Journalism class puts focus on rural AK

Three University of Alaska Anchorage journalism students who are taking a class on rural reporting stopped by the ADN office last week, and I've been meaning to post links to some their work for Alaska Newspapers Inc. ever since:

Check it out:

-- Bethel's police chief is doing more with less
By Logan Tuttle

-- Native artist's poster wins national contest
By Melissa Driggers

-- Program puts students in leadership roles
By Suzanna Caldwell

The group would love to get out and cover stories first-hand in the villages but don't have the money for travel, said Professor Paola Banchero. They did stop by Chickaloon, home to a federally recognized tribe in the Mat-su. Here's their story, after the jump:

By Logan Tuttle, Melissa Driggers and Paola Banchero

Last week, three students in a journalism class at UAA went to visit the Chickaloon village outside of Sutton. The students are enrolled in a class in which they are learning how to report about rural Alaska from Anchorage.

Chickaloon village executive director Jennifer Harrison led the group on a more than two-hour tour of the village’s several enterprises. The students started at the village’s greenhouse, which is used to grow produce for members of the Athna Athabascan community.

“As a student reporting on rural issues, a trip to the village of Chickaloon on the Glenn Highway was a vastly informative experience. It helped to put things into perspective for an urban person,” said student Melissa Driggers, a graduating Journalism and Public Communications student. “One of the first things that caught my attention was the fact that a lot of Chickaloon’s businesses aren’t actually in Chickaloon, but in or around Sutton.”

The students also visited with Angela Wade, environmental resources director for the village. Wade explained the salmon hatchery that the village has started. Instead of keeping the salmon eggs submerged in water, they are constantly misted, which is all they actually need to grow. This helps to keep any fungus-infected eggs from ruining the whole batch of eggs. The village is hoping that it can increase the number of king salmon in Moose Creek, a tributary of the Matanuska River.

As Wade explained, Chickaloon used to support a lot of Athna Athabascans through its salmon run. But it can’t do that now.

“The State of Alaska does not allow anybody to fish for salmon in the Matanuska River and its tributaries, because of the low runs,” Harrison said later by e-mail. “This is why our restoration projects are so important.”

Next on the tour was a visit to the village’s community center, where it also has a small health clinic.

“What caught my eye was everything the village does for the community. Every Thursday is the Elders’ lunch, which is open to everyone around the area,” said senior Logan Tuttle. The village also shows a movie—often a foreign movie— once a month.

The village has greater ambitions than its small community center. For one thing, it’s planning to expand the building to put in a commercial kitchen and make other improvements. Having a commercial kitchen would allow village members to lease the space for a couple of hours each week to make goods that could be sold as retail items in the area.

The village, which employs about 35 people, also wants to broaden the mission of its health clinic.

“The health clinic that we are planning to open as a community health clinic, if we are successful in receiving an appropriation from Congress, will be paid for with funding from the appropriation and our existing contracts with Indian Health Service, Southcentral Foundation, and Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium,” Harrison said. The plan is for the appropriation to pay for a nurse practitioner for the first year. A nurse practitioner on staff would allow the village to bill insurance companies. Plus, the nurse practitioner could prescribe medicine. There isn’t such a clinic between Palmer and Glenallen.

“Community health clinics charge patients on a sliding fee basis,” Harrison said, “so it is our hope that we will earn enough in the first year to keep it open and sustainable on its own income.”

The village is also in the business of building low-income housing. Chickaloon builds the units with funding from U.S. Housing and Urban Development and program income from charging rent. The village is able to build about one unit each year.

The village has a contract with the Federal Highway Administration to build roads. Next year, the village plans to build a road around its low-income housing property to improve access to the existing houses and provide access to new houses.

“We can build roads wherever the tribe and the communities think are important,” Harrison said. “We have been focusing on our housing units, because the road was so terrible in the past.” In the future, the village is interested in building a road near Wolverine Creek. The village is working with the Matanuska-Susitna Borough and the Butte Community Council to determine the exact location. It will provide access to the tribe’s hay fields, and the borough wants to develop some recreational areas around the lake.

The last stop on the tour was the Ya Ne Dah Ah School, a one-room schoolhouse in operation since 1992. It has about 12 students right now. Because it was picture day, only two pupils were there to greet the UAA students. But they treated the students to a song in Athna Athabascan, which is part of the curriculum there.

“Getting to see their school was probably my favorite part of the trip,” Driggers said. “Their school may not be big or filled with hundreds of students, but it means a lot to Chickaloon. It seemed like a really great environment to learn in. There were pictures all over the walls, calendars in English and Ahtna, and areas where the younger kids could play. I think it gives the kids of Chickaloon a great sense of belonging to their community.”