Alaska Native Corporations

A coalition of Southeast tribes and the region’s largest Native corporation announced on Thursday the creation of an endowment designed to support conservation and economic development. They’re calling it the Seacoast Trust.

Sealaska Corporation and The Nature Conservancy have set aside $10 and $7 million respectively in seed money to help support the fund that they say they’d like to eventually grow to $100 million.

Its work will be coordinated by Southeast Sustainable Partnership, a decade-old effort that runs projects in towns and villages across Southeast Alaska. That partnership will run the programs funded by the new trust.

Sealaska CEO Anthony Mallott told reporters that some projects are already running across Southeast. But the growth of the new fund could help them expand in new places and on a larger scale.

“This just gives us the pathway to increase the number of projects and bring on more partners and more communities,” he said.

Southeast tribes including the Organized Village of Kasaan, Organized Village of Kake and Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska are helping lead the effort on the ground.

“Our people watched the Tongass grow,” Tlingit & Haida President Richard Peterson said Thursday. “And this forest has taken care of us for generations. And who better than us to lead efforts to care for our forests and our resources.”

Fran Ulmer, a former Alaska lieutenant governor and Juneau mayor who now works for The Nature Conservancy, says her conservation group is pleased to offer $7 million towards getting the Seacoast Trust off the ground.

“It is an exciting opportunity to really make something happen that has durability and sustainability,” she said. “And that recognizes how important it is that collaborative land and resource management with Indigenous people leading the way is what really makes sense in Alaska and in many other places in the world.”

Financial oversight of the Seacoast Trust will be done by Spruceroot, a nonprofit originally founded by Sealaska that is now organizationally independent. The Juneau-based nonprofit offers seed money and expertise for new businesses.

Congress set aside $8 billion for tribal entities across the country as part of the CARES Act but it took a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in June to free up some of those pandemic relief funds for Alaska Native Corporations.

Some of the village corporations got large payouts while Juneau-based Sealaska, the corporation with the most shareholders, got the least of the dozen regional corporations. Corporation executives say they’re still trying to understand the wide disparities in disbursements.

The Supreme Court ruling freed up nearly $450 million in federal pandemic relief. Corporations large and small had applied — some expecting to be able to offer some direct relief to shareholders.

Don Bremner, president of Yak-Tat Kwaan, Inc., said their allocation was around $164,000.

“So we thought, ‘My gosh, did we did we fill out the forms wrong? Maybe we missed something,’” he said from Yakutat where the village corporation serves around 500 shareholders.

Divvying up the federal aid would work out to about $300 each.

“So it wasn’t something to get excited about,” Bremner said. “That’s pretty much chump change.”

It was a similar story in Angoon. Melissa Kookesh chairs the board of Kootznoowoo, Inc. which has about 1,100 shareholders with ties to the Southeast village on Admiralty Island.

“Our corporation only received $168,625,” she said. “And it’s disturbing, especially when an urban corporation, just up the way from us receives over $11 million.”

She’s referring to Juneau’s Goldbelt, Inc. It received about $11.1 million allowing its board to distribute the cash to its 4,000-odd shareholders.

“We’re trying to push out as much as possible to shareholders to get their relief to get that money in their hands as quickly as possible,” said Goldbelt CEO McHugh Pierre.

The Juneau corporation is offering its shareholders up to $2,600 in direct assistance through the end of September. Then it’ll decide what to do with the rest of the cash.

“There’s enough for everybody,” Pierre added. “This isn’t a needs based system where you income qualify: If you can certify you had expenses and you’re a Goldbelt shareholder, we have enough money for everybody to receive relief.”

Juneau’s urban Native corporation has about four times as many shareholders as Angoon’s, yet it received more than 60 times as much federal pandemic relief.

A federal database that shows CARES Act payouts to Alaska Native Corporations suggests these disparities were common.

Staff at a number of  Native corporations said they didn’t understand exactly how the formula worked. But corporations with more shareholders didn’t necessarily get more money.

Village corporations have been seeking an explanation from the Treasury Department.

But Nathan McCowan, chair of the Alaska Native Village Corporation Association, said they haven’t gotten a satisfying answer.

“They were translucent, but not transparent,” he said.

