Nicholas Galanin strives to create fearlessly. The Tlingit-Unangax artist works in multiple mediums and from his home in Sitka, has made a name for himself in the indigenous art world. At 39, Galanin just finished a solo retrospective at the Heard Museum in Phoenix, Arizona. “Dear Listener” is the largest exhibit by a contemporary artist at the Heard Museum in a decade.

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At his workshop in Sitka, all of Galanin’s attention is on a thin and shining piece of silver.

“I am working on some silver jewelry right now, so this is an engraving and it’s going to be a bracelet when it’s done,” Gallanin said.

Rubbing oil based clay on the silver, Galanin sketches a small circle. He brings a pneumatic hand engraver to the metal, moving slowly.

Jewelry is where Galanin got his start. At 14, he began carving under the apprenticeship under his father, Dave Galanin. Pretty soon, the newly born eye of a Raven looks back at us.

Galanin used to design everything on paper and transfer the image to the silver. Now, he trusts his line work and creates freely. His last desk job was at 18-years-old at Sitka National Historical Park, greeting visitors.

“Nobody was there [one day] and I didn’t have anything to do, so I drew. I was told that I can’t do Tlingit art drawing there. I could only read Russian history books. So I quit. That was my last job that was non-creative related,” Galanin recalled.

Galanin’s made a living from his art ever since, earning national and international recognition. Singer Erykah Badu is wearing his silver work in her latest Instagram photo. Galanin is a musician too, releasing an album last year with his band Indian Agent.

2018 has been a busy year for Galanin, but a lifetime in the making. In addition to the solo retrospective at the Heard Museum, Galanin’s released a 140-page monograph called Let Them Enter Dancing and Showing Their Faces and led the carving of a totem pole.

“That was a big side job,” Galanin said with a laugh. “I was flying to Juneau and working three days a week, 12 hour days to start. At the end we were working 20-hour days to finish it up.”

Galanin and his five apprentice carvers hit their mark. The 40-foot healing pole was raised in June to memorialize when the City of Douglas burned down the Douglas Indian Village in 1962.

Even when working with traditional materials, Galanin has a call-and-response relationship with history. He tracks on the ways that indigenous people are displaced, often through violent and traumatic means, and indigenous culture appropriated. His work calls attention to that, boldly challenging the viewer and asking him or her, “Where do you stand?”

Take for example a pair of iron handcuffs, intricately engraved by Galanin with Tlingit imagery. He calls the work, “Indian Children’s Bracelet,” in reference to the separation of families through Native American boarding schools.

“That’s representation of that selective amnesia. Somebody will look at these children’s bracelets. If they just want to look at the surface, they’ll see the engraving and they’ll see the Tlingit art from that they might appreciate. They will not see the full object or the history that that object tells,” Galanin explained.

That’s one of 50 such works in the exhibit. Galanin flips through his monograph, pointing out others. There’s “God Complex,” police riot gear made out of porcelain. “White Noise, American Prayer Rug” evokes the fuzz on a television screen. “We Dreamt Deaf” is a taxidermied polar bear from Shishmaref. His unstuffed hindquarters appear to melt. It’s a provocative statement about climate change.

“They offer room for dialogue and progress. They’re tools. The work is doing the work,” Galanin said.

Viewers have reacted all kinds of way, he tells me, some saying the work made them uncomfortable. Opening night was particularly overwhelming. The group Shabazz Palaces were performing and Galanin was getting approached on all sides.

“It was like I walked into a pit of piranhas at  the opening and was being fed upon by docents, white old ladies. They were vicious. They were like demanding me to explain the work and myself and these titles and all these things,” he says.

Other viewers, especially Native viewers, said the work made them feel seen and empowered. He reads his favorite comments from Instagram.

“‘I finally got the family to see the brilliant Dear Listener at the Heard Museum. This experience has forever changed my spirit,’” Galanin reads, grinning.

“Dear Listener” is the name of the exhibit and Galanin’s fully aware some of his most attentive listeners are his three children. They’ve seen the home studio in Sitka grow over the years.

“Forever holding new things and new objects. Every object is a conversation. These conversations we’re having now, I have with them,” Galanin said.

That is the most important part for Galanin — not the art in the exhibit, but the conversation that comes out of those willing to take the time, look, and listen.

This week we’re hearing from artist Mark Wittteveen in Kodiak. Locals may have seen Witteveen’s work around town in the form of metal fish.

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WITTEVEEN: I am a sheet metal sculptor, so I craft mostly marine related stuff — fish and octopus and crab and stuff — out of sheet metal. You end up with a pretty life-like three-dimensional sculpture with lots of depth and motion and color, so it’s kind of a unique medium and it’s really fun.

The only real people doing metal-shaping anymore are people that build, like, custom hot rods or motorcycles. There’s just not a lot of artists out there that are metal shapers. So it’s kinda fun being unique in that way.

Usually I do stuff that’s popular to people wherever I’m selling stuff. Around here, it’s salmon and halibut. And I’m a fisheries biologist, so I spend a lot of time with live fish and really kinda get hung up on the details of the pieces being biologically accurate.

As far as different types of salmon, a lot of it has to do with shape. Different parts are different on salmon. Like the base of the tail on a coho is really thick, and that’s how you identify a coho. And what pigment is on the tail, if it’s silver or spots.

I think fish are interesting just because of their diversity. You look at salmon versus rockfish versus halibut, it’s just a fabulous amount of variety in the fish themselves. And their life histories are really interesting, and how they pave, how they exist in their world.

I think it’s really reflected in how important they are. The economy of fisheries is sort of obvious in a place like Kodiak. And as a recreational outlet for people. But then they really become part of the culture. You see fish in art, fish in subsistence, people putting food on their table. So fish are really kind of all-encompassing in a place like this. It’s hard to not be passionate about them.

Fuel for oil field operations arrived on the North Slope by barge instead of by truck last week, Aug. 30, for the first time.

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Colville, the company that contracted the barge, supplies about 90% of the refined fuel for oil field operations on the North Slope.

“The industry demand has increased and is anticipated to increase and so a fuel barge is a way to augment our trucking operation and the ability to transport fuel up to our customer,” Colville CEO and President Dave Pfeifer said.

There’s an increasing number of big oil projects being planned and developed on the North Slope right now, especially west of Prudhoe Bay. That’s where companies like Conoco have made large oil discoveries recently.

Pfeifer says that bringing fuel up by barge is now possible due to declining sea ice.

“The Beaufort Sea has been in the last few years particularly accommodating with a lesser ice floe, which has allowed the ability for barges to come in that hadn’t been in years past,” Pfeifer said.

