Well now Donald Trump's ignorance about climate change is directly impacting Alaska.

Courtesy of The Guardian:

The Trump administration has moved to dismantle climate adaptation programs including the Denali Commission, an Anchorage-based agency that is crafting a plan to safeguard or relocate dozens of towns at risk from rising sea levels, storms and the winnowing away of sea ice. 

Federal assistance for these towns has been ponderous but could now grind to a halt, with even those working on the issue seemingly targeted by the administration. In July, Joel Clement, an interior department official who worked with Alaskan communities on climate adaptation, claimed he had been moved to a completely unrelated position because of the administration’s ideological hostility to the issue. 

“We were getting down to the brass tacks of relocation [of towns at risk] and now work has just stopped,” Clement told the Guardian. He has lodged an official complaint over his reassignment.

“Without federal coordination from Washington DC, there isn’t much hope. This will take millions of dollars and will take years, and these people don’t have years. I think it’s clear I was moved because of my climate work. It feels like a complete abdication of responsibility on climate change.” 

According to the Army Corps of Engineers, 31 Alaskan communities face “imminent” existential threats from coastline erosion, flooding and other consequences of temperatures that are rising twice as quickly in the state as the global average. A handful – Kivalina, Newtok, Shishmaref and Shaktoolik – are considered in particularly perilous positions and will need to be moved. 

“It was clear from the start of the Trump administration that there was no interest in helping Alaskan communities, particularly coastal communities, adapt to climate change,” said Victoria Hermann, president of the Arctic Institute. 

“There’s now no liaison from Washington on the issue. The biggest loss has been momentum. It feels like the Obama administration was kickstarting something useful but now it has dropped dead.”

It should be noted that Alaska natives overwhelmingly voted for Hillary Clinton, and in an unusual move even endorsed her during the 2016 campaign.

They knew what the danger was in electing Donald Trump, and they feared what he would do to the country and how it could negatively impact their lives.

And they were right to fear.

These villages are in a very dire situation, and without government help they may lose the home they and their ancestors have inhabited for literally thousands of years.

The Denali Commission in Anchorage is working right now to raise funds and help them, but as it turns out they are also targeted for elimination by the Trump Administration.

When President Obama came here in 2015 he saw the problems facing our native communities and he implemented plans to help them.

If Hillary Clinton had won this election you can bet she would have kept those promises made by her predecessor.

Donald Trump on the other hand wants to literally undo EVERYTHING President Obama set in motion to help this planet and her people.

Like I said, the Alaska natives knew. Too bad so many failed to listen.

The "skinny" version of Trumpcare failed last night.

Here's the moment the Skinny Repeal failed. pic.twitter.com/y6kiT2HzC5

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 28, 2017

Courtesy of NPR: 

In a moment of unexpected high drama, Republicans were stymied once again in their effort to repeal Obamacare — and they have John McCain to thank for it. 

The senator who earned the nickname "Maverick" over his long tenure showed why in the early morning hours Friday. 

McCain, who was diagnosed with brain cancer and returned to Washington to advance the health care bill, turned around and bucked his party's leadership — and President Trump — by joining two moderate Republicans and every Democrat in voting against the so-called "skinny repeal" of the Affordable Care Act.

Personally I am in no way ready to throw a parade in McCain's honor.

This is clearly the right thing to do, and the fact that he was one of only three Republicans to do it should shame the GOP into hiding under their beds.

However as we know Republicans don't feel shame.

Having said that I am going to give another shout out to Lisa Murkowski who kept her promise to the Alaska natives who helped her hang on to her Senate seat when the Republican party abandoned her.

Losing Obamacare would have been devastating for them, and she stood by them as they stood by her.

So I think this thing is really dead dead now.

There are now calls from some on the GOP side to start working with the Democrats to move forward and repair Obamacare so that it works better.

And I think that is really the best we can hope for at this point.

Sarah Palin denies that she is a racist. Then attempts to prove it by attacking BLM and President Obama.

The Palin family playing "Eskimo Bingo."

From the depths of the dark web where only fools dare to tread: 

Todd is an Alaskan native and part Eskimo; my kids’ Yupik Eskimo heritage is a badge of honor, not a chip on their shoulder. (Eskimo?)

