SAN BERNARDINO, Calif. – The ancient Native American language of Serrano, which was dying out as fewer and fewer native speakers of the language remained, has received a lifeline through the work of tribal people and academics.
The San Manuel Band of Mission Indians (Yuhaviatam Clan of Serrano) signed a historic agreement with Cal State San Bernardino on Friday, May 24, to have the Serrano language taught at the university by San Manuel linguists and a tribal elder through CSUSB’s world languages and literature department.
“Serrano is a language that came close to extinction,” said CSUSB President Tomás D. Morales. “Now through this agreement, the Serrano language will not only be perpetuated, but also its use will be expanded.”
Under the agreement, San Manuel’s Serrano Language Revitalization Project staff will teach the Serrano language course series – Serrano 101, 102 and 103 – at Cal State San Bernardino for the academic year 2013-2014, in collaboration with Ernest Siva of the Dorothy Ramon Learning Center. The course will cover the language, history and culture of the Serrano people. Along with CSUSB students, tribal citizens also will be able to take the Serrano course series through the university’s College of Extended Learning and receive college credit.
And, as part of the agreement, the tribe’s sponsorship in providing the instructors and curriculum for the course will be considered as a donation to the CSUSB Philanthropic Foundation.
“As we increasingly become an academic center that supports and encourages tribal heritage, we want to continue to build our relations with our native partners,” Morales said. “We want the tribal members of the San Manuel Band of Mission Indians to feel CSUSB is their home. We also want to extend that feeling of welcome to other tribes in our region.”
“It is my belief that our identity as Serrano people is rooted in our land, our culture and our language, each an aspect of the Serrano world connecting us to all that has passed before and all that is yet to come,” said San Manuel Chairperson Carla Rodriguez. “This course will allow Serrano Indian people and Cal State San Bernardino students an opportunity to bring new life to our ancient and sacred language.”
The Serrano Language Revitalization Program, a function of the San Manuel Education Department, conducts regular, ongoing research to develop and publish Serrano resources, including a dictionary and grammar book. This process includes weekly field work with Ernest Siva and is directed by San Manuel Tribal Members, including Education Committee Chairman Paakuma’ Tawinat, who helped lead the tribal effort to establish the Serrano language course series.
“By being involved in the community through our educational outreach, San Manuel has found opportunities and partners to bring new vitality to the Serrano language and culture. On the reservation, we have made great strides to take a traditionally only-spoken language and create a modern written language,” Tawinat said. “The Serrano language is a very important part of our lives, and along with our traditions, it defines who we are as people. It is a great honor to share our language with students, to see it grow and preserve the memory of our ancestors.”
Siva, who has also taught prior courses on culture and language at CSUSB, agreed. “I’m honored to be involved in making the language available to anyone who wants to learn it. It’s kind of like a dream,” he said. “Who’d ever think it would happen?”
Siva grew up on the Morongo Indian Reservation, where he learned the Serrano language and serves as tribal historian and cultural adviser for the Morongo Band of Mission Indians. Siva, who has been a strong proponent for the preservation of American Indian culture, founded and serves as president of the Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, which saves and shares all Southern California’s American Indian cultures, languages, history, music and other traditional arts.
Siva earned both a bachelor’s and master’s degree in music education and choral music from the University of Southern California and serves as a distinguished guest artist in Native American culture at Cal State San Bernardino. Siva also serves on the board of directors of the California Indian Storytelling Association, the board of trustees of Idyllwild Arts, and the board of the Riverside Arts Council. He also is a member of the CSUSB Philanthropic Board of Directors and recipient of an Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts from the university in 2009.
Morales said the university’s courses on cultural resource management, museum studies, geography and archaeology will focus on maintaining Native American cultural identity and protecting tribal autonomy to further cement the university’s commitment to work with American Indian tribes in the region.
The agreement is another part of the university’s ongoing effort to preserve Native American records.
Over the past year, Thomas Long, an associate professor in the CSUSB history department and its coordinator of public history and internships, has had his students digitize and catalogue the Mission Indian Federation records at the National Archives.
Long’s students also have been digitizing and cataloguing the St. Boniface Indian School records at the San Bernardino Roman Catholic Diocese archives. The archiving project will run through the summer and fall quarter of 2013. At its conclusion, a full copy-set of the materials will be delivered to the San Manuel archives.
In addition, Long’s students have been completing their internship work at the Dorothy Ramon Learning Center, working on various projects aimed at the Serrano and Cahuilla culture preservation as well as other significant archival projects with tribal elder Ernest and his wife, June Siva.
