Free Republic

Last of two parts In 1967, I took on the Alaska Federation of Natives full time. The organization had only $9 in its bank account. I had a young family. I got behind three months on both house and car payments. One week we subsisted on one pot of beans. Those who formed AFN took time off from work and paid their own way: travel, hotel rooms and meals. None of them were ever really recognized for the price they paid. Harvey Samuelson once told me he had spent $20,000 to $30,000 (a lot more money in value at that...

Walter Soboleff gave the Alaska Native Brotherhood and Alaska Native Sisterhood a strong reminder of its cultural values in a keynote speech on Tuesday morning for the organizations' weeklong convention in Juneau. The theme of this year's gathering is "Teaching Respect to Our Youth Through Our Families", with a focus on family-based education. Children's welfare, Hurricane Katrina and the war in Iraq are among the social and political topics to be discussed at the 93rd convention. Soboleff, a Juneau pastor and Native scholar, said spending time with Tlingit elders in the 1940s was a high privilege and was "like going...