Anchorage Daily News | Rural education has endured long saga: "The practice of tearing high schoolers away from their villages had begun a century earlier, when white settlers arrived in Alaska searching for wealth in gold and salmon. As new settlements grew and matured, so did the need for schools.

Thus began two systems of education: one for white students and those of 'mixed blood' who were deemed civilized, and another for Natives. Federal laws in the early 1900s legitimized the dual system, which became the standard for tens of thousands of children living in places so remote there were no roads."