a loss, if we cannot make it up from our summer business? 

As the proposed “cap” is a mythical figure, there is in no way to guarantee, if this referendum passes, that the cruise ship numbers will actually approach the upper limits of the cap amount. The unintended consequences may very well be that we will see way less than the maximum visitor cap set by the referendum, which could for sure lead to employee layoffs, (not just the loss of revenues through sales taxes), and could result in the complete shutdown of ours and other businesses, with our employees, and their families having to leave Sitka to earn a living elsewhere, and could lead to permanent closures of even long-time downtown businesses.

Also, it must be noted that if this passes, it is not just the direct major losses of sales tax revenues that our city will feel from the multitude of businesses; it is also the recirculation of these dollars throughout the city economy throughout the year, as we re-spend these dollars collected from our customers throughout the city.

We pay our suppliers, our employees, our utilities, our rents, etc. – all of which again create an additional sales tax that supports our city services. Then again each of the recipients of these dollars will re-spend and recirculate them to create more sales taxes! This “multiplier effect” means the economic impact of our revenues from the tourist dollars is much higher than just the initial collection made by our stores, and could ripple throughout the town.

Finally, it must be noted that we, along with most of the other tourist-related businesses, also are major supporters of Sitka’s many nonprofits. 

These deserving nonprofits include social programs for elders and the less fortunate, our most important educational and school programs, the renowned Sitka Summer Music Festival, the Fine Arts Camp, SitkaTrails, the Legacy Fund, and yes, our valued public radio station! Every year we have helped to sustain these valuable programs.

But they can only gain our support if we have a viable, stable, and growing downtown business community, which is quite concerning.

And, this is especially true now, as other public sources of support, mainly from our state and federal governments, for this nonprofit sector, are seriously threatened.

In conclusion, the radical approach of a referendum suggests some serious possible downsides that could negatively affect most all Sitkans.

We would hope that the growing pains from the increase in tourism could be better addressed through collaboration, cooperation, and shared values of what we all should want for our special unique coastal town. 

In our opinion, this referendum raises many, many uncertainties of possible serious, negative, unintended consequences, and every listener should be considering these before going to vote.

Thank you for the opportunity to comment.

The post Commentary: Prop 1 will have unintended consequences for Sitka’s economy appeared first on KCAW.

Larry Edwards and Klaudia Lecesse are the authors of Proposition 1, which would cap cruise visitors at 300,000, May-September. The two appeared on a KCAW Special Election Forum on May 20, 2025.

The post Listen: Prop 1 authors outline views in Small Town SOUL forum appeared first on KCAW.

Researcher and UAF Associate Research Professor Tyler Hennon has been working with Southeast Alaska trollers to gather oceanography data in Sitka. Hennon and ALFA Policy Coordinator Lauren Howard joined KCAW for the morning interview to discuss the project, which provides fishermen with scientific instruments to monitor oceanographic parameters like temperature and salinity. Listen to their conversation here:

The post Data gathered by citizen scientist fishermen reveals ocean patterns appeared first on KCAW.

I’m walking along Katlian Bay Road, the one-lane gravel thoroughfare that weaves along a cliffside a few miles north of downtown Sitka. To one side there are sheer rock faces, and to the other, steep embankments leading directly down to the bay. My cell phone buzzes intermittently, going in and out of service.

It would be a challenging place for a search and rescue operation. But that’s exactly what is happening on this Wednesday in late April – well, sort of. 

I spot Lieutenant Commander Jared Carbajal standing on the edge of a steep slope about a mile up the road. He’s watching intently as two men swing a floppy-bodied mannequin in a Coast Guard jumpsuit back and forth. With a final swing, they release the mannequin down the jagged hillside, where it tumbles before settling just above the waterline. They cheer.

Carbajal, along with Lieutenant Commander Mick Klakring, helped organize this Search and Rescue Exercise, or SAREX. It’s an annual event that brings together the US Coast Guard and Air Force, the Royal Canadian Air Force, and volunteers from regional search-and-rescue organizations to train with simulated disaster scenarios. The agenda for this week includes rescuing people from an ATV wreck on Kruzof Island and a plane crash in Nakwasina Bay. Today, Carbajal is preparing for a mass casualty scenario. He explains as we drive up the road, looking for spots to drop more mannequins. 

