Watch Preview on PBS. See more from The Ghost Army.

War, deception and art come together in this astonishing true story of American G.I.s who tricked the enemy with rubber tanks, sound effects and carefully crafted illusions during WWII. This remarkable tale of a top-secret mission that was at once absurd, deadly and amazingly effective is told through the stories of the veterans, many of whom — like Bill Blass and Ellsworth Kelly — would go on to have illustrious careers in art, design and fashion.

• TV: Tuesday, 5/21 at 7:00pm

I impressed Skip early in our relationship when I, having bought the Alibi Club (which was basically an old-style Fourth Avenue bar in Spenard) from him and his partner, Jack Griffin, stated boldly that I was going to triple his business. He replied, “You may double it, but you’ll never triple it.” I quadrupled it in the first year.

I understood something that Skip did not. Although Fairbanks had the Malemute Saloon, Juneau had the Red Dog Saloon and even little Homer had the Salty Dawg Saloon, Anchorage had no bar with an authentic Alaskan theme. All the bars were either trying to mimic outside operations, or they were neighborhood bars, nightclubs or strip joints.

A couple of high school friends and I had successfully owned and operated the Bird House Bar, another of the funky Alaskan themed bars, on the Seward Highway from December of 1967 to December of 1968, our first business venture, which we had purchased from the estranged wife of the original owner, Cliff Brandt.

One of my partners, Johnnie Tegstrom, had leukemia, a present from Uncle Sam for having worked at the nuclear test site on Amchitka Island for a summer. Shamefully, the United States government denied culpability in this matter for decades, or until most of the living relatives of the afflicted had passed away. Johnnie spent most of his time in cancer treatment in New York during our year of ownership of the Bird House Bar. My other partner, Norman, whose father had loaned the three of us the money to purchase the place, was the managing partner and worked the bar during the week.

I was married to my first wife and selling life insurance for New York Life. Each week, on Friday afternoons, I would drive to Bird Creek and take over the bartending chores from Norm. Working the place by myself, forty miles out the Seward Highway, with no phone, until 5:00 am, I would stagger to the little shack we owned behind the bar and go to sleep. At noon the next day I would reopen the place and run it straight through until 5:00 am again, stumble back to the shed for the night and reopen again on Sunday at noon.

Norm was supposed to relieve me around 6:00 pm as I recall, but was frequently late, which was the cause of some aggravation because I then had to drive back to Anchorage and present myself bright-eyed and bushy-tailed in suit and tie for an 8:00 am Monday morning sales meeting at New York Life. I did this routine for a year.

Johnnie bartending at the Bird House, 1968

In late 1968 it was apparent that Johnnie was not going to live much longer. Norm wanted to return to college to continue his education, so we put the Bird House up for sale and it sold immediately for twice what we had paid for it to an ex-school teacher, Dick Delak. Dick successfully operated the bar until December, 1993, when he was killed in a commuter airplane crash near Hibbing, Minnesota. I believe he was on his way to visit an uncle for Christmas.

After Dick’s untimely death, his wife, Susan, ran the bar until February 18th, 1996, when it burned to the ground in the early morning hours. Though the fire department blamed the blaze on faulty wiring, I have been told locals thought it was arson perpetrated by a Bird Creek resident. I bought back the Bird House Bar name and rights from Susan in 2002 and rebuilt the place as part of Chilkoot Charlie’s. She had dealt with a number of suitors for the name, but sold to me because she believed I would do it properly.

There was an open area at the rear of Chilkoot Charlie’s where we had horseshoe pits and held a free meal every Sunday afternoon for many years. Amazingly, the Bird House fit perfectly into that space. Believe it or not, the old place had an extant as-built survey, as well as a scale model made by some Bird Creek fan, and, of course, there were photos and videos available. The fact that I had worked the place every weekend for a year didn’t hurt either.

Having been everyone’s favorite little bar, I was determined to make sure that it was an exact replica, and it is, right down to the bumper stickers around the inside of the bar. The crew at Chilkoot Charlie’s, with the help of architect, Jeffery Wilson, built the place and when our crew got the bar installed they excitedly recruited me from my office nearby to take a look at it. When I noticed the bar angle was not right and needed more of a slant to it, Craig, my property manager, said, “We can’t do it, Mike. If we raise it on the outside end any more you won’t be able to see inside and if we lower it anymore on the inside we’d have to tear the floor out and start all over.” My immediate reply was, “Start tearing.”