Visit the Dorothy Ramon Learning Center website at
www.dorothyramon.org for more information, as well as the San Manuel Band of Serrano Mission Indians website at http://www.sanmanuel-nsn.gov/.
For more information on Cal State San Bernardino, contact the university’s Office of Public Affairs at (909) 537-5007 and visit news.csusb.edu.
Historic Everett and the Northwest Neighborhood Association will be honoring the earliest inhabitants of the Everett community with the installation of three interpretive signs depicting the early culture and history of the Snohomish Peoples.
Gale Courey Toensing, Indian Country Today Media Network
Indigenous organizations attending the 12th Session of the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues (UNPFII) criticized the United States federal government for trying to make an end run around the human rights affirmed in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (Declaration) and voiced concern that state actions will sideline Indigenous Peoples at the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples scheduled for September 2014. The UNPFII took place at the U.N. in New York from May 20-31.
In a day long discussion on the World Conference during the Permanent Forum on May 28, speakers expressed opposition – and indignation – at a statement made by Laurie Shestack Phipps, advisor for economic and social affairs of the United States Mission to the United Nations, regarding the federal government’s position on the Declaration.
Phipps’ statement, or “intervention” as it is called at the U.N., was presented May 22 in opposition to a suggestion that the Permanent Forum establish a monitoring and complaints mechanism for the Declaration. But most offensive to indigenous organizations was Phipps’ reiteration of parts of the State Department’s white paper of December 16, 2010 – the day President Barack Obama announced that the U.S. was “lending its support” to the Declaration.
“We would like to take this opportunity to note that the Declaration is a non-binding, aspirational document,” Phipps stated. “We would also like to reiterate the U.S. government’s view that self-determination, as expressed in the Declaration, is different from self-determination in international law.”
The statement set off a red alert among North American Indigenous Peoples when it was first announced. “We’ve been involved in these issues for a while now and making sure that the United States doesn’t try to domesticate the international Declaration—that’s going to be the challenge,” Penobscot Indian Nation Chief Kirk Francis said at the time. And the statement outraged people again at this year’s Permanent Forum. (Related story: Next Step: ? Implementation)
“The most objectionable [part of the U.S. statement] was their reiterated position that the rights of self-determination as recognized under international law for ALL PEOPLES is somehow a different right for Indigenous Peoples,” Roberto Borrero (Taino People of Boriken – Puerto Rico), said in an impassioned statement that he read on behalf of the International Indian Treaty Council. “At that time [2010] Indigenous Peoples did not accept this attempt to redefine international law as affirmed in the U.N. Charter and the Covenants, or to diminish the internationally recognized minimum standard of the Declaration. We do not accept it now.”
The IITC statement acknowledged that the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples has the potential to move forward the full and effective implementation of the inherent rights affirmed by the Declaration. But IITC and other indigenous organizations are concerned that some states might use the World Conference “in an attempt to diminish, qualify or redefine the rights affirmed in this hard fought minimum standard, or to limit the intended scope of its implementation,” Borrero said. “We are firmly resolved and will stand united with the Indigenous Peoples of the world to ensure that this will not happen. Discrimination must not be tolerated in any body or process of the United Nations which is based on the fundamental principles of international human rights law and the tenants of the U.N. Charter which include non-discrimination.”
The IITC has asked the Permanent Forum to issue a formal statement expressing its concern and joining with Indigenous Peoples in rejecting discriminatory attempts by the U.S. or any other state to diminish the rights affirmed in the Declaration by the U.N. and at the World Conference. “This is an historic opportunity for full and effective implementation, in good faith and partnership,” Borrero said. “The time for racial discrimination and all doctrines which justify it is the past. Their proper place is in the dustbin of history. “
Indigenous representatives from Africa, Asia, the Arctic, North America, Central and South America and the Caribbean, Eastern Europe Russian Federation, Central Asia and Transcaucasia, and the Pacific as well as the Indigenous Women’s Caucus and the Indigenous Youth Caucus, both of which presented interventions at the Permanent Forum, will attend a preparatory conference in Alta, Norway June 10-12 to consolidate indigenous Peoples’ strategies and positions for the World Conference, which is described as “a high-level plenary meeting of the General Assembly.”
Kenneth Deer, representative of the North American Indigenous Peoples Caucus (NAIPC), said the caucus agreed to take part in the World Conference under certain conditions, including advancing “the rights of Indigenous Peoples as peoples and nations with rights equal to all other peoples, that we have and confirm the inalienable right to self determination as recognized in various international instruments, such as the Universal Declaration of Human Rights … as well as our rights to our lands, territories, resources, treaties, languages and cultures.” He said the Alta Conference outcome document should assert these rights and support the implementation of the Declaration and that the NAIPC will review the document “to determine what positive and negative impacts it could have and also to assess NAIPC’s involvement in the World Conference.”