According to the Treasury one of the factors would be the number of employees the corporation and its subsidiaries have. McCowan said that seems to have affected many of the payouts.

“There does seem to be a strong correlation, in that the larger the operating base, the larger the number of employees, the greater amount of money that the corporation received,” McCowan said.

That might explain the case of Afognak Native Corporation. It received $19.2 million, or nearly $20,000 for each of its thousand-odd shareholders.  It’s a relatively small village corporation with ancestral ties to the Kodiak Archipelago. But its revenues are more than $600 million dollars a year.

According to a statement from Afognak Native Corporation, executives don’t fully understand the formula used by the U.S. Treasury but are “very pleased to have received such a generous grant from the federal government to provide relief and response to the significant impacts of COVID on all of our stakeholders and community.”

It also helps explain why Juneau’s Goldbelt — which boasts more than two dozen subsidiaries — received more than twice as much of this federal relief as Sealaska, the ANCSA corporation with the most number shareholders overall.

In a statement directed at its 23,000 shareholders, Sealaska says it’s received questions from shareholders on how the disbursement was calculated.

“Sealaska is working out the details of how the $4.2 million allocation will be distributed to benefit our shareholders. We know this has been a difficult 18 months and that many are still struggling,” according to the statement. It also said corporations that provide housing-related services through a federal program were also given a leg up.

In contrast, Tatitlek Corporation, a village corporation with roots in  Prince William Sound, received nearly $5 million — more than Sealaska — despite having fewer than 500 shareholders. No one from the corporation returned calls for comment.

The Native corporation to receive far and away the most CARES Act funds for tribal entities was CIRI, the regional corporation serving the Cook Inlet region including Anchorage, Kenai and the Mat-Su. It took in more than $111 million or roughly $12,000 per shareholder.

“I don’t know how Treasury made their calculations to determine the allocation,” said CIRI spokesperson Ethan Tyler.

But he said the regional corporation serves the most populous part of the state. It runs Southcentral Foundation which serves some 60,000 Alaska Natives and Native Americans which will allow it to put the funds to use beyond its direct shareholders, he added.

The three factors that Treasury seems to have taken into account, Tyler said, were tribal population, employment and increased expenditures of the corporation.

“But we were not provided a basis for the amount of funding that the Treasury allocated to anyone,” he said.

This CARES Act funds have strings attached. It has to be spent on pandemic-related expenses. And under current deadlines, CIRI has to spend its $111 million by the end of the year.

“And we’re actively seeking to extend that deadline,” Tyler said.

This month CIRI announced its shareholders can apply for assistance of up to $1,500 plus more for those with dependents.

That’s not something many other corporations will be able to offer their shareholders especially in rural Southeast Alaska.

“It’s just really challenging,” Kootznoowoo’s Melissa Kookesh said.

She said, if divided up, its disbursement would be less than $150 per shareholder.

“And that can’t even get you a plane ticket to Angoon,” she added.

Angoon doesn’t have an airport. All air service comes via seaplane that land on the water. That’s another project her village corporation is working on — trying to develop an airstrip for the island community.

Alaska Public Media’s Liz Ruskin in Anchorage contributed to this article.

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to correct a transcription error. The previous version included the term “income quality.” This has been changed to “income qualify.” The story has also been updated to reflect that there are now only 12 regional Native corporations, not 13.

The Alaska Federation of Natives, the state’s largest organization of Alaska Native people, has postponed their annual convention to December, citing concerns over the high rates of COVID-19 cases and hospitalizations.

The three-day event had been scheduled for Oct. 21-23 in Anchorage. However, AFN President Julie Kitka said in a statement Tuesday, “the high-risk factors of holding a 5,000-person indoor meeting, with delegates coming in from across Alaska, make an in-person October gathering out of the question.”

Cases of COVID-19 have risen steadily over the past month in Anchorage, with the convention’s host city reporting its highest number of hospitalizations from the virus since December.

The pandemic already pushed the annual Elder’s and Youth Conference to be held virtually this year. That conference is an Alaska Native gathering that typically occurs the same week as AFN.

AFN officials continue to opt for an in-person convention with a virtual option.