To my great satisfaction, no one has ever criticized the reincarnation. It is a virtual time machine, though the only thing in it that was actually in the old Bird House on the highway is the stove, singularly unaffected by the blaze. Thus, the Bird House Bar had been the parent of Chilkoot Charlie’s and now Chilkoot Charlie’s is the parent of the Bird House Bar, under whose wing it is protected by a modern fire sprinkler system.

Mike and Jeff with model of The Bird House.

While bartending at the Bird House Bar during my year of weekends I met my future partner in Chilkoot Charlie’s. He was a lawyer named Bill Jacobs, who owned a condominium at the base of Mount Alyeska and travelled back and forth from Anchorage to ski on weekends, regularly stopping to imbibe at the Bird House Bar. Norm and John and I had frequently discussed the idea of figuratively putting the Bird House Bar on a flat bed truck and hauling it to Anchorage, where all the people were. Bill and I became friends and I convinced him of the idea of creating an Alaska-themed bar in Anchorage. Bill made an arrangement with his mother, living in Chicago, to borrow $20,000 and the hunt was on for a location.

Bill was practicing law and I was feeding my family by selling life insurance while looking for a bar that suited our purposes. I had also made an arrangement with another friend to purchase a half block of property in downtown Anchorage with fifteen rentals on it, I being the resident manager. Bill and I were involved in probably ten different potential deals, some of course more appealing than others, and the very first one was the Alibi Club on Spenard Road, owned by Skip Fuller and Jack Griffin. I was not sure at the time that it was the best location and I felt they were asking for too much money.

Meanwhile, I was tired of selling insurance and a lot of people had suggested to me that I should become involved in radio or television, mostly because of my voice. In those days, broadcasters had to take a pretty simple FCC test and be licensed before they could go on the air, so I went to the old federal building on Fourth Avenue and got licensed.

Next, I applied for a job as a disc jockey with local radio station KHAR. I vividly remember Ken Flynn was the station manager and he had me go into a little booth and read a couple of advertisements over a microphone. One was an ad for Volkswagen. When I was finished he said, “I hate it when some kid walks in straight of the street and sounds better than I do!” Then he hired me.

Selling life insurance for New York Life, I basically set my own hours, so, though I was working on the downtown apartments, trying to put another bar deal together and crawling under the buildings of prospective purchases through the reeking fumes of space heaters placed to prevent the plumbing from freezing, I went in the mornings to KHAR each day to learn how to work “the board.” My teacher was Ruben Gaines. This chance meeting was one of the most important in either of our lives though neither of us could have possibly guessed it at the time.

Ruben was the consummate raconteur, and a truly gifted and professional writer and entertainer in every sense of the word. They simply didn’t “make ‘em any better, man!” I marveled at his abilities. He had a program called Conversations Unlimited, in which he entertained Alaskans every day of the week for half an hour during prime drive-home time with his storytelling, wit and social commentaries, mixed with easy-listening music fore and aft. His theme song, I nostalgically recall, was Claude Debussy’s “Clair de Lune.”

Ruben had different established characters in his stories, including Doc, Mrs. Malone, Six-toed Mordecai and, of course, Chilkoot Charlie, a titan sourdough reprobate Ruben dreamed up during a long, rainy winter in Ketchikan in the late 1940s. Ruben would bring these characters to life for his audience, and when he put himself into their different personalities he virtually become them. The character I remember most vividly being personalized was Doc, the crusty sourdough, for whom Ruben would greatly protrude his lower lip to produce the appropriate vocal personality.

Ruben had also worked a spell in Fairbanks before settling in Anchorage. While working in Fairbanks, he and another talented radio guy, sportscaster Ed Stevens, would brilliantly broadcast “live” major league baseball games. Of course, there were no satellites back then, so Alaskans had to wait several days for tape recordings to arrive, and calling the states was expensive. Ruben and Ed would receive the play-by-play information about a game from a buddy in the Lower 48 by telephone and would then “broadcast” the game as if it were live, including the excitement one would expect from the announcer, the sound effects of the ball being hit, the crowd roaring and all. People in the Bush never knew the difference between Ruben and Ed’s broadcasts and the real thing.

