Alaska Native Government & Policy

Six United States senators and the Secretary of Energy traveled to Bethel Monday to hold a hearing on Alaska’s energy challenges and innovations. The team included the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee, lead by Republican Sen. Lisa Murkowski.

But before the hearing, the group went on a field trip to see where those challenges and innovations intersect.

The group, joined by Gov. Bill Walker and others, loaded in vehicles and drove five miles up the frozen Kuskokwim River to Oscarville, population 60.

Nearing the village, the first thing the group saw was a line of branches sticking out of the ice, and around them, men are pike fishing. Then the group stepped inside the school. Elders greeted them, and students, wearing black and yellow kuspuks, danced and sang in Yup’ik. Later they performed Native games like the two-foot high kick and one-arm reach.

“I was almost crying earlier. Like, really too happy,” said Oscarville tribal administrator Michael Stevens. “Everybody’s here, and I just stopped myself. I never really thought there’d be lots of senators, the governor and secretary of energy would be here in Oscarville.”

He says he hopes the group’s visit jump-starts funding for basic necessitates like water, sewer, electricity, and housing. He says Oscarville uses rain and river water. Only the school has treated, running water. And all the residents use honey buckets.

For over a year, a group of Alaska agencies has been trying to bring those services Stevens mentioned to the village. They’re using the community as a pilot project to develop these services together rather than individually.

One reason they chose Oscarville is because of the community’s strong local leaders and commitment to place. That is what the senators and secretary were seeing during their visit—in the subsistence pike fishing, the active elders, and Yup’ik dancing and games.

Jackie Schaeffer is helping facilitate the pilot project and tells her hopes for the visit.

“The goal would be for them to not only see the connection to a place from the people and the culture but to see the challenges and how happy people are living here even with those challenges,” she said.

Whether or not the group left with that understanding, U.S. Secretary of Energy Earnest Moniz says the trip was better than a day in the office.

“You don’t get the same feel sitting in Washington [D.C.] and hearing this town doesn’t have water and we should do something,” he said.

If the pilot project succeeds, Oscarville won’t be without water for long. The agencies are looking into drilling a 400-foot community well.

Alaska Supreme Court Chief Justice Craig Stowers said the court system has taken steps to cut costs.

In the annual State of the Judiciary Address to a joint session of the legislature Wednesday, he said the courts plan on more cuts.

But Stowers also gave legislators some advice as they shape the budget. He said if leaders act in the interest of Alaskans, their constituents will support them.

“My friends, do not be afraid: Fear is the mind-killer,” he said, quoting a phrase from the Frank Herbert novel “Dune.” “Be bold. Also, be selfless and look to the greater good. You are our elected leaders, and leaders sometimes have to make hard decisions their constituents don’t immediately understand or agree with.”

Stowers also urged legislators to ensure the state’s budget problems don’t fall too heavily on any one group.

The court system cut its budget by 3.5 percent this year, equal to $3.8 million.

The chief justice said all levels of court employees, from Supreme Court justices down to lower paid staff members, agreed to voluntary unpaid time off this year.

The Supreme Court has proposed another 3.5-percent budget cut for the fiscal year starting on July 1.

That plan includes not filling the jobs of those who retire or leave the courts.

“Additional loss of positions will have a direct, negative effect, on the public services we are able to provide,” Stowers said.

The Supreme Court has decided to close courts statewide in the upcoming fiscal year each Friday afternoon, beginning at noon on July 1, Stowers said. All nonjudicial court staff will be furloughed every Friday afternoon.

“No court proceedings apart from emergency proceedings will be allowed,” he said.

Stowers said if the legislature further cuts the courts’ budget, some court locations may have to close.

He said this would hit rural Alaska — where the courts serve as the face of state government — the hardest.

“It would be a terrible travesty to have to reduce those efforts that you and we have made to reach out to rural Alaska and rural Alaskans … including our Native brothers and sisters out there,” Stowers said.

Gov. Bill Walker proposed a total cut of $100 million to the state budget. Legislators have been seeking deeper cuts.

The past three weeks have been turbulent at Mt. Edgecumbe High School in Sitka. The Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program, or ANSEP, has proposed turning the 70-year-old boarding school into an accelerated high school, with an emphasis on science and engineering.

It all began when ANSEP founder Herb Schroeder presented his idea to lawmakers in January, as a draft piece of legislation.

Now, Edgecumbe students and teachers are asking questions about ANSEP’s motivations and whether the plan would even work.

Erica Willis and Xochitl Martinez are in Mt. Edgecumbe’s radio club. They broadcast every other week.

“The past week or two have left our school in a bit of a tizzy due to a situation that’s come up,” Martinez said during a broadcast.

For anyone listening to their program, you can tell these two students are not pleased.