They say the exact dates, times and agenda for the AFN convention will be announced in the coming weeks. After reviewing data and guidance from federal, state and tribal health leaders, the AFN board will also make a final decision in October on whether the convention will be in-person or not.

The theme of this year’s convention is “ANCSA at 50: Empowering Our Future”, commemorating the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, a landmark land claims law that established the 12 regional Alaska Native Corporations and more than 200 village corporations. AFN co-chair Joe Nelson said in a statement that postponing the convention will allow the attendees to properly celebrate ANCSA, but “it all hinges on everyone’s willingness to get vaccinated.”

AFN represents members from 11 of the 12 regional Native corporations and more than 191 federally recognized tribes.

Sealaska shareholders have elected two new directors to the Alaska Native corporation’s board. The Juneau-based regional Native corporation announced on Saturday the addition of Liz Medicine Crow and Vicki Soboleff among the five seats that were up for grabs.

Medicine Crow was among the four board-endorsed candidates to be elected. Longtime chair Joe Nelson who has been on the board since 2003 was also reelected.

The other returning incumbents are Barbara Cadiente-Nelson and Nicole Hallingstad, who was elected as an independent in 2018 but added to the board slate this year.

Medicine Crow is chief executive of First Alaskans Institute, a nonprofit whose aim is to advance the interests of Alaska’s Indigenous peoples. She did not respond to requests for comment on Monday.

Independent candidate elected

Soboleff, an independent, won the second-highest number of votes, according to a tally released by the corporation. She’s a grants coordinator for a Washington state tribal government. Both she and Medicine Crow grew up in and have deep ties to Southeast Alaska.  She declined to be interviewed but released a short statement to CoastAlaska.

“I will not forget the support I have received,” Soboleff wrote, “and I will continue my work for our people.”

Board-endorsed resolution wins, shareholder resolutions fail

The precise count of direct shareholder votes wasn’t publicly released. A shareholder resolution to require more in-depth reporting of results failed, as did a second resolution that would have restricted the practice of allowing the board majority to steer proxy votes toward favored candidates that critics say perpetuates the status quo.

But a board-proposed resolution passed by a majority of votes. It establishes a tax shelter allowing the corporation to pay its dividends. That measure was controversial as some shareholders say its language is too vague; there’s nothing to guarantee that payments to shareholders would be equitable.

“We have an excellent combination of fresh perspectives and institutional knowledge on our board, and I am confident the settlement trust will be a great benefit to shareholders,” Sealaska chief executive Anthony Mallott wrote in a statement.

Only one candidate endorsed by the board majority wasn’t elected. Sarah Dybdahl of Juneau came in sixth place, according to the vote count released, which reported a turnout of around 64% of shareholders.

Sealaska is a significant economic player in Alaska. It’s one of the original 13 established the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act and has more than 20,000 shareholders whose ancestors have ties to traditional homelands across Southeast Alaska.

Nearly 50 years old, it’s become a major player in real estate, fisheries and commercial services. It reported nearly $700 million in annual revenue with more than $55 million in net profits last year, according to its most recent annual report.

The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Friday that Alaska Native regional and village corporations are eligible to receive federal CARES Act funding intended for tribes.

At stake in the case is about $500 million that the Treasury Department was going to distribute to Alaska Native corporations until several tribes filed a lawsuit. But both sides say the case was about more than money.

For the tribes, it’s about guarding their sovereignty as governments. They argued that since Alaska’s for-profit Native corporations aren’t tribes, they should not get a share of the $8 billion coronavirus relief fund that Congress reserved for tribal governments.

The 6-3 decision was written by Justice Sonia Sotomayor.

Mike Williams read it with dismay. He is the senior chief of the Akiak tribe, in Western Alaska.

“I’m definitely disappointed but continuously being hopeful and we’ll continue to fight to protect our tribal sovereignty, period,” he said.

For Williams and tribal leaders in the Lower 48, the case is emotional. The tribes feel that the Alaska Native Corporations are trying to horn in on their sovereignty.

“But it wasn’t about the ANCs horning in on anything,” said attorney Lloyd Miller, who has brought cases to assert Alaska tribal self-determination. “It was whether members of Congress intended to include the ANCs in this pool of money. And the court’s conclusion was that members of Congress did intend that.”

