Health center is well of care, renewal — Wellness facility represents sea change for Kenaitze Tribe

Photos by Patrice Kohl, for the Redoubt Reporter. A “Łuq’a Nagh Ghilghuzht” sculpture by Joel Isaak depicts traditional Dena’ina life at fish camp outside the Kenaitze Indian Tribe’s new Dena’ina Wellness Center in Old Town Kenai.

Clarification: It was incorrectly reported that the Dena’ina Wellness Center is currently seeing all veterans and is considering expanding medical services to the public. Currently, only Alaska Native and American Indian veterans receive VA services through the Dena’ina Wellness Center. As a community mental health center, behavioral health services are open to the public. Other services are available to Indian Health Service beneficiaries.

Through the joint venture award, Indian Health Service funding supports operation and maintenance for a minimum of 20 years. The state of Alaska Department of Commerce, Community, and Economic Development Division of Community and Regional Affairs provided $20 million to the project.

 

By Jenny Neyman

Redoubt Reporter

For the Kenaitze Indian Tribe, a new building in Old Town Kenai is an indication that the tide has turned.

A gradual erosion of culture, connection and community has reversed, and what was washed away, grain by grain, as if by the lapping pull of receding waves, is rushing back in, not only replacing what’s been lost, but reaching a new high-water mark.

That mark is a substantial one, both in its 52,000-square-foot physical form — the Dena’ina Wellness Center in Kenai — and in what it represents for the tribe.

“The Dena’ina word for it is ‘naqantughedul.’ For the tribe it means the tide is going out and it’s turning and going back in,” said Jaylene Peterson-Nyren, executive director. “It means the culture, the people, the land and just the lifestyle has been going away for many, many years, and it has taken a turn with this facility. It’s coming back.”

The building isn’t just a health clinic, nor was the motivation to construct it simply some tipping of an equation of funding and client base and service needs. It grew from a need to come together — to reconnect, strengthen and grow — and to improve health beyond just the physical.

The lobby of the new, 52,000-square-foot Dena’Ina Wellness Center is meant to be an area for gathering and socializing, more than just a medical clinic reception lobby.

“We wanted to design not just a health clinic, but we wanted to look at wellness from a holistic perspective, and that means not just that you’d have your checkups and you check out well. It means social and economic wellness, it means educational wellness — knowledge. It encompasses relationships across the board with customers who come in to seek services and for staff who are all working together on behalf of our customers,” Peterson-Nyren said.

Fittingly, then, the facility consolidates the tribe’s three health services programs under one roof — medical, dental and behavioral — as well as expands new services to address the wellness of a person as a whole, not just whether they’re running a fever.

“We try to focus on prevention and intervention. We want to encourage people to return. That’s one of the reasons we built the Gathering Space (building entrance room) is we want people to want to be here,” she said.

Along with being a center for holistic wellness, the brand-new facility, with construction starting in August 2012 and the grand opening ceremony June 12, is also a hub of social connection — an area of wellness which the tribe believes also needs care.

It’s designed to facilitate both — new equipment and the latest technology to aid the delivery of quality medical services, and a welcoming, calming, comfortable design to encourage people to come and enjoy the facility. The entry leads into the Gathering Space, with a large, open, airy design and windows stretching floor to the second-story ceiling above. A stage area anchors the wall facing the doors, while a reception desk, curved as if beckoning a visitor further into the building, stands to the right of the stage. To the left of the entrance is a wide staircase giving the feel of floating upward as it parallels the windows looking out over Old Town toward the mouth of the Kenai River and Cook Inlet. Upstairs are balcony railings to allow a bird’s-eye view of the stage and circular Oculus feature below, which will have a commissioned art piece suspended above it.

The whole space can be configured for large gatherings, such as the grand opening of the facility, which was packed to standing room only. Over 1,000 people came through the facility during the two days of tours, presentations and festivities, Peterson-Nyren said.

“I think the response has been tremendous,” she said. “It was amazing to feel that community support, just everyone showed up.”

Fish passage no longer abridged — New bridge over Soldotna Creek removes old culvert

Photo by Joseph Robertia, Redoubt Reporter. Robert Ruffner, executive director of the Kenai Watershed Forum, takes in the view from a new foot/bike bridge over Soldotna Creek. The bridge project was done to remove an old culvert that inhibited fish passage.

By Joseph Robertia

Redoubt Reporter

Compared to the much larger Kenai River, its banks teeming with hopeful fishermen during the summer months, little Soldotna Creek doesn’t get near the annual attention from tourists, but it is an important stream to the year-round “residents” of the peninsula.

Not only do bears — brown and black — drink and feed from the stream, as well as the occasional coyote, but Soldotna Creek also is home to several species of anadromous fish, including chinook, sockeye, silver and pink salmon, and trout species, including Dolly Varden, rainbow and steelhead.

These fish rely not only on the 8.6 miles of Soldotna Creek itself, but also the eight major lakes that feed into the creek, which is why an old culvert less than a half mile from the stream’s confluence with the Kenai was removed recently.

“The significance of this project is there were miles of fish habitat out there that fish couldn’t get to because it was previously inaccessible to them,” said Robert Ruffner, executive director of the Kenai Watershed Forum, which oversaw the project.

The culvert was part of Mullen Drive, an old road primarily only used by area residents, under a bridge on private property behind the now-demolished building at the “Y” in Soldotna that housed River City Books and other shops, where construction is currently underway on a pharmacy. It was due to this construction that the Watershed Forum decided on replacing the culvert as part of ongoing fish passage projects around the peninsula.

