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Unrest continues at Alaskan school

Two weeks after classes resumed in Kivalina, Alaska, the problems at McQueen School still aren’t over.

Kivalina, an Inupiat community of 375, is located on the Chukchi Sea coast, about 100 kilometres northwest of Kotzebue, Alaska.

On Feb. 27, local school board officials shut McQueen School down when half the teaching staff decided to leave the community following a series of violent incidents. The school reopened March 18.

"Last week the students seemed somewhat quiet for the first few days," principal Betty Wallace wrote district officials and community leaders. "But they have been normal since then."

Normalcy means fights, vandalism and harassment by students have flared up again. Someone also stole the hard drive from the school computer lab’s network server.

The recent spate of troubles at McQueen School apparently began last year. The Anchorage Daily News reported how the principal had sent a memo in October describing children lighting fires beneath and around the school and teacher housing, destroying property and tormenting school staffers.

"We have also discovered small children dipping wooden sticks and rolled-up plastic tubes into the gas tanks of four-wheelers and setting the sticks and tubes on fire," Betty Wallace wrote. "They say they like to see the flames whoosh up."

She said the school’s cable television wires were destroyed, so most students couldn’t watch coverage of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Kivalina has no resident police or village public safety officer.

A second memo, released on Jan. 17, had announced that no McQueen students had passed the high school graduation qualifying exam and that most had failed other state-required tests.

But the school’s 135 students all graduated to the next grade when the academic year ended.

"Unfortunately, social promotion has been rampant for so many years at McQueen School, it will be a real challenge to stop it," Wallace wrote. She called the entire situation "totally unacceptable."

A report for Alaska’s education department that was released earlier this week called the Feb. 27 shutdown "the result of a long and complex chain of events in a dysfunctional school in a dysfunctional community" and said "little has changed as a result of the school closure."

It said Kivalina has low educational expectations coupled with a "pervasive community tolerance of student misbehavior" that is rationalized and supported by some parents.

But it also said test scores are a sign of ineffective teaching and show there’s a gap between what’s taught in the classroom and daily life and culture.

The report recommends the Northwest Arctic Borough School District form a team of community and regional leaders and parents develop a "school improvement plan," help improve student test scores, and boost student and community involvement.

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April 5, 2002

More accolades for Atanarjuat

Zacharias Kunuk, the director of Atanarjuat, the first Inuktitut feature film, has been awarded the 2001 Banff Centre National Arts Award.

Kunuk, the sculptor-turned-filmmaker from Igloolik, will receive the Donald Cameron Bronze medal, $10,000 and two-weeks residency at the Banff Centre.

The award alternates among the Aboriginal, literary, media/visual, music, and performing arts.

Joanne Morrow, vice-president of The Banff Centre, said through the beauty of Atanarjuat, Kunuk brought back lost traditions and in doing so has put Aboriginal filmmaking on the map.

Atanarjuat will be screened during the 2002 Banff Arts Festival on July 28.

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April 5, 2002

ATV to cross Bering Strait?

Two British men planned to cross the Bering Strait from Alaska to Chukotka, Russia, in an all-terrain vehicle this week.

Steve Brooks and Graham Stratford were to cross the 56 miles between Alaska and Russia in the Snowbird 6, a Snow Cat designed to travel across snow, ice and open water.

The team used a helicopter to check the ice pack conditions.

"The strait changes every day," Brooks told the Anchorage Daily News earlier this week. "Some days there are lovely pans of ice, others rough bad ones."

But weather delayed the pair from beginning the journey. Temperatures close to freezing reduced visability while a 25 knot south wind kept the ice in motion.

For an update on the expedition’s progress online, visit www.icechallenger.com.

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April 5, 2002

Saving eastern Greenlandic history and language

Ole Lund, a teacher in eastern Greenland for the past 10 years, is looking for money to kick start a project that will help preserve and promote the language and culture of eastern Greenlanders.

Lund wants to compile the complete family history of 7,000 living and deceased eastern Greenlanders.

"The family history will rehabilitate the eastern Greenlanders and motivate them to revive their rich oral tradition, who has been suppressed for decades," Lund told the Danish newspaper Jyllandsposten. "The eastern Greenlandic kids are not taught their own language at the school, they are taught western Greenlandic. There is no standardized eastern Greenlandic language, and the few eastern Greenlandic dictionaries available are produced by French men, Danes and western Greenlanders. They literally have jumped from having no books into the age of Internet technology."

Lund said eastern Greenlanders were once considered to be lawless cannibals, while the Thule Inuit were considered "noble savages."

"Their reputation has been bad, and their language has been put down. They were exploited by the French and the Danes. Their original history with the original phrases has almost all been lost. I want to help, but it is urgent."

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April 5, 2002

Denmark won’t loosen its tight budget for ICC

The Greenlandic office of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference came up short when Denmark’s parliament approved its national budget last week.

Kuupik Kleist, one of Greenland’s two members of parliament, had presented suggestions for amendments to the budget on behalf of the North Atlantic Group that includes both Greenland and the Faroe Islands.

Kleist called for 2.5 million krøner ($500,000) to support ICC’s international work.

