Alaska Native Government & Policy

Those who knew and loved Marlene Johnson say she was in constant motion — either behind the scenes, or on the forefront of the major issues that have shaped life for Alaska Natives for more than 60 years.

The Lingít leader died on Jan. 25 at the age of 90.

“People don’t realize how different Alaska would be without her, certainly Alaska Native lives,” said Vera Starbard, Johnson’s granddaughter, known for her poetry and as a screenwriter for national programs like the PBS hit series Molly of Denali and the TV drama, Alaska Daily.

Starbard says her grandmother sent her a steady stream of job leads, a sign that she found her chosen career to be too quiet and sedentary. Yet it has given Starbard plenty of time to reflect on her grandmother, enough to begin work on a play about how she became a voice for change.

Advocacy for ANCSA

Johnson’s role in the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act is one of her biggest legacies. Today, ANCSA remains the nation’s largest land claims settlement in history – legislation she helped to steer through Congress during the 1960s, legislation that changed Alaska forever.

It wasn’t an easy time to be a Native in politics, or a woman.

“The men had the voice. They were out front, and they were the speakers,” Irene Rowan said. “But somehow, Marlene became a voice among all those men. I often wondered, how did she do it?”

Back then, Rowan worked for the federal government and became part of an ANCSA support group called “Alaskans on the Potomac.”

As a woman trying to navigate a male-dominated world, Johnson was an inspiration, said Rowan. “She was royalty. People looked up to her. She was rich. She was rich with knowledge and with enthusiasm,” she said.

Rosita Worl, another up-and-coming Lingít leader in those days, also learned from Johnson.

“She exemplified what we know and recognize as a leader, and they don’t come along very often,” Worl said, maybe once in a lifetime.

“I don’t think people thought of her as a woman or a man. They just admired her leadership capabilities,” Worl said.

Breaking barriers

Vera Starbard says she marvels at how her grandmother was able to break through gender and race barriers.

“She always insisted on being taken seriously,” Starbard said, “but at the same time, she had to figure out how to maneuver in that world, let her voice be heard, when literally some people would not hear it.”

Starbard says people forget that Johnson was a single mom, who not only raised six kids, but was also a businesswoman. She co-owned a regional air taxi service in her home village of Hoonah and became one of the first women to lead a Native corporation. For more than a decade, she served on the Sealaska board. Johnson also helped to found many of the educational organizations and non-profits that make up today’s social service safety net.

A 2009 interview with Dr. Thomas Thornton, an ethnologist at Sealaska Heritage Institute, offers clues about the source of Johnson’s passion for public service. Johnson told him about the racism she encountered in Juneau, where her family moved in the late 1940’s so she could attend high school.

“I shouldn’t confess doing anything wrong in my life,” Johnson laughed, as she described an ongoing late-night mission that she and her girlfriends carried out.

“A few of us that were considered “Breeds” would go down the street and rip the signs off the bars, and there were bars all up and down South Franklin Street that aren’t there now, that said ‘No Coasties. No Indians. No dogs allowed.'”

She said Coasties was slang for Coast Guard members, who had a reputation for getting into fights—and like Natives and dogs, were unwelcome.

The path to power

Somewhere along the line, Johnson evolved from an activist into a statesman, and Native corporations, with their growing wealth and resources, became a vehicle for change.

“Without ANCSA, we would be back where we were in the early ’60s, where discrimination would still be here? I am a firm believer of that,” Johnson said.

Emil Notti, the first president of the Alaska Federation of Natives, the main group which led the land claims fight, said Johnson overcame the chauvinism of the day through her hard work and understanding of the issues.

“She stood on her own, her qualifications,” Notti said. “She wasn’t put there because she was a woman. She was put there because she was an effective advocate.”

Notti says Johnson worked well with different factions of Alaska Natives, who resisted compromise, a role pivotal to the passage of ANCSA. Notti believes her experience with the Alaska Native Brotherhood honed her skills as trusted and persuasive negotiator.

Tireless advocacy

Over the years, Notti said, he watched her sphere of influence continue to grow.

In a 2011 interview with the late journalist Nellie Moore, Johnson mapped out how Alaska Natives could become agents of change.