Preifer expects barging to become a regular part of the company’s fuel delivery system, and perhaps even increase in the coming years.

Colville typically delivers 20 million gallons of fuel to the North Slope a year, which requires about 2,000 truck deliveries. One barge delivery is equivalent to that of 200 trucks.

Pfeifer says that Colville’s interest in barging stems in part from a 2015 event where ice and water flooded the Dalton Highway from a nearby river and held up transport.

“No truck was able to get past it for about 18 days,” Pfeifer said. “So the supplies ran out and it was only critical services… that the oil companies allowed to burn fuel.”

Pfeifer says that barging will provide the company another way to get fuel to the North Slope should something like that happen again.

A Sitka man has been sentenced to 45 years in prison for second-degree murder for shooting his girlfriend during an altercation last year. Tuesday’s sentencing concluded a 15-month legal drama that began with a romance inside Sitka’s city hall.

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During a heart-wrenching two-hour hearing in Sitka Superior Court, 40-year old Reuben Yerkes — a former city paralegal — told the overflow audience that taking the life of 28-year-old Ali Clayton “constitutes the single worst failure of my life,” and expressed deep remorse over the act, and over the trauma he has inflicted on the community.

“All that matters now is that Ali isn’t here,” Yerkes said through tears. “People are suffering greatly as a result of my actions. Words cannot express the sorrow, regret, and shame I feel knowing I took away the life of a kind and loving woman — a woman who should have had a bright future.”

Yerkes turned himself in to Sitka police early in the morning of Saturday May 6, 2017, and confessed to shooting Clayton in her home during an argument that night. After formal charges were brought, Yerkes initially asked for a trial by entering a plea of not guilty. He changed his plea,however, when he realized the further potential for pain it would cause in the community.

Yerkes was raised in Sitka.

“You had every right to expect more from me,” Yerkes said. “In the face of the crushing tragedy I have inflicted on this town, I am broken.”

The couple met after Clayton took a job in Sitka’s Finance Department. They had only been dating for about 10 weeks, when Yerkes shot and killed Clayton. He has already spent 15 months in jail — most of that time at the Lemon Creek Correctional Center in Juneau — while the state and the city engaged in a protracted dispute over confidential emails on the computers seized from the pair’s work computers.

His mother, Karen Yerkes, told the court that she expected him to forge a meaningful life behind bars.

“Having loving, encouraging family and friends will make all the difference in his ability to make a life for himself, and provide him some measure of self-worth, which will allow him to atone for his deed,” Karen Yerkes said. “I can’t go back and change the past, no matter how much I wish it. I can wish and pray for peace for Ali’s loved ones. I can make the best of the present, and have hope for the future. These things I do because despite Reuben’s responsibility in Ali’s death, he is a good human being.”

But not everyone who spoke at the hearing agreed. Ali Clayton’s father, Steve Clayton, argued that Reuben Yerkes was more dangerous than many realized. In the aftermath of Ali’s death, he and his wife discovered two weapons belonging to Yerkes — including a sniper rifle — which he had stored in her home, in addition to the pistol he used for the crime. Police found other weapons, and literature about snipers, on Yerkes’ boat. Pounding his fist on the table, Steve Clayton told the court that his daughter was not the victim of Yerkes’ rage, but of his homicidal fantasies.

“Killing people is in his brain thoughts,” Clayton said.

Judge Trevor Stevens also shared his misgivings over the manner of Ali Clayton’s death. Although he believed that Yerkes never planned Clayton’s death, Stevens said it was intentional: Yerkes had to “walk across the room, open a drawer, take out a handgun,” and then held Clayton on the bed as he shot her four times in the head.

“It’s fair to infer from the record I have before me that she was aware of what was happening,” Stevens said from the bench. “She may have attempted to defend herself; it’s likely she knew she was going to die. The horror, the terror that he caused her in that moment is simply beyond my powers to describe.”

Ali Clayton’s mother, Paula Clayton, offered the longest testimony to the court. She said that Yerkes did not deserve another day of freedom. She described “the five life sentences” that she would now face including the pain of knowing her daughter faced a violent death, the loss of joy in her family’s lives and most importantly: living with hatred. Paula Clayton said that she taught her two children that it was okay to hate cauliflower, but never people.

Her child’s murder has changed her.

“I was wrong,” Paula Clayton told the court. “I hate Mr. Yerkes with every cell in my body. I despise him. I loathe him. Some people will say that I need to forgive him, to find it in myself to forgive him, but they’re not experiencing this.”

Depending on his behavior in prison, Reuben Yerkes will be eligible for discretionary parole in 13 years and nine months. If the parole board turns him down, he’ll be eligible for mandatory parole after serving 30 years of his 45-year sentence.

Steve Clayton did not appear placated by this news. Looking at Yerkes, he said, “You’re lucky to have this court of law to protect you.”

As the race for Alaska’s next Governor heats up, Talk of Alaska is featuring all three candidates in September. On the next program, Democrat Mark Begich joins us. What does he see as the best path forward for the future of Alaska?

HOST: Lori Townsend

GUESTS:

• Mark Begich – Democratic candidate for governor

• Call 550-8422 (Anchorage) or 1-800-478-8255 (statewide) during the live broadcast
• Post your comment before, during or after the live broadcast (comments may be read on air).
• Send email to talk@alaskapublic.org (comments may be read on air)

LIVE Broadcast: Tuesday, September 11, 2018 at 10:00 a.m. on APRN stations statewide.

SUBSCRIBE: Get Talk of Alaska updates automatically by email, RSS or podcast.

Stories are posted on the APRN news page. You can subscribe to APRN’s newsfeeds via email, podcast and RSS. Follow us on Facebook at alaskapublic.org and on Twitter @AKPublicNews

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Fuel for North Slope oil production arrives by barge for the first time

Ravenna Koenig, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Fairbanks

Bringing fuel up to the North Slope by barge is now possible due to declining sea ice.

Trilogy Metals seeks permits for Ambler Mine project

Dan Bross, KUAC – Fairbanks

A mining company is preparing to apply for permits for an open pit project in the Ambler Mining District.

Alaska companies release private data for global seabed mapping project

Rashah McChesney, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Juneau

The goal is to completely map the seafloor by the year 2030 and three Alaska companies are pitching in.

Former Sitka paralegal sentenced for 2017 murder of his girlfriend

Robert Woolsey, KCAW – Sitka

A Sitka man has been sentenced to 45 years in prison for second-degree murder for shooting his girlfriend during an altercation last year.

Kenai Peninsula Borough opposes Soldotna’s annexation plans

Associated Press

The Kenai Peninsula Borough is urging the city of Soldotna to seek voter approval in its efforts to annex surrounding areas.