“Around 10 years ago we inventoried all streams crossing under roads as part of our culvert assessment,” Ruffner said.

The Watershed Forum wanted to focus on keeping the connections open between salmon nursery areas and Cook Inlet, rather than duplicating efforts of other environmentally minded organizations in the area that focus on bank restoration and protection projects, such as when constructing access to waterways.

“We believed it was important to provide the most amount of restored habitat per dollar spent, and so from a cost-benefit ratio, you get much more bang for your buck replacing these old culverts versus just restoring 100 feet of bank,” Ruffner said.

Rigged to wait — Buccaneer’s former rigs sit in limbo

Homer Tribune file photo. Buccaneer’s Endeavour jack-up rig sits idle outside Port Graham, tied up in the company’s bankruptcy proceedings.

By Naomi Klouda

Homer Tribune

Companies owed money by Buccaneer Alaska Energy are in the process of filing necessary paperwork with South Texas District Court, among them the village of Port Graham, where the Endeavour jack-up rig presently moors, idle.

The small Alutiiq tribe will need to stand in line along with an assortment of companies owed money by Buccaneer. The bankrupt Australian energy concern owes $30.8 million in outstanding liabilities to a long list of creditors.

Villagers who like to fish on the old Load-Transfer Freight Dock, which juts out into the tranquil channel, aren’t liking the way the rig “hovers” over them, said resident Daryl Kreun. The Spartan 151 jack-up also remains in the bay, though this is peak drilling season.

“The LTF (dock) is where most youth and elders fish for halibut, salmon, rock cod, flounder … , ” Kreun wrote in an email. “We do not like fishing from LTF and the docks. Both rigs just seem to hover over you.” The Load-Transfer Freight Dock, used for fisheries in the 1980s, became a popular spot for young people and others to access the deeper water for fishing.

A series of requests by Buccaneer’s attorneys were scheduled to be taken up in separate hearings this month in South Texas U.S. District Court. On Wednesday, the court hears arguments on whether to allow Buccaneer and its subsidiaries employment so work can carry on while bankruptcy decisions move. It also hears motions asking to proceed with paying for and receiving services.

On July 23, the court hears motions to allow stock voting and disclosures to proceed. It also takes up an emergency motion to approve bidding procedures in a future auction.

On Aug. 12, the court will hear an expedited motion for consolidating cases under Chapter 11.

While plans for paying its debts are getting worked out in a distant Houston courtroom, the Endeavour rig can still proceed with work, said Karsten Rodvik, external affairs officer with the Alaska Industrial Development and Export Authority. It isn’t tied to the Buccaneer or the bankruptcy. AIDEA owns $24 million interest in the $137 million-valued Endeavour.

The jack-up rig is no longer tied to Buccaneer or the bankruptcy, but it needs more fittings to make the rig suitable for working in harsh Alaska conditions, Rodvik said.

“The rig can work,” Rodvik said. “The bankruptcy does not relate to the rig since Buccaneer has no ownership of the Endeavour.”

Kenai Offshore Ventures is the entity that owns the rig, Rodvik said. AIDEA is a preferred member in KOV. Ezion Holdings Limited and its affiliate, Terras Investments, are the common members, and Buccaneer is no longer a member of KOV, Rodvik said.

Now KOV is working with Spartan to continue refurbishment work on the rig in anticipation of late summer drilling activities, he added.

KOV, as owner of the rig, also has the authority to lease the Endeavour. Under the bankruptcy action, the charter agreement Buccaneer subsidiary Kenai Drilling had with KOV was canceled. KOV is therefore actively looking at other leaseholders that might have an interest in chartering the rig.

“It is important to remind again that the bankruptcy has nothing to do with the rig,” Rodvik said

Plugged In: Progressing clicks on with move to smaller cameras

By Joe Kashi, for the Redoubt Reporter

There’s a quiet shift occurring among prof-essional photographers, with many nationally prominent professional photographers switching to smaller compact-system cameras for their paying work.

When working pros first switched from film to digital cameras, the only digital cameras capable of providing acceptable image quality were early, inevitably bulky, full-frame models. More recently, as imaging sensors and data processing chips both improved and became smaller, the technical reasons for using bulky digital cameras are less and less compelling.

The transition now underway to compact-system cameras isn’t unique or even surprising. Broad adoption of smaller, more capable cameras has occurred repeatedly ever since the first crude photograph was taken in 1826, and is likely to continue awhile longer.

By the 1890s, Kodak’s convenient roll and sheet film quickly displaced awkward and potentially dangerous wet-plate processes that required immediate development in a mule-drawn portable darkroom wagon. By the 1930s, studio and view cameras using very large sheet film negatives largely gave way to more portable Speed Graphic press cameras that merged hand-holdable cameras containing a rangefinder and viewfinder for quickly focusing and capturing fast action, with smaller, 4-by-5-inch sheet film contained in a heavy case, two-shot film holders. Making 20 images in a day with such equipment required a strong back. Professionally acceptable final prints up to 16-by-20-inch were easily made, and perhaps one size larger with very careful exposure, film processing and printing.

Improvements in film and lens technology during World War II, along with the need to capture fast-moving military and naval action while remaining relatively unencumbered and agile, led to the widespread adoption of 35-mm rangefinder cameras made by Leica, Zeiss and Nikon. These dominated professional photojournalism in the 1950s.

By the early 1960s, further improvements allowed perfectionists like Ansel Adams to substitute easily portable 120-roll film cameras made by Hasselblad for their bulky, tripod-based view cameras without losing the excellent final image quality for which they were so well known. Relatively portable Hasselblad roll film cameras were good enough to record the Apollo moon missions.