This show is a follow-up to a show that aired in February of 2021 about Chugach State Park. We found a few paragraphs in the 2016 Management Plan about the First People to arrive in the Anchorage area intriguing. We will learn more about the seafaring First People who first discovered the Upper Cook Inlet and the Dena’ina Athabaskans who then moved into the area we now know as Anchorage and hunted and fished in the area we now know as Chugach State Park. Although Eklutna Inc. owns 10% of the land that Chugach State Park sits on and is the largest private landowner in the Anchorage Municipality, the Dena’ina have been called the “invisible people” because the stories of their ancestors have not been heard. Aaron Leggett, Senior Curator of Alaska History & Indigenous Culture at the Anchorage Museum and President of the Tribal Council of the Native Village of Eklutna, joins us to talk about the past, present, and future of the Dena’ina in the Anchorage area.
SEGMENTS:
Aaron Leggett, Senior Curator of Alaska History & Indigenous Culture at the Anchorage Museum and President of the Tribal Council of the Native Village of Eklutna
LINKS:
- Chugach State Park Management Plan
- “Shem Pete’s Alaska” book
- Aaron Leggett’s essay, “This Is My Story: “Tanaina” No More,” and the Anchorage Museum exhibit “Being Dena’ina”
- Native Village of Eklutna
BROADCAST: Thursday, September 30th, 2021. 10:00 am – 3:00 p.m. AKT
REPEAT BROADCAST: Thursday, September 30th, 2021. 8:00 – 9:00 p.m. AKT
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Eric Bork, or you can just call him “Bork” because everybody else does, is the FM Operations Manager for KSKA-FM. He oversees the day-to-day operations of the FM broadcast. He produces and edits episodes of Outdoor Explorer, the Alaska-focused outdoors program. He also maintains the web posts for that show. You may have heard him filling in for Morning Edition or hosting All Things Considered and can still find him operating the soundboard for any of the live broadcast programs.
After escaping the Detroit area when he was 18, Bork made it up to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, where he earned a degree in Communications/Radio Broadcasting from Northern Michigan University. He spent time managing the college radio station, working for the local NPR affiliate, and then in top 40 radio in Michigan before coming to Alaska to work his first few summers. After then moving to Chicago, it only took five years to convince him to move back to Alaska in 2010. When not involved in great radio programming he’s probably riding a bicycle, thinking about riding bicycles, dreaming about bikes, reading a book, or planning the next place he’ll travel to. Only two continents left to conquer!
