Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of Inner City Press in SoHo
www.innercitypress.com/us1alaskahs091608.html
NEW YORK, September 16 -- In a gleaming white storefront on SoHo's Mercer Street on Monday night, Native Alaskan art was displayed and some was destroyed. It was the opening of Alaska House, a gallery and also the state's economic embassy in New York. Governor Sarah Palin had been slated to attend, until John McCain tapped her as his running mate.
The space's two stories were standing room only with hipsters, and it at first appeared there were no Alaskans, much less Natives, in attendance. Inner City Press, drawn as a matter of news by the prospect of Palin, interviewed a series of lobbyists and filmmakers, finally finding one of each who was an Alaskan Native. The initial purpose was to ask for views of Palin, but the trail soon led farther afield.
The U.S. Arctic Research Commission's Mead Treadwell, soon to fly to Tokyo to speak of whaling "among other things," one of them being drilling the Arctic for oil, told Inner City Press about Alaska House's founder, Alice Rogoff Rubenstein. "Her husband David started a hedge fund you may of heard of," Treadwell said. "The Carlyle Group. It dawned on her that her husband didn't need her for the business. So she found a cause, Alaska. The state is lucky."
"But what's her connection to Alaska?"
"You'll have to ask her." Ultimately Inner City Press did. But first the question was put to her beneficiaries, direct and indirect. Andrew Okpeaha MacLean, the Alaskan Native director of Sikumi (On Thin Ice), a winner of the Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, explained that his mother Edna Ahgeak MacLean is a noted Inupiaq linguist, and that his current project is about a murder on Alaskan ice. "Who did it?"
We won't spoil the murder mystery for you, his non-Alaskan producer Cara Marcous said.
They were accompanied by a Alaskan Native who gave her name only as Mary and who said that her boss is on the board of directors of the Alaska Native Arts Foundation. She works in Washington for the North Star Group, which "promotes a bunch of project in Alaska," as she put it.
"Do these include oil?"
They do. Mary is from Dillingham, the same town as Sarah Palin's husband the First Dude, Todd. What does she think of Palin? Her running for vice president is great for the state, Mary said, adding that she'll be voting for Obama. "She's a little too into Jesus," Mary said of Palin. "It makes people who aren't a little scared, that they'll be discriminated against."
There was a crash as an Alaskan Native mask was knocked from the wall to the floor. From outside on Mercer Street came another crash, as the ice sculpture that marked this unmistakably as a climate change event collapsed. "Did it happened naturally?" someone asked, as in a murder mystery. Yes was the answer. An ice piece was carted off.
There by the front door was Alice Rogoff Rubenstein, saying goodbye to her guests. Asked for her views on Sarah Palin, she echoed that her candidacy is good for the state. "My personal views, I'll keep to myself," she said. Inner City Press recounted Mead Treadwell's summary and asked, how did you choose Alaska. "It had nothing to do with my husband," she quickly said. She'd always wanted to go to Alaska, and finally did. She followed the Iditerod dog sled race around, and on the way found Native art. The rest, she said, is history.
But is there any government money behind it? Well, yes. There was an appropriation from Congress used for it.
Would that be an earmark?
Yes.
And see, www.innercitypress.com/us1alaskahs091608.html