“Alaska Natives, I don’t care where you’re from, need to be involved. They need to sit on boards. They need to sit on commissions,” she said. “The Alaska Native perspective needs to be heard, that we aren’t sitting on a stump doing nothing — that we are just like everybody else,” Johnson said. “We have a brain, and we use it. We have muscles and we use it. And we have respect for each other, and we don’t call other people names like they sometimes call us.”

Not long before Johnson died, Notti and Willie Hensley, another leader in the claims fight, visited Johnson in Juneau. Notti said, when he realized her time was almost over, he felt a wave of loneliness — because there are only about a dozen people still alive who really know the story of ANCSA.

“There are 500 stories. Everybody who was involved has a story. You look at the same event, see it different. You get all kinds of stories. But in there, somewhere, is what really happened,” Notti said. Now there is one less voice in the ANCSA band of warriors.

Notti says every momentous historical event spawns a “greatest generation,” and ANCSA was one of those that brought out the best in Alaska Natives, who accomplished what many believed was impossible.

As the Northern Lights danced, Marlene Johnson departed

And for Rosita Worl, Marlene Johnson was one of those who rose to the occasion and became a force to be reckoned with.

“The night before she left us, we had just spectacular Northern Lights. That said to me, those are our warriors, ready to embrace this leader in the spirit world.”

But for her family, Johnson’s exit was more down-to-earth. Vera Starbard says her grandmother, in her last days, was telling jokes — bad ones at that. “And she said, ‘Boy I better talk more. Those will be my last words,” Starbard said. “She was very aware of what was happening and still going to make a joke out of it.”

When everybody laughed, Starbard was reminded that it was Johnson’s keen sense of humor that was her secret weapon in life. It disarmed her opponents and endeared her supporters.

“It was a mass of privilege being Marlene Johnson’s granddaughter,” she said, “but I miss the woman who made wild strawberry jam really well.” “

The business arm of Southeast Alaska’s largest tribe has earned nearly $40 million from U.S. Navy contracts in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba – money some tribal members are concerned comes from supporting immigrant detention. 

While tribal corporation leadership says their operations are separate from the detention center on the military base, what’s happening on the ground may tell a different story.

Guantánamo Bay is the site of an active U.S. Navy base with about 6,000 military personnel living and working there. It also houses a detention facility. That facility’s main purpose was to detain people accused of orchestrating the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. 

The Trump administration has been using the detention facility to detain migrants as part of its aggressive deportation policies that many deem inhumane and unconstitutional.

Tlingit Haida Tribal Business Corporation is the business arm of the Southeast Alaska tribal  government — the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska. The corporation currently has a contract in Guantánamo Bay.

In 2018, the corporation’s subsidiary, KIRA, announced a contract with the U.S. Navy to provide maintenance services, port operations and waterfront administration for the base. That contract lasted until 2022. According to a government website that tracks contracts, a similar contract started two months before it ended and is set to last until February 2028. The value of the two contracts together has so far reached just under $40 million.

Tlingit and Haida said the corporation’s contract provides services to the Navy base; it does not support detention operations at the base. But some tribal members, like Clarice Johnson, have doubts about that.

Tribal involvement in Trump’s detention operations

Johnson said she’s been concerned about the contract since it began seven years ago. But when the Trump administration vowed to hold thousands of immigrants in Guantánamo, it brought new urgency to her concerns.

“It makes me ill to think of Tlingit and Haida making money off the abuse of other people,” Johnson said. “Especially those who are just looking for a better life.” 

Guantánamo Bay’s detention center has been known for human rights violations for decades. It’s also notoriously secretive.

In 2023, a United Nations investigator researched the facility and reported “ongoing cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment.” The report suggested that the facility be closed. But two years later, the second Trump administration pledged to use it for migrant detention. 

In other parts of the state, Alaska Native tribal members have protested their corporations’ investments in immigration detention centers. NANA Regional Corporation’s subsidiary, Akima, has been directly investing in ICE detention operations, including in Guantánamo Bay, for years. 

In the rest of the United States, Indigenous people are questioning their own tribal governments’ involvement in detention centers.

When stories about inhumane conditions at Akima-run detention centers surfaced this fall, Johnson said she started posting in a Facebook group called “Shareholders of Sealaska,” to make sure tribal members like her knew Tlingit and Haida also had connections to Guantánamo Bay. 