Steve Newcomb (Shawnee, Lenape), an Indian Country Today Media Network columnist, presented an intervention on behalf of the Indigenous Law Institute that began with an acknowledgment that the U.N. building stands on the traditional territory of the Lenape, Munsee and Delaware ancestors. Mincing no words, Newcomb said that the U.S. position for a ‘different” right of self determination for Indigenous Peoples in international law “is racist and predicated on ancient theological-political bigotry” – namely the Doctrine of Discovery that allowed Christian nations to claim as their own land that was not inhabited by Christians and to kill or enslave the indigenous inhabitants or those lands. The World Conference “will not result in positive and fundamental reform for our Nations and Peoples unless it is used as an opportunity to engage in the kinds of moral discussions that took place in the 16th century … regarding Aristotle’s theory of natural domination or slavery and whether our ancestors were human. The difference today, of course, is that we have our own voice,” Newcomb said.
Tonawanda Seneca Chief Darwin Hill read a statement on behalf of an umbrella group including the National Congress of American Indians, United South and Eastern Tribes, the California Association of Tribal Governments, 72 Indigenous nations and seven Indigenous organizations. Violations against indigenous are actually increasing in some states, Hill said. And the Declaration, which is supposed to protect those rights, cannot be effective without implementing measures and without international monitoring, he said. The group recommended, among other things, creating a new U.N. body to promote and monitor implementation of the Declaration and giving Indigenous Peoples “a dignified and appropriate” permanent status through their constitutional and customary governments to participate in all U.N. activities.
Aaron Reardon’s departure as county executive doesn’t end a number of investigations.
By Noah Haglund and Scott North, The Herald
EVERETT — Snohomish County Executive Aaron Reardon left public office about 4 p.m. Friday, ending nearly a decade as the county’s top elected official.
He did not speak with Herald reporters seeking answers about harassing records requests linked to his staff, or how he could explain evidence that he crossed lines intended to keep his political campaigns separate from taxpayers’ money.
A statement attributed to him was posted on the county’s website: “I extend my best wishes to our county officials as they continue their work at the direction of this county’s residents. Finally, and most importantly, I want to sincerely thank the voters of Snohomish County for choosing me on six separate occasions to represent you. It has been a great honor and a sincere privilege to work on your behalf.”
Reardon’s departure cleared the way for other county leaders to focus on hopes that a new executive would bring productive working relationships back to county government.
“I’m very excited about the future,” said County Councilman Brian Sullivan, whose relationship with Reardon, a former ally, soured over the years.
Prosecuting Attorney Mark Roe said he’s hopeful that Monday will bring word that Sheriff John Lovick, of Mill Creek, has been chosen to be the next county executive. Other likely nominees are state Rep. John McCoy, D-Tulalip, and Everett attorney Todd Nichols, a longtime Democratic Party leader at the state and county level.
Reardon’s departure is a significant step in a story with chapters yet unfolding. They include:
•King County Sheriff’s Officecriminal investigation — Detectives still are trying to determine whether any laws were broken by Reardon’s staff. The people on the receiving end of public records requests, made anonymously by aides Kevin Hulten and Jon Rudicil, believe they were targets of harassment, surveillance and retaliation for cooperating with a 2012 investigation of Reardon. The State Patrol investigation eventually cleared Reardon of using public funds to carry on a private affair with another county employee.
•Public Disclosure Commission — Two investigations are underway, both focusing on campaign activity in Reardon’s office during his 2011 run for office. One inquiry is examining Reardon’s conduct, including hundreds of calls he made to people who worked on or funded his re-election campaign. The other case is focused on Hulten, and work-day calls he made to state election watchdogs about issues later used to attack Reardon’s opponent, state Rep. Mike Hope, R-Lake Stevens.
•Political changes — The departure triggers reshuffling among county leaders and likely will mean changes for one or more office holders. If Lovick gets the nod, the council will need to name a new sheriff. New leadership also may mean shifts in county priorities.
•More lawsuits — The county could face litigation over some of the controversies that have swirled around Reardon. Some have been threatening lawsuits for years.
Reardon’s parting statement claimed multiple successes in managing the county.
“Together, we have modernized and transformed Snohomish County government from a silo-based bureaucracy to a more dynamic, network-driven organization focused on outcomes as opposed to processes.”
