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AS 09-15-11

Child obesityMore than half of elementary and middle school students in region are overweight or obese.

Page 7

Whale salvagedCarcass had been found, beached, and was recovered by the community.

Page 2

Young whaler energizes Elders and Youth Conference

PhotoS BY toMMY WellS

Sophomore quarterback Anthony Freuan passed for 56 yards and a touchdown to propel the Barrow Whalers to a 20-14 victory in the Division III state football championship. Below, Freuan holds the Whalers’ trophy.

State ChampionS

STEM educationANSeP helps kids receive hands-on learning in science and technology fields.

Page 16

Vol. 31, No. 42 | $1.00 www.thearct icsounder.com october 19, 2017

Animal-rights activists

didn’t like Chris

Apassingok’s catch.

He’s not backing down.

By Lisa Demer Alaska Dispatch News

He sat on stage, the governor on one side, the lieutenant governor on the

other, his parents at the end, and he told a story bigger than the confer-ence room, a story of a life on the wild lands and in the rough seas.

Chris Apassingok of Gambell on Monday told how he helped catch a massive bowhead whale in April when he was 16, and how radical ani-mal-rights activists went after him and his family. The whale changed their world. But the critics won’t change how he lives, he told the First Alaskans Institute Elders and Youth Conference, a precursor to the

upcoming Alaska Federation of Natives convention.

“Agragiighuunga,” he said at the start of his conference keynote speech, speaking in St. Lawrence Island Yupik, then in English. He started with his Yupik name. “I am Agragiiq. Chris Apassingok.”

He told how he started hunting seals at age 7, where his favorite neng-ki or seal blind is, how climate change is affecting hunts in the Bering Sea.

He wore a ceremonial hat of polar bear fur and seal that an auntie gave

him and a new qaspeq with an appli-queed bowhead that his mother spe-cial-ordered from a seamstress in Nome. As he read his speech, elders, youths and chaperones at the Dena’ina Civic and Convention Center interrupted with applause time and again.

Apassingok is 17 now, a high school junior in Gambell.

“The great land and ocean provide us with whales, walrus, a few kinds of

Your News. Your Stories. Your Life.©

Late stand lifts Whalers

to first state football title

■ see Page 9, aPassiNgOK

Barrow charges to

thrilling 20-14 victory

over Homer Mariners

By TOmmy WeLLsthe Arctic Sounder

PALMER — With the game, and the Barrow Whalers’ dreams, on the line Saturday at Machetanz Field, reserve linebacker Jalen Tracey made sure his team got to kiss the golden football — as the groom for the first time.

Having entered the game only moments earlier when the team’s starting outside linebacker was injured, Tracey found himself at the

■ see Page 11, TiTLe

Alaska’s congressional

delegation, governor and

AFN praise decision

By Lisa Demer Alaska Dispatch News

Tara Sweeney is executive vice president of external affairs for Arctic Slope Regional Corp. — the largest Alaska-owned business — and is a previous co-chair of the Alaska Federation of Natives, which is hold-ing its annual convention in Anchorage this week. She’s from Utqiaġvik, previously known as Barrow, and is Inupiaq.

The Trump administrat ion announced Sweeney’s nomination as assistant Interior secretary for Indian Affairs around 6:30 p.m. Alaska time, way after hours on the East Coast. Within minutes, the Alaska congres-sional delegation responded with strong praise. AFN leaders and Gov. Bill Walker soon did the same.

“Ms. Sweeney grew up in rural Alaska and has spent a lifetime advo-cating for responsible Indian energy policy, rural connectivity, Arctic growth, and Native American self-determination,” the president’s announcement said.

If she is confirmed by the U.S. Senate, Sweeney will hold a powerful position with authority over pro-grams that can help the nation’s 567 tribes govern themselves. Alaska is home to 229 of the nation’s tribes.

The assistant secretary is charged with upholding the federal-tribe gov-ernment-to-government relationship, the congressional delegation said.

Specifically, she would oversee the

Trump nominates Sweeney for Indian Affairs job

■ see Page 6, sWeeNey

Page 16 www.thearcticsounder.com october 19, 2017

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ANSEP off ers hands-on learning opportunities

By shaDy grOve OLiverthe Arctic Sounder

It’s afternoon when the shaking starts. The fl oor rumbles. The walls sway back and forth. Will the support beams hold? The 60 seconds on the clock tick down and the building stays standing.

Surviving this earthquake means success for the Northwest Arctic Borough students who’ve traveled to Anchorage this month for the Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program’s middle school academy.

Building a structure that could survive one minute on the shake table at the University of Alaska Anchorage was just one of the many challenges they have to face as part of the program.