“I didn’t want people to forget that whenever they’re criticizing other corporations for doing this, that our own tribe was also participating,” she said.

Her posts garnered discussion with other tribal members, who posted their own concerns. In response to public criticism, Tlingit and Haida posted a statement in early December saying the contract is “strictly limited to the operation and maintenance of multiple watercraft and port facilities,” and that the corporation is obligated to continue the work until the contract ends. 

What Tlingit Haida Tribal Business Corporation is doing in Guantánamo Bay

But Johnson is worried that some of those watercraft transport migrants to the detention center in Guantánamo Bay.

Richard Rinehart is the CEO of Tlingit Haida Tribal Business Corporation. He said it’s against taking on contracts that assist in immigration detention. 

“We don’t have anything to do with that,” Rinehart said.

Instead, the corporation contract relates to vessel operation and maintenance, he said. 

“We run a ferry that goes from the leeward side, which is where the airport is, to the windward side, which is where the naval base is,” he said. “Goes back and forth.”

However, Rinehart said he’s heard that the ferry the corporation operates is used to transport detainees. But, he said, he and his staff aren’t involved with that process. 

“There are times — I hear, I’ve not seen this — but my manager there tells me that they do come across and they’ll put somebody on the ferry. It’s usually late at night, and it’s all just their vehicles, all their staff,” he said. “They move across and they go to the airport, but we have the only ferry going from the airport to the windward side, where everything is.” 

At least 700 migrants were detained at Guantánamo Bay in the past year, and were initially flown there, according to previous reporting by NPR and the New York Times. 

In an email to KTOO in response to follow-up questions, Rinehart said he could not speak to how many migrants have been transported via the ferry the tribal corporation maintains and operates. 

KTOO could not confirm whether or not there is another way migrant detainees are transported from the airport to the facilities they are held in. 

From the corporation’s perspective, he said involvement in migrant transport is “outside our visibility and control and is not tracked, directed, or managed by [Tlingit Haida Tribal Business Corporation] as part of our contractual duties.” 

Though Guantánamo Bay is often linked with the detention facility, Rinehart says he doesn’t think a lot of people realize it’s primarily a naval base with about 6,000 military personnel. And that’s who Rinehart said the contract serves. 

Johnson said even incidental involvement in migrant detention is still too close for her comfort. 

“I understand why they want to claim six degrees of separation from ICE,” she said. “But I think that their actions at Guantánamo Bay place them in much closer proximity than many tribal citizens realize.”

And she wants to know if the tribal corporation will take a stance on migrant detention as more opportunities to profit from it arise. 

“Will Tlingit and Haida jump on the money train?” Johnson said. “Or will they actually have guidelines on which contracts they will bid on, as some corporations have?”

Clarification: This story has been updated to reflect that Tlingit Haida Tribal Business Corporation has earned nearly $40 million from U.S. Navy contracts in Guantánamo Bay. 

The U.S. Supreme Court has rejected the state of Alaska’s latest attempt to alter Alaska’s decades-old system of subsistence fishing management.

In a one-sentence order Monday, the court said it will not review a decision by the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which ruled in August that Alaska cannot manage fishing on a stretch of the Kuskokwim River that flows through the Yukon Delta National Wildlife Refuge.

If the Supreme Court had taken up the case, it could have redefined Alaska’s unique system of hunting and fishing management, which allows the federal government to restrict subsistence hunting and fishing on federal land to rural Alaskans. The state is forbidden by the Alaska Constitution from offering the same preference.

Alaska Native organizations, including the Alaska Federation of Natives, praised the court’s decision, but the commissioner of the Alaska Department of Fish and Game said by email that it would continue to work with the federal government on the issue.

Monday’s Supreme Court decision ends a five-year dispute that began during a salmon shortage on the Kuskokwim River in 2021. The state of Alaska issued orders to open fishing that contradicted federal fisheries managers’ decision to keep it closed.

Salmon fishing is a critical aspect of Alaska Native culture, tradition and survival. Salmon returns have plummeted in recent years, straining managers who must balance the wants and needs of Alaskans and Yukoners pursuing the same fish.

On the Kuskokwim, the state claimed it was simply interpreting a U.S. Supreme Court ruling from 2019, but the federal government disagreed with the state’s interpretation and sued the following year.