At the same time, Reardon left office by delivering an unwelcome surprise to his County Council counterparts just before he left.
Reardon’s spokesman informed the council that Reardon had signed a memorandum of understanding with the Tulalip tribes regarding land-use planning. That was news to the council. The county’s rules require the executive to first seek the council’s agreement before any intergovernmental agreements are signed. The council planned to take up the issue next week.
Deputy County Executive Gary Haakenson is now the acting county executive until Reardon’s replacement is named.
Because Reardon is a Democrat, it’s up to Snohomish County Democrats to nominate three candidates to take his place. The party plans to convene a special caucus Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Everett Labor Temple’s Warren Rush Hall, 2812 Lombard Ave., Everett. The meeting is public.
The party’s central committee will forward the names to the County Council, which then has 60 days to agree on a successor. The council has scheduled public interviews with the nominees for 8:30 a.m. Monday.
The new regime is sure to usher in sweeping personnel changes.
By last week, some of the closest members of Reardon’s staff already had begun making their way toward the exit doors.
Reardon’s finance chief, Roger Neumaier, is in line to be appointed finance director for the city of Edmonds. He awaits the Edmonds City Council’s confirmation on Tuesday. More staff changes are expected.
Voters first sent Reardon to the Legislature in 1997 and he became the youngest county executive in the nation in 2004, at age 33.
His time as the county’s top elected administrator was marked by public feuds with other county leaders and scandals related to his staff and himself. The investigation into his use of county resources while carrying on the affair began in November 2011. And in February he was back under scrutiny after Hulten and Rudicil were linked to the anonymous public records requests, attack websites and other activities targeting people considered the executive’s political rivals.
After spending 15 years as an elected public official, Reardon so far hasn’t discussed what he plans next.
To Sullivan, that was typical of Reardon and part of his undoing.
“He’s not a very open person and it’s hard to be a secret person in a public life,” Sullivan said. “I wish him and his family well.”
On Friday, Roe said he is looking forward to a time when the good work being done by Snohomish County government workers has a chance of attracting more attention than serial scandals.
“For the last couple of years I’ve had to listen to Snohomish County jokes from colleagues and friends and family relations, and I’m ready for that to be over,” Roe said.
Saturday-Sunday: 22nd Annual Veterans Pow Wow at the Tulalip Resort Convention area. Also take time to enjoy the vendors and food in the outside tent.
Saturday-Sunday: Tulalip Tribes Stickgame Tournament. An exciting event with games and vendors. The games are located on 27th Ave, across from the Boom City Swap Meet.
Fundraising Sale: Parent Committee of Tulalip Early Head Start Fundraising Gym Sale, Saturday June 2 8am-5pm, Old Tulalip Elementary School Gym
Boom City Swap Meet – Open Saturday and Sunday. www.boomcityswapmeet.com
Storytelling at the Hibulb Cultural Center, Sunday, June 2: Lois Langrebe, Language teacher and artist, in the Longhouse Room, 1pm
The Bismarck Tribune, Tom Stromme/Associated Press – FILE–North Dakota’s U.S. Attorney Tim Purdon speaks during a press conference in Bismarck, N.D., in this May 28, 2013 file photo.
Source: Washington Post, Associated Press
FLAGSTAFF, Ariz. — American Indian leaders who have criticized the federal government for years over the way authorities handled major crimes on reservations can mark progress with the release of newly tracked statistics from the U.S. Justice Department.
The number of Indian Country cases charged in federal court has increased by 54 percent between fiscal years 2009 and 2012, from 1,091 cases to 1,677 cases, according to a DOJ report released Thursday.
“They’ve taken their responsibility much more seriously than before,” said Brent Leonhard, an attorney with Umatilla tribe in Oregon.
The report marks the first look at government investigations and prosecutions on tribal lands. It comes as a result of the 2010 Tribal Law and Order Act, which requires the Justice Department to publicly release such figures.
Justice officials acknowledge that their work is far from done, but they say the numbers demonstrate the government’s commitment to combating violent crime on reservations where rates are higher than the national average.
Also, the report shows that prosecutors secured convictions in about two-thirds of nearly 6,000 reservation cases between calendar years 2011 and 2012. Of the 5,985 cases, about one-third were declined for prosecution.
Some others were resolved administratively or sent to another prosecuting authority and didn’t end up in federal court.
The numbers show “that we’re walking the talk at the Department of Justice,” said Tim Purdon, U.S. attorney in North Dakota.
