The Nome Nugget
Nome-Beltz boys win big at Subway Showdown
By Ariana Crockett O’Harra Basketball fans from near and far packed the Den of the Nanooks last weekend as the annual Subway Showdown basketball tournament was underway. Teams from Unalakleet, Valdez and Soldotna traveled to Nome to duke it out with...
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Shareholders ask BSNC to divest from ICE contracts
Bering Straits Native Corporation faces criticism from shareholders regarding the corporation’s involvement in federal contracts to aid in the detention and removal of asylum seekers, illegal immigrants and migrants. BSNC has in the past ten years...
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Nome students fish for science
Last Friday, a group of NomeBeltz high school students decked out in their winter gear stood in two rows, fishing for tomcod in the Nome Inner Harbor. The kids weren’t playing hooky. The fishing was part of a larger unit that science teacher Sarah...
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Fireman’s Carnival a big success
Nomeites and visitors from around the region packed the Rec Center last Saturday night for the annual Fireman’s Carnival. People jostled for space at the bingo tables, waited in line for face paint, snow cones and the cake walk and admired the two...
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Nome Preschool’s Holiday Bazaar entices Nomeites to shop local and support artists
Vendors at the annual Holiday Bazaar said that business had been good this year, even as the price of their raw materials has incrementally been creeping up. Organized annually by the Nome Preschool, the bazaar is a prime opportunity to buy locally...
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Polar Cub Café to close after 50 years of operation
The Polar Cub Café’s 50-year run has come to an end. On Friday, November 28, the storied restaurant will close for meal service. On the morning of Sunday, November 23, the morning sun was just peeking through the windows of the café, customers waited...
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Nome-Beltz Volleyball team puts up fight at State 3A Championships
By Ariana Crockett O’Harra The Nome-Beltz Lady Nanooks volleyball put up a tough fight last week at the Alaska State 3A Championships. On Thursday, November 13, the team went up against number one seed in the state, Valdez, and lost, 03. Assistant...
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Ada Blackjack inducted into Alaska Women’s Hall of Fame
Ada Blackjack was inducted posthumously in the Alaska Women’s Hall of Fame last week. Ada Blackjack was an Inupiaq woman who reluctantly rose to fame as the only survivor of a doomed expedition to Wrangel Island from 1921 to 1923. Ada Delutuk was...
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Subsistence rights and disaster relief take center stage at 2025 Alaska Federation of Natives convention
Alaska Natives from across the state grappled with two dramatic issues at the Alaska Federation of Natives annual convention last week: The immediate devastation of the impact of typhoon Halong and yet another legal challenge to...
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Ex-typhoon Halong shifted course, and turned deadly in the YK-Delta
A joint search and rescue mission was concluding, Monday, when state authorities announced at least one woman had died from a rare and devastating coastal storm that slammed into Alaska’s western coast over the weekend. Alaska State Troopers said the...
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Federal government shutdown may soon impact region
The effects of the federal government shutdown could soon be felt in Nome and Western Alaska. A press release from Governor Dunleavy’s office last week said that Medicaid, Title IV-E Foster Care, and Adoption Assistance will have funding. Some...
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New Bering Land Bridge Preserve Visitor Center opens doors after renovation
The Bering Land Bridge National Preserve Visitor Center re-opened its doors on September 6 after spending nearly a year undergoing renovations. Since the visitor center is housed in the Sitnasuak Native Corporation’s building on Front Street, the...
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Rain, fog and wind didn’t hamper runners in the Nome-Beltz Musk Ox Classic
Competitors and spectators from six communities gathered in wet and windy conditions on Saturday for the annual Nome-Beltz Musk Ox Classic cross-country running race. High school athletes traveled from Shaktoolik, Unalakleet, Teller, Kotzebue and...
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School in Nome begins with less students than last year
Nome Public Schools opened its doors on Tuesday for the first day of the 2025-2026 school year. Students flooded in ready to begin the new year, but the hallways are a bit emptier this time around with enrollment down 6.3 percent. Superintendent Jamie...
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Teller man sentenced to 20 years in prison for stabbing assault
The life of Gregory Saclamana changed forever on October 4, 2020, when he was stabbed more than 50 times by his partner Bradley Gene Okpealuk, in Teller. Okpealuk continued to cut into Saclamana, who laid in a pool of his own blood in the kitchen,...