Alaska Native groups sided with the federal government, and Alaska District Court Judge Sharon Gleason ruled in favor of the federal government in 2024.

The state appealed to the 9th Circuit, which again ruled in favor of the federal government. That prompted the state to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The Kuskokwim River Intertribal Fish Commission was one of the lead groups standing with the federal government.

“Our Fish Commission is very pleased with this historic victory in favor of the people of the Kuskokwim River. The victory not only upholds rural subsistence rights in Alaska, but upholds the participation of local people, elected by the Tribes, in the co-management of Kuskokwim salmon,” said the group’s chair, Martin Andrew, in a written statement.

Attorney Erin Dougherty Lynch worked on the case for the Native American Rights Fund, which represented the Association of Village Council Presidents.

By phone, she noted that even though this case is over, the Bureau of Land Management is considering changes to the subsistence program.

“What the state is seeking to accomplish now is basically the same thing through administrative processes. They’re definitely still going after subsistence. This won’t be the end, unfortunately, of their efforts to restrict subsistence,” she said.

Safari Club International, which petitioned BLM for regulatory changes, backed the state in the appeal that was rejected Monday.

In a written statement after Monday’s decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, the group said it believes the federal government “has increasingly superseded Alaska’s wildlife authority” and that the state and federal government should continue to work on the issue.

By email, Alaska Department of Fish and Game Commissioner Doug Vincent-Lang offered a similar comment and referred to the 1980 compromises between state and federal interests in the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act.

“We will respect the decision of the U.S. Supreme Court to not address the legal issues regarding fish and game management authorities over navigable waters belonging to the State of Alaska,” he said. “This said, we will continue to work with the Secretaries of Interior and Agriculture to ensure the rights Alaska was given under its statehood compact and envisioned under ANILCA are safeguarded.”

This story is co-published by the Wrangell Sentinel and Northern Journal.

An Indigenous community is locked in a debate about the pros and cons of a major new mine on their traditional lands — and a big cash payment promised by the developer.

There is strong support, and fierce opposition. A lot of money to be made, and a wild river to protect. The community faces a pivotal choice.

Though this story sounds like it could be unfolding in rural Alaska, a version of it has actually been playing out just across the border with Canada, in northwest British Columbia. Still, it has implications for the Alaskans who live downstream from the proposed mine site.

In a referendum after weeks of heated debate, members of the Tahltan Nation earlier this month voted overwhelmingly to approve a deal with a Canadian mining company that hopes to revive a huge gold and silver mine, called Eskay Creek, which stopped producing in 2008. The project is located above the Unuk River, which flows into Alaska near Ketchikan.

The Tahltans’ backing is a major step forward for the project, and it comes as the Canada and B.C. governments intensify efforts to build more mines in the name of national security and economic growth. Several of the projects are near the border with Alaska, where state and federal elected officials are separately pushing mines that could help wean the U.S. off a foreign supply of minerals used in energy, electronics and weapons.

Just one day after the Tahltan vote, Canada’s federal government announced that it had approved a merger between two multinational mining firms with a condition that calls for advancing two other proposed mines in Tahltan territory. Both projects sit above tributaries of the Stikine River, a major, salmon-bearing waterway that straddles Canada and the U.S. and empties into the ocean near the small Southeast Alaska town of Wrangell.

Louie Wagner Jr., a Tsimshian and Tlingit resident of Metlakatla, a Native community at the southern tip of Alaska’s panhandle, said he’s concerned about the health of the Unuk River and its future with mines in its watershed.

Wagner and his family have fished and hunted moose along the Unuk for generations.

“That little river cannot handle it,” Wagner said in a recent phone interview. The Unuk is notable, he added, for its abundance of eulachon, a small, oily fish also known as hooligan that’s a staple for Indigenous communities in Southeast Alaska.

Though rarely discussed in Alaska circles, the Tahltan Nation’s approach to mining has major implications for the industry’s future in the transboundary region. A top U.S. Department of Interior official visited the region last year to learn more about models for how Indigenous nations can partner with mining companies.

There are more than a dozen early-stage mining projects in Tahltan territory, many above rivers that flow into Alaska. And the Eskay Creek vote could serve as a preview of future deals between the Tahltan government and the for-profit mining companies promoting development.