He also asked for increased subsidies to other international human rights groups.

But none of the proposed amendments were included in the final budget.

Kleist said Greenlanders should be concerned about the Danish government’s decision.

Lars Emil Johansen, who also represents Greenland in the Danish parliament, said he supported Kleist’s unsuccessful effort to wrest more money from the conservative, budget-slashing government.

"It all seems like it has been determined beforehand," Johansen told Greenland’s national radio network, KNR.

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April 5, 2002

U.S. and Russia to re-divide Bering Sea fish stocks

Russia and U.S. are negotiating a new framework agreement for fishing in the Bering Sea, which is currently divided into two zones.

Yuri Moskaltsov, deputy head of the State Committee for Fisheries, told Interfax news agency that Russia wants to see the end of quotas for Russians in the U.S. zone.

The current deal, which was signed in 1991, "is not in the economic interests of Russia." The Russian zone is 180 miles wide, while the American zone is 220 miles wide.

According to the Russian fishing company Dalryba, the difference in the size of the two zones means Russia loses out every year on at least 200,000 tonnes of fish and seafood, worth more than U.S. $200 million.

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April 5, 2002

Norway and Sweden to help clean up Kola

Norway and Sweden will spend $250,000 U.S. on a project to overhaul radioactive waste storage facilities at a plant on Russia’s Kola Peninsula.

The Radon plant, established in 1964, stores 800 cubic meters of radioactive waste.

Plant officials in Murmansk told the Interfax news agency that Russia’s 2002 national budget has no money for any clean-up, as the plant "poses no threat to the environmental security of the region."

The Nordic project will see the plant’s radioactive waste moved from underground containers to concrete ones on the surface, where it can be safely stored for 50 years.

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April 5, 2002

Lynge knocks Newsweek

"On behalf of the 152,000 Inuit in Russia, Alaska, Canada, and Greenland, I must set straight the unfair record that you paint in your interview with Danish journalist Kjeld Hansen on 11 March," Inuit Circumpolar Conference president Aqqaluk Lynge wrote Newsweek.

Lynge was infuriated over an interview called "Killer Inuit," which appeared in the international edition of the newsmagazine.

In this interview, Hansen said Greenlandic Inuit were responsible for the depletion of wildlife in Greenland.

But Lynge said Hansen, a Danish journalist and author of "A Farewell to Greenland’s Wildlife," had overlooked the impact of climate change on Greenland’s environment.

"I believe it is far-fetched to presume that the climate and the ecosystem is the same as it was 50-100 years ago and blame the Inuit for all the negative effects of the state of the eco-system," Lynge said.

Lynge also knocked Hansen over his criticism of subsidies that Greenlandic seal hunters receive.

"The paternalistic tone in this new "crusade" sounds all too familiar," Lynge wrote. "In the ‘70s ‘concerned’ environmental groups made a crusade against seal hunting with devastating economic effects to the Inuit peoples...Ironically, this meant an enormous increase of the seal population. And now Kjeld Hansen sees it as grotesque that Inuit hunters living in this harsh climate, with no other means for economic income than selling skins from an abundant seal stock, have to receive subsidies in order to make a living."

Lynge disputed Hansen’s claim that Greenland is "in denial" over the damage its hunters may have caused to the environment.

"We do not think of our past or our present as "idyllic," as he tries to imply. We acknowledge that Greenland Inuit are human and make mistakes. But all Greenland Inuit — and the social, political, and economic institutions through which we express ourselves — know that our living resources are the backbone of our existence. As such, we want to protect them and use them sustainably. And yes, we selectively use new technology as equal members of the peoples of this planet."

Lynge also criticized Hansen’s use of third-party data in his book.

"Newsweek commits the same error by giving no voice to those who live the indigenous hunting life, but only to those who want to disgrace it," Lynge wrote. "When we refer to killers, we are talking about the brutal colonizers that killed off the indigenous peoples in many parts of the world. Therefore your reference is deeply offending."

Lynge said Newsweek owes Greenlanders and all Inuit an apology.

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April 5, 2002

007 takes to Norway’s Arctic islands

This week James Bond’s crew is due to arrive on Svalbard Island, located off the coast of Arctic Norway.

The Oslo newspaper, Aftenposten, reports Agent 007 himself won’t be coming, but film crews working on the next James Bond movie plan to shoot the island’s stunning scenery for some outdoor action scenes. These will be used in the upcoming Bond flick, "Die Another Day."

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April 5, 2002

Satellite images show changing world

The first pictures from Europe’s new Earth observation satellite, Envisat, show how ancient coastlines are undergoing rapid change.

The picture of the Larsen B ice shelf, which collapsed last month, shows the 3,250 square kilometre chunk has broken into thousands of small icebergs and is now drifting away from Antarctica.

The satellite captured the collapse of the 200-metre thick ice shelf, providing dramatic evidence of the impact of global warming in the Antarctic Peninsula region.

Envisat, the biggest and most expensive satellite put into orbit by Europe, was launched in February. Described by Britain’s Independent news service as Europe’s "green eye," it’s equipped with 10 instruments that will conduct scientific measurements of the sea, land, atmosphere and ice caps for the next five years.

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