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US military holds multiple Arctic defense drills in region
When people in Southcentral Alaska spotted a large white and silver balloon floating in the sky last week, it quickly got people talking about the unmanned Chinese balloon that flew into United States airspace two years ago. That incident was enough to...
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Nome bids farewell to longtime pillar of the community
Last Thursday afternoon Kirsten Bey’s fabric and yarn shop Sew Far North was swamped with customers. Sun blazing outside, she had the door to her store wide open; customers entered in a steady stream hoping to catch the end of her 25 percent off...
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WEIO 2025
WEIO— Nome’s Parker Kenick placed second in the Two-Foot High Kick in last week’s World Eskimo-Indian Olympics held in Fairbanks.
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Temporary bridge being constructed at Snake River
It wobbles, it slides, it’s been determined unsafe to drive over. The Snake River bridge on the Nome-Teller Highway closed on Monday for an estimated six days of construction as the Alaska Department of Transportation builds a temporary, single lane...
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Whale poop links toxic algal blooms to climate change
After nearly 20 years of bowhead whale poop data collection, scientists were able to draw a direct line between warming oceans and an increase in harmful algal blooms resulting in toxins found in the whales’ feces. Using data collected by the North...
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Soaking in the summertime at Pilgrim Hot Springs
It was a busy day on the Kougarok Road last Saturday, as caravans of vehicles were visible for miles by the dust plumes they left in their wake. They were headed for Pilgrim Hot Springs for the first ever Mini Music Festival. Seward Peninsula weather...
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80 young entrepreneurs stir it up at Mizuktata
Under overcast skies and a cool coastal breeze, music, sweet smells and small-business ambition filled Nome’s neighborhoods as 80 young entrepreneurs took to the streets on Saturday, June 14, 2025, for Mizuktata—a grassroots revival of what was once...
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Nomeites turn out for spring cleanup
On Saturday, kids and adults with bright yellow bags ran around Nome picking up trash. It was the last day of Nome’s spring cleanup. At Old St. Joe’s, girl scouts gave out hot dogs and City of Nome employees handed out shirts, bags, and merch. The kids...
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Forty students graduate from Nome-Beltz
On Wednesday, May 28, Nome’s streets filled up with trucks and cars decorated in Nanook blue and white, celebrating the Nome-Beltz graduating Class of 2025 with a customary graduation parade. Seniors sat in the backs of trucks, some covered in...
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Graphite One listens to concerns at meeting in Nome
In a series of meetings in Teller, Brevig Mission and Nome last week, Graphite One Alaska updated the public on their plans to develop a graphite mine on the northern slopes of the Kigluaik Mountains and to hear people’s concerns and input. Old St....
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Nome-Beltz students perform ‘I Hate Shakespeare!’
To laugh or not to laugh –- if that was the question, then the answer was a no brainer for audience members attending the Nome-Beltz student production of I Hate Shakespeare! which ran May 14-16. The elementary school cafeteria was alight with...
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Northwest Campus celebrates Class of 2025
Faculty, dignitaries and families joined the Class of 2025 at Old St. Joe’s on Thursday, May 8, as 41 students — not all present — graduated from University of Alaska Fairbank’s Northwest Campus with master’s, bachelor’s and associate’s degrees. Six...
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Two Nome teams compete at NYO
This year, two Nome teams competed at the Native Youth Olympic Games in Anchorage during the state event held last weekend in April. As usual, Nome-Beltz sent a team to compete, but this year, for the first time, Nome also sent a tribal team to the...
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Council steers away from taxi cab lawsuit
The Nome Common Council took no action on a resolution to sue Steven Longley for allegedly operating a cab service without proper cab license, chauffeur’s license and sales tax license. Longley maintained in public comment that he offers rides for...
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Mike Morgan wins Cannonball race
The roar of snowmachines filled the Nome outer harbor on Saturday, as 20 Nome Cannonball snowmachine racers took off to run laps around Nome, with the harbor being the start and finish point. The 2025 Cannonball race marked the last snowmachine race of...
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Nome students walk out to advocate for more school funding
Nome-Beltz students walked out of class at 1 p.m. on April 11 to advocate for more state funding for school districts. Dozens of students stepped out into the bright cold afternoon wearing “Red for Ed” as they joined Barrow, Bethel, Kotzebue and...
