Music Matters
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Dancers from the Alaska Native Heritage Center bless a newly crafted totem pole.
Photo by Matt Faubion, Alaska Public Media.
The Alaska Native Heritage Center gets funding to expand cultural tourism.
KNBA News
  • Since the last census, the number of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI) have grown in Anchorage — less than 10 percent in 2010 and more than 13 percent in 2022. Organizers of the first AAPI Anchorage Mayoral forum say they want to do away with the stereotype that the AAPI community is a "silent minority."
  • This year the Arctic Winter Games were held in the Ma -Su Valley, the first time this international competition has been in Alaska in a decade. Many call this event, which is held once every two years, the Olympics of the North. Alaska governor Wally Hickel and other Arctic Nation leaders founded the Arctic Winter Games in 1959. They believed that the peoples scattered across the Circumpolar North share a mutual identity — and in the case of large countries like Northern Canada and Alaska, perhaps have more in common with the rest of the Arctic than they do with the rest of their own countries.
  • Get out the Native Vote has worked hard to get more Natives to the polls in both local and national elections. Recently, the non-profit has branched out to 45 schools across Alaska.
  • With films like Killers of the Flower Moon winning critical acclaim, Native Americans have a lot to look forward to during this year's Academy Awards ceremony. Ariel Tweto, an Inupiaq TV personality and actress from Unalakleet, says it's an important milestone for Indigenous people.
  • An SD card ,with an almost unimaginable story, turned out to be the key to the murder trial of Brian Smith, a killer who targeted vulnerable Alaska Native women. During the trial, it was revealed that footage on the card came from a cellphone, stolen from Smith. Family members and advocates for Kathleen Henry and Veronica Abouchuk had to hear sounds from Smith's videos and see images that were horrific. And yet they came everyday to seek justice, to remind the court that the women were someone's daughters — and in Abouchuk's case, a mother and a grandmother.