Each morning I sat watching Ruben produce his magic and not long after something monumental happened. Oil was discovered on the North Slope and a state auction raised $900,000,000 from the sale of leases at Prudhoe Bay. It was a colossal amount of money in 1969, though today the state’s budget is well over ten times that much each year. As Bob Dylan so aptly noted in his popular song, “. . . the times they [were] a-changin’,” and given the changing circumstances, I figured I would visit Skip Fuller again to see if the Alibi Club was still for sale. It was, but the price had gone up, like the price of everything else.

Not wanting to miss the potential bonanza of owning a bar during a boom period, Bill and I bit the bullet, borrowed the pre-arranged $20,000 from his mother for the down payment and closed the deal. Now owning the bar, I had to finalize my ideas on a name and specific Alaskan theme for the place. It came down to two ideas and I kept a pad by my bed and woke up frequently in the night writing down ideas about both. One had to do with a much-maligned local variety of salmon—the pink, or humpy. I had scales of ideas about Mr. and Mrs. Humpy. You do not have to think long about the idea to realize what fertile ground it is and, of course, sooner or later someone was going to employ the name, and did. The other idea was Chilkoot Charlie’s. I was torn between the two names.

Mike, the original Koots greeter.

I had a young married couple living in the six-plex on East Sixth Avenue. The husband’s name was Mel Bownes. He was a schoolteacher and I really liked him and his wife. When I would go around to collect the monthly rents they would sometimes invite me in for dinner. They lived in a very large apartment on the ground floor that had originally housed a gambling operation.

As a side note, a tenant at another time in this unit, Joe Hendricks, now Alaska’s most senior big game guide, tried to start the fireplace one night and almost burned the place down because the second floor had been built right over the first with no flue running through from the top of the first floor to the new roof line. I either failed to warn him or was as ignorant as he, probably the latter. There was a picture over the fireplace that had hinges on the upper edge so it could be lifted up and behind it was a hidden safe installed in the days when the apartment building had housed a gambling operation.

One night while I was having dinner with Mel and his wife I presented my dilemma to them. Mel hesitated not a moment and said, “What, are you crazy? Call it Chilkoot Charlie’s!” How could I turn down the forcefully presented suggestion of a guy, who was providing me with food and wine, and not only was a tenant, but had been a customer at The Bird House Bar and was a life insurance policy holder of mine to boot? It was a done deal.

We opened Chilkoot Charlie’s on January first of 1970, New Year’s Day, and the worst night of the year for any bar, but in the tradition of old Alaska, Skip threw a welcome party for us, inviting all of his loyal patrons and friends, and we grossed an incredible $464.50 that first night. Skip said, ‘When you sell a place you want to make sure the new guy can make it, and you’ve got to allow for him to do it in the way you structure the deal.’ He also said after the party, “Hang onto your money. You won’t have another night like that for a long time.”

We grossed $7,534.43 that first month and ended up the year with a gross of $158,775. Cliff, my manager, and I had so much fun with our zany outfits and our three piece band, The Rinky Tinks that first year, and business took off so fast, it was like hanging onto the bumper of an accelerating vehicle while trying to keep your legs moving fast enough to keep up. Toward the end of that first year, Skip said, “This place is going to pay for a lot of mistakes.”

The conical drilling unit Kulluk sits aground on the southeast shore of Sitkalidak Island about 40 miles southwest of Kodiak City, Photo courtesy of the U.S. Coast Guard.

Monday, the U.S. Coast Guard began a week-long probe of the grounding of the drilling rig Kulluk last New Year’s Day on an island south of Kodiak.  The rig was being towed to Seattle when it broke loose in bad weather and ended up going aground.  APRN’s Steve Heimel was at the hearing today at the Anchorage Assembly chambers.

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Circle First Chief Jessica Boyle says the ice started breaking up around 3 a.m. Sunday, jammed downstream and sent water over a 25 foot seawall along the Yukon River.

“Came over the seawall, came up onto the roads,” Boyle said. “It just totally engulfed the whole downtown area of Circle.”

