STORIES
DUBLIN, IRELAND.
I moved here, out of the blue. Here’s what I’ve been learning.
Connolly has a knack for fitting kids to the right bike for their size and skill level.
Seoidín is obsessed with pink. She’s wearing pink shorts, shoes and a new hot pink helmet – and she won’t take less than the hot pink bike. “I want this one,” she says, spotting it. “It’s my favourite colour.”
This one has pedals, though, and Connolly, the instructor, wants her to ride a smaller balance bike, he says. That way she’ll get the movement down and then pedalling will come naturally.
But she won’t, she wants the pink bike. She wins, and her mom Lisa Hyland grips the handlebars as she happily pedals loops around the small community centre gym.
Some of Ireland’s university students have been involved in two major tent encampments this year. The first was this spring when student protestors spent up to a month camped out in tents on campuses across Ireland, demanding their universities cut ties with Israel. Their protest worked and the top universities changed their policies.
Meanwhile, new tent encampments were emerging on Dublin’s streets as Palestinians and other refugees come to Ireland to seek asylum. This go around, students are supporting asylum seekers who are camped out in the streets of Dublin. It’s been brutal, as far-right opposition have been attacking camps and anyone invoived.
Photos courtesy of Theresa Isaac, Marshall, Alaska
While he was on a short trip, visiting Bethel, Alaska from his hometown Marshall, a small Yupi’ik village on the Yukon River, 20-year-old Michael Isaac went missing. He was a firefighter, and had a one-year-old he spoke to everyday. He was heard from on November 2nd, 2023. He was found on November 29th, submerged underwater.
Five months have passed since then. His family has still not seen the autopsy or arrests. They believe he was murdered. I talked to Michael’s mom, Theresa Isaac.
April 29, 2024
© Sunniva Bean, 2024.
A Four Part AUdio Series
The southwestern Alaskan village of Nunapitchuk is home to a population of around 750 almost entirely Yup’ik Alaska Native people. The area is extremely remote, only accessible by boat and prop-plane. For thousands of years, the Yup’ik people lived across the tundra region nomadically, moving from summer camp to fall camp to winter to spring- chasing whatever was in season, and building homes out of natural materials.
But families stopped moving as much in the 1950’s when Alaska Native youth were increasingly required to attend boarding schools in Wasilla and Fairbanks. Then in 1976, the state of Alaska passed the Molly Hooch Act, strictly requiring all Alaska Native youth to attend brand new local schools. The state chose the land for the village of Nunapitchuk because it was the best place to build a port. Families settled around the new school.
The tundra was always fragile, and heavy modern infrastructure tore up the soil. Then it got worse: the permafrost started thawing at an incredible speed. The Arctic is warming at almost four times the speed of the rest of the world, and it’s not stopping. The tundra is turning into mud and everything in the village is sinking.
Sunni Bean, 2023
A large crack runs down the center of James Berlin Sr.’s faded brick-red home. He’s been the mayor of Nunapitchuk for 16 years, and a pillar of the community. His house needs a new porch and a new foundation. “The best choice would be to build a new house,” Berlin Sr. said. “But right now it needs to be repaired.”
Some houses in Nunapitchuk sit on their own little hills as the soil erodes around them. Whole neighborhoods have sunk as seeping sewage mixes with the soil of the melting tundra. One long bridge on the southwest of town is blocked off now with a set of wooden planks. All of the houses in the neighborhood it once connected are abandoned. Read here.
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The law enforcement building is now just a foot away from the dynamic Johnson River, which runs through the center of the village. They want a new building, but they’re not the only ones. The post office and tribal office are also sinking. Electricity poles lean precariously, and a fall of even one could cause a village wide power outage. The church fell of it’s stilts last summer during the salmonberry festival, with a load crash. It was the fourth time volunteers have come to rebuild the church. Read here.
