Online program provides insight into challenges of Alaska Native congregations
Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) Co-Moderators reflect on recent trip to the top of the world
LOUISVILLE — A recent episode of the Presbyterian Hunger Program’s Solidarity Hour provided insight into the unique challenges and cultural richness of the Alaska Native communities that are part of the Presbytery of Yukon.
The episode featured the Rev. CeCe Armstrong and the Rev. Tony Larson, Co-Moderators of the 226th General Assembly of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.), who reflected on a fall 2025 trip to Alaska that also included fellow webinar guest the Rev. Irvin Porter, a U.S. Global Ecumenical Liaison for Native American Congregational Support for the Interim Unified Agency of the PC(USA).
The Rev. Elizabeth Schultz, executive presbyter of the Presbytery of Yukon, also spoke during the Solidarity Hour, an online series by PHP’s Global Solidarity Collective that helps Presbyterians learn about and be in solidarity with communities affected by colonialism and systemic oppression.
“It's a monthly space for U.S.-based Presbyterians to learn, reflect and take action together toward healing the ongoing harms of the Doctrine of Discovery,” Eileen Schuhmann, associate for global engagement and resources for PHP, explained during the program.
Viewers got a chance to hear about the October trip, which included visiting multiple churches, such as Utqiaġvik Presbyterian Church, and meeting many people of faith.
“I come home from that experience with abiding gratitude for the hospitality, with a huge appreciation for the vastness of the space of Yukon Presbytery that is a presbytery unlike any of our others,” Larson said. “When we flew from Anchorage to Utqiaġvik, it was like getting on a plane in South Carolina and flying to central Massachusetts” but remaining in the same presbytery.
The trip also provided insights into the ways that common Christian practices and terms, such as elder, don’t always mesh well with Indigenous traditions, and revealed “how we show up as a church and how we partner and how we do solidarity work,” Larson said.
The trip to the top of the world included visiting Utqiaġvik, a name that reflects the ancestral language of Indigenous people in the area.
“This community was known as Barrow, and it was named for a British Admiral, and it was named by a British explorer, and in 2016, the community — the council — decided to decolonize that and to change the name back to the original name, Utqiaġvik, which is also the name of the Presbyterian Church,” said Cindy Corell, a U.S. Global Ecumenical Liaison who hosted the episode.
Larson noted that some of the struggles that Alaska Natives have endured are similar to those suffered by Indigenous people in other parts of the country. Some of those common threads include families that have experienced the negative impacts of boarding schools or efforts to separate them from their native languages.
“This is not just shadows of the past entirely,” Larson said. “They linger with us.”
After witnessing a funeral during the trip, Armstrong was struck by the similarity between some of the customs she observed in Alaska and those of people in the South Carolina Lowcountry.
“When people spoke at the funeral regarding the one who was deceased, they walked up and sang first before they spoke, and then they walked away in song, and that's exactly what happens in the Lowcountry,” she said. “It made everybody in sync for the moment that they were there. And I found that to just be one of the warmest parts” of the trip.
Later, Armstrong shared a kernel of an idea about pairing churches in Alaska with churches in the lower 48 states to create a continual connection between them. That would be one way to show that “we are still a connectional church and we're working on relationships to get there,” she said.
Although many of the churches in Yukon presbytery are small, they are vital to their communities, Schultz said.
“These churches are the hubs of these communities,” she said. “Even when they are in some state of disrepair, they are still the place where everybody gathers for a funeral, or a significant religious event, throughout the year.”
However, efforts by the greater church to decolonize mission have left voids, and there are day-to-day struggles, Schultz explained.
For example, in these communities of 200-300 people, “we don't have young families going sometimes,” and there can be “intergenerational trauma and the reality of addiction and social struggle in these communities,” she said.
Many people still hunt for their food, and “it does not work to overlay Presbyterianism” by saying that “a church needs to have Sunday morning worship services, and you need to have a session of eight elders,” she said, and “mission pastors are no longer coming.”
Schultz also noted that several factors, including the sheer vastness of the Yukon presbytery, can make ordinary things like having a once-a-year, in-person presbytery meeting difficult.
“We welcome in and try to fly in all of our … Alaska Native members, so that they continue to stay connected and be a part of our family,” she said.
However, it can cost $1,400 to travel from a distant community, weather can be problematic, and even meeting online can be a struggle, she noted.
“In Alaska, the communities don't have internet service that's consistent, so sometimes their Zoom works, sometimes it doesn't,” she said. Also, “a lot of these churches are now very small and held together by a commissioned lay pastor in their 80s that may or may not have the technology … (or the connectivity) to get on a Zoom meeting.”
Porter shared about his work, noting that he started with the PC(USA) in June 2013 to provide support for Native American congregations. Since 2001, he’s also been a part-time pastor of Church of the Indian Fellowship in Tacoma, Washington.
In his work for the PC(USA), he works with 98 Native American congregations throughout the country, including Alaska, doing training workshops for leaders, such as elders, deacons and clerks of session, and being the primary contact for scholarships and other grants.
He also discussed the Native American Church Property Fund and how it has helped to repair buildings that are more than 100 years old in some cases.
Some other aspects of his work include holding workshops on topics, such as dismantling the Doctrine of Discovery, understanding the Indian boarding school experiment, and exposing the unlawful adoption of Native American children. It is encouraging when congregations request these workshops, which are usually done online, so that they can “understand more fully what Native Americans have endured in American society,” he said.
Watch the full webinar on Facebook.
Watch a video on racism and reparations in Alaska here.
The Solidarity Hour is usually held on the second Tuesday of the month. For more information about the Global Solidarity Collective, go here.
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