At remote Cape Peirce, Bristol Bay students experience the environment first-hand

Isabelle Ross, KDLG – Dillingham

Eight Bristol Bay middle schoolers did something particularly adventurous with their summer vacations – they attended the Cape Peirce marine science and culture camp on the southwest tip of the Togiak National Wildlife Refuge.

AK: For Tlingit-Unangax artist Nicholas Galanin, first retrospective a lifetime in the making

Emily Kwong, KCAW – Sitka

Nicholas Galanin strives to create fearlessly. The Tlingit artist works in multiple mediums from his home in Sitka, and has made a name for himself in the indigenous art world.

49 Voices: Mark Wittteveen of Kodiak

Kayla Desroches, KMXT – Kodiak

This week we’re hearing from artist Mark Wittteveen in Kodiak. Locals may have seen Witteveen’s work around town in the form of metal fish.

What does the bottom of the ocean look like? A global collaboration of public and private groups are working to figure that out. The goal is to completely map the seafloor by the year 2030 and three Alaska companies are pitching in.

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The Alaska Gasline Development Corporation is spearheading a project that could lead to the state getting a pipeline from Prudhoe Bay down to Nikiski in Cook Inlet, where liquefied natural gas would be loaded onto tankers and then shipped to Asia.

But before they could decide if it was feasible to do that, project managers needed to know what the bottom of the inlet looked like. So, they hired a geoservice company to chart it out for them.

Cook Inlet has extreme tides, giant boulders and moving sand waves that could potentially bury the pipeline.

It turns out that Fugro — the geoservice company they hired to chart it for them, is part of a massive effort to completely map the seafloor by 2030.

“Surprisingly, the world’s oceans are not mapped,” Fugro Alaska General Manager Rada Khadjinova said. “They just look like they are, but it’s a visual trick.”

Khadjinova said maps of the seafloor are often just fillers.

“That’s what we think it is; it’s not based on any sounding or measurement,” Khadjinova said.

Fugro Geoservices Inc., is partnering with Seabed 2030 to replace those filler charts with real data. To do that, the company is doing new mapping expeditions. It’s also helping to convince governments, private companies and other sources of seafloor data to make it public, including the state’s gasline corporation.

“You know we thought about it for a bit and we said yeah,” Alaska Gasline Development Corporation Vice President of LNG and Administrative Service Fritz Krusen said.  “This sounds like something good for the public, you know, for the Cook Inlet fishermen and for the marine traffic that goes up and down to Anchorage through the Cook Inlet.”

Krusen said the state corporation has to clear the request with BP, ConocoPhillips and Exxon Mobil first — they’re the ones who own the original data.  But, he expects the data to be released in a few weeks.

They’re not the first company in Alaska to pay for marine charting data, then turn it over to the public.

In late 2017, the broadband company Quintillion finished installing more than 1,000 miles of cable along Alaska’s Arctic coast — bringing internet to communities from Prudhoe Bay to Nome.

Just like the state’s gasline project, Quintillion needed to know what was happening under water before it could install the fiber-optic cable.

Kristina Woolston, the company’s Vice President of External Relations, said when Quintillion started its project, there just wasn’t a lot of information available about the seabed floor in Northwest Alaska.

“We had a blank map to start from and we surveyed the seabed floor along about 1,000 miles of the coast of Alaska,” Woolston said.

Because this is the first time this type of work has been done in the area Woolston said it adds data that could be used to build functional charts for everyone from fishing boat captains to new private industry in the Arctic.

The search continues in Kotzebue for a missing ten year old girl.

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Alaska State Troopers report that Ashley Johnson-Barr was last seen leaving a local park at 6 p.m. on Thursday.

A statement issued by Kotzebue police Saturday says Johnson-Barr’s cellphone was found soon on a city street about a half-mile from the park, in the opposite direction of the route to her home.

Numerous agencies are involved in the search, including Arctic Circle Search and Rescue, the Northwest Arctic Borough Search and Rescue, the Coast Guard, Mat-Su-based search dog teams and hundreds of volunteers.

A state incident management team arrived in Kotzebue on Saturday to organize the search, most of which is being conducted on foot. It’s included a grid search of the city, surrounding area campsites and structures.

On a Monday afternoon in mid-July, eight middle schoolers – four from Dillingham and four from Good News Bay – took off in a couple DeHaviland Beavers. They landed in the harbor off the Cape Peirce beach.

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Camp leader Terry Fuller led the way as we dragged our gear and food through the tall grass to the two cabins, surrounded by a bear fence. Chaperon Jon Dyasuk brought up the rear. After the kids unpacked, Fuller explained what to expect over the next few days.

“We want you guys enjoying yourselves in the outdoors and attaching importance to the environment so that when you are adults and you are the ones voting and making decisions you’re making good solid decisions about it,” Fuller said. “Somebody who never has the chance to come out here is going to have a different perspective on this than you will.”

The next morning, the camp began in earnest; the group headed to the beach to see what they could find in the sand.

“This is why you need to follow directions. First of all, bear tracks, and I believe these are last night’s – they’re fresh,” Fuller said.

As we walked along the beach we didn’t see any walrus. But we did see a walrus carcass, and the pungent stench didn’t deter Melvin Pavala and the other kids from taking a closer look.

“Do you know what paraluqs are? Maggots,” Melvin explained.

Low tide found us clambering below Cape Peirce’s famous arch. Puffins propelled themselves through the air with their short wings as the kids peered into tide pools and jumped over waves. Freedom Theurer, Kylie Clouse and Jamal Romie headed to the shore.

“My favorite activity was going down to the beach during the bonfire, cause I got to jump in the water and trip in it too,” Freedom said.

“When we were jumping over the waves we saw a jellyfish and me and Jamal touched it. That was pretty cool,” Kylie said.

“It even had a thing to digest things,” Jamal said.

Camp leader Fuller said these camps help kids bond with the environment.

“Part of my job is exposing people to this so that hopefully they’ll make decisions that benefit the natural resources rather than just tear them down,” Fuller said. “Stewardship is the word.”

An important piece of that is having fun. At the beach bonfire that evening, Kimberly Roberts, Melvin Pavala and Miszenna Evans practiced their new survival skills — starting fires with flint and shooting bows and arrows.

“My favorite thing to do is archery,” Kimberly said.

On the final full day, we hiked five miles along the cliffs overlooking the water. We saw a host of seabirds: black-footed kitty wakes, cormorants and murres. Perched atop a cliff, we also saw an enormous bald eagle. Winding down the path on the way back to the cabins, suddenly, the kids spotted a fox.

