THE DREAM
Angoon Alive Project, Inc. (“AAP”), is a coalition of Native-Americans, business professionals, and philanthropists dedicated to helping the impoverished native community of Angoon, Alaska achieve economic self-sufficiency and community transformation via our grassroots, sustainable development model.
Angoon is one of the few-remaining traditional, native villages of the renowned Tlingit tribe (pronounced "Klinkit"), located on Admiralty Island in Southeast Alaska. Known for its preservation of "subsistence living" and its "traditional" breathtaking art that adorns our nation's top-tier museums, Angoon is currently being crippled by burdens, by-and-large ignored by the outside world. Angoon faces several alarming factors (just to name a few): 87% unemployment, 40% of children living below poverty line, and exorbitant energy costs ($.65kw.h).
Consequently, these factors are combining to create yet another "Trail of Tears" of sorts, as many are now forced to leave their beloved homeland and seek a living elsewhere. And at a time when Alaskan natives—and Native-Americans as a whole—are ever-fearing complete "Westernization" at the expense of all their cultural identity, traditions, and values (what many natives across our land mournfully refer to as institutionalized "ethnic cleansing"), Angoon must maintain its defining role as a bedrock of traditional native preservation.
The story has only begun; PLEASE, READ MORE...