Boyle says about 15 homes were flooded, some getting as much as 3 feet of water.

“Most of the houses in the downtown area did get water in it and then a couple came off the foundations and floated into the woods behind where their house originally was,” she said.

Boyle says a community hall on higher ground, is providing housing for some while others have taken refuge with friends whose homes were not flooded. She says the community of about 80 people is a mess.

“There’s ice chunks on the roads, it’s pretty muddy, pretty messy, there’s a strong smell of diesel and gas in the downtown area,” Boyle said. “Our church got flooded, our clinic got flooded. It looks pretty rough.”

Circle’s electric generator is working and Boyle says the community has a 5,000 gallon holding tank that’s providing fresh water, but there’s concern the city well may be contaminated. She says community leaders are communicating with agencies, including the Tanana Chiefs Conference, the Red Cross for recovery assistance.

A flood warning has also been issued downstream on at Fort Yukon.

National Weather service hydrologist Ed Plumb says aerial surveillance indicates the village will likely experience high water.

“We’re expecting the break up front to push past Fort Yukon sometime later today and with all this water coming down the river,” Plumb said. “Low lying areas of Fort Yukon will likely see water go over the bank.”

Plumb says the big concern is that strong ice below Ft. Yukon will result in a jam.

Pavlof volcano eruption column, May 18, 2013. Photo courtesy Theo Chesley.

Pavlof Volcano continued to erupt over the weekend, spitting a plume of ash that reached 22,000 feet into the sky.

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That’s not enough to affect international air traffic. But it was enough to cancel air service to the village of Sand Point. A PenAir representative confirms that planes haven’t made it to Sand Point since Thursday, but declined to say exactly why.

Ashfall in Sand Point airport is probably to blame, according to Rick Wessels. He’s a geophysicist for the Alaska Volcano Observatory, and he’s monitoring Pavlof, which has been sprinkling ash on Sand Point all weekend.

Index map showing location of Pavlof volcano and other Alaska Peninsula volcanoes. Image by Seth Snedigar and Janet Schaefer.

“Even if it doesn’t ruin the engine, it is hard on the air filters and so on,” Wessels says. “It requires a lot more maintenance.”

Sand Point resident David Osterback says he didn’t notice any ash until Sunday morning, when he woke up to an accumulation outside his house.

“Easiest place to see it was on the windshield of the vehicles — kind of a light brownish in color, so it kind of blended in with most everything,” says Osterback. “But it definitely was ash. It was a pretty good dusting — that’s for sure.”

Now the forecast calls for northerly winds, which means the southern-lying Sand Point may get some relief. But since Pavlof is still spewing steam and ash, that means the communities of Nelson Lagoon and Port Moller are now in the line of fire.

Merle Brandell is a water plant operator and wildlife guide in Nelson Lagoon. He saw the forecasts, and got on the community’s VHF radio band Sunday night to send out a warning about the volcano.

“A lot of people put fuel in their house and stocked up on water and groceries,” Brandell says. “They’re prepared to stay indoors the whole time if this does happen.”

Ash is expected to fall on Nelson Lagoon and Port Moller throughout Monday.

Napaskiak elder, Noah Okoviak, was one of several fishermen to be sentenced May 20. Photo by Lillian Michael.

Nearly 50 fishermen were cited for illegal salmon fishing last June. Half of them pled not guilty and have been fighting it in court ever since.

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In recent weeks, the fishermen had been waiting to hear a decision on whether they have the religious right to subsistence fish, even during state closures.

The trial resumed May 20 in Bethel and the fishermen packed into the courtroom with some people left standing in the hallway. It was a trial by judge and Judge Bruce Ward, in a gentle voice, said the court found that the state’s need to restrict King salmon supersedes the fishermen’s right to religious practice.

“The court wants all parties to know that this was a very difficult decision to make,” Ward said. “This was not easy.”

The fishermen were challenging the state based on a free exercise clause of the Alaska constitution, arguing that subsistence fishing is a religious practice and that when they fished last summer during closures, they were practicing their religion.