Sunni Bean, 2023
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Residents recall how much easier finding food was growing up. You could stroll around the tundra and find eggs and berries, and barely leave the dock before finding fish. Now the land is barren mud. There’s fishing restrictions, and safety concerns. People still live off the land, but it’s harder now. Read here.
Sunni Bean, 2023
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Sunni Bean, 2023
In Fall of 2023, Nunapitchuk’s tribe, city council, and Native corporation signed a unanimous declaration that they want to relocate the entire village to a plot of land in eye distance of their current town. The village attendees voted unanimously to support the decision.
As the village of Nunapitchuk vies for funding to relocate, they need paperwork, proof, and plans. This fall, Nunapitchuk was selected as a testing ground for a new approach to climate-driven village relocation. Read here.
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Infrastructure Woes
In the village of Aniak, electricity prices quadrupled without warning — A FOUR PART SERIES
The Yup’ik homeland in the Yukon Kuskowkim Delta region in southwestern Alaska is 600km away from the U.S. Roads system, and on a freezing bogland. Utilities are difficult.
In April, Aniak resident Amanda Hoeldt’s electricity bill was $381.95. In May, it was more than $1,100.
At Aniak’s school, the electricity bill went from around $7,700 to almost $24,000.
“Just honestly, like, I’m standing in my district office right now and all the lights are off. We’re all working in the dark,” said Madeline Aguillard, superintendent of the Kuspuk School District.
Sunni Bean, 2023
In a letter to the state of Alaska, the City of Bethel challenged the state’s method for deciding which communities are eligible for water and sewer money. Much of the region doesn’t have running water or waste water treatment, and rely on rain water and picking ice in lakes.
The City of Bethel contends the criteria to receive water funding is unreliable, and docks point for Native villages specifically because they already are without water and sewer infrastructure.
Sunni Bean, 2023
It’s that time of year. Snow, sun, melt, freeze again. And there, beneath the cold packed precipitation, the road hazard of the spring — potholes. Some drivers boldly declare that they preferred the ice.
The city is in charge of the gravel roads, which are most of them. The state takes care of the highways, which are made of asphalt. Williams said paving the streets with asphalt would solve a lot of problems, but like most things in Bethel, it’s expensive.
“Right now, the [Department of Transportation has] just told us that we can't maintain them. And we differ on that. I think we could if we tried,” he said. “But it comes back to cost.”
Sunni Bean, 2023
Gov. Dunleavy issues a disaster declaration for Quinhagak’s power outage — A Four Part SERIES
Gov. Mike Dunleavy issued a disaster declaration for the coastal village of Quinhagak on Wednesday, Dec. 13. An extended power outage left many in the village of around a thousand without power, emergency medical flights, and frozen pipes, after five days in temperatures below -25 Fahrenheit.
Sunni Bean, 2023
© Sunniva Bean, 2024.
Tales of the Yukon Kuskokwim Delta
Southwest Alaska
Sunni Bean, 2023
Joe ‘Dadu’ Bavilla, Napaskiak’s school secretary of over 30 years, gave artist Clayton Conner his Yup'ik name: Minguugista, meaning painter.
Conner was first hired by a school in Lower Kuskokwim School District in 2019, and other schools saw it and wanted him to come to paint them their own.
Conner has painted 54 of Napaskiak’s elders on the walls, everyone can point to their grandparents and aunts around the school.
The school has hired him back about a half a dozen times, and Conner stops by whenever he’s in the region.
June, 2023
Sunni Bean, 2023
In 2007, more and more artifacts were washing up on Quinhagak’s shore. Permafrost melt and erosion meant they would soon be lost to rot and decay. Despite local tradition, the village agreed, they wanted to dig in.
17 years on, Quinhagak’s archeological dig has produced the largest collection of prehistoric Yup’ik artifacts in the world. And defying norms, the artifacts are staying locally, displayed in the village’s one-of-a-kind museum.
