Ed Schoenfeld, CoastAlaska

Sealaska officials say investments in two seafood processors will help drive future earnings.

But a critic of Southeast’s regional Native corporation doubts they will make much money.

Sealaska’s latest investment is Seattle-based Odyssey Foods.

It sells a variety of seafood, under the Treasure of the Sea and Chef’s Treasures brand. It also has a food service division and produces custom products for other companies.

Sealaska President and CEO Anthony Mallott said it’s more than a seafood company.

“They do a lot of breaded and battered processing. But the real value was the people and the platform that provides a channel to market,” he said.

Sealaska bought 51 percent of the company, so it has majority ownership, Mallott said.

But the Juneau-based corporation will leave Odyssey’s business model and management team in place.

“The base of their global supply chain provides a good stable income, good cash flow,” he said. “The growth that we’ll be looking for is adding more wild Alaska product to their marketing channels.”

Odyssey is Sealaska’s second seafood investment in a year. And it’s part of an effort to change its direction.

Sealaska purchased a minority interest in Independent Packers Corp., a slightly smaller Seattle processor, last May.

“They were a great ground-floor platform for us to build upon, even with the minority position,” he said. “They have a client base, they have the expertise to get products directly to the retail market.”

Independent Packers employs about 180 people. Odyssey’s staff is about 200.

Sealaska said both could provide jobs for its shareholders who live in the Pacific Northwest, and not just on the processing line.

Sealaska has not released the financial details of its most recent seafood investment. Mallott said that will be in the corporation’s annual report, to be released in early May.

Longtime Sealaska critic Brad Fluetsch said that information should already be available.

“This really goes to the point that Sealaska is not very transparent in its financials and financial dealings with shareholders,” he said.

Fluetsch, who is running for Sealaska’s board of directors, is an investments manager for the city of Santa Fe, N.M.

He also said the processor investments are the wrong approach to making money.

“This is taking all the risk of a private company, when they could have went out and bought a diversified portfolio of global fish companies, if they really want to get into the fishing industry, and earn a much higher rate of return,” he said.

Sealaska’s Mallott said the two companies will bring in more revenue than such investments. He also pointed to the corporation’s existing investments in the stock and bond markets.

Art Johns has been playing at the Alaska Folk Festival since 1995.

But his musical roots go way back, almost 80 years.

Johns grew up in the rural Yukon towns of Carcross and Tagish, about 60 miles northeast of Skagway, in northern Southeast Alaska.

Johns’ first inspiration came from phonographs his sister mail-ordered from a catalog.

The family listened to them on a human-powered machine.

“I’d crank a wheel with a handle to get the spring loaded and listen to her music,” he said. “She liked the Carter Family and Jimmy Rodgers and stuff like that. I guess it wore off on me and I’m the one who started playing.”

Johns loved the music and started singing along. Then, another relative decided to help him take another step.

“I had a cousin who was the same age as my sister. He taught me three chords on a guitar and he says, ‘OK, now you can do your singing,’” he said.

Along with music, Johns learned hunting traditions passed down by his parents, who were Tlingit and Tagish.

He also learned the family business, and became a big game outfitter, hunting guide and game warden. The work involved a lot of horse-wrangling.

“I like being a cowboy. You’re out there riding your horse and do what you want,” he said. “You read the signs of the land. Not some person who made this up for you.”

Then, in the 1990s, a filmmaker decided to make a documentary called “Life’s Dream,” which shows Johns caring for his horses and teaching one of his sons how to track, shoot and skin a moose.

The producer wanted to include the country song “God Must Be a Cowboy.” Johns said, “No.”

But the filmmaker was insistent.

“I tell you, I learned it and I sang it and that’s when the public got to know that I played music,” Johns said. “I was getting phone calls from here and there, come do a coffee house or something. So that’s how it all started.”

Around the same time, Johns connected with Alaska musicians playing the International Folk Festival, in Skagway and Whitehorse, The Yukon’s capital.

That led him to the big Juneau festival, where he became a regular, performing all but a few years since.

Johns sometimes plays solo, but other times has a backup band.

Most often, he’s with his long-time musical partner, Skagway fiddler Nola Lampken.

They had a hard time defining exactly what makes an Art Johns song.

“I never had any lessons in music, nothing,” Johns said. “Just, if I hear a song and I like it.”

“He plays what comes to his head and what he feels like at the moment. Very campfire-ish,” Lamken added.

At 84, Johns is slowing down. He has less energy and his fingers don’t always do what he wants them to.

But he plans to play for as long as he can.

Hear Art Johns, Nola Lamken and friends at the 2003 Alaska Folk Festival:

Lower North Slope oil prices are taking a bite out of Native corporation dividends 1,100 miles away.

