Stepetin is Unangax̂ (Aleut) and Tlingit, and his grandparents were interned at Funter Bay. “It went kind of unnaturally fast in the legislature this year, which is really great, you know? We’re super proud of that,” Stepetin said. He is also a member of the Friends of Admiralty Island. Martin Stepetin advocated for the bill during last year’s and this year’s Legislatures. Most Alaska lawmakers already knew about the bill from last year and were supportive. When the bill was reintroduced this year as House Bill 10, it went pretty smoothly. The bill was making headway in the Legislature - until the pandemic disrupted the session. She and her staff, along with Unangax̂ elders and the Friends of Admiralty Island, worked hard to educate Alaska lawmakers about the Funter Bay internment camps and the lasting effects of these camps on the families. Hannan introduced a bill to protect the Funter Bay cemetery to last year’s Legislature. Kito then passed the issue along to Hannan when she was elected. They went to their Juneau representative at the time, former Rep. That is why the group Friends of Admiralty Island sought legislative action to protect these graves. Not a lot of people know about this history.

“The men placed in internment in Funter Bay are still forced to return to the islands in the summer to seal for the government and told ‘If you don’t do this, we’ll never let you return home,’” Hannan said. government also forced the Unangax̂ in the Pribilofs to hunt seals. The Russians enslaved them, forced them to relocate to the then-uninhabited Pribilof Islands and made them hunt seals for their fur.Ī couple hundred years later, the U.S. The Unangax̂ people interned at Funter Bay were some of the first Unangax̂ people to come into contact with the Russians. “This camp in particular, you know, it’s just a compounding of errors of history,” Hannan said. Sara Hannan of Juneau sponsored the bill. House Bill 10 will protect the graves of Unangax̂ people who died in Funter Bay. They were held there for two years and were not provided with basic necessities like clean water.Ībout 10% of people died at the Funter Bay internment camps. government forced Unangax̂ people to live in two internment camps in Southeast Alaska. When the Japanese military invaded the Aleutians during World War II, the U.S. (Courtesy of the Juneau-Douglas City Museum)Ī bill protecting the graves of Unangax̂ people forced to live in internment camps in Funter Bay passed the Alaska Legislature on May 17 and now awaits Gov. A recent photo of the Unangax̂ cemetery at Funter Bay.

Funter bay cemetery bill