Here’s how the CARES Act defines tribe: It says “tribe” has the same meaning it does in an older law, the Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act, also known as ISDA. That’s a 1975 law that allows tribes to contract with the U.S. government to provide services that used to be done by federal agencies.

Had the case gone the other way, the corporations say, it could have upset long-standing health care and housing programs.

Consider Doyon, the Native corporation for the Interior. Under ISDA, Doyon is a tribe for purposes of receiving Native American housing allocations, which it passes on to the Interior Regional Housing Authority.

“Especially in urban Alaska – Anchorage and Fairbanks in particular – this case had the potential to disrupt that provision of services,” said Doyon CEO Aaron Schutt. “That was the important issue from the start.”

Alaska’s cities have a lot of Alaska Native residents, but Schutt said the local tribes were often decimated so the corporations play an important role.

“The history of Fairbanks is, it’s one of those areas where there’s no federally recognized tribe because the last big pandemic 100 years ago pretty much killed all the Native people in the Fairbanks-North Star borough,” he said. “So the history is tied together.”

The biggest service provider among the ANCs is Cook Inlet Region Inc. It founded the nonprofit Southcentral Foundation, which partners with tribal organizations to run the Alaska Native Medical Center in Anchorage.

None of the 12 regional ANCs or the 174 village corporations know exactly how much it will get of the $8 billion tribal CARES Act fund, although collectively it totals about half a billion dollars. Schutt said Doyon has asked, but Treasury hasn’t produced a number.

“As we sit here today, knowing we’ve now won the case, we still only have six months to deploy money,” he said. “We don’t know how much it is. So that’s going to be a challenge.”

Schutt said another looming challenge is to heal the rift this case has created between the tribes and Alaska Native corporations.

Editor’s note: This article has been updated with more information from tribal leaders. The headline has also been updated.

Pedro Bay Corporation is seeking conservation easements on land it owns around Illiamna Lake, an arrangement that would be a significant hurdle to any future plans to remove ore from the giant Pebble deposit.

More than 90% of shareholders have agreed to the plan. It calls for The Conservation Fund to buy easements on 44,000 acres. In return for the restrictions on its property rights, the Alaska Native village corporation would receive $18.3 million, plus $500,000 to its cultural and education fund.

The land that would be covered by the easement includes part of the “northern corridor” that Pebble Limited Partnership proposed to bring ore from the mine to a port on Cook Inlet. It’s not the only way to bring the ore out, but it’s the one federal regulators said would be the least harmful.

In November, the Army Corps rejected Pebble’s mine application, saying the plan for the open-pit gold and copper mine wasn’t compatible with the Clean Water Act. The company backing the project is still fighting for it.

Pedro Bay Corporation has fewer than 200 shareholders. CEO Matt McDaniel said they made an “informed decision” on the conservation easement.

“The general feedback was that this land is their home.  Their subsistence, their culture, and their history is tied to this land,” he said in an email. “And they want to protect this land for generations to come.”

Protecting important salmon habitat, not thwarting Pebble, is the main purpose of the easements, organizers say. Only a small portion of the 44,000 acres covered would have been used in the northern corridor.

The easements would restrict industrial-scale developments, but not all economic activity.

The Bristol Bay Heritage Land Trust would manage the easement. Its director, Tim Troll, says subsistence, cultural activities and tourism would still be allowed.

“There are some limitations on what they can construct. We’re not looking at huge buildings,” he said. “But as long as it’s consistent with the overall purposes of the easement, then it’s OK.”

Now it’s up to The Conservation Fund, based in Virginia, to raise the money. CEO Larry Selzer said the organization prioritized these lands in part because of the proposed Pebble mine.

“Obviously, the Illiamna Lake region — the salmon values, the ecological values are of extremely high importance,” he said. “But also the threat was real.”

Selzer says the campaign to stop the mine — which featured lush images of streams and focused national attention on the importance of salmon to the people of the region — may make the next challenge easier.

“The fact that this has been in the public eye for decades, and the threat from the Pebble Mine has been a proximate issue for decades, drives the visibility that we hope will translate into significant fundraising,” he said.