For months, members of the First Nation debated whether to approve a deal, known as an impact benefit agreement, that Tahltan elected leaders had negotiated with Vancouver-based Skeena Resources, the company pushing Eskay Creek.

The specifics of the agreement have not been made public. But Tahltan officials have said it guarantees benefits worth more than $1 billion over the life of the mine, mostly in cash but also in contracts and wages.

The deal also calls for an upfront payment from Skeena, intended to be distributed to individual Tahltan members — to the tune of $7,250 each, according to Tahltan officials. And the agreement reportedly gives the First Nation government some environmental oversight over the mine.

The nation backed the deal with support from more than 77% of the roughly 1,750 Tahltans who voted, according to the Tahltan Central Government. Payments are expected to go out to members in 2026.

“Tahltan Central Government is not standing on the sidelines,” Tahltan president Kerry Carlick said in a statement after the vote.  “We are embedding ourselves directly into the governance of environmental protection.”

Tahltan leaders have long worked to navigate political tensions between an expanding mining industry and efforts to protect traditional lands and wildlife.

The Tahltan government has entered into a number of agreements with mining companies. But it also has opposed efforts to mine coal and drill for natural gas near the headwaters of major rivers in the region.

And some Tahltan members have been outspoken critics of the Eskay Creek project and the company promoting it.

In the leadup to the recent vote, arguments erupted on social media, and relationships among community members grew strained, some Eskay Creek opponents said in interviews.

“This is causing internal conflicts,” said Tamara Quock, a Tahltan member who lives in northern B.C. some 350 miles east of the mine site.

Quock said she thinks the promise of the direct payments “enticed” some people to vote in favor of the agreement. Debate over the project, she added, grew more intense after that condition was added to the deal.

Quock said she feels Skeena is “using the Tahltan people” to generate its own profits.

She and other critics have voiced concerns about a perceived lack of transparency and potential conflicts of interest within the First Nation’s government. They also say they are worried about possible environmental impacts from the project, which would involve digging two open pits and storing millions of tons of mining waste above the Unuk River.

Skeena didn’t respond to requests for comment.

Alaska Native leaders, fishermen and environmental advocates who live downstream, in Southeast Alaska, for years have expressed concerns about Eskay Creek and other proposed mines in the region, saying they don’t trust Canadian regulators to safeguard Alaskan interests.

“You can’t cut these watersheds in half and expect to adequately protect them,” said Guy Archibald, executive director of the tribally led Southeast Alaska Indigenous Transboundary Commission. “Right now they’re cutting the baby in half and ignoring the effects on the Alaska side of the border.”

The commission last month filed a legal challenge in B.C. court, asserting that regulators had failed to consult Alaska tribes on several proposed mines in the region, including Eskay Creek.

Meanwhile, after a major spill last year at a Canadian gold mine in the Yukon River watershed, Alaska’s congressional delegation called for more oversight of Canadian mines near transboundary rivers like the Unuk and Stikine. The statement from the delegation — which has strongly supported mine development in Alaska — called for “binding protections, financial assurances, and strong transboundary governance.”

“As British Columbia seeks to advance numerous mines just upstream from Alaska, we are still asking them to fully remediate legacy sites and firmly commit to binding protections for Alaska interests,” Joe Plesha, a spokesperson for U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, said in a recent statement. “Senator Murkowski is actively considering new ways to make our B.C. neighbors take Alaskans’ concerns seriously.”

Ottawa and B.C.’s provincial government, meanwhile, are funding new infrastructure projects and prioritizing permitting for energy and resource development projects, including Eskay Creek and the expansion of a huge copper and gold mine in the Stikine watershed, called Red Chris.

Canadian officials say existing regulations are geared to minimize impacts in the shared watersheds. Major projects undergo thorough environmental assessments before they’re approved, a spokesperson with the B.C. agency that leads those reviews, the Environmental Assessment Office, said in an email.

“Making sure large-scale projects are properly assessed is critical to making sure development is sustainable — to ensure good jobs and economic growth while also protecting the environment and wildlife, and keeping communities healthy and safe,” said the spokesperson, Sarah Plank.

Tahltan officials declined an interview request and did not respond to questions about Alaskans’ concerns or the First Nation’s agreement with Skeena.

