Memorable moments on the tundra

MATT NEVALA

December 31, 2008 at 10:29AM AKST

Residents of Bethel and the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta witnessed their share of change in 2008 when it came to political leaders.

Bethel welcomed a new, 24-year-old mayor. District 38 voters selected a new state representative and the entire state voted to send a new senator to Washington, D.C.

Outside of politics, Y-K Delta newsmakers were many. An Aniak woman moved to the news anchor desk at one of Anchorage’s television stations. The Kuskokwim 300 sled dog race survived some rough offseason terrain as the 30th edition of the race approaches. And a collection of students in the area celebrated 50 years of Alaska’s statehood in “tundra style.”

And that’s just scratching the tundra’s surface.

The staff at the Tundra Drums and Alaska Newspapers Inc. did its best to bring the region’s stories to life in the pages of the newspaper and online at www.thetundradrums.com. Below is a collection of some of the memorable Drums stories of 2008.

Visit our Web site to read the stories in their entirety — look at them as a refresher of what the year was all about.

Nelson decides to step down
State Rep. Mary Nelson joined her colleagues in the Legislature when it convened for the 25th session in January. It was the representative’s fifth session in Juneau. It also would be her last.
Nelson joined the Alaska Legislature in 1998 after ousting veteran Rep. Ivan Ivan in the Democratic primary as a 24-year-old political outsider. Then known as Mary Sattler, she knew the halls of the Alaska State House only as a first-year legislative aide.
By her fifth session, she led the Bush Caucus and served on the influential House Finance Committee. Her five sessions in the House earned her some clout, and she said it was difficult to relinquish that tenure at a time when her popularity in the district remains strong. There’s a value in “continuity of service,” she said.
But Nelson’s loyalties reached beyond District 38, which includes Bethel and a broad swath of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.
She is a mother of three. A fourth child arrived March. Her husband, Joe Nelson, has a satisfying career as admissions director at the University of Alaska Southeast in Juneau.
With loyalties split between a young family in Juneau and her duties as a legislator representing Bethel and the region, the line between career and family duties was stretched too tight, she said.
After conversations with her husband, Nelson said she decided not to seek re-election near the end of the last legislative session. The family will live in Juneau, where she expects to remain engaged in the public process.
Her time in the Legislature spanned the Federal Bureau of Investigations probe of corruption in Alaska politics. The probe implicated several colleagues and tarnished the Legislature’s image.
“That has been very disappointing. That has definitely contributed to my desire to not run again,” she said.
Former Bethel city manager Bob Herron was voted in to replace Nelson.

Council moves to fire city attorney
Bethel City Council members who voted to fire the city attorney in February said they wouldn’t reverse their decision despite mounting public outcry criticizing the impromptu move.
In a Feb. 8 special meeting most expected to be a routine performance review, four council members voted to fire city attorney Sharon Sigmon in what some called the “cocktail-hour massacre.”
Most of the dozens of residents who overflowed the gallery of the council chambers at a Feb. 12 meeting seemed to support Sigmon. But characterizing its critics as “way wrong,” council member Willy Keppel said the four-person majority vote would stand.
“That’s not changing my mind or anyone else’s. If anything, it probably just solidified the rest of us,” Keppel said. “We’re just going to keep asking questions. This is Bethel’s version of Rome burning.”

Kuskokwim 300 stays in the running
Significant cost-cutting measures, a few new revenue generators and continued support from sponsors have allowed the Kuskokwim 300 race committee to project a full $100,000 purse for the 30th running of the famed mid-distance sled dog race in Bethel.
Officials announced Dec. 2 the K300 purse and traditional purses of $25,000 and $10,000 respectively for the smaller Bogus Creek 150 and Akiak Dash races.
The three races are set to start Jan. 16.
“For me, it’s a real happy day,” K300 race chairman Myron Angstman said. “I felt for a long time that we were going to make it. (The funds) started adding up quicker than normal in the summer, partially because we had (fewer) expenses.”
The $100,000 purse is considered mushing’s third largest, behind only the Iditarod and Yukon Quest sled dog races.
The K300’s tumultuous offseason was well documented. Former race manager Staci Gillilan was fired in March and then arrested and charged in May with allegedly stealing money from the race, an Iditarod qualifier that runs from Bethel to Aniak and back.
Financial fallout from the Gillilan case left some to wonder about the K300’s health. But race officials made necessary changes — selling the company truck, canceling race insurance and working as more of a volunteer organization — to keep moving along.

Pioneers of Yup’ik immersion graduate
When a sandy-haired, fair-skinned teenager gave a greeting speech at Bethel Regional High School’s graduation ceremony in May, tears streamed down Agatha John-Shields’ cheeks.
It wasn’t just what Daniel Updegrove said.
It was the fact that the white science and math whiz — who tied with another student for the second-highest academic rank in his graduating class — spoke in perfect Yup’ik.
For John-Shields and others fighting to save the language of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, Updegrove’s few minutes on stage helped justify an immersion program that remains controversial years after its creation.
“Hearing that was like taking a big backpack off our shoulders and saying this was the product we created,” said John-Shields, principal of the Ayaprun Elitnaurvik Yup’ik immersion elementary school.
Updegrove, 19, was one of 16 pioneer students to complete the school in 2002. He was it’s only non-Native at the time. The Yup’ik-speaking students were sixth-graders heading into standard, English-taught classes in junior high.

