Click here for the Transportation Department newsletter

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Health & Social Services (Dorothy Boatright) - Our menu for August 4^th Elders' Lunch was prepared by Phillip Ling while he participated in the summer work program. We will be having salmon donated by Barb Leppanen. Thank you Barb! Also, we would like to thank Faye Carroll for donating cabbage from her garden for our July 28^th Elder Lunch.    Thank you Faye! Special thank you to Doug Wade for bringing in a wonderful box of chocolate truffles to the Dept. of Health & Social Services. We so needed that!! Thank you Helen Carroll for organizing our copy room. It really looks great with everything labeled and a lot of items put out of sight in cupboards, instead of being stacked on top of each other. Thank you Crystal James, Jamie Duhamel, & Phil Williams for volunteering in the kitchen and Phil for mowing the lawn at the CVTC Building. Also thank you Aaron Christiansen (Amanda's hubby) for mowing the lawn in June and for weed-whacking around the building. 

The next Elders' Lunch will be held at Moose Creek Campground at 12:30. It will be hotdogs, chips, pasta salad, cookies and watermelon. From 1:30-2:30PM the New Old Time Chautauqua, a traveling educational circus and vaudeville variety show, will present a unique 2-2½ hour performance at Moose Creek Campgounds. The troupe will include entertainers, both international and local performers. Their show will feature juggling, magic, music, trapeze, dance, storytellers, and poets for an exciting afternoon of fun and merriment for young and old...a great family performance. A live band accompanies each performance with rousing music and zany wisecracks.

A bit of History: "Chautauqua" was a cultural and social movement that started in the 1870s and flourished until the mid 1920s.  During this time hundreds of touring chautauquas presented lectures, dance, music, drama, and other forms of "cultural enrichment". In rural America big tents served as temporary theaters for these productions. Lectures by author Mark Twain, suffragette Susan B. Anthony, or a production of "The Tale of Two Cities" were the kinds of entertainment one could expect at a Chautauqua show.

Sadly, this form of entertainment faded with the growing popularity of radio and motion pictures. The movement was named after the Chautauqua Institute, which was founded near Lake Chautauqua in upstate New York. Now the New Old time Chautauqua (NOTC) was founded in 1981 by a group of adventurous performers, health care practitioners, and educators, including the Flying Karamazov Brothers and Dr. Patch Adams.  The all-volunteer 50+ person troupe has staged a 2-5 week summer tours in areas throughout California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Montana, ALASKA, and British Colombia. Their Mission Statement is To Build Community through Laughter, Entertainment, and Education.  They believe that when people laugh and sing and play together, social and political boundaries can fall away. When that magic happens, our lives are enriched, and we can experience our common humanity.

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The Chickaloon News (Patricia Wade) - I used to love to drive past our Ya Ne Dah Ah School and the big lawn where so many children have played during the last sixty years. We moved to that area in 1950 and our home was always a safe haven for family and friends. Everyone was welcome, except if they were drunk or disorderly. My parents raised many children besides their biological ones.

To carry on the tradition of love and caring for one another, my mother, Katherine Wade, started our Tribal school in 1993. We have been working hard since that time to keep our school going so that the children can learn their culture and the importance of caring for the Earth and each other.

Now exploiters are determined to mine for coal and are busting a road into the forest right across from Ya Ne Dah Ah School.

For those of you who may not know, the federal government told my Ancestors in Chickaloon that they needed to mine for coal to fuel their World War I warships. It wasn't bad enough that coal mining operations killed all the salmon in Chickaloon River, but it was the beginning of the end of our rich Ahtna culture. Along with newcomers mining for coal came diseases, alcohol and new religions that taught fear of the natural world.

For the last 20 years our Tribe/Family has been in the process of healing and bringing back ways vital to our culture, such as teaching our Ahtna language that was near extinction.

Today when I drive past our Ya Ne Dah Ah School and the beautiful Land where I grew up it brings sadness and a heavy heart. Equipment is uprooting the beautiful trees and plowing through the ground, bringing death and displacement to the animals, insects and birds that have called this home. I can't believe any government would allow this to happen so that greedy corporations can mine for coal, dirty the Earth, and ship coal to a foreign country. Coal has a very important role to play right where Creator put it, like purify the water.

