Unalaska’s Museum of the Aleutians lost a major funding source last week due to budget cuts at the national level. Museum staff learned via a letter from the National Endowment for the Humanities that around $348,000 in grant money had been cancelled. They’ve already spent some of those funds and aren't sure if the money will be reimbursed.
The Museum of the Aleutians is among thousands of other educational and cultural institutions across the country affected by this particular wave of grant cancellations.
The grant termination letter sent to the museum stated that the elimination of the funding was “necessary to safeguard the interests of the federal government, including its fiscal priorities.”
Ginny Hatfield serves as director for the Museum of the Aleutians. She sat down with KUCB’s Andy Lusk on Sunday to talk about the impact this loss is expected to have on programming and personnel.
This interview has been edited for clarity and length.
TRANSCRIPTION:
Ginny Hatfield: We have a three year grant. We were almost done with the first year — the first year of that grant would have ended May 31.
This grant funded quite a few personnel positions and a lot of partnerships, including with KUCB. It was a bit of a shocker to have it terminated just because the administration currently in office decided we should have a change. It was very disappointing and very saddening.
Andy Lusk: In the letter that you received letting you know that this grant had been terminated, what was the rationale for the cuts they made?
Hatfield: Basically, to sum up, it was the changing priorities of the president. This administration doesn't want to fund all of the things that prior administrations agreed to.
Lusk: What are some of the projects that the museum is no longer able to do or has to do in a reduced form from here?
Hatfield: We have two that were directly impacted. So the big one is this National Endowment for the Humanities grant we had called ‘Sharing Voices’ that would have analyzed a large collection coming back from Reese Bay.
The Reese Bay site is right next to Unalaska Bay, the next bay over, and there were two archeological sites that were excavated in the 1980s and 90s by Doug Veltre and his team. He partnered back then with the Ounalashka Corp. and this community, so there are a lot of community members who have a memory of it.
We were hoping that this project would allow us — as we catalog these artifacts and get them in the right kinds of boxes and bags and put them in our collections for permanent storage — to replicate some of these artifacts and create a podcast that interviewed community members, participants and even people who use that area today, because this is a big salmon fishing place right now. It would have also resulted in a publication that would have been able to share all of these prior excavations, current interviews and information.
We also had Anfesia Tutiakoff consulting with us to be able to update our archeological understanding of these items with the heritage that it represents, because these are artifacts from an archeological site that is, of course, Unangax̂ in heritage. So we were really looking forward to having this really robust, updated information about this one spot on this planet. It would have been really wonderful.
Lusk: Can you tell me how much money was lost with this cut?
Hatfield: The grant total was $348,000, a little over. We only expended $48,000 so far and have only been reimbursed for $33,000 of that $48,000, so we're still hoping that they will pay their bills for which we were, you know, duly expending per the grant agreement. That's a big loss. That’s about $40,000 from this year.
[With] $150,000, a little bit less than that, for next year we would have had a full time person joining our staff to help us with our collections care — particularly with…80 boxes of artifacts that have to be checked off, rebagged and labeled. It also would have paid in that second year for a college intern position, a student from high school here, and then our consultants like Anfesia and Lauren Adams. So, I had a lot of reach in that second year.
Then in the third year, wrapping that up, it was another $121,000.
It was really heartbreaking to make those phone calls and let people know that they couldn't continue this work.
Lusk: You mentioned that you're looking for some alternative sources for funding. Can you tell me where you're looking at the moment to try to bring some of these projects back and keep people on staff?
Hatfield: We applied for a Mellon Foundation grant recently, so we will hear in May. With that one, because we knew this NEH grant was going to be impacted and we have a lot of collections that need help, we hope we'll get that. That would be a two year grant and a little bit of funding for a part-time position, about 20 hours a week for two years for somebody. So that would help.
And then we always get great support from the Aleut Corp., the Ounalashka Corp., and the city has funds with the Community Support Grant. They fund most of our operations, so that will help us with keeping the museum open and inviting visitors in, but doesn't get us supplies that we need for collections care. That takes a lot to get here just because of shipping.
Lusk: Community Support Grant presentations are coming up this week. Do you feel that the content of your presentation has changed because of this?
Hatfield: I will mention to the city council that the support right now is really vital. We are more at risk right now because we won't be able to apply for as many grants as we have been.
The Alaska Humanities Forum, they need support right now. They're mainly funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and their grants have been cut as well. We would have applied for two grants from them this year — one to help us share collections with the community, and another one that would have helped us finish a Family Mosaics project.
That's another one I was worried about. That was a National Park Service grant that ended last year, and we would like to publish those results. This was Family Mosaics — Commander Islands, and the history of the Unangax̂ people there — and we would like to publish that book, but we still need some translation services and we have run out of money, so I'm not sure where we'll find funding for that. And these special projects are what are going to get cut, but thankfully, because of the city, we will be able to carry on most of our mission.
Lusk: Do you think you're going to be relying a lot more on volunteers at this point?
Hatfield: For sure. We will definitely be needing volunteer help with our collections care. If there's anyone who's interested that would allow us to keep going to Reese Bay…we would love to continue the work that we have.
Again, we have 80 boxes…It might take us more than a year, or two years, which is what we'd planned for the grant. I think [now] it'll take us more like five years because it is a lot, and it's tedious work to match these artifacts against the record that the excavator sent us and make sure everything is tracked. And, you know, so we know what shelf it's on, and can take pictures of the really nice items so that we can share that with researchers, visitors and any Indigenous scholars who might want to come in and look at this material. So, we will be working on that.
Yeah, volunteers are welcome — please come in.
