Historic Preservation Plan remanded back to planning commission

The Nome Common Council has postponed a vote to adopt a Historic Preservation Plan. The delay comes as the City grapples with its own identity in reexamining a history that some have described as “Euro-centric.”

On Monday, Dec. 13, council members decided to push the vote to a later date on the adoption of the Nome Historic Preservation Plan. The plan is in its nascent stage and calls for reassessing the city’s timeline which mostly centers around Nome’s storied gold rush.

In recent months, an effort to seek a more inclusive version of its past has moved the document from the planning commission to the Nome Common Council and back. When a draft proposal was released by city planning commissioners in July, Iñupiat resident Austin Ahmasuk voiced concerns that the government-funded history project was one that represented Indigenous erasure.

“We all know white history and that history is discounting who we are,” said Ahmasuk referring to his Iñupiat heritage.

In September, Ahmasuk submitted a four-page letter to the Nome Planning Commission detailing specific examples where lived realities of the region’s Iñupiat were either mischaracterized or altogether left out in the proposed Historic Preservation

Plan. One example criticized the naming of the enclosed seal-skin kayak, or qajaq. In the proposal, these Indigenous watercraft were represented as “baidarkas,” the Russian word for the adopted boat. “Baidarka is NOT the traditional term that is used for this region and should be deleted,” Ahmasuk wrote.

If such details seemed nit-picky to commissioners, no one has revealed it. “I tend to agree, the current narrative is Euro-centric,” said Planning Commission Chairman Ken Hughes.

When commissioners convened for their regularly scheduled meeting, Dec. 7, the proposal and Ahmasuk’s recommendations led the discussion. Commissioners agreed that a rewrite of the Historic Preservation Plan is necessary and, if needed, have encouraged the process to carry out over the course of a year. They also hope to seek more input from citizens like Ahmasuk.

“We need to be doing the proper outreach to ensure that our story is told the right way,” said Nome Planning Commissioner, Mat Michels.

Michels, who grew up in Nome, said he would like to see legacies like civil rights activist Alberta Schenck featured more prominently in the city’s effort to update its historical narrative. Schenck was the InupiatIrish teenager who staged a sit-in in the “White’s Only” section of

Nome’s Dream Theater in 1944 and was arrested for it. Today, her civil rights activism is credited in helping pass the landmark Alaska Anti-discrimination Act in 1945. But for all the significance of Schenk’s civil rights activism, a Jim Crow challenge predating Rosa Parks famous Montgomery bus sit-in by eleven years, this legacy from Nome is little known, even among residents who live here.

“The Dream Theater incident – I didn’t know about that until I was a college student in Montana,” said Michels, 36. “That’s a historical event people here should know about.”

Michels sees the historic preservation planning efforts as a necessary step to prepare for the future of Nome’s economy. “If tourism is going to be something that is hoping to bring more of an impact to Nome, people need to have more stuff to see,” he said. “You got to have more reason for people to stick around than just three hours from a cruise ship.”

In an effort to kickstart a new round of grant funding, the planning commission wanted the Nome Common Council to approve the draft proposal in its current state. The council however wanted to see a more inclusive document, including Iñupiat Council member Meghan Sigvanna Topkok. “For decades our history and our people are not acknowledged in the way we should be,” Topkok said. “To continue to be sidelined is very frustrating.” She volunteered to work with the planning commission and Ahmasuk to improve on the document.

The council remanded the document back to the planning commission with the request that the concerns be relayed to the panel and possibly addressed in a work session.