Arizona, home to part of the nation’s largest American Indian reservation, had the highest number of total referrals with more than 2,000, followed by South Dakota with nearly 1,000 and Montana with more than 500.
Purdon leads a subcommittee that reports to Attorney General Eric Holder on American Indian issues. He said federal officials “want to improve public safety” and added that they are working to “remove those most dangerous predators, the most dangerous criminals from Indian Country.”
The federal government and tribes have concurrent jurisdiction in crimes where the suspect and victim are both American Indian, but federal prosecutions carry much stiffer penalties. Among recent U.S. government prosecutions:
— A man was found guilty of sexually abusing a teenager he met while working as a counselor at a summer camp on the Rocky Boy’s reservation in Montana. He was sentenced to more than three years in prison.
— A woman on the Spirit Lake Reservation in North Dakota was convicted of beating her 4-year-old son with a plastic clothes hanger. She was sentenced to seven years in prison.
— A man was sent to prison for 10 years for kicking the woman who was pregnant with his child on the Navajo Nation in Arizona. The unborn child died after suffering a skull fracture and other injuries.
Still, nearly 2,000 cases were declined for prosecution over the two-year span, a matter for which the DOJ has been criticized in the past.
“There are cases that are legitimately declined, and that is appropriate and expected,” said Leonhard, of the Umatilla tribe’s Office of Legal Counsel.
Free upcoming seminars at the Tulalip Cabela’s include:
June 1: 11 a.m., Puget Sound Crabbing Essentials; gear, bait, line, and where to go.
June 2, 1 p.m. in the Gun Library: Shotgun Cleaning 101. Keep your firearms in like-new condition.
June 3: 6-7:30 p.m., Advanced Tips and Techniques for Archers; pre-registration suggested by calling 360-474-4880.
June 8: 10 a.m. to 4 p.m., Family Outdoor Adventure Day; free kids fishing pond, live music by The Bobbers, youth archery shoot, decoy painting, kids calling contest, laser shoot, BB gun shooting, face painting, gold panning and more.
Every Saturday, June 8 to Nov. 9: 11 a.m., Responsible Firearm Ownership.
Every Saturday, June 15 to Aug. 24: 1 p.m., Learn to Fly Fish. Each class will present the basics of fly fishing including techniques, gear, casting, fly selection and more. Pre-registration is suggested by calling 360-474-4880. For a complete schedule of upcoming free classes and events, call that number or go to www.cabelas.com/tulalip.
Comey, who served as the second highest-ranking official at the Department of Justice from 2003 to 2005, became notable for refusing to reauthorize a warrantless domestic eavesdropping program. He objected when White House officials tried to secure approval from then-attorney general John Ashcroft, who was in the hospital recovering from surgery at the time.
If nominated and confirmed, Comey would replace Robert Mueller, who has served as FBI director since 2001. By law, Mueller’s term expires in September, The New York Times reported.
The FBI investigates crime in Indian Country. The agency has 100 special agents assigned to more than 200 reservations.
EVERETT — The Aaron Reardon era is expected to end for Snohomish County government at 5 p.m. today.
Reardon, 42, was in the office Thursday, keeping a low profile but speaking with television reporters.
“I’m probably the most thoroughly vetted candidate in the United States of America,” he told King 5. For months Reardon has refused interview requests from The Herald.
In keeping with the county charter, Deputy County Executive Gary Haakenson said he expects to take over after midnight Friday and will serve as acting executive until a new executive is appointed and sworn in. That could happen early next week.
Reardon was 33 when he first took county office in 2004, then the youngest county executive in the nation. He was re-elected to a third and final term in 2011, despite word that he was the focus of a Washington State Patrol investigation into his use of public money in pursuit of an extramarital affair with a county worker.
Reardon emerged from the investigation claiming he’d been exonerated after Island County’s prosecutor determined there was insufficient evidence to bring charges. The probe documented Reardon’s affair and also turned up evidence that Reardon used public resources in his campaign. The state Public Disclosure Commission is investigating.
On Feb. 21, Reardon used his 10th State of the County speech to announce he was stepping down. His prepared remarks were slim on details but full of blame. Reardon claimed political enemies had peppered him for years with what he called “false and scurrilous allegations.” The cost of defending himself from the attacks, he said, had just become too high.
Reardon’s resignation announcement came the day after the County Council voted unanimously to remove his authority over the county’s public records and computer system.
That happened as the council called for an independent investigation into evidence that two people on Reardon’s staff were behind a series of anonymous public records requests, attack websites and other activities targeting people considered the executive’s political rivals.