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Nome teachers have contracts
By Anna Lionas After almost a year of negotiations, the Nome Public School Board and the Nome Education Association E-mail: [email protected] came to a three-year Certified Negotiation Agreement, or CNA. The proposed agreement, which includes...
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Iditarod front runners reach the coast
Conventional Iditarod Trail Sled Dog races see a finish in Nome by Tuesday, but not so this year. A 130-mile longer trail, rerouted from the Iditarod trail to Fairbanks and thus mostly run on the Yukon River, and a later start contribute to the fact...
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NOAA funding cuts impact weather reporting
In the aftermath of the loss of Bering Air Flight 445, Washington D.C. politicians held a press conference on flight safety in Alaska. On February 11, all three members of Alaska’s congressional delegation joined with Secretary of Transportation Sean...
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Council works on budget adjustments
The Nome Common Council passed in first reading budget amendments for the FY 2025 budgets of various city and port of Nome funds. The proposed amended budget of the city’s general fund brings the city’s adjusted FY25 budget to $18,740, 791 with a...
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Student, school board president advocate for HB 69 in Juneau
Each year the Alaska State Legislature hosts representatives from school districts across the state to hear about the issues schools are facing as they put together their bills that determine how the state funds public education. This year, Nome was...
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Region mourns ten people lost in plane crash
Ten people died in a plane crash on Thursday, February 6, when a Bering Air Cessna Caravan flying between Unalakleet and Nome went down about 34 miles southwest of Nome. There were no survivors. The Bering Air commuter flight 445 was reported missing...
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Hybrid solution proposed for internet restoration
It’s been almost 20 days since the Quintillion fiber optic cable was scoured by ice resulting in slow or no internet in communities across western and northwestern Alaska, with repairs not possible until late summer, early fall. On Monday, February 3,...
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Nome Kennel Club kicks off Serum Run week of events
On a cold but sunny Saturday afternoon, the Nome Kennel Club and friends gathered at the snow dump to run dogs and commemorate 100 years since the Serum Run to Nome. The 1925 Serum Run made national headlines as a relay of mushers and their dogs...
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Nome Public Schools mull teacher cuts in first draft of 2026 budget
Nome Public Schools presented the first budget draft for the fiscal year 2026 to the Nome Board of On the Web: www.nomenugget.net E-mail: [email protected] Education, with a total operating cost of $16.8 million, which accounts for the “worst...
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Polar Enterprises sees change of ownership
It’s a new year, and, for Polar Enterprises, a new era. Though everything may have appeared business as usual to regulars, Sunday, January 5 marked the transfer of ownership to Mymy and Larry St. Clair from brothers Patrick “Pat” and William “Bill”...
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Northern Bering Sea protected from oil and gas development
On Monday, President Joe Biden announced the withdrawal of 44 million acres of the Northern Bering Sea from federal oil and gas leasing. Using a section of the Outer Continental Shelf Lands Act, Biden issued memoranda to withdraw portions of the outer...
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Nome Public School Board approves budget revision, talks about teacher recruitment
Nome Public Schools Board voted to approve an updated budget for fiscal year 2024/2025, and it is $352,624 more than anticipated. The increased budget came after decreases in anticipated revenue and increases of cost beyond initial estimates. A...
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Interim city manager Brooks Chandler reflects on his time in Nome
Three months has come and gone, and Interim City Manager Brooks Chandler is packing his bags to leave Nome, he hopes better than he found it. Chandler stepped in the role temporarily after former City Manager Glenn Steckman resigned and to concentrate...
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NPS doesn’t have the funds to meet teacher demands
Superintendent Jamie Burgess delivered her annual State of the Schools address to the Nome Common Council last Monday, November 25. The presentation aims to bring the Council up to speed on the issues at Nome Public Schools, one of them being the...
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Port funds to earn interest while Corps “recalibrates” bidding
The delay of the Port of Nome expansion project due to the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers’ cancellation of the bidding process in October has created an opportunity for the City: some of the money waiting to be spent on the project can now be parked in...