You’ll not see my kids falsely charging someone with racism just because they disagree with an opinion. (No they just call them "faggot.")

But liberals slap that racist label on me – and any other conservative – simply to stop debate on any issue. What a tactic! It immediately puts you on the defensive. 

Racial tensions are mounting, and Americans are being divided. We don’t have “whites only” water fountains or “separate but equal” schools anymore, but, ironically, race relations in this country seemed to take a giant step backward under the presidency of Barack Obama. (Yes, because of the racists who came out of the woodwork in response to his candidacy. You know, that same ones that showed up at the McCain/Palin rallies.)

Slogans proclaiming “black lives matter” have clouded the truth that all lives matter. And, to show how crazy things are, both a college president and a Democrat politician have actually apologized for saying that “all lives matter,” as if that were somehow wrong. (They missed the point, as does Palin.)

But the fact is, we’re all created in God’s image. (The white Anglo-Saxon god that was inflicted on the native people in Alaska by the missionaries who punished them for speaking their own language and forcibly changed their names to ones plucked from the Bible? Does she mean THAT god?)


Not to nitpick, but I have known dozens and dozens of Alaska natives in my life, and not one of them ever called themselves an "Eskimo." 

As for Palin being a racist well she was quoted as saying she would not hire any blacks when she became governor, did nothing to help the people of Emmonak despite public outrage, and during her 2008 campaign rallies whipped the racists into a frenzy by constantly attacking Barack Obama as "the other."

I would argue that Palin actually planted the racist seeds in 2008 that Donald Trump harvested to become president in 2016.

So is Sarah Palin a racist?

Is water wet?

Photographer travels to Alaska to photograph polar bears in their natural habitat. What she finds shocks her.

Courtesy of HuffPo: 

Photographer Patty Waymire traveled to Alaska’s Barter Island from late September to early October with an express purpose: To take pictures of polar bears in their natural environment, surrounded by picturesque snow. 

But there was no snow to be found. 

“I was surprised when I arrived, to find there was no snow nor was the sea ice forming yet,” Waymire told The Huffington Post. “The locals told me that it was an unusually warm winter and that the snow would be late in arriving. It is one of the warmest winters on record.” 

So instead, she photographed the bears on patches of sand and dirt, or swimming in the Beaufort Sea.

I say this all of the time so pardon me for being redundant, but nobody living in Alaska has the luxury of denying the existence of global warming.

And to be fair it was not the scientists who were beating the drums about climate change up here, it was the native Alaskans.

They saw it before anybody, and they tried to tell people, but nobody seemed to want to listen until it was too late.

(P.S. You can visit the website for his wonderful photographer by clicking here.)

For the first time in its history the Alaska Federation of Natives has endorsed a presidential candidate. And it's Hillary Clinton.

Hey Alaska!

Courtesy of KTUU: 

For the first time since its formation in 1966, the Alaska Federation of Natives has officially endorsed a U.S. presidential candidate. 

As the organization gears up for its annual convention in Fairbanks, AFN announced on Wednesday morning that the Board had adopted a resolution endorsing Hillary Clinton for president. 

In a press release explaining the decision, AFN said that Clinton’s priorities closely reflected those of native Alaskan communities, so much so that the board was “compelled to break tradition.” 

“AFN and many of our members have long held policies of non-endorsement when it comes to presidential elections, and some Board members abstained because they needed further internal discussions with their groups,” AFN said in the statement. “Overall the AFN Board voted decisively to endorse Hillary Clinton as the best choice for President of the United States.

Holy crap my heart is beating so hard in my chest that I can barely hear myself think.

Now of course this in no way means that ALL native Alaskans will vote for Hillary, nor that the state is about to go blue, but it IS a very big deal.

The native vote is how Lisa Murkowski managed to win the Senate as a write in candidate back in 2010, and they are a voting block with some real influence.

Just let me forewarn you that if Alaska ends up voting for the Democrat for the first time in over 40 years I am going to be impossible to live with.

I will be running around my house screaming, and every post on here for the first day will be some version of "How do you like me now?"

And of course I will also feel compelled to reach out and thank Sarah Palin for helping to destroy the Republican party and turn my state blue for the first time since 1964.

