Early horse drawn float (1907). Photographer: Unknown (All images courtesy of Juneau Douglas City Museum) Juneau, Alaska (KINY) - Ever wonder what Independence Day looked like before the fireworks, bike parades, and contests of today? Niko Sanguinetti, curator of collections at the Juneau Douglas City Museum, gave News of the North a little history lesson.
Sanguinetti said Independence Day has been celebrated since the state was claimed by the United States in the 1800s. In Juneau, there has always been more than one set of festivities on Douglas and in Juneau. There have always been celebrations separate, on each side of the channel, and in the early mining days, when Douglas had both Douglas city and Treadwell city, and the multiple mines in the Treadwell complex, there were separate celebrations that sometimes merged together, she said.
A bill protecting the graves of Unangax̂ people forced to live in internment camps in Funter Bay passed the Alaska Legislature on May 17 and now awaits Gov
Haunted by World War II internment
As a country, as a state, as a people, âwe are still capable of these atrocitiesâ
Author:
May 18, 2021
A photo of unidentified Aleuts (Unangan) being transported from Pribilof and Aleutian islands to camps in Southeast Alaska during World War II. (Photo courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration)
As a country, as a state, as a people, âwe are still capable of these atrocitiesâ
Joaqlin Estus
The Alaska Legislature unanimously voted on Monday to help protect an Unangax, or Aleut, cemetery in Southeast Alaska. The cemetery holds the remains of Aleut people who died in a World War II era internment camp.
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The first time Martin Stepetin went to the Unangax̂ cemetery at Funter Bay, he didn’t know how to find it.
“We looked all over inside of Funter Bay,” Stepetin said. “We went up to people’s cabins. And we’re asking folks, ‘Hey, do you know where this is where the Aleuts were kept?’ And many people didn’t even know. And they lived there.”
The cemetery holds the graves of 30 to 40 Unangax̂ people who died at Funter Bay during World War II. In 1942, the U.S. government forcibly removed them from the treeless Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea and took them to the Southeast rainforest about 1,300 miles away with only one bag apiece and no hunting or fishing gear.
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