Supporters of Eskay Creek say it could be transformational for the Tahltan Nation. Among proponents of the deal is Chad Norman Day, a former Tahltan president who has worked in the mining industry and now runs a consulting firm that does mining-related business.

“The benefits which flow to the Tahltan Nation from here will empower the people and territory unlike anything we have ever seen,” Day said in a statement after the vote.

Many Tahltan people work in mining, and the First Nation already generates revenue from Red Chris and another large operating mine, Brucejack, which started producing gold in 2017.

In 2019, Tahltan citizens voted in favor of an agreement with a different mining company pushing another, much bigger proposed mine partially in the Unuk watershed, called KSM. The outcome of that vote was nearly identical to the recent Eskay one, with about the same percentage in favor.

The first nation also, in the past five years, has entered into two joint decisionmaking agreements with the B.C. government for regulatory reviews of mining projects, including Eskay Creek.

Before it can start producing, Eskay Creek needs an environmental approval from the provincial government. A decision is expected early next year.

For those who haven’t filed for their Native allotments, Alaska Native veterans don’t have much time to claim 160 acres of federal land. The window for applications closes permanently on Dec. 29.

ANCSA ended 1906 Native allotment program

The land grants were part of a government program created over a hundred years ago, to promote homesteads and private property ownership. But the 1906 Native allotment program shut down in 1971, after Congress passed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act passed.

But in the years leading up to the land claims act, Natives scrambled to file for their land allotments. But during that time, a lot of Native Vietnam veterans missed out, because they were stationed overseas. Many were engaged in combat.

The Alaska Congressional delegation eventually succeeded in passing legislation to fix this. In 2019, President Trump signed a bill into law that opened a five-year window for Natives vets to claim their allotments. But despite the special exemption to apply for the land, it isn’t easy to do. There are still many hurdles.

Application process is “onerous”

“It’s one thing to make laws,” said Jim LaBelle, an Inupiaq Vietnam veteran. “But it’s quite another thing when the bureaucracy kicks in and starts developing these onerous processes that were never really anticipated.”

LaBelle’s challenges began before the war when he and his younger brother, Kermit, were in boarding school. He says they were unable to qualify for their allotments, because they were far from home and couldn’t prove they worked the land they hoped to receive.

Then both brothers went to fight in the Vietnam War, and Kermit was killed in action at the age of 18.

After the war, LaBelle had about given up on efforts to claim his land but tried again. A few years ago, the government finally accepted his application.

Veterans unhappy with federal land available

“It took a little doing, but I managed,” he said. “And I can’t say I was very happy with the lands that I got.”

LaBelle wound up with land near the Interior Alaska community of Tok, far away from his Inupiaq homelands.

“It’s an area I’m not familiar with but was available at the time,” LaBelle said. “The way I look at the map, I’d have to have a helicopter to fly in.”

LaBelle is now focused on getting his late brother Kermit’s allotment. To do that, he needed a death certificate.

“I have to prove that he was killed in Viet Nam. I also have to prove that he had a CIB, Certificate of Indian Blood,” LaBelle said. Michael Livingston has volunteered to help vets like Jim LaBelle apply.

Michael Livingston, an Alaska Native veteran’s advocate, has volunteered to help vets like Jim LaBelle apply.

“It’s not a user-friendly process,” he said. “Out of the 2000-some veterans that are eligible, only about 500 of them have applied, so that’s only about 25 percent.”

Native vet allotment applications remain low

As of mid-December, the Bureau of Land Management’s website said it had received 519 applications – but fewer than 44 have been accepted.

Livingston believes the limited land available to veterans has discouraged them from applying but says age is probably the biggest barrier. He says most of the veterans he’s worked with are now in their 70’s and 80’s. Many are in poor health and don’t have the computer and internet skills it takes to navigate the bureaucracy, so they’ve given up.

Livingston says it also takes a lot of persistence, which he is willing to supply.

“So far, I’ve helped about 50 Alaska Native veterans apply for about 160 acres of land,” he said. “And that adds up to over 8,000 acres that potentially is going to return to the hands of Alaska Natives. So, in that sense, it’s been pretty rewarding.”

Livingston encourages Native vets to file before the Dec. 29 deadline, even if their application is incomplete. He says if veterans need help, it’s OK for them to email him at the following address: michaelpocatelloATgmail.com.