“Though our school and ANSEP have had good relations and a strong partnership in the past, this was brought before the legislature without consulting any of the people who actually run Edgecumbe,” Willis said in the broadcast.

Nor did ANSEP secure the approval of the state Department of Education and Early Development, the Board of Regents or the University of Alaska, who would absorb any retained Edgecumbe staff should the plan roll through.

Martinez said she is confused as to why Schroeder, ANSEP’s founder, wanted to take over instead of collaborate.

“Why didn’t he come talk to Edgecumbe about inputting more STEM classes or integrating a program that would fast-track kids through three years, but at the same time they would keep the old program?” she asked. “I don’t see why that couldn’t work and why he would just go straight to legislature. I mean, dude.”

Historically, the institutions have been friendly, if casual, partners. ANSEP has trained Edgecumbe teachers. Edgecumbe kids have flown up to Anchorage taken part in ANSEP’s summer programs.

Martinez said one of her friends still has a desktop computer ANSEP gave her. The Gustavus-born senior was living in Oregon when she decided to apply to Edgecumbe. And she added, that while an ANSEP boarding school sounds appealing, it would not have been a good match for her.

“I don’t have the scores for something that would be fast-tracked. I’m not good at classes that are going to be sped up or anything,” Martinez explained. “So, I’d be concerned about my own education and probably would have stayed in Oregon.”

In a press release issued Jan. 30, ANSEP stated that students at its school would earn dozens of credits towards a bachelor’s of engineering, science, psychology or education and graduate college in three years.

For Willis, also a senior, her big bone to pick is that ANSEP feeds the University of Alaska only.

“I have applied to UAF, just in case, but it’s not my first choice,” she said. “I’d rather go to school out of state.”

Willis is from Central, a tiny community near Fairbanks. She considers ANSEP a fantastic program for rural Alaskans like herself. But she was adamant that if ANSEP wants to fix education in the state, they’re better off leaving Edgecumbe alone and putting their energies towards other problems.

“There’s other proposals going through legislature to raise the number of minimum students to keep a school open. In the next few years, there’s a really good possibility that there’s going to be schools closing. So there’s going to be that many more kids without schools to attend,” Willis said. “And if they don’t have as many options for other places to go … I can’t predict the future, but that doesn’t seem like a great combination of factors.”

Teacher Dionne Brady-Howard worries about this too.

“The fact is that, in going from a four year to a three year program with narrower focus, things will be lost,” she said.

If Edgecumbe had a school spirit parade, Brady-Howard would be marching in front with a cardinal and gold baton. She graduated in 1991, has taught social studies since 2000, and sent both her daughters through the school.

And Brady-Howard is worried that young Alaskans wouldn’t be ready to sign on to the kind of school ANSEP has in mind by the eighth grade. In their press release, ANSEP claims it will have its graduates career ready by age 20.

“There are so many of us who go out in the world and can barely declare a major by the time we’re 20, let alone know that we’re already certified as an engineer or a scientist and be work ready,” Brady-Howard said. “To expect 13-year-olds applying to the ANSEP Mt. Edgecumbe accelerated high school that they’re proposing is a bit daunting.”

Months away from graduation, Willis also has the next generation on her mind.

Willis said she’s a little heartbroken over the idea of Mt. Edgecumbe closing.

“It just feels like everybody, as well as Alaska, would kind of be losing something. It’s 70 years of tradition here. And it’s not just the history, it’s the future. OK, I know kids in seventh and eighth grade who want to come here and there are kids in freshman and sophomore year who want to graduate from here. If that were to go away, it  just seems like it would be tragic.

Though very little is on paper, Martinez said that ANSEP has come to represent a bogeyman for Edgecumbe students. And a punchline.

“Something breaks, we’ll say, ‘Oh it’s ANSEP’s fault.’ Something happens, ‘Oh it’s ANSEP. This is totally a conspiracy by ANSEP.’ A bunch of running jokes,” Martinez said. “I think that’s how Edgecumbe deals with things. Bad humor for sure.”

Bad humor maybe, and a lot of Edgecumbe pride for sure.

The City of Angoon believes high levels of mercury have been discovered in subsistence food caught near Hawk Inlet and that Hecla’s Greens Creek Mine could be responsible.

Angoon’s tribal government is asking for changes with the monitoring and processing of mine waste. Albert Howard, the city’s mayor and tribal president, said dead crab initiated the concern.

Last year, a seal was harvested at Hawk Point and brought back to the village to share. Howard said a sample of the tissue was sent to a lab to be inspected.

“And the lab results came back and it’s one of the highest levels of mercury seen in the state of Alaska since the seal sample program has taken place,” Howard said.

