Health

Family, friends, and former colleagues traveled from across Alaska to remember Mary Ciuniq Pete at the Bethel Cultural Center on Dec. 2. Pete’s partner and husband, Hubert Angaiak, didn’t speak at her memorial in Bethel, but he played “Amazing Grace” on his mandolin to open it up. 

Update: A memorial and viewing service will be held for Mary Pete on November 20 at Kehl's Legacy Funeral Home in Anchorage from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. A service in Bethel will be announced at a later time.

Mary Ciuniq Pete died November 17 at Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage. She succumbed to complications from ovarian cancer. Pete was 61. 

She left behind a huge legacy in Alaska as she worked to protect subsistence, and then later as the Director of the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Kuskokwim Campus.

KYUK spoke with several friends and former colleagues who remembered the contributions that Pete made to Alaska, and to the lives of everyone in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. 

Mountain Village Police Officer Anna Bill thought about quitting her job many times; her community kept her going.

A little after midnight at Mountain Village’s police station, Village Police Officer Anna Bill walks into a back room with a thick stack of papers. She’s holding a pile of Title 47s, a form that law enforcement uses to place involuntary holds on people who pose an immediate threat to themselves or others.

"This is just from the last couple months," Anna says. She thumps the papers down on the table in front of her. "And it's a whole stack."

Top leadership from the federal government’s Indian Health Service flew into Bethel and put on their hardhats on Tuesday. IHS Acting Director Michael Weahkee and his team went on a whirlwind tour of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation’s hospital expansion, which could add as many as 200 healthcare jobs to the region. The ambitious project is still in its early stages, and YKHC is facing a series of challenges to complete it.

When the AC Quickstop liquor store opened two years ago, local emergency services, law enforcement and social services saw a sharp rise in alcohol-related incidents — mostly public intoxication.