“There’s a fox right there. And it’s on the ledge of a rock. And it’s just sleeping. And we have to be really quiet or we’ll wake it up and it will run away,” Jamal said.

As the sun set and we started packing up, the kids reflected on what they would take with them.

“The sand dunes. I love the sand dunes,” Angelina Olson said. “Despite the fact that it gets everywhere when you play in it. Because it’s squishy. That is one of my favorite reasons.”

“I liked the view and I liked how the grass and the nature made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside,” Chenoa Chingliak said.

For Miszenna, the trip was about new friends.

“I’m going to tell my family what the best things I did here and tell them about the fun people I met, and the people I remember,” Misvenna said.

The next morning, tired, happy and covered in sand, we flew home.

In a hastily-assembled, early morning press conference on Sept. 10, state officials announced that they have settled on the terms of a gas sales agreement with ExxonMobil.

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The agreement is not binding, but is intended to supply gas for the Alaska LNG project.

Though they would not share a copy of the agreement, officials say it contains key terms like the price for the gas and volume the company agrees to sell into the Alaska LNG project, which would build a pipeline to bring gas from the North Slope to Cook Inlet for export.

The state and its Alaska Gasline Development Corporation are negotiating at both ends of the proposed pipeline, including final agreements to buy gas from producers and contracts for buyers for that gas.

The gas sales agreement is also linked to production at the massive Point Thomson field on the North Slope. Exxon operates the field, though BP is a major owner as well.

Production at the field has been a point of contention between the state and the oil companies for decades. A 2012 legal agreement set a timeline for bumping up production. Now, the state has agreed to suspend that timeline — so long as ExxonMobil and BP continue to negotiate gas sales agreements for the Alaska LNG project.

The gasline corporation still needs to secure the federal and state permits to build the $45 billion project.  It wants a final investment decision by 2019 — so it can break ground that year and bring the project online by 2025.

The Department of Veterans Affairs in Alaska, or VA, wants to provide Homer veterans with more health services and a larger clinic. But there’s a hang up. It’s estimated that only half of the veterans in town are signed up for insurance through the VA. Without more registered vets, it may be harder to justify additional services, and getting unregistered vets to sign up isn’t easy.

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Vietnam veteran Troy Wise wears the same grey hat everyday.

“It has three pins on there,” Wise said. “It has the combat infantry badge, the Vietnam campaign medal and aviator wings.”

Wise hopes those pins catch the attention of other veterans.

“If they recognize that and start up a conversation, then I know that they understand at least what they symbolize,” Wise said. “So they got to be a vet and that’s a start. I find that still a lot of them that I meet on the street, they don’t trust the VA. They are not going to go in.”

Wise knows this type of veteran. He used to be one. The first time he went to the VA was right after he served in the 1970s.

It wasn’t just the bureaucracy of the VA that made him hesitant to register. He didn’t want to admit that he was struggling with PTSD. Wise says he didn’t want to be defined by a diagnosis, but years later it came to a head.

“I entertained thoughts of suicide,” Wise said. “Didn’t act on them; I didn’t think it was a solution. I didn’t want to miss out on my grandkids so didn’t go down that path, but it was not something I could navigate on my own.”

It took him 42 years to seek counseling through the VA, and he says it turned his life around. Now, he’s trying to convince vets with the same struggles to sign up in an effort to bring more V.A. services to Homer.

Dr. Timothy Ballard is the director of the Alaska Veteran Affairs Healthcare System. Ballard acknowledges that many vets are in the position as Wise was.

“I think there are a number of veterans that are hurting,” Ballard said. “There are 20 veterans across the country everyday who commits suicide. Fourteen of them aren’t engaging in our system or they aren’t enrolled.”

Ballard says that there’s an estimated 90,000 veterans in Alaska, the highest per capita in the country. Based on that estimate, less than half have signed up for VA services in the state. That’s a roadblock standing in the way of any attempt to expand services in Alaska.

“So it’s very difficult for my mental health care providers across the state to be able to help these veterans out if they’re not being seen, if we don’t have information on them, if they’re not actively using the system.”

Some veterans in rural Alaska intentionally isolate themselves and don’t wish to engage in a government or community programs. Some vets say others are more deserving of VA services.

Currently, the Vet Center, another branch of the VA, provides monthly mental health services in Homer while the VA itself provides healthcare services a few days per week at South Peninsula Hospital. But there isn’t enough room to serve all of the veterans thought to be in the area.

Alaska VA spokesperson Sam Hudson says the VA put in the paperwork to build a stand alone clinic in Homer. But it’s difficult to justify when less than half of the estimated veterans are registered  with the VA.

“Imagine us saying, hey, we need some more things,” Hudson said. “Whether it be materials, whether it be staffing, whether it be a building, whether it be whatever. Taking for instance, my grandfather. I used to say ‘grandad, I want a motorcycle.’ He was like, ‘why are you wanting a dirt bike when you got a bicycle you don’t use?’”

The VA is working to register more people in the Homer area. They’re trying to rebrand a notorious system.

“This is is not your father’s VA,” Hudson said. “We’re much different. We’re much better. Are we perfect? Absolutely not. But are we getting better? Absolutely.”

Hudson said they are making progress in registering more people. Now, it’s almost a requirement for people who are separating from the military to sign up for care.

But for older veterans, it continues to be a challenge. Still veterans like Wise are not backing down. His dream is to have a Vet Center in Homer, a center just dedicated to serving mental health of veterans and their families.

Besides now, Wise likes to identify himself as a vet.

“I decided to quit denying that it really was a very big part of me and it did define me,” Wise said. “I didn’t have a choice and that was kind of not embracing it so much, but it’s time to be who I really am and stop denying it.”

Wise said whether or not the VA expands its offerings in Homer, he will keep his hat on in an effort to attract more vets to its services.

Earlier this year, the state re-opened Sitka’s public assistance office — to the relief of many. When the office was closed, the welfare caseload became severely backlogged. Locals who rely on benefits were not able to quickly renew, pushing many over the edge. Sitka’s pantries were put to the test.

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Blossom Twitchell pulled back a curtain, revealing Sitka Tribe of Alaska’s pantry. “We have crackers and rice and noodles and chili,” she noted. Twitchell is a case worker for the social services department. The pantry is open to all tribal citizens regardless of income.

At the start of the month, staff go grocery shopping and stock the pantry with staple goods. Three weeks into August, when this interview took place, the shelves were mostly bare.

“A lot of people are using their food money to pay utilities and rent and cost of living expenses. We are seeing a spike in our [pantry use] numbers,” Twitchell said.

