A small crowd of about a dozen people filled seats in the Alutiiq Museum’s presentation room, listening to the board review what staff had been up to last year.
Stacey Simmons was appointed to the board just this year by Koniag, Kodiak’s regional Native corporation. She said she was impressed with the staff even during construction.
“There were so many new things,” Simmons told KMXT. “But really, how the Alutiiq Museum stayed the course, even through this tremendous construction that they did and how they stayed connected both to the community, and offered opportunities for tourists coming through.”
Simmons said that now that the museum’s open, she’s proud to see family heirlooms in the displays, like one of her great great grandfather’s paddles. He used it to get to California to get an education and later paddled back, becoming an interpreter for the village church in Afognak.
“That’s the paddle that he used,” she said. “And funny enough, it was in my house in Old Harbor where I grew up, and I never knew what it was – like, I never knew what a treasure we had.”
After some attendees toured the galleries, museum staff also lead a beading activity in the museum’s atrium.
But the meeting had some business, too – like looking at the museum’s finances. The nonprofit had over $8 million in revenue from its store, and publications on Alutiiq history and learning the Alutiiq language, among other sources.
Executive Director April Laktonen Counceller said last year was average for grants, but those could be harder to come by in the near future. The federal government gutted the Institute for Museums and Library Services earlier this year.
“It’s still a really uncertain landscape right now,” Counceller said. “We had one small grant that was reinstated after being terminated, but it was a grant we had already spent down, so it really didn’t make a difference.”
The Trump administration also terminated three other grants previously awarded to the museum. She says her team requested reviews, but hasn’t heard anything back.
Now, they’re looking at grants from other sources, like the Administration for Native Americans within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She says that’s going to be key going forward.
“We’re looking into what other types of revenues we can increase to help be diversified enough,” the exceutive director said. “Because even as a nonprofit, you still have to be diversified in order to stay open.”
That includes looking at how to increase revenue from the store or finding partnerships for interns.
For now, the whole team is just getting used to being open again after the nearly two year closure.
