Latest news with #Unangax
Boston Globe
13-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
In Boston's sprawling Triennial exhibition, an Indigenous artist's evocations of cultural extinction haunt
Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up Nicholas Galanin, "Aáni yéi xat duwasáakw (I am called Land)," 2025. Courtesy of the artist and Peter Blum Gallery, New York. (Mel Taing) Mel Taing Advertisement The spectacle, penetrating and unnerving, is the work of — nothing living, at least — wins. Advertisement Galanin, who is Tlingít and Unangax̂, has always worked on broader themes of Indigenous resilience and self-determination in the wake of centuries of colonial exploitation and dominance. Outside, Galanin's work often has a wry, gallows-humor edge, and the laughs are pretty grim. It's hard to argue they should be otherwise. But the future is important to Galanin, and his insistence that there is one is not to be ignored. Nicholas Galanin, "I think it goes like this (pick yourself up)," 2025. (Faith Ninivaggi) Faith Ninivaggi His work in recent years has included the giant text installation 'Never Forget,' Advertisement The inversion, blunt and confrontational, takes stock of shameful history, while projecting, unabashedly, a future goal. The landback movement is real, in motion, and has marked some successes at least north of the border: In Canada, Indigenous land claims have resulted in Nicholas Galanin, "Never Forget," 2021. (Lance Gerber) Lance Gerber Here in Boston, Galanin wades into a particular history with a knowing wink. Northwest Indigenous motifs — the familiar red and black depictions of whales, ravens, bear, turtles, among others, using simple geometric forms — are among the best known and most popular Native American icons in the country, reproduced and sold as tourist trinkets by the million. Land is a commodity too, Galanin knows; as a piece of public art, 'I think it goes like this' nods to an Indigenous resurgence that needs to be more than cultural and aesthetic, but rooted in the earth — a progression that remains too slow, and now hampered by a federal government with different priorities. Since January, the Trump administration has Here in New England, Indigenous tribes — the Wampanoag and Penobscot among them — have endured centuries of colonial rule; through those traumas, recent years have seen their cultures start to thrive again in very public ways. Just around the corner from Galanin's piece on Evans Way, — the kind of institution where, generations past, Indigenous culture was ossified and entombed. With the commission, the museum acknowledges Indigenous culture as not only living, but thriving, and projects it to the world. Advertisement Nicholas Galanin, "I think it goes like this (pick yourself up)," 2025. (Faith Ninivaggi) Faith Ninivaggi That 'The Knowledge Keepers,' and 'I think it goes like this' sit out in open for all to see is significant. They are things you negotiate by simple fact of being in the city, whether by choice or not. 'I think it goes like this,' however, is sly; while 'The Knowledge Keepers' insists on a vibrant Indigenous present, Galanin's piece implies a complicated future of adaptation and reinvention, again and again. Indigenous progress has never been a straight line; in this regressive moment, Galanin reminds us that Indigenous people are well versed in making and remaking, for as long as it takes. Nicholas Galanin: 'Aáni yéi xat duwasáak (I am called Land)' At the MassArt Museum, 621 Huntington Ave, through Nov. 30. 'I think it goes like this (pick yourself up),' a project of the Boston Public Art Triennial. At Evans Way Park, 1 Evans Way, through Oct. 21. Advertisement Murray Whyte can be reached at
Yahoo
14-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Scientists uncover surprising evidence after studying ancient polar bears: 'Skeletal elements'
People have become accustomed to watching documentaries about polar bears, but thousands of years ago, humans started coming in contact with them for the first time. A new study published in Nature showed how a changing climate led polar bears to interact with humans during the Neoglacial period, about 4,700 to 2,500 years ago. It was a time when the planet was cooling, and the glaciers were growing. Scientists said they could not confidently differentiate between polar bears and brown bears, which are hard to tell apart from fossil records because of many similarities, and said they suspected there was a mix of the two bears at the time in the areas studied. Archaeological records show them on the Aleutian Islands in Alaska. The study specifically looked at remains in Margaret Bay and Amaknak Bridge. The study aimed to identify the polar bear's range during the Neoglacial period. It showed that the bears used expanding ice to get to new habitats. They ventured into Unalaska Bay, which was home to the Unangax̂ people. According to Nature, "Based on the mortality profile, cut marks, and skeletal elements present, ancestral Unangax̂ harvested both polar and brown bears locally during the Neoglacial phase." The bears were harvested for their skins and their meat. The paper said further research is needed to understand "bear behavior, habitat requirements, response to changing climate, and how they are hunted and used are dependent on species identification." The planet is yet again faced with a changing climate. Animals are once again migrating to new habitats. According to the World Economic Forum, "over half of all species [are] on the move." The rising temperatures are also "forcing people and wildlife to share increasingly crowded spaces," per the International Fund for Animal Welfare. Do you think we still have a lot to learn from ancient cultures? Definitely Only on certain topics I'm not sure No — not really Click your choice to see results and speak your mind. While humans have hunted for thousands of years, Environment Co. said that if hunting goes unchecked, it can make animals endangered. If it's a predator that's removed, other animals' numbers could dwindle, too. It could even take out animals that are vital for pollination. Biodiversity is essential for humans because, as The Royal Society explained, a healthy ecosystem cannot exist without a wide range of species. The air humans breathe and the food they eat require a healthy ecosystem. Once again, in recent years, humans and polar bears are encountering each other more often. Luckily, scientists are using tracking devices to help keep the bears and tourists safe. These monitors will also help researchers understand their changing behavior in the face of losing their habitats due to rising temperatures. You can help these research projects by donating to environmental causes doing this vital work. Join our free newsletter for good news and useful tips, and don't miss this cool list of easy ways to help yourself while helping the planet.
Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Alaska's 'Nazi Creek,' a legacy of World War II, is set for a name change
Apr. 7—This month, state officials voted unanimously to change the names of a creek and a hill on an Aleutian island in response to proposals arguing they were offensive and arbitrary. The features in question are "Nazi Creek," a mile-long stream, and "Nip Hill," a modest summit — both on the southeastern side of Little Kiska Island, beside the bigger, more prominent Kiska Island 242 miles west of Adak at the far end of the Aleutian chain. The move comes after several years of efforts across the country, including in Alaska, to drop words and names with derogatory connections from maps, buildings and civic institutions. Michael Livingston, who submitted the proposals to formally get rid of the existent names, said "Nazi Creek" is particularly offensive given the history of violence that took place during World War II in the Aleutians. "During World War II, the Unangax̂ people — and millions of others — paid dearly due to the actions of Adolf Hitler's Nazis and their Axis powers," Livingston testified during a meeting last Thursday of the Alaska Historical Commission. "After Pearl Harbor was bombed, Dutch Harbor was bombed and 43 Americans were killed in Alaska. Then 881 Unangax̂ people were forcibly relocated. Forty-two people from Attu Village were taken prisoner of war, where 24 died." According to the United States Geological Survey's database of domestic place names, the only geographic feature with "Nazi" in the name is the Aleutian stream on Little Kiska. The term "Nip," Livingston testified, was a derogatory term for Japanese people that came into use during the second World War. It was a derivation of "Nippon," which is the name for Japan in the Japanese language. Livingston is originally from Cold Bay and is a member of the Qawalangin Tribe of Unalaska. A retired police sergeant, for years he's worked on a number of cartography projects to revise and highlight Unangax̂ history in the U.S. and Alaska. He's also been steadily working to make Alaska maps more accurate. The explanation he's come up with for why a creek and hill on Little Kiska got these names is: expediency. Per the "Dictionary of Alaska Place Names," during World War II the U.S. Army was putting tactical names on geographic features throughout the Aleutians. They did so in grids, and applied an alphabetized naming convention for each square. "Nip" and "Nazi" both started with N. The names were arbitrary, Livingston said in the proposals he submitted, possibly picked by young GIs who had the ongoing war and propaganda front of mind at the time. [The ominous true stories behind Alaska's bloody and brutal place names] His recommendation, adopted 6-0 by the commission, is to give the creek and hill names from Unangam Tunuu, the Indigenous language of the region. Moses Dirks, a member of the Sand Point Village tribe and expert on Unangam Tunuu, recommended renaming the creek "Kaxchim Chiĝanaa" and the hill "Kaxchim Qayaa." The names mean "Gizzard Creek" and "Gizzard Hill" respectively — "Kanchix," or "gizzard," being the traditional name for Little Kiska Island. "A local Indigenous name from people who have lived in the region for thousands of years is more appropriate than the name of Adolf Hitler's murderous Third Reich regime responsible for millions of homicides," states one of the two official name change proposals submitted to the U.S. Geological Survey. Little Kiska is part of the Alaska Maritime National Wildlife Refuge, and most of the land is owned and managed by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. Now that the Alaska Historical Commission has supported the name change, the proposal will go on to the U.S. Board on Geographic Names, which will decide whether to switch the creek and hill names on federal maps. "The process isn't always entirely step-by-step straightforward ... but in this case it is fairly straightforward," said Katie Ringsmuth, state historian in Alaska's Office of History and Archaeology. If members of the federal board vote to approve the proposals, then federal sources will follow Alaska in renaming the two features in official materials. For years now, and especially following the death of George Floyd and ensuing protests in 2020, Americans have been reconciling with ugly parts of national history and character in skirmishes over place names. Monuments have come down, sports franchises rebranded, schools and institutions renamed. Under the Biden administration, the Interior Department began systematically renaming geographic features — including more than two dozen sites in Alaska — whose titles included a derogatory name for a Native woman. Under the Trump administration, there's been a push to halt or reverse some of those renaming efforts, including restoring the name Bragg to a North Carolina military base and ordering that the name of North America's tallest mountain revert to McKinley from its Koyukon-Athabascan name, Denali.