Food insecurity in Sitka has deepened and also broadened. Jean Swanson, an outreach family caseworker, said she’s seen tribal citizens come into her office seeking help that never did before.

“We were seeing families that usually are self-sufficient coming in. We were seeing them for the first time,” Swanson said. As a result, what used to last a month at STA’s pantry now lasts a week and half. Why?”

Both Swanson and Twitchell trace the upswing in pantry use this past year to the closure of Sitka’s public assistance office in June 2017. The district office, operated by the state Division of Public Assistance, is where locals could walk in the door, apply for food stamps, Medicaid, and other benefits, and have a technician on hand to help navigate the system.

The closure was the result of attrition. It made financial sense to the state in an era of budget cuts. The Juneau office took over Sitka’s case load and did what it could to keep up with demand, but eventually, the backlog grew and grew… and grew. Individuals were unable to renew their food stamps, formally known as SNAP benefits (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). Without them, more Sitkans were going hungry. Approximately 10% of Sitka’s population uses food stamps.

“A lot people would call the Juneau office and they would get a machine,” Twitchell said. “When you’re in that moment of needing assistance and needing answers to what they needed to do to get back on, they weren’t finding the answers.”

Susan Briles, SEARHC and others began to submit complaints to the state ombudsman, as did other communities in Alaska experiencing their own delays. Twitchell and Briles even brought the issue before Sitka’s Health and Human Services commission.

In 2018, the state ombudsman investigated the Division of Public Assistance and found a backlog of 20,000 applications. Their report was released in May of this year. You can read it here. And in June, to the relief of many, the state re-opened Sitka’s office.

The office is housed in the same building as Sitka’s trial court. Applications are still processed elsewhere – this time in Ketchikan – but the two local positions have been re-hired.

Southeast Regional Manager Victoria O’Brien says it will take awhile to train the new staff and get caught up on Sitka’s case backlog.

“As of right now, we’re doing what we can with what we have and working as much as we can, encouraging our staff to work as quickly as possible as accurately as possible and to get as much done as they can in a day,” O’Brien said.

There have been other positive changes since the ombudsman’s report. The legislature approved funding for 20 new public assistance positions and the department is working on a statewide delivery model that would allow technicians to process applications from anywhere in the state.

Twitchell is relieved.

“It’s not such a bottleneck now, but it definitely hit Sitka hard. It hit families hard. It hit elders especially hard,” Twitchell said.

STA wasn’t the only pantry cleaned out. Sitkans Against Family Violence has seen their stock dwindle. Salvation Army is feeling the pressure too. They are the biggest pantry in Sitka, cycling through 10,000 pounds of food a month. About three quarters of local donations come from Sitka’s groceries stores. The rest is supplied through the U.S. Commodity Supplemental Food Program.But, it’s not enough to meet the need in Sitka.

Major Charleen Morrow moves through the dining area and greets the clientele, as steam rises from bowls on the table. It’s lunch time. She and her husband Matthew took over the job in June. In the past year, they’ve seen clientele at the soup kitchen nearly double, from 25-30 meals a day to 50 meals a day.

Donations for the pantry are not enough, so the Salvation Army spends $600 a week on groceries to keep the shelves full. Frozen meat is one of the first things to go.

“Meat is so expensive and lots of families go without,” Morrow said. “They’ll use canned meat, like chicken or tuna in place of meet, so when we get the meat in, we’re really excited to give that out.”

Morrow echoes what Sitka Tribe is experiencing: that clients aren’t just homeless individuals, but families and senior citizens. She worries about the physical toll food insecurity can take.

“We hear stories about people worrying themselves into the hospital,” Morrow said. “Like, ‘I was so worried about paying this bill, I got an ulcer and ended up going to the hospital.'”

Morrow says it’s hard for those families to come to Salvation Army for the first time.

“We have a lot of people that come in tears because they are embarrassed or ashamed,” Morrow said. “As a person that grew up with a single mom that relied upon food boxes, I know that embarrassment and shame is there. But we try to make it so that it’s not embarrassing or shameful.”

Like Sitka Tribe, Salvation Army does not verify the income of a person seeking help. Their mission is built around the idea that anyone can fall on hard times and that times right now are especially challenging.

“We don’t consider it a hand out,” Morrow said. “We consider it a hand-up.”

Editor’s note: Victoria O’Brien serves on the CoastAlaska board.

The state has filed charges against two Unalaska teenagers who allegedly threatened another teen with a handgun this July.

That’s likely all the information Unalaskans will get about the case — unless it moves to the adult court system.

The rest of the details remain confidential under Alaska law.

Officials said they can’t release the names of the minors or the charges against them, citing confidentiality policies that govern the state Division of Juvenile Justice.

“It can be a mystifying black box for the public,” Matt Davidson, a social services program officer at the division’s headquarters in Juneau, said.

Davidson acknowledged that communities often want more information when it comes to kids and public safety. While that’s understandable, he said, Alaska law protects the privacy of juvenile delinquency records for a reason.

“Children who commit criminal acts should have an opportunity to repair the harm they’ve done without a conviction on their permanent public record,” Davidson said. “So keeping their information privileged — that protects the youth from having something they did as a 12-year-old, for example, follow them throughout their whole life.”

With that mission in mind, Davidson said most cases result in probation.

Judges work with families, schools and social service providers to create plans aimed at addressing the needs of young offenders and preventing future crimes.

“Generally, there aren’t a lot of jury trials,” Davidson said. “But they can happen.”

Trials are reserved for serious offenses. In some cases, kids can end up in juvenile detention until they’re 19.

Even more rarely, Davidson said some offenders are tried as adults, usually if they commit serious crimes past the age of 16.

“Those are crimes like murder, first-degree assault, and arson in the first degree,” Davidson said.

Cases moved to the adult system do become public.

For now, it’s unclear where the Unalaska case fits on the spectrum of offenses or how long it’ll take to move through the Juvenile Justice process.

Acting Public Safety Director Jennifer Shockley described the incident as “disturbing,” but said the accused teenagers are currently out of custody on unspecified conditions of release.

Officials with the Unalaska City School District previously announced the teens had been placed on “homebound instruction” and were completing schoolwork from home. But Superintendent John Conwell said he can’t comment further because student records are private under federal law.

Conwell said the earlier information was only released as an emergency exception to alleviate community fears of a threat against the school.

With the nomination of U.S. Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh pending in the U.S. Senate, many Americans are hoping — and others dreading — that the court could reconsider the legal right of women to terminate a pregnancy, as established in Roe v. Wade. If the 1973 case is overturned, states would have more power to restrict abortion, or possibly ban the procedure entirely within their boundaries. But in Alaska, the right to abortion is stronger than it is in much of the country.

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I put the question to attorneys on both sides of the issue: What happens to abortion rights in Alaska if Roe v. Wade is overturned?

“Well, the answer basically is nothing,” Anchorage attorney Kevin Clarkson said.

That’s because the state Constitution, as interpreted by the Alaska Supreme Court, affirms a legal right that Clarkson calls “Roe v. Wade on steroids.”

“Basically, Alaska provides more protection for abortion rights than the federal Constitution,” Clarkson said. “So if Roe vs. Wade were overturned, in Alaska, nothing would change.”

And as Clarkson sees it, that’s a problem: He has represented the anti-abortion side in several Alaska cases. He defended a law requiring parental consent before a minor’s abortion, and when that was deemed unconstitutional, he defended one requiring parental notification. The state Supreme Court found that one unconstitutional, too.

Again and again, he and other abortion opponents have hit a brick wall called the Alaska Constitution, and Clarkson said the biggest brick in it is the Privacy Amendment.

Roe v. Wade is built on the U.S. Supreme Court’s finding of an implied right to privacy in the national Constitution. But months before Roe, in 1972, Alaska voters installed that right explicitly in their own state Constitution. It’s there in black and white: “The right of the people to privacy is recognized and shall not be infringed.”

“Although I think if you looked at the history of the Privacy Amendment in Alaska, nobody had abortion in mind when they passed that amendment,” Clarkson said.

Clarkson is right that abortion wasn’t the commonly stated reason for Alaska’s privacy amendment. According to a history published by the Legislative Affairs Agency, the issue of the day was the state’s development of a database to track people’s criminal histories.

Regardless of what sparked it, the state Supreme Court has said the intent of the Privacy Amendment was much broader. And that’s how former state Senate President Chancy Croft remembers it, too.

“Nobody really knew where it came from,” Croft said, “but it just struck everybody pretty well unanimously that this was a good idea and it really fits in Alaska.”

Croft said legislators in 1972 liked the spirit of the privacy amendment, even if the exact motivation behind it was something of a mystery.

He and the rest of the Legislature put the Privacy Amendment on the ballot and voters approved it, by a huge margin.

For a long time, Alaska’s privacy protection seemed to be mostly linked to marijuana. That’s because, soon after the amendment passed, an attorney named Irwin Ravin got arrested with some cannabis in his pocket. The Alaska justices concluded it was none of the government’s business if a person had a small amount of marijuana at home.

It wasn’t until 1997 that the Alaska Supreme Court had an opportunity to say the Right of Privacy covered abortion, too.

“Not only does this provision protect reproductive rights, it protects them as a fundamental right,” said attorney Janet Crepps of the Center for Reproductive Rights, who has worked on most of the important Alaska abortion cases. “Which means that they get the highest level of protection under the Constitution.”

About a dozen state constitutions around the country include a right of privacy or something similar. But Crepps said their courts doesn’t necessarily apply it in abortion cases the way Alaska’s does. For instance, Crepps said, “Louisiana has a constitutional right to privacy and the court has said it doesn’t provide any extra protection.”

She agrees with Clarkson, the anti-abortion attorney, that if Roe v. Wade falls, it won’t change anything for women in Alaska.

“That won’t be the case for women in other parts of the country,” Crepps said.

But what if you want abortion banned or limited in Alaskan? Clarkson is resigned to the idea that his side would continue to lose abortion cases in the Alaska Supreme Court, probably on privacy grounds. Even if a conservative governor had a chance to replace all five Alaska justices, he said, the new ones would likely respect precedent.

“What could change things in Alaska to move it towards a more protective-of-life perspective would be an amendment to the Alaska Constitution,” he said. “That’s really what it would take at this time.”

Some campaign signs on private property along Alaska’s highways can be displayed — at least for now. A judge issued a temporary restraining order Monday, stopping the state from removing signs outside the state’s right of way.

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But Superior Court Judge Herman Walker’s order allows the state to continue to enforce the ban within the state’s right of way, as long as the state treats political and commercial signs the same.

Assistant Attorney General Mike Schechter said the order allows the state to protect public safety.

“The judge’s order does essentially what the state requested,” he said, “Which is make clear that folks are allowed to place small, temporary political campaign signs on their private property, and allows the state to continue enforcing restrictions on signage within the right of way.”

Signs were removed under a highway billboard ban in existence since before statehood.

The American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska, the campaign group Dunleavy for Alaska and Palmer resident Eric Seibles had sued the state Department of Transportation for removing them in July.

ACLU spokesman Casey Reynolds said he was pleased.

“The judge sided with us on about 85 percent of the territory that’s in dispute and is going to issue a separate order on the remainder in the next couple of weeks,” he said.

The ACLU said its intent was not to lift the ban on commercial billboards, but the lawsuit does challenge the ban’s constitutionality.

The judge indicated a second order with further guidance on enforcing the ban is forthcoming.

Stories are posted on the APRN news page. You can subscribe to APRN’s newsfeeds via email, podcast and RSS. Follow us on Facebook at alaskapublic.org and on Twitter @AKPublicNews

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Numerous agencies continue search for missing 10-year-old Kotzebue girl

Dan Bross, KUAC – Fairbanks

The search continues in Kotzebue for a missing ten-year-old girl.

Judge orders that some political signs can remain for now — but not all

Andrew Kitchenman, KTOO – Juneau

Superior Court Judge Herman Walker’s order allows the state to continue to enforce the ban within the state’s right of way. That’s as long as the state treats political and commercial signs the same.

State announces tentative deal with ExxonMobil to supply gas for Alaska LNG project

Rashha McChesney, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Juneau

Agreement links Point Thompson production requirements to deal on Alaska LNG project.

What happens if Roe v. Wade goes? In Alaska, ‘nothing’

Liz Ruskin, Alaska Public Media – Washington D.C.

If the 1973 case is overturned, states would have more power to restrict abortion, or possibly ban the procedure entirely within their boundaries. But in Alaska, the right to abortion is stronger than it is in much of the country or in federal law.

Alaska Airlines union workers picket for better wages

Adelyn Baxter, KTOO – Juneau

In Juneau, clerical workers, ramp staff and customer service agents sported neon green t-shirts that said “Show us the money!” as they waved signs on the plaza across from the airport’s drop off area.

Highway re-routed to protect road from migrating debris lobe

Associated Press

Alaska highway workers have moved the Dalton Highway away from a gigantic mass of frozen debris that is oozing down a hillside so that the road doesn’t get T-boned by the so-called blob.