“What we’re simulating is that it was a tour bus, and the bus got swept away in a landslide, and everybody’s stranded,” he says.

There will be 38 total victims scattered along the two miles of road. Five are mannequins, and the other 33 are Coast Guard volunteers. I meet two of them along the road, sipping from thermoses. 

“We’re dehydrated, or hung over,” one says. “Yeah, hungover, dehydrated, all the same.”

The other lies down on the gravel, demonstrating. “I’ll lay out, and then I guess y’all will kind of just be like, ‘Hey, he’s dehydrated!'”

Back on the Sitka Coast Guard base, rescue crews are getting a pep talk from Commander Rand Semke before they head out. 

“Why do we do this?” he asks to a room full of American and Canadian first responders. “I can think of at least three reasons. Number one, it truly is fun. It’s professionally satisfying to do SAREXes.”

It’s the first time in three years that the Canadian crews have participated in the SAREX. He tells them that he hopes they take advantage of the opportunity to learn from one another. 

“We learn things that we would have never thought of from the Canadians,” he says. “We think we’re masters of all kinds of things in the search and rescue world, and then we hang out with our civilian counterparts from [Juneau Mountain Rescue] and Sitka [Search and Rescue]. We learn all kinds of new things.”

Abby Leatherman has been volunteering with Juneau Mountain Rescue for about five years. This is her first time participating in a SAREX. 

“We’re kind of coming into it not knowing quite what to expect, and so we just bring, you know, all of the gear that we anticipate,” she says, standing in front of a table piled high with ropes, litters, and emergency medical equipment.

She says she’s excited to see how the other crews operate. 

“I think it’s super valuable to do interagency work,” she says. “You get to know each other so that when the real mission comes up, we all know each other and trust each other.”

She’ll be riding in the Canadian CH-149 Cormorant helicopter, which towers over the MH-60 Jayhawks that the US team is using.

“I’ve never seen one quite this large, a Cormorant,” she says. “The ones we usually fly in are very, very small, just enough for, you know, two to four people. So, yeah, this is very different. I’ve never been able to stand up in a helicopter before.”

Adam Welsh is a search and rescue technician in the Canadian Royal Air Force. He’s also headed out in the Cormorant. Welsh says he’s excited to see how the US crew compares. 

“In the brief conversations I had yesterday with some of the rescue swimmers, it sounds pretty similar, to be honest,” he says. “Definitely sounds like there’s a lot of crossover at the end of the day. I guess we’re all playing the same game of trying to help people out.”

Back on the Katlian Bay Road, Carbajal gets a radio message that crews are leaving the base. Volunteers take final sips from their thermoses and slide into position under fallen logs and in drainage ditches, ready with stories of broken legs and hypothermia. A Coast Guard cutter motors into view in the bay below, ready to relay radio communications. The whir of helicopters slowly gets louder.

The first helicopter lands, and a team pours out in high-visibility gear, tiny orange dots on the expanse of gravel. US Air Force Pararescueman Jason Hughes is one of the first on the scene. He directs rescuers to walk in opposite directions along the road – they don’t know how many people are out there. 

As the team on foot sets out, radios buzz with messages from the cutter about survivors they can see from the bay. A US Jayhwawk helicopter hovers over an embankment, preparing to hoist the mannequin tossed down earlier. At one point, they even try to rescue me.

In about an hour, rescuers will get an alert saying that someone has activated an iPhone SOS signal from deep in the nearby woods, where a helicopter rescue might be more difficult. 

Carbajal says that locating those survivors and deciding how to get them out of the woods will be an extra challenge. 

“They have to pull out their GPS and use that GPS to go find them, you know, and then bring them out of the woods,” he says. “So just some different elements to it that we’re trying to train.”

