KNBA News

President-elect Joe Biden has chosen Congresswoman Deb Haaland to be the next secretary of Interior . The New Mexico Democrat is a member of the Pueblo of Laguna tribe. If confirmed by the Senate, she would be the first Indigenous person to serve as a cabinet secretary. Indian Country Today editor Mark Trahant said the news made a big splash in Native communities. “Everyone’s working at home, yet we could still hear the reaction going across the country, so that gives you a pretty good idea,”

Federal managers voted to close a huge swath of Upper Cook Inlet to commercial salmon fishing , capping a two-year fight over the fate of the fishery and its 500 permit-holders. Those fishermen and representatives from the Kenai Peninsula turned out in droves to the North Pacific Fisheries Management Council meeting to oppose the closure and advocate for lighter conservation measures. But when representatives from Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy’s administration said the state was unwilling to manage

Jeff Cook, a longtime Fairbanks business figure and the president of the board of the city’s hospital foundation, heard about a case that shook him. A woman in a rural hub town had COVID-19 and needed to be evacuated, but hospitals in Anchorage and Seattle wouldn’t accept her. She was flown to Fairbanks, where she died without family or support, Cook said. Cook drafted an email to the office of GOP Gov. Mike Dunleavy, pleading for a statewide mask mandate and asking for phone call. When he got

Nome’s Tribal health care provider expects to be receiving the first rounds of a COVID-19 vaccine this week . KNOM reports on how Norton Sound Health Corporation, or NSHC, plans to distribute those initial doses. NSHC plans to follow federal and state guidelines for a vaccine roll-out by targeting their nursing home residents and staff at the Quyanna Care Center when the first doses arrive, according to NSHC medical director Mark Peterson. “Then we’ll just turn that around and start vaccinating

When the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers denied the Pebble Limited Partnership a federal permit to develop a mine under Section 404 of the Clean Water Act, it surprised people on both sides of the issue . “I was ecstatic. I was elated. I was so happy to hear that it was finally over,” said Billy Trefon Jr. from Nondalton, one of the villages closest to where the mine would have been built. To the south, in Iliamna, Lisa Reimers, the CEO of Iliamna Development Corporation, said people feel hopeless.

State biologists have again predicted underperforming king salmon runs in the Taku and Stikine river systems . That means Southeast Alaska’s troll and gillnet fleets can expect restrictions for sockeye and king salmon harvests in areas around Juneau and Wrangell. “We’ll be going along in this same conservation mode that we’ve had,” state area management biologist Dave Harris said. “We’ll probably do very, very similar fisheries management regimes that we have in the last several years.” Both

After two years of construction, the Kivalina Access Road project is now usable by the community. It’s the first step in the process to potentially relocate the entire Northwest Alaska village from the threat of an eroding coast and rising sea levels. Kivalina sits on a barrier island, surrounded by the Chukchi Sea. The area is prone to heavy wind and rainstorms. The protection of sea ice has become less reliable and sea levels have risen with climate change. And so the ocean has chewed into the

A 37-year-old man in Pilot Station died from COVID-19 at the village health clinic before he could be transported to a hospital. Stormy conditions prevented a medevac from reaching him. Joe Xavier’s symptoms began on Nov. 22, according to his sister, Donna Xavier-Fancyboy. Within a day, she said that his skin had changed color from lack of oxygen. “Already blue, and fighting to breathe,” Xavier-Fancyboy said. A former health aide, she said that her brother’s oxygen levels were at 38% when he

The Bethel highway horseshoe may soon become a loop again. The state wants to pave Tundra Ridge Road, also known as Polk Road. That would create a straight shot between the Tundra Ridge Subdivision and the airport, and create a loop around Bethel. After a decades-long process, the state wants to wrap up the acquisition of land for that road and is prepared to use the force of law if necessary. The Alaska Department of Transportation has been working on the Tundra Ridge Road Project since January

The battle over oil drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s coastal plain has dragged on for decades. And now, the Trump administration is close to auctioning off drilling rights for the land in northeast Alaska — potentially just days before President-elect Joe Biden takes office in January. But there’s a big, unanswered question looming over the idea of a sale: To what degree would the industry actually participate? Oil and gas companies aren’t talking publicly about whether they’d