24-year-old Zulkosky named mayor
Tiffany Zulkosky’s budding political career got on the fast track after she was voted to the Bethel City Council at age 23.
A year later she was appointed mayor.
At 24, Zulkosky is one of the youngest mayors in the country and the youngest member of the seven-member City Council. But don’t let her age fool you — she carries herself like a political veteran, which is why the council appointed her mayor in a resounding 6-1 vote.
“She’s vibrant. She’s intelligent. She’s very assertive,” said fellow Councilman Dan Leinberger. “Quite frankly, she’s what this community needs right now as the face of Bethel moving forward.”
Zulkosky was floored upon hearing the news that she had been picked in late October to replace Eric Middlebrook for the standard one-year term. She had just started her second year of a three-year council term, so for her peers to vote her in charge was quite a tribute.
“It wasn’t something I was really anticipating,” she said. “I was very excited and honored that they wanted me as their mayor.”
Unlike traditional elections, the residents in Bethel vote for the City Council and the council appoints a mayor. But Zulkosky was quick to point out that being mayor doesn’t mean she’s running the show.

The Aniak Anchor
When Aniak’s Andrea Gusty looks squarely into the television camera and tells her stories, she delights in knowing Alaska Natives like her are watching and taking pride in the work.
More important, the reporter and anchor at KTVA-Channel 11, Anchorage’s CBS affiliate, wants Alaskans of any and all cultures to view the images, listen to the words and learn something they may not have known before.
“It’s definitely something I’ve tried to do,” said Gusty. “Anytime I can go to my managers and say this story is important to rural Alaska, I do. I want to be able to kind of educate urban Alaska. People who have lived (in Anchorage) their whole life don’t really know how people live out in the Bush.”
Gusty, a 2001 graduate of Aniak High, grew up catching salmon, hunting caribou and moose and picking berries from the tundra. She lived every bit of the lifestyle nurtured by her Yup’ik and Athabascan ancestors and relishes it.
In June, after nearly 2-1/2 years working as a KTVA reporter, she made Alaska broadcasting history. Gusty took over as KTVA’s weekend news anchor, and it’s believed she became the second Alaska Native woman to fill an Anchorage anchor’s chair and the first since Bettles’ Shannon McConnell, now executive director of the Doyon Foundation, anchored the KIMO-Channel 13 news in the early 1980s.
“I’m scared, anytime one has change, it’s a little nerve-wracking,” Gusty said. “But one of the great things about the weekend position is it’s only two days. I’ll still be doing what I love the other three days.
“All I’ve ever wanted is to tell stories.”

Hoffman, Albertson, Klejka win
Three City Council candidates rode a wave of voter discontent to October victory in Bethel’s municipal election.
Bev Hoffman, LaMont Albertson and Joe Klejka have at least one thing in common. They all want to clean up what they say is the council’s dysfunctional leadership.
They’ll get that chance.
Hoffman, a volunteer coordinator at Mikelnguut Elitnaurviat primary school, won handily, receiving 619 votes. LaMont Albertson, head of the Yute Elitnaurviat job training center, received 431 votes. Joe Klejka, the medical director at the regional hospital, received 326 votes.
The three were sworn in Oct. 14.

Limousine rolls through Bethel
A remote Alaska town without a bar, clothing store or even a road out just got its first limousine.
The gleaming stretch Cadillac with polished chrome hubcaps and mahogany paneling stands out like a gold tooth in Bethel, where beat-up trucks roil up clouds of dust on only 20 miles of road and tight booze restrictions means there’s little night life.
But James Pak, a former Bethel cab driver, thinks he can make money because people are eager to live the high life, even it comes in one-hour, $110 increments.
“They want to feel like royal family,” Pak said in his thick Korean accent.
An L.A. jewelry distributor in a past life, Pak opened his doors for business in mid-September, throwing on shiny duds to drive around clients. He bought the gray 2003 limo from a cosmetic surgeon in L.A., he said. It cost more than $100,000, including $5,000 to ship it to Bethel by barge this summer.
“First time limo in Bethel,” said Pak proudly. 
The limousine might be the only one in Western Alaska, said Mark Springer, chair of Bethel’s transportation and public safety commission.

Celebrating statehood ‘Tundra Style’
Through the creativity of the arts — activities such as singing, dancing, acting or painting — students in the Lower Kuskokwim School District will embark on an educational adventure to celebrate Alaska’s 50 years of statehood and learn about their region and the people in it, past and present.
“Students Celebrating Statehood: Tundra Style/Yupiulleg Nutemllarmek” is the name of the LKSD project spearheaded by Bev Williams, the district’s Literacy Through the Arts Project director.
“Tundra Style” was awarded a $70,000 Alaska Statehood Experience grant from the Alaska Humanities Forum and the Rasmuson Foundation.
“We’ve been seeing some real growth (from the students) as little performers,” Williams said. “With this grant, we have the opportunity to look at statehood and reflect on it from over the last 50 years.
“We’re going to have the students look at contributions (to the state) from a Yup’ik perspective.”
The “Tundra Style” project is one of 28 the Alaska Humanities Forum and the Rasmuson Foundation gave $921,284 to explore the history of Alaska statehood.
Williams said LKSD students from 10 targeted schools — Akiuk, Atmautluak, Ayaprun Elitnaurvik, Eek, Goodnews Bay, Kwigillingok, Mikelnguut Elitnaurvik, Napaskiak, Newtok and Tununak — would participate

Matt Nevala can be reached at 907-348-2480 or 800-770-9830, ext. 480.

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