I'm thinking flowers and a nice card. 

Yes, I would be THAT excited.

The citizens in the Alaska community of Barrow have decided to return to their traditional roots and change the name of their town to something you will never be able to pronounce.

Courtesy of Yahoo: 

A slight majority of voters in the largely Inupiat city of Barrow approved efforts to change the community's name to Utqiagvik (oot-GHAR-vik) in their local election Oct. 4. The vote was tight, with 381 in favor of the name change and 375 against it. 

"Basically, it reinforces the cultural identity of the people," said Mayor Bob Harcharek, who is not Native. He noted that early day missionaries set up schools in the area where students were forbidden to speak in their native language and were punished if they did so. "It caused some social psychological problems." 

Barrow City Council member Qaiyaan Harcharek, the mayor's son, introduced a local ordinance in August that began the process ratified by voters. The younger Harcharek is Inupiat on his mother's side. 

"We are now in an era where the reclamation of tradition is critical to the perpetuation of identity as Iñupiat," he wrote in an email Friday to The Associated Press. "The people of Utqiagvik voted to regain our traditional name. Hopefully, it signifies the beginning of a decolonizing revolution. Regaining our traditional names is just one step towards that healing!"

As you can imagine this decision is not going over well with folks who run businesses with the name "Barrow" over the top, nor with many of the non-native residents.

However it is hard to blame the people of Utqiagvik for wanting to get back some of the heritage that was beaten out of them by the early missionaries.

As I have shared before what happened to the native children in Alaska was horrific and essentially constituted the wholesale destruction of an entire culture.

The children were torn from their families, and sometimes sent as far away as Arizona, to be "properly" educated in the ways the white man.

As a result many of the children returned to Alaska villages unable to speak the language, knowing nothing about how to survive in one of the most inhospitable places on the planet, and stripped of any sense of self worth.

Alcoholism and drug use became an epidemic, and many of these villages still have no recovered.

So yeah, Utqiagvik (oot-GHAR-vik) is hard as hell to pronounce. But tough shit, learning to do so is really the very least we can do to show respect for a people who have managed to survive frigid temperatures, famine, pestilence, and of worst of all, the arrival of the Christians.

Nancy French, channeling Bristol Palin, decides to speak for all indigenous native people living in the Arctic. No, seriously! Update!

So the image up above is of Kylie Jenner, you know one of the Kardashian family members, in her Halloween costume.

She called it her "Eskimo costume" and there was some backlash on social media.

It's not really any big deal to most people, but some people just like to get upset.

However Nancy French saw this as an opportunity to use Bristol's essentially non-relevant, barely  measurable, native heritage to weigh in on the topic in the hopes of getting some attention NOT focused on trying to figure out just who knocked Bristol up most recently.

Here is what she said: 

Well, as a person born and raised in Alaska (born on Alaska Day, no less) who is also part Yup’ik, let me say this. 

I’m not offended! 

In fact, I’m flattered that you think Eskimos looks this chic.

First off to be fair NO Alaska native woman that I am aware of has ever dressed like that.  Ever!

If Jenner were really interested in authenticity she would have dressed more like this.

But of course she was looking for attention, not heat stroke. And that's fine.

What is NOT fine is for Nancy French, a woman with absolutely no native Alaskan heritage to hide behind, to instead use this vacuous simpleton as a vehicle for expressing opinions that have absolutely NO relevance.

For one thing while it might be true that Alaska natives may not find Kylie Jenner's costume offensive, that is really for THEM to decide.

As for the word "Eskimo" that is a non-Alaskan native word that native Alaskans have been saddled with for over a hundred years now. It is NOT typically considered politically correct to refer to our indigenous population using that term.

Which is something that Bristol Palin SHOULD know, but since her mother still brags about "Eskimo Bingo" probably doesn't care to acknowledge.

However once again pasty white Nancy French is NOT an Alaskan native, so she really has no dog in this fight and therefore no opinion worthy of discussion.

Which also brings up the point that even if this were a post written by Bristol Palin (In crayon most likely.) it still would not have any validity because the native people of Canada and Greenland, who have also been derisively referred to as "Eskimo," most certainly DO have a problem with the word.

