PRIBILOF ISLANDS

KUCB's Maggie Nelson, Kanesia McGlashan-Price and Theo Greenly take a look back at major events this past year in Unalaska and beyond.

Unangam Tunuu is taught in only a handful of classes in the public school system, and outside these sessions, the language is seldom spoken in everyday conversation. The struggle on St. Paul mirrors trends across Alaska. A 2024 report from the Alaska Native Language Preservation and Advisory Council, a legislative council that advises the governor's office, found that all of the state’s Indigenous languages are critically endangered, with some spoken by fewer than a dozen people.

Alaska’s congressional delegation announced more than $104 million in port and maritime infrastructure investments across six coastal communities, with $11 million allocated to renovate St. Paul’s city dock.

According to a Facebook post from the Aleut Community of St. Paul Island Tribal Government, a rat was potentially spotted on Wednesday. The tribal government’s Ecosystem Conservation Office is working to confirm the sighting using trail cameras at the city fourplex where the unconfirmed sighting was reported.

After nearly two years without a stable police force, the remote Pribilof Island community of St. Paul is welcoming new Village Public Safety Officers. City Manager Philip Zavadil said he thinks the transition from a police force to public safety officers will be a good change for the remote community. “Not only is it a good fit for St. Paul, I think for most of rural Alaska, it's a better fit because we're not big [cities],” Zavadil said. “We have different problems, different ways of resolving those problems, different challenges.”

A proposed marine sanctuary in the Pribilof Islands has drawn major pushback from the commercial fishing industry, ever since the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration accepted the sanctuary nomination last June. The Aleut Community of St. Paul says the sanctuary designation would give the tribe greater authority to protect the region’s vast ecosystems and resources, including rich fishing grounds and habitat for the federally protected northern fur seal.

The collapse of the Bering Sea crab fisheries has put St. Paul Island at risk of losing some of its essential services.The city’s economy is about 90% dependent on the harvest of snow crab, which closed for the first time in the fishery’s history in October. Without Bering Sea snow crab or Bristol Bay red king crab — which has been closed since 2021 — the City of St. Paul is estimating a roughly $2.7 million hit.In light of those anticipated losses, St. Paul’s city government declared a cultural, economic and social emergency in late October, following the fishery closures, and subsequently implemented budgetary cuts, hiring freezes and other measures.Now, the Pribilof Island community faces the loss of its emergency medical services.

Millions of homeowners skipped mortgage payments during the pandemic, as people lost jobs and reevaluated their finances. In response, the U.S. Department of Treasury issued millions of dollars to states, tribes and U.S. territories to help prevent payment defaults and utility shutoffs. Now, the Aleutian Housing Authority is giving more than $2 million to homeowners in the Aleutian and Pribilof region through the Department of Treasury’s Homeowner Assistance Fund.

One of the most sealed off communities in the country is under a hunker down order following a surge of COVID-19. Roughly half of all coronavirus cases recorded on St. Paul Island since the start of the pandemic have happened in the last two weeks.

Two years after becoming one of the most sealed-off locations in the United States, St. Paul Island is reopening to visitors. St. Paul Island Tour, a business within the Unangan-owned TDX Corp., is resuming its operations after a pause forced by the COVID-19 pandemic.