As The Herald reported Feb. 14, those on the receiving end believed they’d been subjected to attempts at harassment, surveillance and retaliation. A number of those targeted had cooperated with the patrol’s investigation. It is against the law to harass witnesses in criminal cases.
The King County Sheriff’s Office is now investigating whether any laws were broken. Reardon’s legislative aide, Kevin Hulten, and his executive assistant, Jon Rudicil, were placed on administrative leave in March.
At least for now, Rudicil remains on the county payroll. Hulten resigned earlier this month after sexually explicit images, including homemade porn, were found on the hard drive of a county laptop computer he’d been assigned. The device, which was checked as part of the King County investigation, also contained “background check” files on County Council members, records show.
In his television interview, Reardon denied misusing any taxpayer money for campaigns or on an affair. He wasn’t asked to explain bills from his government phone showing hundreds of calls during business hours to his 2011 campaign staff and to people who contributed financially to his re-election effort.
Reardon was coy with the TV reporter about his future plans.
“I’m an elected official today, I’m a private citizen on Saturday,” he said. “I’m going to elect to keep that private.”
Reardon is a Democrat in a partisan elected office. In keeping with the law, Snohomish County Democrats on Saturday were scheduled to pick three nominees to replace him. The special caucus is open to the public, and is set for 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Everett Labor Temple’s Warren Rush Hall, 2812 Lombard Ave., Everett.
The party’s central committee will forward the names to the County Council, which then has 60 days to agree on a successor. The council has scheduled public interviews with the nominees for 8:30 a.m. Monday.
Whomever is picked to follow Reardon will serve unchallenged at least into November 2014, when results are certified in a special election expected next year.
An election for a full, four-year term is expected in 2015.
The likely nominees are: Sheriff John Lovick of Mill Creek; state Rep. John McCoy, D-Tulalip; and Everett attorney Todd Nichols, a longtime Democratic Party leader at the state and county level.
Lovick is said to have locked up support from a majority of local Democrats. On Wednesday evening, he was the opening speaker at “Humanity not hatred,” gathering sponsored by the Snohomish County Human Rights Commission. Lovick told the crowd he was asked to stand in for Reardon at the event.
It’s on for June. Family reunion at 20,000 feet. Don’t forget the axes, the rope—and the documentary guy.
At the summit of Denali this summer, blood descendants of the first climbing party to stand atop North America’s highest mountain are hoping to mark the 100-year anniversary by retracing the original route, ascending 20,320 feet.
The original climb a century ago was a feat powered in part by young Alaska Natives, and one of the aims of this year’s effort is to inspire Native youth through interactivity and live-blogging during the climb.
Walter Harper, a strong young Athabascan Indian, was the first person to reach the summit on June 7, 1913, in a party organized by Hudson Stuck and Harry Karstens. Here is how Stuck wrote of the moment in Scribner’s Magazine of November 1913: “Walter, who had been in the lead all day, was the first to scramble up: a Alaska Natives, he is the first human being to set foot upon the summit of Alaska’s great mountain and he had well earned the lifelong distinction.”
Although the honor has faded over time—these climbers are far less well-known than Sir Edmund Hillary, for instance—the ascent was long and arduous, as they navigated slopes covered with ice blocks jumbled by an earthquake, and coped with a devastating fire on the mountain that destroyed quite a bit of gear.
Stuck, the Episcopal archdeacon of the Yukon, a diocese covering the vast interior of Alaska, could be considered the brains of the expedition. Karstens, a legendary musher and freight hauler, the brawn.
Top: Stuck, left, and Karstens; bottom, from left: Tatum, George, Karstens, Fredson, Harper
The strain of the climb and the more than three months they spent together frayed the relationship between Stuck and Karstens—they never spoke again. Their split, plus the early deaths of Harper and Stuck, meant the climbers on this year’s anniversary expedition hardly knew of their shared history as they were planning separate centennial observances. “The serendipity on this thing is amazing,” says Ken Karstens.
Karstens and his cousin Ray Schuenemann are great-grandsons of Harry Karstens, a robust Alaska pioneer. Ken Karstens says a treasure trove of family history about Denali lay hidden until the early 1990s when a great-grandmother, on her deathbed near Dallas, revealed the location of three trunks stored in a barn that were full of Harry Karstens’s journals, correspondence and even gold nuggets from the Klondike.
Meanwhile, Daniel Hopkins, a great-great-nephew of Hudson Stuck, also had his connection to Denali belatedly revealed when he was having tea with his grandfather in England. He had been regaling the old man with tales of bears he had seen in Alaska as a 13-year-old volunteer on a guided summer adventure tour to retrace part of the Klondike Trail when his grandfather, “turned white as a ghost and went up to the bookshelf,” Hopkins says.