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Shishmaref experienced power outage for four days
The entire city of Shishmaref lost power last week when their main generator went down Wednesday night, the outage continued until power was restored Sunday night. On Thursday morning Alaska Village Electric Cooperative, or AVEC, the Anchorage-based...
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House District 39 bucks Alaska-wide trend by voting for Harris
At press time, most precincts have reported their results to the Alaska Division of Elections, and unofficial results give a glimpse of how Alaskans voted. According to unofficial results last updated on November 8, 257,648 Alaskans out of 611,078...
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Elections go smoothly in Nome and region, Wales polls opened late
Last Tuesday, voters in Nome and the Bering Strait region turned out for election day. Polls opened at 7 a.m. until 8 p.m. in Nome and all villages, except for Wales, where polls opened late. Alaska’s Division of Elections Director Carol Beecher came...
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Council to amend zoning code to allow crew camps
The Nome Common Council passed into second reading an amendment to the Nome zoning code that would allow man camps, or crew camps, in certain zoning areas of Nome. The Planning Commission and city planner Erin Reinders were made aware that uses not...
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Port expansion on ice as Army Corps cancels call for contractor bids
The proposed expansion of the Port of Nome is not going forward as expected as the news hit last week that the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has canceled its solicitation process for the first phase of port construction. To the surprise of port and...
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High winds pummel Nome and the Bering Strait region
The Norton Sound region was windswept this past weekend, with a windstorm kicking up road dust and pushing waves back from the coast. On Saturday water levels logged at their lowest since recording began in the 1990s, according to UAF Climate...
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Judge vacates ringed, bearded seal habitat designation
Last week, a federal judge in Anchorage vacated a protected bearded and ringed seal habitat along the entire coastline from the Canadian border in the north along the entire western Alaska coastline down to Nunivak Island, including St. Lawrence...
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DEC to issue permit for IPOP
The Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation is set to approve an Alaska Pollutant Discharge Elimination System permit to IPOP LLC, according to an email sent out on September 30 by the DEC. The DEC issued the notification as courtesy, saying...
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Lacking voter registration, council finds candidate ineligible to run for office
The Nome Common Council, in an unanimous vote, denied Rexodus Pomrenke’s appeal to overturn the city clerk’s decision that found her ineligible to run for office and thus excluded her from the municipal ballot. The reason: Pomrenke was not a registered...
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Alaska sees increased Russian naval and flight incursions
Last week, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD, and the U.S. Coast Guard detected and tracked four separate incursions of Russian military aircraft operating in the Alaska Air Defense Identification Zone and one incursion of Russian...
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Council approves contract with interim city manager
Emerging out of executive session, the Nome Common Council approved a contract with interim city manager Brooks Chandler. Chandler was recruited to fill the city’s chief executive role as former city manager Glenn Steckman had resigned effective Sept....
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Mary Peltola shows commanding lead in ranked choice primary official results
With official primary election results made public, there were few surprises left as Mary Peltola emerged as the leading candidate for Alaska’s lone U.S. House of Representatives seat. Alaska is practicing ranked choice voting in open primaries, a...
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Council holds off on authorizing hire of interim city manager
The Nome Common Council wanted to see a negotiated employment agreement before voting on a resolution to install former retired city attorney Brooks Chandler as the interim city manager. Outgoing City Manager Glenn Steckman is set to depart Nome on...
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Nome gardeners show off their green thumbs during Garden Tour
Despite wolf-howling winds and machine-gun precipitation, over a dozen Nomeites gathered outside Old St. Joe’s on Sunday, August 18 for the annual Garden Tour led by master gardener and teacher Cheryl Thompson. The crew was dressed for the weather and...
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City looking to hire a public relations firm
With only a few weeks left at the job, outgoing City Manager Glenn Steckman presented a host of requests for proposals to the Nome Common Council last Monday of things to be done prior to his departure: RFP’s for renovation and wiring projects for city...
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Shots fired at worksite in Teller
A gravel laying project for a new housing development two miles outside of Teller got off to a rocky start after a worker reportedly fired shots while the mayor of Teller Blanche Garnie and her 17-year-old daughter were nearby, returning home from...
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Airlines resist proposal to tax commercial airplanes
The Nome Common Council again heard opposition from the airline industry during a work session last Monday as the council tries to figure out a way to tax commercial aircraft and lifting a personal property tax exemption that is currently in...
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