Judge Ward said he did a lot of research, including looking at an older case, Frank vs. the State, which was decided by the Alaska Supreme Court in 1979. That case shows that the free exercise clause may work when three things are met: 1) religion is involved; 2) the conduct is religiously based; 3) the person is sincere.

The judge found the defendants met the first two, no problem. It was obvious from the expert testimony the court heard on Yup’ik culture. The sincerity question would be addressed later by each individual trials.

The sticking point came when Western science entered into the argument. Based on the testimony given by state and federal fish biologists last month, the court decided that there is a compelling need to restrict the Kuskokwim King run based on recent data. Where in the Frank case, it was about the need to take one moose for a ceremonial potlatch, which wouldn’t have affected the population of moose, in this case the fishing could have had an adverse affect.

“Therefore, this court finds the need to police the Chinook run to ensure its continuity for future generations of Yup’ik fishermen and families overcomes the argued for free exercise exemption which would otherwise apply,” Ward said.

Although each case must be heard separately for the court to determine the fishermen’s sincerity, Judge Ward said those finding won’t sway his guilty verdicts.

That held true in the first trials against fishermen Felix Flynn and Peter Heinz. Both had their nets seized last summer and both got emotional on the stand. Felix Flynn wiped tears away saying that it had been hard answering questions from his young grandson.

“He asked me, when are we going to check the net,” Flynn said, “I couldn’t say nothing…because we didn’t have no net out there…because he witnessed me when we set the net. And that’s really painful.”

So far, the court is finding that all the fishermen were sincere in their religious beliefs but is finding them guilty anyway. Most are being sentenced $500 dollars with half of it suspended and put on probation for one year.

The defense, led by James Davis Jr. with the Northern Justice Project, plans to appeal, and the judge says the Alaska Supreme Court should review the Frank case.

“I think the Alaska Supreme Court needs to address some of the parameters that was outlined in Frank 40 years ago,” Ward said. “It’s been a long time and the situation in this case is very different for a number of reasons.”

At some point during the proceeding, the courtroom was infused with the smell of dry fish as someone in the gallery passed around a gallon baggie full of it, sharing it with everyone.

The individual trials will continue at the Bethel Court House until all remaining fishermen are heard.

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Judge Stephanie Joannides ruled that Miller should pay $85,000 and the Fairbanks North Star Borough twelve and a half thousand dollars to the Alaska Dispatch and its attorney, John McKay.

Miller has a federal campaign committee with a 425 thousand dollar war chest but has not declared any candidacy. In his 2010 Senate race he ran against Democrat Scott McAdams, but both were overwhelmed by a write-in victory by Lisa Murkowski, who had been defeated by Miller in
the primary.

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The $50 millions the state would pony up covers a third of the cost. The state is banking on the federal government and private industry to come up with the rest.

Governor Parnell said the federal government, under the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, or ANILCA, needs to survey the resource potential.

“The federal government can’t legitimately evaluate impact unless it knows the breadth of the oil and gas resources it stands to recover for Americans’ benefit,” he said in a Monday teleconference. “President Obama has also recognized the need to use comprehensive information in decision making in the Arctic. So let’s get the information.”

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s largest business lobby, hosted the conference.

On hand in Washington, D.C. to make the pitch is Natural Resources Commissioner Dan Sullivan. He said the Interior Department is preparing its ANWR management plan, and from what he hears, it will not include expanded oil and gas drilling.

“The six alternatives that are in their ANWR Management Plan? Not one of them mentions anything to do with assessing oil and gas on the coastal plain. Not one,” he complained.

Congress has repeatedly blocked drilling in ANWR. Last year the House passed a bill opening up a segment of the refuge, only to see it garner a slim 41 votes in the Senate.

Three Democrats, including Senator Mark Begich, voted for that amendment, but seven Republicans voted against it.

Commissioner Sullivan, a former state attorney general, said state lawyers don’t know whether it’s legal to proceed with seismic testing without Congressional okay.

“Whether a full exploration program would fit under ANILCA, or would require additional Congressional authority, we’re not sure,” he said. “That’s why we’re proposing this plan to both the Department of Interior and to Congress.”

He said the state told the Interior Department Friday it was releasing the plan. Sullivan will discuss the seismic testing with Deputy Secretary of the Interior David Hayes this week.

