Seward moves toward transferring Jesse Lee orphanage cemetery to the Qutekcak Native Tribe

Seward's Planning and Zoning Commission holds a hearing Tuesday on a plat that would make the Jesse Lee Cemetery its own parcel of land. It's the first step toward transferring the cemetery to the Qutekcak Native Tribe.

The cemetery holds burials from the former Jesse Lee Home, a Seward orphanage that operated from the 1920s through the 1960s. Parts of it became overgrown, and the city didn't actively maintain them, according to City Manager Kat Sorensen's memo to the council.

The tribe researched who was buried there, cleared the grounds and used LiDAR and ground-penetrating radar to find graves, the memo says. Its records identify 53 Jesse Lee Home children buried in Seward-area cemeteries, 41 of them associated with unmarked graves. The tribe plans a memorial.

In April, the City Council voted unanimously to let Sorensen pursue the transfer and negotiate its terms. No graves would be moved, Krisnan Weston, the tribe's program manager, told the council, according to the minutes. She said she wanted to draw awareness to the home's darker history.

The city has to create a separate parcel before it can hand over the land, city planner Courtney Bringhurst wrote. The plat would split a city lot on Coolidge Drive, with the cemetery reached by a 15-foot easement along the existing gravel road.

The commission can only recommend. The plat then goes to the City Council and the Kenai Peninsula Borough, and the transfer itself will need another council vote. Its terms, including whether the land would be sold or given and who would maintain the road, aren't public yet.