Sealaska, Southeast’s regional corporation, just announced it will pay out $10.6 million to its more than 22,000 members mid-month. That’s a third less than last year’s spring distribution.

Sealaska President and CEO Anthony Mallott said it’s dropped because of lower payouts from a pool of natural-resource earnings from all regional Native corporations.

“Arctic Slope Regional Corp. is seeing declining oil royalties from the fields that are on their lands,” he said. “And that offers direct 7(i) (payments) to Sealaska and all of the other regionals.”

7(i) is a provision of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act describing how corporations are to share resource revenues. The settlement act created the corporations.

This month’s Sealaska payments will range from $133 to $609 per 100 shares, depending on membership in other Native corporations and other factors.

Resource revenue pool payments are the difference between the two amounts.

Mallott said the second-largest dividend revenue source is one of Sealaska’s investment accounts.

“The Permanent Fund distribution is very stable,” he said. “It offers close to $4 million annually in distributions.”

The other source is the corporation’s own business earnings, which have been down. They dropped significantly in 2013 after its construction subsidiary lost more than $25 million.

Mallott said that’s hitting the earnings part of the distribution because the corporation averages such revenues over five years.

“As we move out of that effect, as we move into 2018, we fully expect the distribution to have a good upward trajectory,” he said.

Sealaska has six different classes of shareholders, receiving different payments.

Class B also covers those enrolled in an urban corporation, such as Juneau’s Goldbelt. They receive the full $609 per 100 shares, including the resource pool money.

Class A also is those enrolled in a village corporation, such as Kake Tribal. They don’t get the resource pool payment, so their total is only $133 per hundred shares. Sealaska pays the difference directly to the village corporations, which may or may not pass it on to shareholders.

Class C is at-large shareholders, who are not enrolled in another corporation. They get the full amount.

Mallott said about a quarter of shareholders are in village corporations and about three-quarters are with urban corporations, or none at all.

Class D is descendants of original shareholders, who receive the smaller payment, as do those who became shareholders after the original enrollment date in class L.

Also, Class E elders can receive an additional $133.

Many shareholders hold more than one class of stock, due to inheritance or gifting.

A Washington, D.C., environmental group is accusing the Tongass National Forest of breaking its own timber-sale rules.

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility cites internal Forest Service documents in its critique of Tongass management. The national forest includes most of Southeast Alaska.

Executive Director Jeff Ruch said forest managers didn’t sufficiently review or monitor sales. They also allowed logging companies to cut corners, he said.

“And as a result, there were significant monetary losses,” Ruch said. “They didn’t accomplish their environmental goals. And the oversight was so poor that the Tongass National Forest didn’t even have copies of the contract, let alone the backup data,” Ruch said.

Read a Forest Service report identifying problems with some Tongass timber sales.

Alaska Forest Service officials responded with a news release, but wouldn’t grant an interview or answer specific questions.

In the release, officials said they’re already addressing issues raised in the internal review cited by its critics, which includes updating the appraisal process and making improvements to its timber sale administration.

“The Forest Service takes very seriously its obligation to ensure the accountability, integrity and effectiveness of the timber sale program,” the release said. “Internal reviews such as the Forest Management Activity Review referenced by (Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility) are routinely conducted to ensure the Forest Service achieves the management and strategic goals for the activities under review.”

Among its complaints, the public employees group said Tongass managers improperly allowed loggers to “cherry-pick” more valuable timber within sale areas, including spruce and cedar.

Alaska Forest Association Executive Director Owen Graham said that’s the only way to make timber sales economic.

“What they seem to be saying is the Forest Service should have forced them to log more hemlock trees, more lower-value trees. That would have got them more stumpage,” Graham said. “That doesn’t make any sense. If you harvest lower-value trees, you get less stumpage because the trees are worth less.”

The Ketchikan-based trade association has lobbied the Forest Service to provide enough timber to keep what’s left of the region’s industry alive.

Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility is calling for an in-depth, forensic audit.

Tlingit people from around Southeast Alaska have returned from a trip to the Smithsonian Institution. Elders examined hundreds of Tlingit artifacts in the Smithsonian’s collection, providing context for their own research and for museum staff.

The trip to Washington D.C. was part of the Recovering Voices program, a Smithsonian initiative aimed at preserving indigenous languages and cultures.

Virginia Oliver of Wrangell was among those who examined hundreds of Tlingit artifacts in the National Museum of the American Indian’s collection. From bentwood boxes to blankets and daggers, Oliver and the elders studied their history.

“When they opened up the doors, I have to tell you the feeling was really heavy,” she recalled. “It was so much spirit in there where all of our ancestors have been stored for however long since they were collected.”

Every participant prioritized 100 items out of thousands of pieces. Oliver selected 80 items from Wrangell, 10 from Etolin Island and 10 from her hometown Kake.