Although today is a simulation, Carbajal says the stakes are real. He’s flown on missions where crews had to rely primarily on SOS signals to rescue survivors. He says it’s critical for crews to know how to use all the tools at their disposal – and how to make decisions when there isn’t a clear answer. 

“We add a level of, like, decision making and realism to be like, hey, there’s not always going to be a perfect cleared-out landing site,” he says.

At the end of the day today, crews will gather to debrief – on how they performed, and how they can do better tomorrow. 

The post US, Canadian first responders join forces in training ‘SAREX’ appeared first on KCAW.

Note: The application deadline for Sealaska Heritage Institute’s Cultural Warriors program is Thursday, May 22. Applicants must be male, aged 16-22. Apply online.

This is something that is quite different from many western societies: In Lingít culture, children fall into their mother’s moiety – or her clan, as it’s often explained to visitors wondering about the prevalence of the Eagle and Raven crests in town.

This is why uncles – rather than fathers – take precedence when it comes to  cultural education.

Joe Zuboff is with the Sealaska Heritage Institute.

“Within our culture, we always send our younger men off with their uncles to teach them war tactics, or finding food, and how to preserve food and to learn to share the food that they get within their community,” said Zuboff, “ in order to teach them to give back, so that they have a understanding of what it means to be a part of a community.”

Zuboff says the program, called Cultural Warriors, has been in development for a few years, and it’s not about recreating the past. Zuboff says it’s about creating a future for young men aged 16 to 22. 

“We want them to succeed in life, because we’re losing a lot of young men today with other things that are holding them back,” he said.

Cultural Warriors will be available beginning this summer in Sitka, Angoon, Haines, Hoonah, Hydaburg, Juneau, Kake, and Klukwan. Uncles have already stepped forward in each of those communities. 

Robert Miller is the uncle in Sitka.

“It’s not a job,” said Miller, “It’s just being a good person and trying to help people. That’s how I look at it. I had some experiences that, if I can help other young men avoid,that would feel like a big win.”

Miller is well known in Sitka as a seal and sea otter hunter, who tans and sews hides. But  he’s adept in deer hunting and fishing, too, and just about every other facet of surviving and thriving in Southeast Alaska. Sealaska Heritage did not have to work very hard to persuade him to lend a hand to help the region’s young men.

“I think I’m just going to  try to pour my heart and soul into it and try to show them a path that maybe they weren’t going down before,” he said.

Sealaska Heritage is hoping for eight applicants for the two open slots in each town. Again, the age range is 16 to 22, and applicants do not have to be Lingit, or even Alaska Native.

Joe Zuboff says the model is flexible, and can be tailored to the goals of the applicant. 

“We’re just looking for those men that aren’t sure what they want to do yet,” he said, “and while they’re waiting to figure out what they want to do, we want to get them out there learning how to hunt and fish and preserve the food and feed their elders and their parents – and live life.”

Robert Miller recently retired from the Forest Service, where he spent considerable time in the field on all types of projects, often supervising an inexperienced, seasonal workforce. He’s seen what happens when a young person begins to gain competency in the outdoors, and he’s eager to help his two “nephews” succeed.

“My biggest reward is not finishing the million-dollar fish pass in the middle of nowhere with a crew,” said Miller. “The big reward at the end is that the crew can now go on in life with these skills they’ve learned: about how to work hard and how to work as a team and all that stuff. So it’s a pretty important thing.”

Cultural Warriors pays a stipend to successful applicants, and also pays an incentive to those who stay in. The program also fully equips participants with all the gear needed to keep up with someone like Robert Miller, which they can keep on the completion of the program.

The post ‘Cultural Warriors’ is a new mentoring program based on a traditional model appeared first on KCAW.

The Sitka Sound Science Center has five students visiting this month from Windesheim University in the Netherlands. While in Sitka, they are developing a plan to assess and develop regenerative tourism at the Sitka Sound Science Center. Students Jana Feller, Kes Kolsteeg, and Anastasia van der Lende joined KCAW’s Brooke Schafer to discuss their program and what they’ve learned from their time so far in Sitka. Listen to the full interview here:

The post Visiting students study regenerative tourism in Sitka appeared first on KCAW.