In short French just decided to not take offense on behalf of not just the Alaska native population, but also the indigenous people of the entire Arctic region. 

Update: Now Nancy is linking to the article as Sarah, that she wrote as Bristol. 

I wonder if this lunatic even knows who she really is anymore?

President Obama on his Alaska trip, "I've got to come back here once I'm done being President."

You have not seen the last of me Alaska.

Okay so I don't want any credit for being clairvoyant or anything but I predicted yesterday that Alaska was going to get under Obama's skin, and it seems that it has done exactly that:

Right off the bat, I’ll note that I’ve got to come back here once I’m done being President. 

You just can’t see Alaska in three days. 

Well that's the understatement of the year.

Look I know that for many of the people in the lower forty eight Alaska's reputation has been forever besmirched by Sarah Palin. (Why do you think we all worked so hard to distance ourselves from her?)

But Alaska is truly a unique place, whose beauty transcends ideology or political differences.

Sure we have perhaps more than our fair share of lunatics and stupid people, but this is a VERY big state. Fd you don't want to see them, trust me you won't see them.

But if instead you want to meet the nicest, most giving people anywhere, well you really cannot avoid meeting them.

Because they are everywhere.

And the scenery?

Yeah, well you would be hard pressed top beat our scenery.

So of course President Obama is coming back. How could he not?

And just like he will not be able to forget us, we also will not be able to forget him.

Sadly for him however the portion of his trip that will be forever ingrained in our memories is the time the fish jizzed on his boots.

Because THAT was too damn funny!

President Obama just renamed Alaska's tallest mountain.

Courtesy of ABC News:  

President Obama has changed the name of Alaska's Mt. McKinley to Denali, the White House announced Sunday, a day before the president is set to visit the state. 

"Denali" is the Alaskan Native name for the mountain, which is North America's tallest - and a site of cultural significance to Alaska's native population. 

U.S. Interior Secretary Sally Jewell signed the order renaming the mountain on Friday. Obama will officially rename the peak in Anchorage tomorrow, where he will kick off his presidential visit to the 49th state. 

The name change follows a longstanding effort to re-designate the mountain by its Athabascan name. In 1975 Alaska's governor formally requested that the secretary of the interior work to change the name, following a resolution from the Alaska State Legislature. 

"For centuries, Alaskans have known this majestic mountain as the 'Great One.' Today we are honored to be able to officially recognize the mountain as Denali," Sen. Lisa Murkowski, R-Alaska, wrote in a statement thanking the president.

Well I'm glad to see that Lisa Murkowski is supporting the name change, because true Alaskans have been  arguing for it for decades.

Denali was renamed Mt. McKinley by some white gold prospector and that became the official name back in 1917. And it has been pissing off the Alaska natives ever since.

The name Denali means "the great one" and if you have ever seen it you know that is the name it deserves.

Look, President Obama is already doing great things for Alaska, and he has not even landed here yet. One can only imagine how much he will accomplish in the three days that he is scheduled to be here.

Update: Oh and by the way fuck Ohio. That's right, I said it!

The USDA plans to bring indoor plumbing to Alaska villages. Yeah, kind of a big deal.

Alaska honey bucket. No, there is nothing sweet about this.

Courtesy of ABC News:

A remote Alaska Native village where only half the homes have indoor plumbing is among rural communities nationwide that will receive upgrades to rural water and wastewater systems with $352 million in grants and loans from the U.S. Department of Agriculture. 

Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack is scheduled to announce the funding Thursday at a convention of Alaska Natives in Anchorage. 

In a telephone interview Tuesday, Vilsack told The Associated Press that ultimately, the future goal is to bring the entire nation into the modern world. 

"It's really designed to make sure people live in communities and in areas that provide the basic protections and the guarantee of basic protections that we all, as Americans, ought to have," he said. "It's an adequate supply of quality water. It's the ability to treat sewage properly so that it doesn't to harm or damage to the environment."

This may seem almost impossible to believe for those living in the lower 48, and actually those of us in Alaska cities often forget about ti as well, but there are thousands of residents who have to carry their own waste to a dump site for disposal, rather than simply pulling a lever like most people in the modern world.

Not too long ago I worked with a client from a very small village in Western Alaska who had never been out of his community before.