“They had the first 15 items that all of the participants had chosen right out on the tables and you could walk right in there and look at them,” Oliver said. “We got together and started a prayer to say hello to our ancestors and to let them know we were there and speaking Tlingit. We did a song, a potlatch song, an opening welcome for them.”

Information about several items’ history was limited to the collector, the year it was collected and sometimes a location. There was no way to know how old items actually were and sometimes even what they were used for. As part of the program, Smithsonian staff hope participants are able to provide more information.

“They had a weaver come in.  She is a teacher in Juneau, a Chilkat naaxein weaver,” Oliver explained.

The weaver was examining one blanket in particular and noticed that it looked familiar.

“She took a picture out of her camera and showed it to us. It looked like the exact same blanket. This blanket that they had the picture of was on a grave house,” Oliver said. “And, if you looked at this blanket, you could see at the top of the blanket where it had been tacked on to the grave house and how part of it had been probably folded under so it wasn’t weathered. So it was very interesting. They were wondering where that blanket had went and it was in the Smithsonian institute.”

Other items that were mislabeled were also corrected.

Oliver, who teaches a Tlingit culture and language class in Wrangell’s middle and high schools, was able to share her experience with her students by live streaming through a virtual-reality camera.

“We would link up, and they would look at some of the artifacts,” Oliver added.

Hours of footage were taken and will also be converted into two-dimensional video and shared with schools in Hoonah, Angoon and Juneau.

Oliver will not only share what she gleaned from the experience with her students, but will give six presentations to the public.

Ketchikan’s first marijuana retail store could open as early as Friday, if a Thursday inspection goes well. That’s according to owners of the Stoney Moose on the waterfront’s Stedman Street.

“Watch your step because it’s still an active construction site, but if you come back you’ll see how close we’re getting,” said Mark Woodward as leads the way down a boardwalk alley to the main entrance of what will be the Stoney Moose retail marijuana store and – eventually, maybe – a cannabis café.

That café would allow patrons – with a focus on summertime cruise visitors – to purchase marijuana and smoke it right there at the business before heading out for other experiences. The state Marijuana Control Board has declined so far to approve regulations allowing on-site consumption, but Woodward remains optimistic.

“Eventually, we think that those are going to go through and get approved, hopefully by June, maybe even sooner than that,” he said.  “I think (the delay) gives them a chance to really look at exactly what they want. I think Eric and I have the best plans for on-site right now, because we consider everything. We have plans for circulating employees … we’ve already bought our air-handling system, so that’s ready to go. But, we’re pushing pause on all that because we want to get our store opened up, our retail store. So, we’ll go back this way.”

We were out on the back deck, with a view of Ketchikan creek and the occasional river otter scurrying up a rocky bank. We stroll back to the alley entrance, which will be the main access for the retail store.

Inside, it doesn’t look like it will be ready to open in a week. The walls are framed, but not finished, and a work crew is there, busy hammering nails. But, they don’t have to finish the whole thing – just the retail area, an office and the bathrooms need to be ready for what they have planned as the first stage.

And they are definitely starting small – the retail area is tiny – about the size of a walk-in closet.

“Pretty small area,” Woodward agreed. “What we’re going to do is, we have a large glass counter that will fit here, and we’ll do something called deli-style.”

Deli-style in this case means the various marijuana strains will be in big jars, a “bud-tender” will help customers choose what they want, weigh it out and package it up.

They are working hard to get the space ready in time for their April 6 inspection, and it’s a little tight. But, Woodward said it was either that day or they’d have to wait until late April.

“We’ve had so many people coming up to us, saying, ‘Tick tock, tick-tock. When are we opening here?’” he said. “So, we got everyone together last week and we said, ‘What do you guys think? Give me an honest answer.’ Everybody was like, ‘Hey, we want to see you guys open.’”

And while it does still look rough inside, Reimer said the renovation is moving along really well.

“You’d be surprised how quick is goes from the studs to a finished product,” he said. “Once you hang some rock up, put the drywall up and a paint job, all of a sudden you’re in a finished room, rather than just a roughed in construction room. We’ll be there. That’s like a one-day thing.”

So, the two entrepreneurs fully expect to get their license on April 6. And it’s only after they have that signed, official license, that can they receive product.

Woodward said they have a plan in place with Green Leaf out of Sitka, which will provide up to five types of marijuana for the store, initially.

That product should arrive on the 7. Opening day will either be that afternoon, or maybe April 8. He and Reimer, along with their lead bud-tender, are still talking about that.

“I’m like, ‘Let’s get that door open!’” Woodward said, “But, they’re saying maybe a limited opening on Friday and then a bigger opening on Saturday. Just so that we all know, speak the same language and do this right.”

Either way, though, if all goes as planned, their first customer will be the first person to buy marijuana legally in Alaska’s First City.