Howard said the Friends of Admiralty Island also found elevated toxic metals in seaweed, clams, mussels, shrimp, cockles and crab. It’s such a concern that Angoon has warned tribal members not to collect traditional foods in the area.

Howard said he would like to see the city and the mine work together to clean up the water.

“I understand that the mine is important to a lot of people for jobs and revenue into the City and Borough of Juneau, but there’s also a responsibility to the community health. And what I meant by that is the city council and the tribal council understand the importance of the community’s health and our children,” Howard said.

Greens Creek spokesperson Mike Satre said the mine reports a sample on an annual basis.

“We meet all the permitted conditions that are put on us by the state for the discharge of our water into Hawk Inlet,” Satre said.

While the reports are annual, Satre said they’re based on continuous monitoring and sampling of the discharge water, supplemented by quarterly bio-monitoring and additional sampling of seawater and sediment.

Angoon has requested that Lt. Gov. Byron Mallott and Alaska’s Department of Health and Social Services look into the matter.

Editor’s note: Comments by Greens Creek mine spokesperson Mike Satre about annual reporting have been expanded and clarified. 

The enormous $940 million class-action lawsuit against the Bureau of Indian Affairs on behalf of tribes cleared the last court hurdle Wednesday in New Mexico. The case stems from decades of short-funding tribal contracts. More than $100 million will be awarded to tribal organizations in Alaska.

The settlement is similar to one reached with the Indian Health Service last year that also found tribes had agreed to contract amounts for tribal services but were then shorted the funds, or in some cases, not awarded any money at all for the signed contracts with the federal government.

The Ramah Navajo tribe started the suit which eventually became a class-action for hundreds of tribes and tribal organizations across the nation. The suit covered BIA tribal contracts from 1994 until 2013. After the tribes won, notices went out to them laying out the settlement.

Lloyd Miller is one of the attorneys working the case for tribes. He says a November deadline for tribes to object to the settlement terms passed with no disagreement.

“Which was stunning to us, a settlement that involves this kind of money, people are experienced with Cobell, which was controversial, not here and these are tribes able to get a lot of money. None objected to anything.”

Although no tribes objected to the amounts or the terms, Miller says, they did hear from tribes that had been missed.

“And the database the BIA used to develop the master list was incomplete. So we found another database. And from that database we picked up another 55 tribes and tribal organizations — many of them Alaska. So now we have a total of 699 Alaska Native villages, American Indian tribes and intertribal organizations.”

He says the incomplete lists were the result of software changes within the BIA over the course of the 20 years the litigation has been ongoing.

“We were tasked with trying to combine software from many different sources and produce a master database that we could use in the case. We needed to use that software to do a statistical sampling of the whole class — of all 10,000 contractors, contract years that were at issue in the case. I hope that the BIA takes this to heart. We can’t get them ordered to do record-keeping in a certain way, but I think they’ve learned a sobering lesson in finding out that they missed 55 tribes.”

Miller says today’s hearing was the last check in with the court after the additional tribal groups had been included in the settlement. He says Judge James Parker should issue his final orders in the case within two weeks. Payments ranging from tens of millions to tens of thousands will be issued toward spring. Miller says 209 tribes in Alaska will receive more than $123 million.

Four tribes in Western Alaska are calling on the Association of Village Council Presidents to broaden the focus of a special meeting originally intended to address regional governance, and to set a date for the gathering.

On Jan. 8, KYUK in Bethel reported it had obtained documents showing AVCP used grants for intended to help needy families to keep a vocational flight school going. In December, AVCP laid off 30 employees, 7 percent of its workforce, citing budget troubles. AVCP also announced a 5 percent pay cut for general staff and a 10 percent salary reduction for senior management.

Mike Williams, Sr., with the Akiak tribal council, says the sudden layoffs may leave people unable to pay for stove fuel or electricity.

“Yeah, the majority live in Bethel and a lot of those are in the villages. So they’re left out in the cold, and we’re very concerned about that.”

He says the tribes of Akiak, Akiachak, Kwethluk and Tuluksak — along with several others along the Yukon River — want to find out more than they’ve been told.

“I think in that meeting, we can close the door and find out what’s really going on.”

Last year, the regional for-profit corporation Calista created a group to study problems with legislation affecting Alaska Native people and organizations. The group came up with three proposals: 1) To strengthen AVCP, 2) To create a borough, or 3) To create a new regional tribal government. Williams says the goal is to give Natives a stronger voice…

“… and if there is development, for instance, the Donlin Gold project, then how are we going to have the ability to regulate and also the issue of tax payment as well.”

In an October meeting, tribal representatives voted to hold a special meeting on governance in February. AVCP Administrators have not yet approved or announced a meeting date. AVCP is the regional nonprofit for the 56 villages in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta.