Alaska Youth Stewards All-Crew Training 2025

[SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE] All of our Alaska Youth Stewards are here in Glacier Bay right now. We have Angoon, different villages across Prince of Wales, Hoonah, and Kake.

This all-crew training is a time where we can all get together We do some safety trainings, we do wilderness first aid, and we just have like real camaraderie. We do potlucks and gatherings, and we're trying to do it in each of the communities because a lot of these youth and even adults never get to see the other communities that are doing similar projects. So it's really cool. And it makes it easier to connect with people our age and just like explore different communities and see what they do. [Speaker:JULIA] We're doing a lot of different job shadowing with the Park Service here in Glacier Bay.

Today the students are getting an awesome chance to clean snow. Kind of like being giant dentists, it feels like to me. But just to see what some of the jobs are, Park Service jobs, and this is one of the many varied jobs that kind of you don't think about behind the scenes, but keeping the bones of the humpback whale clean for the many tourists and visitors that come through every year. Okay, watch behind you, there's a log. If you're having trouble, don't be afraid to tell us, yeah?

So often programs partner with federal agencies like the National Park Service or the National Forest Service, who tend to manage recreation on land that's currently claimed as Tongass National Forest. So in CAKE, we have a bunch of different trails, and the youth are responsible for taking care of those trails. For folks who are trying to get out, recreate, for elders who need a clean path, we're using our young labor in this one way of stewarding the land and the recreation access around us. We're using these like log clippers or PVs to carry logs to this one big truck. And what we have to do is clamp down on these woods with two people and one making sure there's one communicator.

Careful. Some branches over here. It contributes to the community and yourself. You're building relationships, you're building trust, respect, all that kind of stuff. And then it also helps you figure out what the community needs, how you can improve it more often, and how you can just improve yourself by helping.

[SPEAKING NATIVE LANGUAGE] The national park and the national forests are such an integral part to Southeast. Many of these villages that the AYS comes from are surrounded by national forests, near the national parks. So it's a, it's a good chance to see what kind of job opportunities are around where the students and the youth can stay nearby, stay local, which is a big goal of Alaska Youth Stewards workforce development, that they can stay in their backyard and stay in their homeland. In these smaller villages, we don't have that much. It helps set them up for like bigger jobs and all that.

And it's just like a source of income for the younger ones because like some people don't want to hire kids. To be honest, I think this program is important because it builds relationships, it builds your own mental thinking path, like creative skills so you can be dependable on yourself and for others one day.

And it heightens their connection to the land around them. We spend most days out the road either working on trails or doing traditional food harvests. So through our work, they're connecting with the land and water around them, which is a value that we're trying to raise the next generation with. [FOREIGN LANGUAGE].