BBC News
20-03-2025
- BBC News
The US island that once belonged to Russia
Unalaska Island in the remote Aleutian archipelago was part of an epic, but now mostly forgotten, military campaign during World War Two. Situated where the northern Pacific Ocean meets the Bering Sea, the remote US island of Unalaska straddles the liminal zone where North America transitions into Siberia. The island lies further west than Hawaii; its position on the cusp of East Asia makes it one of Alaska's more remote and idiosyncratic communities. Part of the Aleutian Islands, a 1,100-mile volcanic archipelago that curves in a westward arc to within 600 miles of Russia's Kamchatka Peninsula, Unalaska features one of the harshest environments on the planet outside the polar regions. The windswept coastlines are rugged, often precipitous and almost entirely devoid of trees. Because of the Aleutians' location in the Pacific Ring of Fire – one of the world's most seismically active areas – earthquakes are ubiquitous, and half of the island chain's 70 volcanoes, including Unalaska's active Makushin volcano, have erupted in the last 250 years. "Cradle of Storms" and "Birthplace of Winds" are two well-deserved nicknames among locals for the Aleutians. Conflicting weather systems generated in neighbouring seas result in cyclonic storms, hurricane-force winds, heavy rain and dense fog that have a considerable impact upon weather across much of Canada and the continental US. Today roughly 4,200 people call Unalaska home, including fishermen and the Indigenous Unangax̂ people (pronounced Oo-Nung-akhh). Also referred to as the Aleuts, the Unangax̂ have lived in the archipelago and parts of the Alaska Peninsula for at least 9,000 years, creating a subsistence lifestyle that drew upon every resource that the land and sea offered. But over the past several centuries, the Unangax̂ population has plummeted due to disease and the gradual attrition of their culture that came on the heels of colonialism. Today there are around 2,000 Unangax̂ in Alaska and the Aleutian Islands. Yet, this wind-battered island has historically been home to another very different group of peoples who also migrated across what is now the Bering Strait: Russians. After Danish explorer Vitus Bering and his Russian colleague Alexei Chirikov became the first-known Europeans to visit the Aleutian Islands in 1741, waves of Russian fur traders flocked to the archipelago to hunt sea otters and fur seals. After establishing a Russian settlement on Unalaska in 1759, the islands officially became a colony of the Russian Empire in the late 1700s. Today many inhabitants still have Russian surnames. The Russian Orthodox Church followed the fur hunters, building small houses of worship across the islands and converting many Unangax̂ to their faith. Although the US gained control of the Aleutian Islands when it purchased Alaska from Russia in 1867, the Russian Orthodox legacy has survived. Unalaska's Church of the Holy Ascension is one of a few Russian Orthodox houses of worship that remain. Rebuilt atop its original 1824 location in 1896, it is the oldest cruciform-style Russian Orthodox cathedral in North America, and contains one of Alaska's greatest collection of Russian artefacts, religious icons and artworks – including some that were donated directly from Catherine the Great. Before the arrival of the current Russian Orthodox priest, reverend Evon Bereskin was Unalaska's sole Christian Orthodox priest and the keeper of the Church of the Holy Ascension from 2013 to 2023. A member of the Unangax̂ community, he oversaw all the parishes in the Aleutian islands. "I am constantly in awe of the fact that I [was] the custodian of this incredible relic building," he told me. "It [was] an unbelievable honour and responsibility." As head of the church, Reverend Bereskin raised funds to restore the church and its icons, which had suffered at the hands of time and the elements. He also changed the liturgy of his services to English (from the Unangax̂ language and old Slavonic) to make services more accessible to worshippers. Prior to World War Two, the US had a modest commercial and military presence on the Aleutian Islands, which, lying relatively close to East Asia, were vulnerable to attack after Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. On 3-4 June 1942, planes from two Japanese aircraft carriers attacked Dutch Harbor in the town of Unalaska on the island's northern coast, killing 50 people. Several days later Japanese forces invaded Kiska and Attu islands, the westernmost islands in the Aleutians (670 and 850 miles from Unalaska, respectively), in an attempt to