In the News

Indian Country Today- Alaska Village Eyes Return of Ancestral Lands

May 17, 2021

Catholic Church hopes to sell boarding school property to Tazlina for $1.86 million.
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KNBA Radio – Native Village of Tazlina hopes to purchase 462 acres of its traditional lands from Archdiocese

March 29, 2021

A federally recognized Tribe in the Ahtna region of the Copper River area hopes to buy more than 450 acres of its traditional homeland — and return it to the Tribe.
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Copper River Record – Native Village of Tazlina Works to Recover its Homeland

February, 2021

In a years-long effort to repatriate 462 acres of its ancestral homeland, the Native Village of Tazlina (NVT) has roughly eight months left to raise $250,000. .  .  . “It’s kind of an odd concept to be in a position to buy that back,” Lacayah Engebretson, the Village’s vice president, said in a Facebook Live discussion last November. “We’re essentially trying to purchase our place of belonging that people are already tied to and already have that home feeling of.”
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Anchorage Daily News – The Copper Valley School’s Legacy Continues

February, 2021

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the closing of the Copper Valley School, the first integrated boarding school in Alaska. Located near Glennallen, “Copper,” as many referred to it, aimed to prepare its students to become the next generation of leaders in Alaska.
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Copper River Country News – Tazlina Village Raising Funds To Purchase 462 Acres As Cultural Gathering Place

February, 2021

Tazlina Native Village is working to buy the property of the old Copper Valley School, which is in Tazlina on what were once traditional lands.  The property covers 462 acres. Used as a Catholic boarding school, the site was known throughout Alaska, and educated many boarders who came to the Copper Valley from throughout Alaska. Closed in 1971, the school burned down in 1976.
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Ahtna News – Help Tazlina recover its homelands

January, 2021 / By the Native Village of Tazlina Council

The Native Village of Tazlina has a historic opportunity to purchase its ancestral lands and bring the story of its homelands back full circle. Where the current owner, the Archdiocese of Anchorage, operated the Copper Valley School for two decades, the Tazlina Village has a vision for the land that includes honoring the tradition of education by establishing a tribal college. Also on the land, along the shoreline of the Copper River, the Village will add a conservation easement to ensure in perpetuity that family and community fish wheels can continue to harvest salmon for the Ahtna people.
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The Cordova Times – Help Tazlina recover its homelands

December 20, 2020 / By Gloria Stickwan

Tazlina Village, as in many Alaska Native Villages since time immemorial, depends on salmon returning up the Copper River each spring to their spawning grounds. This blessing from the creator has made the difference between hard times or survival for centuries. This land where we work in our summer fish camps has documented house pit sites and fish camps dating back 300 to 700 years (NPS, 2019).
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