Western

Terms like tribal sovereignty, Native Rights, and co-management, are all open to interpretation. One of the most vocal groups in the Y-K Delta, Yupiit Nation, recently met to hash out their vision of future governance in the region. Members have a spectrum of views about what tribal sovereignty really means.

A few dozen people gathered in the Akiachak School Gym last month for two days of Yupiit Nation discussions at their annual meeting. A similar set of topics comes up at every meeting: subsistence, co-management, local law enforcement; the most basic idea of governance and what role local tribes, who are members of Yupiit Nation, want to play. Ivan M. Ivan is the Tribal President in Akiak.

“We’re not trying to become a government that runs villages. The villages have their power. By themselves to control their own destiny but collectively together I believe they can help each other,” said Ivan.

There is however a long-standing discussion about forming a regional tribal government. Yupiit Nation Chief, Mike Williams, said after the meeting that vision includes a legislative, executive, and judicial branch. He says the current governmental structure holds tribes back.

“There’s 56 individual federally recognized tribes in our area and the respect is there. But if 56 unite together I think we can begin to deal with these issues that are not good and help us manage our way of live as we have for thousands of years,” said Williams.

Williams calls Yupiit Nation a consortium of federally recognized tribes. Formed in 1978 with 19 tribes, Williams says there are now 12 tribes with active members. The core of the group, however, is centered in Akiak, Akiachak, Tuluksak, and Kwethluk.

Critics say the outspoken group doesn’t represent the majority of Y-K Delta tribal members. Still, the group pushes for a shift of the power to tribes in rural Alaska.

Phillip Peter Senior is Akiachak’s Native Community President. He says his ancestors controlled their own destiny and today there are too many laws and regulations. Still, he wants tribes to be partners with existing governments.

“The vision is to help ourselves. And work with our federal and state governments We’re not trying to take away the power from the government and state. All we want to do is work with them,” said Peter.

Moses Owen from Akiak takes a harder line for the Yupiit Nation.

“You know it’s getting tougher for us to survive, with the laws, the regulations, we have have to get back to where we were before. No laws, no rules, just our way of life, we want to practice that,” said Owen.

Yupiit Nation Chief Mike Williams says the group held off on elections, which were scheduled for their meeting on August 22nd and 23rd. He says they’ll likely take place at an upcoming meeting.

And Yupiit Nation isn’t the only group talking about building new tribal government structures. For example, the Y-K Delta Regional Committee, a group facilitated by Calista, the regional Native Corporation, is also drafting a constitution for a possible future tribal government.

A new lawsuit has been filed against the state redistricting board. This time, it’s by the Alaska Democratic Party.

In a couple of ways, the redistricting process is sort of like solving a Rubik’s Cube: It can be really frustrating, and every time you try to fix a part, you run the risk of messing up something else.

From the perspective of the Alaska Democratic Party, the map used for the last election was:

McKinnon: Outrageous.

But the newest version?

McKinnon: Is just bad.

Joe McKinnon is the party’s attorney. He says that while the redistricting board’s newest map solves some constitutional problems, it creates a few others. That’s why the party — along with Katie Hurley and Warren Keogh — filed a lawsuit against the board on Tuesday. There’s already another group based in Fairbanks that’s suing the board for different reasons concerning the Senate pairings of certain districts, and it’s possible this new lawsuit could be rolled in with that one.

McKinnon says his clients have a handful of concerns with the new map. They think the board, which is mostly made up of Republicans, took extra voters from the conservative Mat-Su region to make other seats more secure for their party.

“The Mat-Su has exactly enough population for five seats, and yet the board only put four seats within the borough and then split the other population, putting part in with Valdez and then part in with Anchorage.”

McKinnon says the way the lines were drawn in the Kenai Peninsula and Fairbanks are similarly problematic. He also says the state’s rural districts should have been better drawn to match Native corporation boundaries.

Now, McKinnon wants the courts to say the redistricting board has had enough chances to produce a constitutional map.

“The remedy we want is for the court to draw the final map, to appoint a master.”

Michael White is the redistricting board’s attorney, and he thinks the lawsuit is being brought more for political reasons than constitutional ones.

“I guess if I’m a betting man, I would say what they’re trying to do is blow up the plan with anything they possibly can in the hopes that they would get a master appointed, and that would somehow benefit the Democrats.”

White says he was surprised that the Democrats filed their own suit against the redistricting board, and that he doesn’t think their case has any merit. When it comes to the Mat-Su region, he says the decision to take some population from that area was necessary to pad surrounding districts that didn’t have enough voters.

“It isn’t just a simple matter of ‘Let’s draw this in isolation.’ There’s a ripple effect that you have whenever you move a single person — you start moving several hundred people.”

White adds that he doesn’t see basis for a complaint about rural districts. The map the redistricting board adopted was partially based on a plan offered by Calista, an Alaska Native corporation.

“If they don’t match Alaska Native lines, how come there is not a single Alaska Native interest that is making a challenge?”