Hunters unearth massive mammoth tusk in Northwest Alaska

Associated Press

A pair duck hunting in northwest Alaska stumbled upon a 177-pound woolly mammoth tusk sticking out of the ground.

When Sitka’s public assistance office closed, pantries shouldered need

Emily Kwong, KCAW – Sitka

Earlier this year, the state re-opened Sitka’s public assistance office — to the relief of many. When the office was closed, the welfare caseload became severely backlogged.

VA wants more veterans to register for healthcare

Renee Gross, KBBI – Homer

The Department of Veterans Affairs in Alaska, or VA, wants to provide Homer veterans with more health services and a larger clinic. But there’s a hang up. 

How oil companies are confronted by climate change

Elizabeth Harball, Alaska’s Energy Desk – Anchorage

Today, oil companies on Alaska’s North Slope are dealing with on-the-ground problems related to rising temperatures, like shorter ice road seasons. But the oil industry is also grappling with climate change on at much higher level.

From Fairbanks to San Diego, Alaska Airlines workers picketed at airports across the West Coast Monday.

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They’re upset over slow moving contract negotiations.

In Juneau, clerical workers, ramp staff and customer service agents represented by the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers sported neon green t-shirts that said “Show us the money!” as they waved signs on the plaza across from the airport’s drop off area.

John Walters works on the ramp for Alaska Airlines at Juneau International Airport. He and about 20 other union employees and supporters demonstrated for most of the day.

“Job security is number one. Our job is not guaranteed, we live contract to contract, so job security is huge,” Walters said. “Pension, raise — our starting pay is $12/hr. We don’t get paid much to do this job.”

According to union representatives, Juneau’s demonstration was one of 10 in cities across the West Coast. About 20 workers picketed in Anchorage and a handful in Fairbanks.

All of the participants took part before or after work or on their day off.

President of Local 2202 Kaleb Rosa said they first approached the airline in August 2017 about opening up contract negotiations.

“It’s going, but it’s going slowly. We’re doing it as clean as possible,” Rosa said. “We love the place we work, we love our work group. We love our coworkers and the company we work for.”

Rosa explained that the union cannot strike without congressional approval due to the Railway Labor Act. Instead, they’re hoping to put public pressure on Alaska Airlines.

“We’ll take all the support we can get,” Rosa said. “But if Alaska doesn’t start moving this process quicker, then we’re going to have to start engaging the public on a daily basis.”

In a statement, Alaska Airlines confirmed it is in the process of negotiating two labor agreements with the union.

The airline said it does not talk about specifics during union negotiations, but it supports paying employees fair, competitive wages and offering quality benefits.

The FBI has joined the effort to find a missing girl in Kotzebue. Ten-year-old Ashley Johnson-Barr was last seen the evening of September 6th leaving a local park. Kotzebue police, Alaska State Troopers, the Coast Guard and numerous others have been looking for her since. The effort is being led by a state incident management team.

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Alaska State Trooper communications director Jonathon Taylor says the operation remains a search and rescue, and Troopers sought help from the FBI for additional staffing and expertise.

“With any search and rescue operation, a key part of that is looking into the circumstances surrounding the disappearance of the individual who is missing,” Taylor said. “And so we requested assistance from them.”

Johnson-Barr’s cell phone was found on a street after her disappearance, and Taylor says it’s being analyzed.

“Ashley’s cell phone was found about a half-mile away from where she was last seen at Rainbow Park,” Taylor said. “And that is with investigators now. They’re analyzing it, trying to determine if it’s been damaged, if there’s any information that they can glean from that.”

Kotzebue is a compact community surrounded by a lot of water and open tundra, and Taylor says the search is multifaceted, “canvassing the area on land, by ATV, by air.”

Taylor says daily sweeps of the community are being conducted by professionals and numerous volunteers from Kotzebue and other communities.

“We had folks from all across the community in the region volunteer. Yesterday we had at least 50 people,” Taylor said. “We were, I believe, expecting at least that many today to help with the canvassing and search efforts.”

Taylor emphasizes that the focus remains finding Ashley Johnson-Barr safe, and getting her home to her family.

Alaska has the second highest rate of suicide in the nation, that’s according to a 2016 study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Monday marked World Suicide Prevention Day.

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Darian Gerald was just a freshman in Wrangell when she developed an eating disorder.

“I got down so low into a really dark place,” Gerald said.

Gerald was of the one percent of Americans every year who have made a plan to kill themselves, according to CDC stats.

“When I finally got to the point where I was going to take my life, the day I was going to do it, I asked for help,” Gerald said.

Gerald was compelled by her belief in Jesus that things actually could get better. And her mom was there for her support.

“Someone who is moments away, from committing suicide to standing up asking for help is an incredible leap,” Gerald said.

Gerald went to the local mental health clinic, receiving therapy and medications. And to this day, she still goes to counseling, taking that extra time and effort to keep herself healthy.

Gerald shared her story at Wrangell High School to teens, adults and friends. The event was sponsored by the Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium. Gerald hopes that sharing her story can help high schoolers and those at any age.

“We didn’t have someone speak when I was in high school, and I know that if I was sitting there as a freshman and hearing someone basically describe what I was going through, I knew that would have sparked me to get help sooner,” Gerald said.

CDC stats say suicide is the second leading cause of death for those aged 10 to 24.

In Alaska, a third of all high schoolers have felt hopeless consistently for two weeks or more. And a fifth of students have suicide plans. That’s according to an Alaska Department of Public Health survey released last year.

If you or someone you know is struggling with depression or suicidal thoughts, you can contact your local mental health provider. Or call the national suicide prevention line at 1-800-273-8255.

This spring, ExxonMobil held a meeting with investors. It didn’t generate many headlines. And that’s a little surprising, considering what the company was there to talk about.

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“This was the first time that Exxon had ever held a session devoted entirely to carbon, as they called it, but to the larger issue of climate change,” said Amy Harder, a veteran energy reporter who used to work for the Wall Street Journal and is now with Axios in Washington, D.C.

In Alaska, oil companies are already seeing the consequences of climate change. Shorter winter seasons are impacting the use of ice roads for oil exploration and construction. It’s also forcing the use of more refrigeration technology to keep thawing permafrost stable beneath infrastructure.

But the oil industry is also grappling with the issue on a much higher level — in a way that could eventually affect whether or not they pursue projects in the Arctic.

For Harder, Exxon’s meeting is a key example of how seriously oil companies are strategizing around climate change.

“You had Darren Woods, the CEO of the company, there, talking directly with analysts about this very issue,” Harder said.

Woods discussed what oil companies are calling “the dual challenge” — that is, the rising need for energy in developing nations pitted against the need to reduce planet-warming carbon emissions.