September, 2023
Sunni Bean, 2023
In Bethel, Alaska, cars, people, and everything else, can only get in or out by plane or barge. The remoteness makes cars hard and expensive to maintain. That didn’t stopped car lovers from putting together the region’s very first car show.
September, 2023
Sunni Bean, 2023
Yugtun, or central Alaskan Yup’ik, is the second most widely spoken Native language in the United States after Navajo. Bethel is the hub for Yugtun speakers. Now, the Lower Kuskokwim School district is implementing a long-awaited assessment, that measure the language in a way that captures the essence of Yugtun.
September, 2023
People Of Harlem, NYC
Sunni Bean, 2022
147th Street and Broadway, Manhattan
In 2012, Rahman Md moved from Bangladesh to New York City on a diversity visa. He said he had $450, and he needed $300 for rent. He used the rest to start a fruit stand. That became a fruit store.
Everyday, he stands on the street with a big grin greeting passerby’s. He works relentlessly, and keeps the store open 24 hours a day. The fruit on the sidewalk doesn’t fit in the shop, so it’s easier employ people and never close.
Despite the work he’s put in, Rahman doesn’t like the fruit industry anymore. He pointed out, while fruit and vegetables are some of the healthiest foods, it’s one industry people like to haggle and get cheap. He wants to change industries now that he has more cash.
“I made a pretty bad choice my friend.” He told me with a big smile. “I wasted a decade of my life.”
March, 2022
Sunni Bean, 2022
David Phelps said his parents knew about his diagnosis when he was a kid, and so did his school. Nobody told him.
David was raised by a Pentecostal Christian Priest, and David was gay. He ran away when he was 16, and worked at a gay bar in Tennessee, before he discovered photography. In his 20’s David moved to New York and started shooting for the big leagues: Rue Paul’s Drag Race and America’s Next Top Model.
His success hasn’t been without significant setbacks. When David got his diagnosis for autism in 2020, it opened him up to a new understanding of himself and his life.
149th Street Between Broadway and Amsterdam, Manhattan
April, 2022
Sunni Bean, 2022
149th Street Between Broadway and Amsterdam, Manhattan
In the 80’s in the iconic Harlem neighborhood of Sugar Hill, Maggie Burnett saw an empty lot. It was the era of the crack epidemic, and the juncture in the block was eroding into a desert for drug dealing. Ms. Maggie was not the type of person to stand for that.
Ms. Maggie was a Black woman, and had moved north from a farm in Georgia as part of the great migration in the 50s. Now, she wanted to make the lot into a garden- and she fought the drug dealers by tooth and nail for it. She acquired a fence and a lock, and walled off the land. She was threatened many times, and even stabbed and left for dead in that lot. But the spot on 149th St. became her garden.
In 1999, Mayor Rudy Giuliani wanted to sell many of Manhattan’s community gardens. Famed actor Bette Middler decided to buy them up, and amongst others, bought Maggie’s, which she came to consider her special gem. For the reopening, President Bill Clinton came to Maggie’s Garden.
“I want to thank Maggie for giving that talk.” President Bill Clinton said after Ms. Maggie addressed the crowd from her garden. “I couldn’t figure out if she should be appointed the next drug czar or secretary of the interior.”
May, 2022
Sunni Bean, 2022
58th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam, Manhattan
January, 2022
Jacob Agai was born in 1944, and he had severe asthama. When his family was moving to the US when he was a teenager, he swore to himself he would never have asthama again. He never did.
Now, Jacob lives on the 68th floor in midtown Manhattan. When he lost his leg in 2020, he approached the situation like he always does— believing he can will what he wants.
© Sunniva Bean, 2024.
strange stories
When Florent was 25, he replaced himself with a Robotic double.
He didn’t just want it to look like him, he wanted it to be functional. That way, he got to hitchhike the world, and his robot went to school for him.
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It’s coming from inside the studio
It’s been said for generations. KYUK, the public radio station for southwest Alaska, has a ghost.