He was taken from his village after an incident and transported to a mental health facility in Anchorage. It was the first time he had flown on a plane, or ridden in a car, but those two things did not freak him out as much as indoor plumbing did.

After check in one of the doctors noticed that he was hopping around and realized that boy, who did not yet speak hardly any English, had to use the facilities.

He was taken into a room, which completely confused him as his family went out of doors to relieve themselves, and was encourage by male staff to pee into the toilet bowl.

Finally unable to hold it, he did just that. However when the toilet was flushed he became terrified and ran out of the room and almost out the front door of the building in terror.

So yes, this would be an incredibly huge deal for rural Alaskans.

Oh and by the way. These are the kinds of things that happen under Democratic administrations. And the kinds of things facilitated by Democratic Senators.

Rape Culture in Alaska

The Atlantic has a long and incredibly detailed report of rape and sexual assault in Alaska that will literally depress the hell out of you.

However I think it is an important article and I urge all of you to read it.

Here are a few of the lowlights:  

In its short history as a state, Alaska has earned an unnerving epithet: It is the rape capital of the U.S. At nearly 80 rapes per 100,000, according to the FBI Uniform Crime Report, Alaska’s rape rate is almost three times the national average; for child sexual assault, it’s nearly six times. And, according to the 2010 Alaska Victimization Survey, the most comprehensive data to date, 59 percent of Alaskan women have been victims of sexual assault, intimate partner violence, or both. 

But those numbers, say researchers, just skim the surface. Since sex crimes are generally underreported, and may be particularly underreported in Alaska for cultural reasons. “Those numbers are conservative,” says Ann Rausch, a program coordinator at Alaska’s Council on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault. “They’re still staggering.” 

The causes of the violence are complex and entrenched. Government officials, law enforcement personnel, and victim advocates note the state’s surfeit of risk factors, from an abundance of male-dominated industries, like oil drilling and the military, to the state’s vast geography, with many communities that have no roads and little law enforcement. “There are so many factors that tip the scale for Alaska,” says Linda Chamberlain, executive director of the Alaska Family Violence Prevention Project. Not the least among them: the lack strong law enforcement presence, or support services of any kind, in remote towns like Tanana. “It’s easier for perpetrators to isolate their victims and not get caught. And for people not to get help.”

The reason that so many sexual assaults are not reported is also fairly unique to Alaska:

While few victims deny that sexual assault and domestic violence should be punishable crimes, the public shaming of an elder or father or brother is a big deal in a village where everyone is related—either by blood, or by a lifelong relationship just as binding. “Everybody knows who’s doing what,” Erickson told me. “It’s common river knowledge. Who’s the molester. Who’s the abuser.” But families struggle to protect one another and their lives going forward, knowing that anyone they offend will be at the post office the next day, and the day after, and the day after that. Winters are long, brutal, and dark, and in a tight-knit, tiny community, connected to most of its income, medical care, and law enforcement only by airplane, conflicts often simmer in silence. Flights aren’t cheap; when tensions build, there’s no place to go. 

For that reason, family members often blame the victims, or the friends of victims, who attempt to report a crime, out of fear of losing material support, or a vital link in a precarious web of familial structure. When a young man from Tanana was accused of sexually abusing several village children a few years ago, some of his relatives verbally attacked the woman who turned him in, saying, “Shame on you. He had his whole life in front of him and you’re going to ruin it.” 

The cold hard facts are that men are more highly regarded in native villages than are women, who even today are seen as second class citizens, and less deserving of support then the men who hunt and fish for food to feed the village or work to bring money home to the local economy.

That's why, as I pointed out earlier, Sean Parnell's "Choose Respect"  is of no real value.

This problem is deeply ingrained in parts of Alaska society, and the ONLY thing that will make a significant difference is to spend a significant amount of money to create educational programs that will set up shop in these far flung villages, and more law enforcement professionals who are assigned the task of  making sure that predators are punished and victims are protected.

But I can tell you right now that the Republicans up here have no intention of spending money that will not create a return on their investment, and protecting the women who are NOT their own wives and daughters is of little interest to men who see natives as little more than savages, and who could not care less what happens in communities that many of them will never visit.