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Alaska House in SoHo, Even Palin-Less, Is a Bridge
to Somewhere: But Where?
Byline: Matthew Russell Lee of
Inner City Press in SoHo: News Muse
NEW YORK,
September 16 -- In a gleaming white
storefront on SoHo's Mercer Street on Monday night, Native Alaskan art
was
displayed and some was destroyed. It was the opening of Alaska House, a
gallery
and also the state's economic embassy in New York. Governor Sarah Palin
had
been slated to attend, until John McCain tapped her as his running mate.
The space's
two stories were standing room only with hipsters, and it at first
appeared
there were no Alaskans, much less Natives, in attendance. Inner City
Press,
drawn as a matter of news by the prospect of Palin, interviewed a
series of
lobbyists and filmmakers, finally finding one of each who was an
Alaskan Native.
The initial purpose was to ask for views of Palin, but the trail soon
led
farther afield.
The U.S.
Arctic Research Commission's Mead Treadwell, soon to fly to Tokyo to
speak of
whaling "among other things," one of them being drilling the Arctic
for oil, told Inner City Press about Alaska House's founder, Alice
Rogoff Rubenstein.
"Her husband David started a hedge fund you may of heard of,"
Treadwell said. "The Carlyle Group. It dawned on her that her husband
didn't need her for the business. So she found a cause, Alaska. The
state is
lucky."
"But
what's her connection to Alaska?"
"You'll have to ask her." Ultimately Inner City
Press did. But
first the question was put to her beneficiaries, direct and indirect. Andrew Okpeaha MacLean, the Alaskan Native
director
of Sikumi (On Thin Ice), a winner of the Jury Prize at the Sundance
Film
Festival, explained that his mother Edna Ahgeak MacLean is a noted
Inupiaq
linguist, and that his current project is about a murder on Alaskan ice. "Who did it?"
We won't
spoil the murder mystery for you, his non-Alaskan producer Cara Marcous
said.
They were
accompanied by a Alaskan Native who gave her name only as Mary and who
said that
her boss is on the board of directors of the Alaska Native Arts
Foundation. She
works in Washington for the North Star Group, which "promotes a bunch
of
project in Alaska," as she put it.
"Do
these include oil?"
They do.
Mary is from Dillingham, the same town as Sarah Palin's husband the
First Dude,
Todd. What does she think of Palin? Her running for vice president is
great for
the state, Mary said, adding that she'll be voting for Obama. "She's a
little too into Jesus," Mary said of Palin. "It makes people who
aren't a little scared, that they'll be discriminated against."
Sarah Palin signing, earmark for bridge to
somewhere not shown
There was a
crash as an Alaskan Native mask was knocked from the wall to the floor.
From outside
on Mercer Street came another crash, as the ice sculpture that marked
this unmistakably
as a climate change event collapsed. "Did it happened naturally?"
someone asked, as in a murder mystery. Yes was the answer. An ice piece
was
carted off.
There by
the front door was Alice Rogoff Rubenstein, saying goodbye to her
guests. Asked
for her views on Sarah
Palin, she echoed that her candidacy is good for the state. "My
personal
views, I'll keep to myself," she said. Inner
City Press recounted Mead Treadwell's summary and asked, how did you
choose
Alaska. "It had nothing to do with my husband," she quickly said. She'd
always wanted to go to Alaska, and finally did. She followed the
Iditerod dog
sled race around, and on the way found Native art. The rest, she said,
is
history.
But is
there any government money behind it? Well, yes. There was an
appropriation
from Congress used for it.
Would that
be an earmark?
Yes.
Even amid
the crashing of the masks and ice sculpture, the irony was thick.
Palin's tale
of rebuffing earmark funding for the so-called Bridge to Nowhere stands
in
contrast to her state's embassy to hipsters being funded, at least
indirectly,
by earmark funds from taxpayers, combined with money from a hedge fund
involved
not only with military contractors but also subprime lending. Alaska
House, it
turns, is itself a bridge to somewhere. But where?
To be continued.
Watch this site, and this (UN) debate.
* * *
These
reports are
usually also available through Google
News and on Lexis-Nexis.
Click
here
for a Reuters
AlertNet piece by this correspondent
about Uganda's Lord's Resistance Army. Click
here
for an earlier Reuters AlertNet piece about the Somali
National
Reconciliation Congress, and the UN's $200,000 contribution from an
undefined trust fund. Video
Analysis here
Feedback: Editorial
[at] innercitypress.com
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2006-08 Inner City Press, Inc. To request
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