His grandfather pulled down an old copy of Ten Thousand Miles With a Dogsled, written by Stuck and asked, “Do you have any idea that this is your great uncle?”
The revelation that he’d inadvertently been following in his great-great-uncle’s footsteps struck him deeply, Hopkins recalls, but it wasn’t until 2007, “when my wife asked me what was my dream,” that he realized he wanted to climb Denali to honor the legacy.
Hopkins reached the summit in 2008 with a group that ascended by the popular West Buttress Route, which had been pioneered in 1951. While at the park he met one of Denali’s legendary figures, National Park Service Mountaineering Ranger Roger Robinson, who has spent more than three decades at the mountain.
Hopkins had also been introduced via e-mail to filmmaker Elia Saikaly, and it turned out they were virtually neighbors in Ottawa. Coincidentally, Saikaly was headed for Denali in 2008 as Hopkins was leaving and the two met in an Anchorage hotel room to talk about life-dreams and stories.
“Serendipity is a very good word,” says the adventure filmmaker and high-altitude climber Saikaly of his part in the Denali climb. Five years ago, he was a mountaineering newbie headed to the Himalayas to start a film project, FindingLife, to honor a mentor who had died on Mount Everest. “At that point, I had never slept in a tent.” He got an e-mail from a fellow who also lived in Ottawa, Dan Hopkins, laying out a similar project of following an ancestor up a different mountain.
“It started out as a simple concept of Dan retracing Hudson Stuck’s footsteps. At the time we didn’t know all these other family members were out there,” Saikaly says. “It’s evolved beautifully over these last four or five years.”
As he headed to Denali, Saikaly also ran across Ranger Robinson. “I met Dan Hopkins, he’d come through and visited here at the ranger station. And Elia too,” Robinson recalls. “They weren’t together but they were both talking about the same cause, trying to do a centennial climb.”
And, Robinson adds, “It wasn’t new to me.” Turns out he had also fielded a phone call from Mike Harper, a descendant of Walter Harper, who was also seeking information about a centennial climb.
“Really, the central figure in all this is Roger Robinson,” says team member Sam Alexander, of the Gwich’in Nation from Fort Yukon, the village where Hudson Stuck is buried and where 1913 team member John Fredson is a revered political figure. Alexander adds that Robinson “knew that I wanted to do the climb because he had met my brother, and he had met Ken Karstens. He knew Dan Hopkins. But none of us knew each other. It was through Roger that we all got connected.”
Also in this mix was Mark Lattime, the Episcopal bishop of Alaska, who was seeking some way of honoring his church forebear, Hudson Stuck, who in 2009 had been named to the roll of Episcopal Holy Women, Holy Men. “We wanted to do something to commemorate the 100-year anniversary,” Lattime says. “I talked about getting a plane and flying onto the glacier as high as we could and do a service or something of that nature.”
Serendipity stepped in again during the diocesan convention in Wasilla, Alaska last year when a woman who had caught wind of a possible memorial service came up to Lattime and introduced herself as Joanne Harper, another descendant of Walter Harper, and told him there was a mountain climb in the works, which included Dana Wright, a back-country snowboarder and great-grandnephew of Walter Harper.
The new crew, from left: Lattime, Wright, Schuenemann, Hopkins and Karstens
Lattime was in. “I thought, Wow, now that’s cool! Let’s do that and we can really make something grand about it,” he recalls.
Suddenly all the frayed threads from 1913 had been rewoven. Wright represents Harper. Ken Karstens and Schuenemann are representing Harry Karstens. Hopkins is kin to Stuck. Lattime brings the church element of Stuck.
Alexander carries cultural kinship to Fredson. And in April, Sam Tatum, a great-nephew of the final 1913 climber, Robert Tatum signed on. And Saikaly will film it all—live action and historical recreation.
The 2013 team begins its ascent on June 7, the day the original crew reached the summit. “All of a sudden I was caught up in this whirlwind…and what really moved me is that this is a wonderful way to draw attention to the achievement of that first climb but also to really tell the story of Walter Harper as the first one to set foot on the top of the mountain,” Lattime says. “Especially in this diocese, where we have so many young people who are struggling.… We have very high incidences of suicide here and abuse of alcohol and drugs.”
With its ambition to inspire students—especially Native youth—Lattime senses a connection back to Stuck, who chose three Alaska Natives students in Walter Harper, John Fredson and Esaias George to teach and mentor. Harper, 20 at the time of the climb, had worked with Stuck for several years. Fredson and George were each only 14. Stuck not only included them in the climb, but also tutored them intensively for a far tougher climb—to become leaders in their communities and navigate a changing world.