The redistricting board is arguing that all legal challenges against the redistricting board be dismissed.

The courts are hearing the lawsuits on an expedited basis in an effort to finalize the state’s political boundaries before the 2014 election. It’s been three years since the redistricting process first started.

This story has been updated to include comment from the redistricting board.

In a half-hour meeting on a Sunday afternoon, the Alaska Redistricting Board unanimously agreed on a new electoral map.

The process of drawing the state’s political boundaries has been going on for nearly three years. Along the way, board members described it as a struggle, Democrats characterized it as gerrymandering by a Republican-dominated group, and the courts deemed it unconstitutional.

Board member Bob Brodie expressed relief at the idea the prospect of Sunday’s meeting being the board’s last.

“It wasn’t an easy job in the beginning, and it wasn’t any easier later.”

The new plan is partially based on a proposal from the Native corporation Calista, and there are some major changes from the temporary map used in the 2012 election. It gets rid of a controversial district that mixed some Fairbanks area residents with rural Alaska; it removes Petersburg from Juneau’s Senate district; and it reconnects the Aleutian chain. All of those issues had been raised as constitutional concerns, and board attorney Michael White said at the meeting that the new map addresses those legal claims.

The map also opens up a Senate seat in the Mat-Su area by placing Eagle River Republicans Anna Fairclough and Fred Dyson in the same district, and it creates a new House seat in the Interior by putting North Pole Republicans Doug Isaacson and Tammie Wilson in the same political boundaries.

During Sunday’s meeting, board members complimented each other on finalizing a new map, and they discussed the challenges of complying with both the Alaska Constitution and the federal Voting Rights Act. The act, which is meant to protect the influence of minority populations, was partially struck down by the Supreme Court last month. Board member Jim Holm spoke critically of giving special treatment to Native voters.

“I find it to be disconcerting that we so many times try to allow people to have extra voting rights versus people who are just plain Alaskans. I’ve been here 67 years, and I’m an Alaskan. I may not be an Alaska Native, but I’m a native Alaskan.”

The map will now be submitted to the courts for approval as part of an ongoing lawsuit.

 

The Alaska Redistricting Board has come up with seven new maps of its own. Four more were submitted by the Ketchikan Gateway Borough, the Calista regional Native corporation and two other groups. (Link to the maps and related documents.)

But the redistricting maps posted online are small or compressed. So, it’s hard to even tell where some communities end up.

“I don’t think anybody really knows what’s going on with redistricting,” said Skagway Mayor Stan Selmer.

Like many Southeast leaders, he’s considering the implications of another round of election-boundary changes.

“I’m a little bit disappointed that this has this much of a life,” he said.

The northern Lynn Canal community used to be linked to Haines, its nearby neighbor, and quite a few other small Southeast towns.

The current redistricting plan, undergoing a court-ordered review, puts Skagway in with downtown Juneau, Petersburg, Gustavus and Tenakee Springs.

New maps keep Selmer’s town linked to the capital city and its Lynn Canal neighbors.

“I know that geography really is the major component of tying Haines, Skagway and Juneau together,” Selmer said.

Most of the new redistricting maps match other Southeast communities with their neighbors, rather than long, narrow strings of towns.

For example, plans link all of southern Southeast together.

Dan Bockhorst is borough manager of Ketchikan, which submitted its own set of regional boundaries.

“The plan that was presented would encompass all of the Ketchikan Gateway Borough and areas with which Ketchikan has strong social, cultural, economic, geographic and transportation connections and similarities,” Bockhorst said.

Some of the 11 proposed maps shuffle communities and boundaries in the middle of the region.

A number, including Ketchikan’s, put Wrangell back in a district with Sitka and Petersburg. That’s what Petersburg wants, rather the current district with Juneau.

All these changes make it hard for some residents to know who their legislators are – and vice versa.

“I’ll just go with the flow, whatever it is. It’s just very frustrating when you get yanked around,” said Wrangell Representative Peggy Wilson.

She lost Sitka and Petersburg from her district for the 2012 elections. And she gained much-larger Ketchikan.

“The thing is, I know that district so well because I’ve had it for so long. And it’s been a challenge for me to get to learn all new people,” Wilson said.

Election districts have to have pretty much the same number of residents.

So when Southeast Alaska didn’t grow – and other parts of the state did – redistricting cost the region two of its eight legislative seats.

That forced small towns in with larger communities, some against their will.

Merrill Sanford is mayor of Juneau, which has about half the region’s residents and two of its four remaining election districts.

“It just seems like no matter how you cut it, we end up having to have some of the other littler communities around us, one way or the other, in our district. And of course that scares and worries them and I don’t blame them,” Sanford said.

A public hearing on the plans is set for noon to 4 p.m., July 2nd, in Juneau. Others are set for June 28th in Anchorage and July 1st in Fairbanks. Testimony will be taken in person and via teleconference.

Stories include the latest candidate to run for school board during the municipal election on October 4th and another buyer steps forward to pick up the last two weeklies being shut down by Calista Corporation.