“When we’ve had a discussion with the federal government on this issue, there’s a bit of a head in the sand, head in the tundra view, where they don’t want to know anymore,” Sullivan joked.

Cindy Shogan, executive director of the Alaska Wilderness League, didn’t find anything amusing.

“Talk about wasting taxpayers’ dollars,” she said Monday afternoon.

She called the state’s move pure politics.

And on top of that, Shogan said the federal government has made clear any development requires Congressional approval.

“It would take an act of Congress to do any exploration or leasing or development on the coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge. So it’s illegal,” she said.

Also in D.C. promoting the plan are Alaska Native leaders, including North Slope Borough Mayor Charlotte Brower. Brower told the ausience the borough has consistently pushed for onshore development.

“We’d rather have onshore development because that’s more responsible than offshore. That’s important for us,” she said while seated next to the state’s Resources Commissioner.

ANWR is located in the borough. And Kaktovik is the only village in ANWR. For years residents have debated whether development in the refuge is a good thing.

Officials with the Department of Interior did not return calls for comment. But their management plan is rumored to be complete. There’s no set publication date.

A young rainboot racer tests her pink raingear before Saturday’s race.

And now for some breaking news. Record-breaking, that is.

Nearly 2,000 people turned out in Ketchikan Saturday afternoon to break the Guinness World Record for the largest rainboot race.

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According to official U.S. Census records, Ketchikan’s population is just shy of 13,800 people. That’s the whole borough, not just the city. A couple hundred at a time will get together for plays or concerts, but it’s very rare – perhaps unprecedented in the community’s history – for nearly 2,000 people in Ketchikan to congregate in one place, at one time for a single purpose.

But, on a beautiful afternoon with just a sprinkling of rain to get people in the proper mood before the clouds lifted, it happened. A sea of people, all wearing rainboots, gathered, mingled, talked, laughed, sang and finally walked – a few ran – to break a record.

The previous record for what’s officially known as the largest Wellington boot race was held by the British county of Lincolnshire, which is about a two-hour drive from London. It’s known for its attractive coastlines, Lincoln Castle, its local recipe for stuffed chine – a brined pork dish – and, until recently, its world record.

That county broke the record in 2009, when 1,366 people marched a mile in their Wellies. Ketchikan’s race more than met that challenge. The number announced after the race, while not confirmed yet by Guinness, was 1,976.

As the crowd gathered at the starting line, the city’s mayor stood by, ready to kick off the race.

When asked how he was talked into participating, Lew Williams III answered, “They gave me a gun. “

It’s been said, and evidence seems to prove, that Ketchikan residents will use any excuse to dress in costume. So it seemed natural for a few superheroes to find their way into the crowd.

“We are breaking a world record, right?” said Tiffany Pickrell, dressed in a Wonder Woman costume. “And that’s something Wonder Woman does every day.”

And a couple of ducks — more specifically, Rotary members dressed like ducks to promote their raffle drive.

Adding to the festive atmosphere, a trumpet serenaded walkers at the halfway mark.

It wasn’t just local folks walking in the race. People came from neighboring islands to help break the record, and some came from much farther. Femke Boersma and Kelli Breemer are here from the Netherlands, visiting a friend.

Boersma said it was good timing.

“We were very excited that the race was during our time here,” she said. “We’re here for six days, and we feel like we traveled all the way from our own rainy country to help set this record.”

The two had to borrow rainboots for the race, and they say they’re impressed with the ubiquitous ExtraTufs boots that many local residents wear. However, they won’t be taking a pair back to Holland.

“We don’t have such a rough country,” Breemer said. “Our country is not extra tough.”

At the end of the short trek along Ketchikan’s Third Avenue, volunteers collected wristbands, proving that each participant officially completed the race. The bands, along with other evidence, will be shipped to Guinness headquarters in New York for confirmation of Ketchikan’s accomplishment.

But we know we did it.

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In 1973 former community members decided to resettle the area and build a village far from the bustle of the regional hub. But just 25 years later, the bustle came to them in the form of Alpine Oil field.

For our series on culture in Alaska, contributor Anne Hillman found out how the oil company and the community have learned to communicate with one another.

Elder Lydia Sovolik grew up in the Colville Delta, home to the modern day community of Nuiqsut.

