Alaska Native Arts & Culture

Alaska Native Corporations display a strong ethos of corporate responsibility, according to an anthropologist who studies the organizations.

Tom Thornton is a senior research fellow for Environmental Change and Management at Oxford University. He presented some of his current research yesterday (Tuesday) at Sealaska Heritage Institute’s annual Native American History Month lecture series.

Thornton says Native Corporations make especially interesting subjects for social scientists.

“The big reason is that they are very unique hybrid institutions,” he says. “They’re not like regular corporations, and obviously they are major cultural institutions as well.”

Thornton says the corporate responsibility ethos is evidenced by many of the corporations’ mission statements, which refer to “sustainability.”

“Probably like all corporations, not every Alaska Native Corporation lives up to its ideals and its mission statement. But the fact that they’re articulated with a certain set of values is quite interesting,” Thornton says. “Because we’re all looking for the right model of sustainable development, if that’s not an oxymoron or a non-sequitur. If there is sustainable development, it obviously has to incorporate some key cultural values into it. It can’t just be an economic model.”

Thornton’s current project is looking at how ANCs have transformed institutional relations between Native people, state governments, ecosystems, and economies.

Since the corporations were created by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, they have adapted to changing cultural, economic and political circumstances. He points to Southeast Alaska, where Native people traditionally lived and survived by the ocean. But under ANCSA – where the settlement included land – virtually all Southeast Native Corporations have been or are involved in timber.

“You move from people who were fishermen to forests. There wasn’t a lot of experience at the beginning. This lack of experience led to mistakes, or people taking advantage, and this set a lot of particularly small corporations off to a bad start,” Thornton says. “They either harvested their timber too quickly, they didn’t get a good price for it, or they didn’t really consider their own values in terms of what they really wanted to do with their natural capital to support their cultural capital.”

In some cases Thornton says Native corporations have done well by moving away from natural resource industries, and into businesses like tourism. One example is Huna Totem Corporation’s Icy Strait Point tourist attraction in Hoonah.

“You have 130 people employed by Huna Totem Corporation in tourism. That would seem to be sustainable if you can get one ship per day in there throughout the summer,” he says.

But there’s still a strong desire on the part of ANC leaders to combine traditional ways of living with newer models. Thornton says one Hoonah fisherman suggested to him that they develop niche economies.

“In the summer, you have tourism, major industrial tourism, that is your form of sustainable development. But in the winter and spring, maybe people could still fish there,” he says.

Thornton’s research is still in the preliminary stages. He says it will eventually compare the development of Southeast Native corporations with those in the Bering Straits region.

Sealaska Heritage Institute’s Native American History Month events continue today (Wednesday) with a luncheon to recognize ANCSA at the Alaska Native Brotherhood Hall.

The lecture series resumes tomorrow (Thursday) with a talk by Tlingit and Haida Central Council President Edward Thomas on the relationships between tribes and corporations.

Sealaska director and former CEO Byron Mallott says the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act is a work in progress.

Mallott kicked off Sealaska Heritage Institute’s annual Native American History Month lecture series last week (Friday), by calling the landmark piece of federal legislation “unfinished business.”

“It’s unfinished in the sense that it has been amended many, many times in order to be responsive to changing public policy, the changing aspirations of Native peoples themselves,” says Mallott. “But it has also big chunks of it need to be rationalized and dealt with.”

Sealaska is one of twelve regional Native corporations created by ANCSA in 1971. Each received land to settle the various aboriginal claims of Alaska Native people. The settlement also included compensation of nearly a billion dollars that was split between the companies. A thirteenth corporation was later formed for so-called “landless Natives.”

Mallott hopes ANCSA will be amended in the future to allow land swaps between Native corporations, tribes, and the federal government.

“There are Native lands in Native ownership that probably should best be in public ownership. There are public lands that if you really look at them, have more the attributes of Native places,” he says. “And the biggest one of all to me, is how do we keep those lands which are now essentially corporate assets? Even though they are protected in modest ways, they are not tribal lands in the legal sense, even though we believe they are tribal lands in the Native sense.”

Mallott did not touch on it in his speech, but legislation sponsored by Alaska’s Congressional delegation would allow Sealaska to complete its ANCSA entitlement by choosing land outside the act’s original boundaries.

The Sealaska Heritage Institute lecture series continues next Monday. Tlingit and Haida Central Council President Edward Thomas will describe the interrelationships between Alaska Native Corporations and tribes.

Sealaska Heritage Foundation President Rosita Worl is the Alaska Federation of Native’s Citizen of the Year.

 

Worl was presented the honor on Friday at the annual convention in Anchorage. It is the highest award given by the AFN Board of Directors.

AFN President Julie Kitka said Worl has dedicated her life to working for Alaska Natives “from one corner of the state to the others.”

“I venture to say there’s nobody’s life that’s not been touched by the efforts that she has put into her work helping the Native community over her lifetime,” Kitka said.

Worl, an anthropologist with a Ph.D. from Harvard University, also serves on the AFN Board of Directors, the Sealaska Corporation board, as well as numerous other boards and commissions.

She said no one works on their own. Asking her family, friends, colleagues, and all subsistence users in the audience to stand, she told the crowd:

“You are my source of inspiration. You are the ones who give me strength. You are the ones who make me believe that our way of life is worthy of protection.”

The annual AFN convention ended over the weekend. It was carried live on 360 North and will repeat beginning Monday, October 31. For details and times, go to www.360North.org.

SEARHC President Emeritus Ethel Lund, of Juneau, has received an award for her work in protecting and promoting respect for Alaska Native women and children.

Gov. Sean Parnell today (Friday) presented Lund the Shirley Demientieff Award at the Alaska Federation of Natives Convention in Anchorage.

The award is given at AFN every year by the governor for advocacy on behalf of Alaska Native women and children. Parnell has vowed to reduce domestic violence and sexual assault during his administration.

During his AFN speech, he pledged an additional 15 Village Public Safety Officers for rural villages next year as well as more money for rural education.

“We will not rest as long as the epidemic of domestic violence and sexual assault steals the hopes and dreams of women and children and men in this land,” Parnell said.

Demientieff was a prominent Athabascan activist and community leader. She died in 2007, known for her work to curb suicide, domestic violence and sexual assault among Native people. She helped found Alaska Natives Standing Up for Justice, which criticized the treatment of Natives in the justice system.

Lund, a Tlingit, is known statewide for her work in health care. A founder of the Southeast Alaska Regional Health Care Consortium, she helped develop a landmark agreement with the federal Indian Health Service. The Juneau SEARHC clinic is named for Lund. She currently oversees regional operations and village-based health programs across Southeast Alaska.

Lund described Demientieff as ”a gracious and caring woman” who had an impact on the entire state. She said she was humbled to receive the award for her work.

“I feel doubly blessed that my life’s work has been one of challenge and reward,” Lund told the AFN crowd. “It involved my mind, heart and soul.”

Lund is a former president of the Alaska Native Sisterhood Grand Camp, as well a local president of ANS Camps 1 and 70. She has served as chairwoman of the Alaska Native Health Board and Alaska Tribal Health Directors, and was vice chair of the National Indian Health Board.

She was president of SEARHC at its founding in 1975 and has been President emeritus since 1999. SEARHC is one of the largest health care organizations in Alaska.