Alaska News

Residents exiled following community meetings in Alaska village

Alaska State Troopers say the school in the village of Huslia was placed in lockdown this week as local residents were exiled from the community.

The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner reports the brief lockdown occurred Tuesday.

Troopers spokeswoman Megan Peters said the people who were asked to leave are no longer in the Koyukuk River community, located nearly 250 miles northwest of Fairbanks.

She said she could not elaborate on how many residents were exiled or why. State prosecutors had not charged the people asked to leave with any crimes, Peters told the News-Miner.

Shandara Swatling, Huslia tribal administrator, also declined to comment on the banishment Wednesday when contacted by Alaska Dispatch News. She forwarded a letter she had written, saying it "is all the community would like to say."

According to the letter, the community of about 275 people held public meetings Monday and Tuesday night, "where a huge majority of the adult population congregated."

They discussed the "core of our community's problems," including "bootleggers, drug dealers, domestic violence, child molestation, rape, underage drinking, adults contributing to minors and youth curfew," she wrote.

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"A movement is happening in Huslia," she wrote. "It requires putting our foot down so that we may once again have a community that is safe and a better place to live for the whole community."

In the opening of Swatling's letter, she wrote that Huslia had recently received a "bad reputation by the media for a few people's actions."

"Like many villages in Alaska, ours is riddled with alcohol and drug related problems but it doesn't mean that we as a whole are bad people," she wrote.

Troopers wrote in a dispatch published online Wednesday that they received report of a sexual assault in Huslia shortly before midnight Saturday.

Peters said troopers were investigating the incident. It was unclear if it was connected to the banishment.

Alaska Dispatch News reporter Tegan Hanlon contributed to this report.

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