“Stuck certainly grieved the loss of culture that he was seeing in the Native community. It was extremely important to him that people embrace their culture and sustain their culture but it was equally important to him that they be successful in both worlds,” Lattime says.
Harper and bride Frances Wells—they had been married by Stuck only weeks earlier—were en route to Seattle in 1918, with Harper eventually hoping to pursue a career in medicine. But the ship, the S.S. Princess Sophia, ran aground in a channel off Juneau and sank with the loss of all 343 aboard.
Stuck died in Fort Yukon two years later of pneumonia.
It fell to Fredson to attend Stuck’s alma mater, Sewanee: the University of the South, in Tennessee and become the first Alaska Native to graduate university in 1930.
Fredson went on to become a potent leader—primary founder of the Venetie Reserve, a champion for hunting and fishing rights, teacher and creator of hospitals in remote communities such as Fort Yukon, where Native people had no resistance to disease. Many of these issues on sustainability, fisheries protection and education remain important today. “That’s the legacy of Hudson Stuck and John Fredson—Native people need to have a voice and have a say about what goes on here. We have a right to self-determination,” Alexander says. “Let’s start by saying this mountain is Denali.”
Stuck refused to call the mountain McKinley—which is how it is identified on most maps—saying it is a dishonor to toss aside 10,000 years of local identity for a distant president.
The 2013 expedition is retracing the original Muldrow Glacier route. It takes about a week longer, starts way lower, has a higher difficulty rating than the West Buttress route, which was created 62 years ago. The group will be guided by Alaska Mountaineering School, which has already cached 16 boxes of supplies along the route, taken in by dogsled in early March.
This year’s climbers say they expect a challenge—they have been especially diligent about practicing crevasse rescues for their traverse of the Muldrow Glacier—but remain astonished at the challenges their ancestors overcame.
Climbing a year after a magnitude 7.2 earthquake struck along the Denali fault in 1912, the original party was confronted by an unexpected obstacle, as Stuck wrote: “What a discouraging prospect stretched before us! Mile upon mile of huge ice blocks, heaped in confusion, resting at every insecure angle, some on their points, some on their edges, with here and there gaps that went down to the black rock, and here and there pinnacles that soared to forty or fifty feet in the air, and everywhere the snow-slope under them falling away too steeply for any passage.… ”
But they did not stop. Harper and Karstens, the two strongest, took turns chopping three miles of stair-steps up the jumbled ice with ice axes and coal shovels. It took them three weeks.
And it wasn’t an easy place to work. Stuck again: “On either side the ridge fell precipitously to a glacier floor, five hundred feet below on the one hand, fifteen hundred feet below on the other.… ”
Along the way they suffered a fire in camp, believed to have been sparked by a match that either Stuck or Karstens carelessly tossed as the two men lit their pipes after lunch. The blaze destroyed tents and clothing and film. From Harper’s diary:
“02 May 1913—All the sox and stockings, all the sugar and Archdeacons films and 3 silk tents which were proposed for up above were burnt, and 2 shovels, an axe, some dog fish [salmon], all the milk, some butter and some baking powder, one or 2 overalls and Mr. Karstens’ fur parka.”
Harper and Fredson returned all the way to base camp to bring back canvas sled covers to be sewn into a new tent. The camel’s-hair lining of a sleeping bag was made into a dozen pair of socks.
Robert Tatum says the new tent was so small that if one guy wanted to roll over in the night, he gave a signal and all turned at once.
With all the staging and restaging of supplies at their various camps, Stuck estimated that each man climbed 60,000 feet on the 20,000-foot mountain.
On June 7, Stuck describes a sunny day so bitter cold he could not feel his hands or feet—he was so short of breath that the other men hauled him the last 100 feet to the summit, where he passed out briefly.
The team said a quick prayer on top of the world, then set up instruments to take barometric readings and other observations. And there was the view that no one had seen before. Stuck writes, “In the distance, the snow-covered tops of a thousand peaks dwindled and dwindled away, floating in the thin air….” And above, he added, “the sky took a blue so deep that none of us had ever gazed upon a midday sky like it before.… It was a deep, rich, lustrous, transparent blue…a hue so strange, so increasingly impressive that to one at least it ‘seemed like special news of God.’ ”
By the end of June, the climbers on this year’s anniversary ascent will hope for not just a reunion with the past, but for communion with the beauty their forebears saw.