They call it progress...say it will bring jobs. But what about the illnesses it will bring, especially to our children.

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Environmental (Michael Williams) - There has been lot of activity going on at the Moose Creek Campground lately and all of it good. Erik and I have been working daily to keep the park neat and clean, our twice a day visits to the park have been great opportunities to talk with the users of the campground, and our presence has kept the atmosphere much calmer. So if you haven't stopped at Moose Creek lately, come down, take a stroll around the park and view some of the king salmon in the creek.

The ESD walked Moose Creek on Thursday to do a fish count on the King Salmon. We counted 235 salmon from Black Diamond to the mouth. The weather was great, the sun shone all day and the temperature kept things comfortable on the river.

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Accounting (Ingrid Ling) - Have extra coupons that you're not using? Chickaloon Village's Elders' Lunch Program would love to take them off your hands. Helen Carroll, the Elders' Lunch Assistant said she is always looking for ways to save a buck and would love to take any unwanted coupons off your hands. So, get to clippin' and send those coupons to PO Box 1105 Chickaloon, Ak 99674 Attention: Helen Carroll or drop them by on Thursday and grab a bite to eat! Thank you for helping this worthy cause! Tsin'aen (thank you), Ingrid Ling

 Check out Kendra's cool artwork! 

 Kendra's art

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Alpine Historical Society Arts & Craft Fair at Alpine Historical Park - Mile 61.5 Glenn Highway SUNDAY, AUGUST 14th from 11am to 5pm - $10 per booth (bring your own) Contact: Lisa at cjn@mtaonline.net Or call 745-8991 for more information.

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NEW OLD TIME CHAUTAUQUA WORKSHOPS AND PERFORMANCES THURSDAY, AUGUST 4^TH AT 11:00AM - 2:30PM AT CHICKALOON VILLAGE'S MOOSE CREEK PROPERTY, MILE 55.5 GLENN HWY PALMER, AK. ALL ARE WELCOME. The New Old Time Chautauqua, a charitable 501(c)(3) non-profit organization, is a community of performers, friends, and families who see live performance as a way to share laughter, friendship and wonder with the intention of inspiring creativity and supporting community by providing family-oriented entertainment to diverse communities. Workshops will be presented between 11AM - 1PM at no charge to participants. Workshops include topics such as juggling, acrobatics, mask-making, magic, comedy and more. Variety show performance around 1:15-2:00pm. For more information about NOTC: www.chautauqua.org

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Tyonek is pleased to announce the 2^nd Annual IDA'INA Pow-Wow. All Alaskan and lower 48 Tribes are invited to join the People of Tyonek at the 2012 Pow-Wow March 30-April 1, 2012. For updates follow Tebughna Foundation on Facebook.

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River Rally 2012 - Call for Workshop Proposals - The National River Rally is currently seeking workshop proposals. The 2012 River Rally will take place May 4-7 in Portland, Oregon. Proposals are due Oct. 13; for more information, please visit http://www.rivernetwork.org/rally/call-for-workshops.

The National River Rally attracts a great diversity of conservation leaders, bringing new ideas for the best water resource protection strategies to participants, and revitalizing the commitment of those who attend to continue protecting the rivers, streams, lakes, wetlands and estuaries they cherish. Attendees with many years of community-based watershed protection experience cross paths with folks that are brand new to the movement. The structure emphasizes peer learning as well as engaging natural resource professionals to enrich discussions and to teach advanced topics.

The 2012 River Rally will have a special focus on a critical "bridge building" strategy: leveraging new relationships that can offer a host of new technical resources, funding and policy/management changes to local groups - especially as they relate to monitoring and restoration efforts. As part of this effort, we will be hosting a 'bridge' day (Friday, May 4) between the National Water Quality Monitoring Council's conference and River Rally. We are also pleased to be working in partnership with the Waterkeeper Alliance to provide a diverse array of workshops, participants and most importantly, energy. For more information, please visit www.riverrally.org, or contact Katherine Luscher (kluscher@rivernetwork.org 503.542.8397). Rally Ho!

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