Rural Alaska Native villages will receive nearly $5 million from the U.S. Justice Department to combat numerous public safety problems, including no law enforcement presence in some communities, the agency announced Tuesday.
The award comes nearly two months after Attorney General William Barr met with tribal representatives who told him about slow emergency responses by authorities, violence against women and abuse of alcohol and drugs, including opioids, in remote communities. The money is for hiring additional village and tribal officers and to pay for equipment and training.
The grant funding couldn’t come at a more crucial time for Sharon Williams, the tribal administrator in the southwest Alaska village of Napaskiak, one of three communities Barr visited in May. The Yup’ik community of 450 is just 7 miles (11 kilometers) from the hub town of Bethel, whose voters lifted a decades long ban on alcohol sales in recent years.
Napaskiak and other villages ban alcohol, but Williams said the new supply of readily available booze purchased nearby is bringing more alcohol related problems to the village, including many intoxicated people boating on the Kuskokwim River. Since 2016, there have been 11 alcohol deaths in Napaskiak alone, including a 14-year-old boy who died of alcohol poisoning in February, Williams said. The community currently has four village and tribal police, but sometimes there are none because of sometimes high turnovers, she said.