“I liked the earthquake engineering because we got to build (something) and it was really fun because we got to test it out and see whose would last the longest. We tested it where the professors had a shake table and it had the number of how high the earthquake would be. If our buildings last-ed more than a minute, everybody got hap-py and that’s what I liked because our team did really good,” said Kotzebue eighth-grader Adriana Arnold, 13. “A lot of teams did really awesome and it was really fun to see diff erent ways they built them.”

Every year, ANSEP partners with school districts around Alaska to off er area-specif-ic programs. This particular academy is open to middle-schoolers from the Northwest Arctic. Running from Oct. 10-21, it’s two solid weeks of science exploration.

“My friends went last year and they told me it was awesome and that I should go,” said Kotzebue seventh-grader Cody Kramer, 13.

Kramer wasn’t quite sure what to expect from the program, but said he’s enjoyed the projects they’ve worked on so far, especially the computer build.

“I really liked putting together the com-puter because it helped me follow instruc-tions. I just really like to learn so after I can tinker with things and make them diff er-ent,” Kramer explained. “We had the tower

and it had most of the wires in there. They gave us little kits, like the motherboard. They taught us how to open the CPU door and they taught us how to take out the screws and put it all together.”

All of the students get to take the comput-ers home with them once the program is fi nished and are allowed to keep them only if they agree to fi nish Algebra I by the time they enter high school.

“I’m just really happy to have the students here. They’re the fi rst group for the fall and it’s going well so far,” said Yosty Storms, a regional director with the program. “We do also target those students who have been historically underserved or underrepresent-ed in the STEM (science, technology, engi-neering, math) fi elds.”

Storms was an ANSEP student herself in high school. She stayed with the program through college and has been involved with it ever since, now helping run academies for new students.

“I think I was in the same spot as a lot of the students that come to our program. You know, when you’re in high school, you don’t

know what you want to do when you’re older,” said Storms. “Having a program like ANSEP where you have the mentors and the professionals here and they’re able to talk to you and inspire you to do something with your future, I was really drawn to the program for that reason. What kept me involved in the program was the commu-nity that was built from the people who are involved in it.”

Kramer said he’s not sure exactly what he wants to do when he’s older, but he’s got some ideas.

“I think from this program I’m going to take away all the diff erent guest speakers that we had that taught us about what they did. I don’t know what I want to do in life, so that probably would help me. One of them was a hydrologist and one was a herpetolo-gist and two were professors here at UAA and they taught about earthquake engineer-ing,” said Kramer. “I really want to go to college. I would like to study geochemistry and maybe a little bit of ecology. I like to be outside, so something like that.”

As for Arnold, she plans to follow in her

predecessors’ footsteps and put what she’s learned at ANSEP to good use in the process.

“I want to go to college for engineering because I want to work at Red Dog as an engineer,” said Arnold. “A lot of my family members work there, so it would kind of be like a generational type of thing.”

A little sooner in the future, though, is the next week at ANSEP, during which the stu-dents will work on building a bridge that they’ll have to put to a stress test to see if it will hold under pressure.

Both Kramer and Arnold say they’re look-ing forward to the task.

“I’m looking forward to the bridge build because we already built something (but) this is going to be harder, I think,” said Arnold. “I think it’s going to be a really fun activity because we have partners and we get to work together as a group and it’s not just a one-person thing. If it was, it would have been really hard. So, I’m looking forward to seeing how our team’s bridge turns out.”

There’s more to this program than just encouraging kids to take an interest in the STEM fields, though, Storms explained. Being together and working together as part of a residential program for this long means they have to learn interpersonal skills, too.

“I love it. It’s a lot of fun and it’s really nice to meet the new students every year from the diff erent districts. It’s really interesting to see them grow from the fi rst day they get here to the very last day. One of the other things we focus on here in our program is professional development skills. That could be learning how to introduce yourself to people you might not know. So, on the fi rst day we have the students say their names and where they’re from and tell everybody if they have an Inupiaq name or another Alaska Native name, tell them what grade they’re in and what school they go to,” Storms said. “Seeing them grow from the fi rst day to the last day, it’s huge. On the fi rst day, they haven’t met a lot of the kids and they’re a little shy and on the last day, you see them have this confi dence and it’s amaz-ing. You look at some adults and they don’t have that level of confi dence, but you have these middle schoolers that are going above and beyond with it.”

More information about ANSEP can be found at www.ansep.net.

Students learn to love STEM education

Photo CoURteSY oF ANSeP

Students from across the Northwest Arctic Borough traveled to Anchorage for the Alaska Native Science and engineering Program’s middle school academy this month. ANSeP partners with school districts around the state to engage students with the STEM fi elds (science, technology, engineering, math). these students are learning how to build a computer that they will be able to take home with them once the program is over.