inflict a psychological blow and divert US forces from the Central Pacific theatre, where the Battle of Midway Island was about to take place. It was the first invasion of US soil since the British incursions in 1812. The SS Northwestern, a passenger and freight steamship used by the US Navy in the war, was destroyed in the Japanese attack on Dutch Harbor. Its rusted hull still rises above the water's surface, a ghostly reminder of a bloody battle. Within months of the Dutch Harbor attack, 145,000 US and Canadian soldiers were deployed to defend and retake the occupied Aleutians. They secured the islands with fortresses, artillery and bunkers, such one on Bunker Hill above Dutch Harbor, which is now the setting of a hike with stunning 360-degree views. A larger base overlooking Unalaska Bay and the Bering Sea a few miles away on nearby Mount Ballyhoo, known as Fort Schwatka, once featured 100 buildings and was built to withstand earthquakes and hurricane-force winds. Epic, harrowing battles were fought on bleak and difficult terrain. Thousands died on both sides of the conflict – many from exposure to the islands' harsh weather. By August 1943, the Japanese were expelled from the Aleutians, and over time, the battles that took place here have been largely forgotten. After the Japanese attacks, the US military ordered the mandatory evacuation of the Unangax̂ from the Aleutians for their safety and to prepare the island for arriving military forces. Residents were given less than a day's notice, allowed one suitcase each and weren't told where they were going or when they would return. In all, 881 Unangax̂ were expelled from nine villages across the archipelago and were interned at abandoned canneries in the temperate rainforests of south-eastern Alaska for three years. Many had never left their homeland before, let alone seen trees. Around 10% of the camps' population perished due to poor housing and sanitation conditions and limited access to health care. Those who returned to Unalaska in 1945 found their villages either looted or burned down. In the 1980s, the Unangax̂ sued for ill-treatment and deprivation of their rights in conjunction with Japanese Americans who were also interned during the war. In 1988, a restitution law was passed granting financial compensation and an apology to the Unangax̂ from both Congress and the President. Today, an etched stone slab Unalaska serves as is a memorial to that dark period. After World War Two, Unalaska became a hub of the US' commercial fishing industry, which still dominates the island today. Dutch Harbor is the US' top commercial fishing port by volume and the main delivery port featured on Discovery Channel's hit reality show, Deadliest Catch. Four hundred vessels from 14 countries make port here each year, catching several hundred million pounds of fish – around 10% of the entire US fishing industry. Halibut, salmon, herring and several varieties of crab are among the species caught in nearby waters. Alaskan pollock comprises 80% of all seafood processed on the island and is used to produce fish oil, fish fillets (for frozen fish sticks and McDonald's Filet-o-Fish sandwiches) and surimi (imitation crab meat) among other products. UniSea, the largest seafood processing plant on the island, has some of the highest environmental standards of any fishery in Alaska, including traceable seafood and lowest by-catch. "We use every part of the pollock fish here and nothing goes to waste," said Tom Enlow, president and CEO of UniSea and a resident of Unalaska. "Fish oil gives us a renewable hydrocarbon to help power and heat our plant and worker accommodations, thereby offsetting the burning of diesel." In addition to an abundance of fish, Unalaska's nutrient-rich waters play host to a rich variety of marine mammals, including orcas, Dall porpoises, sea otters, harbour seals and whales (humpback, pilot and fin). Steller's sea lions gather on isolated rocks known as rookeries to mate and give birth between May and July. The Aleutian coastlines are also home to a nesting seabird population that is larger than that of the rest of the US combined. Bird enthusiasts travel from all over the world to see the varied waterfowl, especially the ultra-rare whiskered auklet. Meanwhile, hiking Unalaska's trails exposes the remote corners of the island. Traversing its rolling alpine meadows and dramatic mountains is to experience the palpable soul of the Aleutians. These poetic, lyrical landscapes soften the harsh and sometimes unforgiving attributes of a place deeply beholden to the elements. -- For more Travel stories from the BBC, follow us on Facebook, X and Instagram.
