Tundra Times, Howard Rock and ANCSA: the birth of Native power in Alaska.

• Author: Stricker, Julie
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: ANCSA 40TH ANNIVERSARY

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When Irene Rowan moved to Bethel in 1964 to teach school, she said two things struck her about the quiet village in Southwest Alaska. One was the lack of trees; the other was its extreme isolation.

"It was very different going from Southeast Alaska with its beautiful trees to Bethel with its one tree," Rowan said. "There was no telephone, no television, no radio, no real communication with the outside world."

In fact, the only radio station was a shortwave broadcast from across the Bering Sea.

"We couldn't see Russia from our front porch, but we could hear it," Rowan said.

RURAL DISCONNECT

Bethel was not alone in its isolation. Few people in rural Alaska had access to telephones, television or newspapers. Rural Alaska Natives were largely unaware of the Alaska Statehood Act, under which the State had received a dowry of 104 million acres and was claiming that land in areas used for generations by Alaska Natives. Natives were unaware of laws that made them "instant criminals" for hunting migratory birds. They were also largely unaware of the repercussions of a plan to excavate a harbor in Northwest Alaska using nuclear bombs.

In region after region, Alaska Natives began to realize they were losing the rights to the land and the culture they took for granted would always be theirs. They created regional organizations, but land rights was a topic that had to be addressed on a statewide level. The question was how to get the word out.

"If you wanted to hold a statewide meeting, how would you let everybody know?" asked journalist Lael Morgan. "The newspapers did not carry Native news, unless a Native won a dogsled race or jumped off a high building or shot someone. They didn't cover the Native scene at all."

The answer was to create a newspaper to cover Alaska Native issues. The first edition of the Tundra Times rolled off the presses Oct. 1, 1962. At the helm was an Inupiat artist named Howard Rock, who had no newspaper experience whatsoever. The bi-weekly, statewide paper was chronically understaffed and underfunded, but under Rock's leadership, it helped unite Alaska Natives and fundamentally change the future of Alaska.

Morgan worked off and on for the Tundra Times in the 1960s and '70s and wrote a 1988 biography of Howard Rock: "Art and Eskimo Power: The Life and Times of Alaskan Howard Rock."

"The circulation when I was there was never over 500," Morgan said, "but it went to every office in the state and the pass-around in villages was huge. If you saw that paper after it had been out a...