Sen. Dan Sullivan offers staff assistance

Alaska U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan also says vets shouldn’t worry about filing a complete form, that it’s more important to meet the deadline.

“Get your application in, we can work with you,” Sullivan said. “We can help. If it needs to be updated, we can do that.”

Sulllivan says staffers in his Alaska offices are prepared to assist. For now, he is racing against the clock to get a bill passed to extend the program.

“I just wish we could get my colleagues to see that this is not a big ask,” the Republican senator said. “Believe it or not, the bill is a two-word change. It’s from five years to ten years.”

In his advocacy for the extension, Sullivan reminds his colleagues that Alaska Natives veterans have some of the highest rates of service of any ethnic group in the nation.

“You’ll go to a small Native community and ask how many veterans there are,” Sullivan said, “and like, almost all the men in the town hall you’re doing, raise their hand.”

Although Sullivan has attempted to make new lands available for veterans to claim, his current bill, S785 and its companion House bill, HR410, does not include new land. It simply extends the application period to December 2030.

Sullivan says his bill has Republican support – and he’s worked with Democrats to attach his legislation to other bills that include things they want. But the senator believes they continue to block his extension, because they think it’s a backdoor attempt to usher in more development, which he says is not true.

“They’ve just been very reluctant to get more people land and access to federal lands in Alaska,” said Sullivan, who remains hopeful he’ll be able to win an extension in time.

“But just to be safe, get your application in before the end of the year,” he said.

Haines’ mayor would like the borough’s Tlingit Park to be owned by the Tlingits.

In November’s Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee, the Mayor Tom Morphet made the case for granting the land, part of which is a Tlingit cemetery, to a local tribe, the Chilkoot Indian Association. The plan was met with mixed reactions.

The mayor first brought up the concept this spring and says he has had conversations with the Chilkoot Indian Association’s tribal administrator.

“I’ve been having informal discussions with Harriet Brouillette … and I posted back in March on my site,” he said. “And I also posted on Facebook, and I just figured the public wasn’t interested because I never heard anything bad. But there was quite a bit on Facebook this week, or the past few weeks, and a lot of people have questions.”

Morphet stressed that the idea is conceptual, and would need to be approved by the Tribe and the Haines Borough Assembly.

“The idea that we’ve refined, as much as it’s been refined, is to transfer the park property, the grassy part to the Tribe,” he said. “… this would require a new property line to be drawn. But the borough, at this time, would retain ownership of the … senior center and the playground of our dreams next to it. So this would be just the tribal house pavilion, the Native grave sites and the picnic tables restroom that would become owned by the CIA.”

The land would come with a caveat, according to Morphet’s plan. The trail through the park would remain open to public use.

Morphet said there are two reasons to change ownership of the land. The first is that he believes the land should already be Native-owned. He said it was originally granted to the Presbyterian Church to be used as a mission school. Federal law says that property used for indigenous mission schools should revert to Tribes.

On his mayor’s web page, Morphet wrote the following:

“The park, a Tlingit graveyard, should have gone back to the Tlingits 40 years ago when the Presbyterian Church was deeding the last of its vacant mission properties back to the Tribe. But by then the City of Haines had scooped up the parcel for a downtown park.”

Morphet said another reason is cost. The borough has less money and more responsibilities than ever.

“The borough has a million-dollar deficit,” he said. “Also, we’ve just accepted a new park, park land from Margaret Piggott, that will cost money to maintain over time, or develop or do whatever we’re going to do.”

Former Mayor Jan Hill listened to the presentation and expressed concern. She worried that changing owners could cause unintentional harm.

“I understand the warm and fuzzy feeling that some people get from this,” she said. “But it just feels like this is a way to slough off borough responsibility and liability onto an organization that’s totally grant driven — and that doesn’t feel warm and fuzzy to me. It could put this organization in a really tough financial spot.”

Georgiana Hotch is a Chilkoot Indian Association council member. She spoke at the meeting in favor of more discussion.

“… this is a really great gesture,” she said. “Because we do have, we do have a cemetery. You can look at that as sacred, like sacred sites to our people. It’s community-oriented, which is good for the entire city. And we appreciate being able to put it on the table and talk about it.”

Members of the Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee agreed that more information is needed. Their next meeting is Jan. 14.

You can contact this reporter at melinda@khns.org.