“I always had my dog team. Had fun with my dog team hunting squirrel, hunting ptarmagin,” Sovolik said.

Her family was one of the last to leave the area in 1948 for Barrow, a larger town with schools. When they lived in Barrow she worked as a waitress in different restaurants, but eventually, it became too much.

“Eeeh, too much alcohol. That’s how come we want to move back here. Too much. Can’t stay dry over there,” Sovolik said.

So they joined a group that wanted to re-establish a settled community in the Delta. She arrived in Nuiqsut on the back of a snow machine in 1973 and moved into a tent with her children and the rest of the new settlers. They made it as comfortable as they could.

“Lot of people always make a lot of donuts. You could smell em from outside…. And we’d always get a plane. Lot a times the plane would land in the street. Or by the bank,” Sovolik said.

Now, Nuiqsut boasts perfectly straight streets lined with wooden houses, a school, a store, churches, an airport… And oil. Elder Joe Nukapigak says his ancestors knew about the oil in the region.

“The would come to the certain places where there’s an oil seep and in those years they would dig up the oil soaked tundra and use it to heat their sod houses and whatever,” Nukapigak said.

But Nukapigak says that’s not why people returned to the area. They came for the hunting and the fishing – the same things their ancestors sought in the region.

Within 25 years of the founding of Nuiqsut, in the 1990s, the subsistence-based community had to start thinking about oil development. James Taalak is the cultural coordinator for the city of Nuiqsut. He says when oil companies first came to the area, they didn’t bother to communicate with the local residents.

“Fifteen to 20 years ago they wouldn’t have even given a community like Nuiqsut a thought. They’d do their regular thing.  They’d go to state agencies to get their permits, they’d go to the larger business and the regional corporations to get their okays, but come to a small community and do a meeting? Back then, they wouldn’t have given it a thought. But these days, it’s mandatory,” Taalak said.

Alpine oil field sits eight miles from the community of Nuiqsut. It was the first major development near the community and ConocoPhillips first started commercially producing oil *there* in 2001. They run three other sites in the Colville Delta. Other companies, like Pioneer Natural Resources, operate fields in the vicinity.*

Taalak, sitting in the bustling but tiny city office, says that when the oil companies began reaching out to the community, they were in for a surprise.

“I think it’s a culture shock to a lot of the outsiders. You know? They’re used to set times, given times, appointments, and making sure they’re either early or on time for these appointments and deadlines. Come to a community like Nuiqust or anywhere in rural Alaska, villages, they say you know, maybe you’re right, I should take it easy, soak in the days,” Taalak said.

He says they also had to learn about different mannerisms – eye contact is less important in Inupiat culture; people raise their eyebrows to say yes. And the Inupiat had to learn about the Outsiders and their fast ways and sometimes confusing body language.

But over time, and through cross cultural education by the city, both sides came up to speed.

“But I think on all sides, at least for Nuiqsut I can speak for, I think that bridge has been crossed. We can communicate as well with them as they can with us,” Taalak said.

To help maintain the bridge between the community and the oil companies, some businesses, such as Pioneer Natural Resources, attend the annual Naluqatak festivals each summer and dance with the community during the festival’s closing.

Pioneer, which operates a small oil field from a man-made island two and half miles off-shore, provides a barbeque at the event that celebrates the yearly whale harvest. Dale Hoff, a senior land manager with Pioneer, says they also require all of the workers to attend orientation sessions about the local culture, whaling, and sensitive parts of the Arctic environment.

“It’s important to our company because really the people of Nuiqsut are our closest neighbors. We’re about 25 miles away from their village, which seems far for other people but in the Arctic it’s pretty close. And we’d like to maintain the respect for the community here as well as help them understand what we do. We’ve had people come out to the island. We have a good working relationship with the village,” Hoff said.

And James Talaak, who helps coordinate some of the cross-cultural meetings, agrees that the companies are much more respectful than they used to be.

But that doesn’t mean that the entire community is completely happy with oil development in the area. Multiple elders said that the pipeline changes where the caribou herd travels. The animals don’t come as close to the community any more, making hunting harder. And the hunting grounds of their ancestors were the reason many of them came back.