“We believe that we have an obligation to help address this challenge,” Woods said. “We also believe, very strongly, that we’re part of the solution.”

The purpose of the meeting was to explain to Exxon’s investors how the company fits in a world where climate change not only exists, but where people are trying to do something about it. At one point, Woods explained why Exxon could support a carbon tax.

“There is a cost of carbon in society today. It’s an implicit cost. It’s hidden. And so our view with a carbon tax is making it explicit is a much more effective way,” Woods said.

Climate activists didn’t exactly hail Exxon’s meeting as a victory. The company’s take-home message was its oil and gas business is going to be just fine, even in a world that’s trying to confront climate change. Exxon also projected the world will probably blow past the crucial 2 degree Celsius threshold — that’s the amount of warming scientists say will lead to severe impacts across the globe. And that spurred a lot of criticism.

All that aside, though, Harder’s point is this: that Exxon’s meeting even happened is a big deal. That its investors were there, asking tough questions about climate policy and how it could affect Exxon’s business model — and that the CEO was there, taking those questions on — that’s telling.

“They’re accustomed to dealing with what reservoirs around the world have the most oil… all of these other things that really have nothing to do with climate change,” Harder said. “So the fact that they were steeped in it, to me was an indication that climate change is a very big issue from a business perspective for Exxon and other big oil companies.”

Exxon’s climate meeting fits into a larger debate happening in the oil industry right now. For decades, the world’s hunger for oil has generally, steadily ticked upwards. And in response, companies have done what they do best: find and produce more oil to satisfy that growing demand.

But now, thanks to climate change, there’s talk that trend might shift.

“There’s been a real sea change in the last 18 months or so in how the oil industry approaches climate change as a financial issue,” said Andrew Logan of Ceres, a Boston-based nonprofit that works with investors and companies to make the business case for environmentally friendly practices.

“What’s changed … is that the industry now, for the first time in its history, is worried that after a century and a half of growth, global demand for oil may peak and eventually decline,” Logan said. “That is a remarkably fundamental shift for these companies.”

There are a number of factors leading to this discussion. For example, the Trump administration may be pulling back from climate policy, but most of the rest of the world isn’t. Renewables like solar and wind still make up a small fraction of the world’s energy supply, but the sector is growing rapidly. And the world is getting much more efficient in how it uses fossil fuels.

So some big oil companies are talking about a day when the world’s demand for oil stops growing. Companies like BP, which operates Alaska’s biggest oil field, and Shell. This year, another company, Norway’s Statoil, proclaimed to the world it was taking “oil” out of its name. The company is now called Equinor, and it’s reshaping itself as an energy company, not just an oil company. By 2030, Equinor expects up to 20 percent of its business will be in renewable energy and technology to capture carbon emissions.

It’s important to note that all oil companies, including Equinor, agree demand for their product isn’t going to dry up any time soon. The world goes through a mind-boggling amount of oil every day.

For example, ConocoPhillips recently announced a huge oil discovery in the Arctic, called the Willow discovery. Conoco is planning to spend years, and billions of dollars, to develop it. On the high end, Conoco estimates the discovery holds up to 750 million barrels of oil. That’s big for Conoco. Huge for Alaska.

But the world goes through about that much oil in just over a week.

For the world to stop using so much oil would require a massive, fundamental shift for the global economy — that’s one big reason why solving climate change is such a difficult problem. And as giant economies like China and India grow even more, staggering amounts of energy will be needed to power them.

So oil economists looking to the future are trying to balance the world’s insatiable need for energy against its pressing need to deal with climate change.

ConocoPhillips’ Chief Economist Helen Currie is one of those people. In an interview, Currie said Conoco’s position is that the world’s need to drive down emissions doesn’t mean oil demand will decline.

“We see oil demand continuing to grow for decades into the future — and in our view, it can continue to grow inclusive of climate change policies,” Currie said.

While Conoco thinks the rate of growth of oil demand might slow, the company still believes oil demand is going to keep rising for quite some time.

But it’s impossible to know exactly how this will play out — the energy industry is notoriously complex and unpredictable. So today, when it comes to future oil demand, companies are starting to say different things. There’s Conoco’s position, and then there are players like Equinor, the Norwegian company, which is now projecting oil demand could start to decline by 2030.

Logan of Ceres said there’s no doubt the world is going to need a lot more energy.

“I think the real question is what form will that energy take, and will it necessarily be fossil fuels?” Logan said. “And that’s where I think the risk of the industry being wrong is greatest, and, I guess, is the greatest threat to the long-term financial health of these companies.”

So what could that mean for Alaska?

One of the scientific papers that inspired the “Keep It In The Ground” activist movement puts Alaska’s oil industry squarely in the crosshairs of the global push to halt climate change. It says that in a world that keeps warming below 2 degrees Celsius, “all Arctic resources should be classified as unburnable.”

Right now, many companies still see Alaska’s oil as eminently burnable.

But at least one oil company operating in Alaska is publicly weighing potential climate change policies against its future investments on the North Slope. Oil Search, a Papua New Guinea company that has taken over the large Nanushuk oil play, held a briefing this April with investors on “climate risk.” In the company’s presentation, it lays out projections on whether its developments would go forward under several future climate policy scenarios.

In a world that keeps warming under 2 degrees Celsius, Oil Search said while the project’s “value is eroded,” the company still sees Nanushuk as a good investment. If the world takes much more extreme action to curb emissions, keeping future climate warming under 1.5 degrees Celsius, Oil Search’s presentation states, “the project would not be sanctioned.”

So it’s worth asking the question: if the global push to reduce emissions intensifies, what could happen to other future oil developments in the Arctic, perhaps offshore, where drilling is expensive and controversial? Is it possible the industry will decide some of Alaska’s oil isn’t worth drilling?

If the world starts to take more meaningful steps to curb climate change, Harder, the energy reporter with Axios, thinks that at some point, some oil, somewhere is going to get left behind.

“All of these oil companies say that their reserves are the most viable, they can get oil out the cheapest, that they will thrive in a carbon constrained world,” Harder said. “But it’s a little bit like musical chairs — everybody thinks that they are going to get a spot. But by definition, not everybody can succeed.”

For oil companies, climate change is an issue they can’t escape. They’re agreeing with climate activists that climate change is real. They even say they could support policies to do something about it.

But if companies do eventually go one gigantic step further and keep some of their oil in the ground, it probably won’t be because they’ve decided to save the planet — it will be because they’re trying to save themselves.

This story is part of the podcast, Midnight Oil: The Big Thaw, from Alaska’s Energy Desk. To hear more, visit the website or subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.