Alaska Native Government & Policy

In two major coronavirus relief bills, Congress sent Alaska tribes huge sums in direct payments. But the bounty was uneven: While the largest Alaska tribe got $6,000 per person, one tribe that reported having only three members received nearly $1 million per person.

It started in 2020 with the CARES Act. It resulted in payment totaling more than $300 million to Alaska tribes and Native corporations. That turned out to be modest compared to the tribal payments that came when Congress passed the American Rescue Plan Act. ARPA sent Alaska tribes $1.4 billion.

It’s an unprecedented amount of money and will change how Alaska tribes plan their future, said Teresa Jacobsson, chair of the Alaska Tribal Administrators Association.

“This is just really an amazing and special time for tribes to have the resources to meet critical needs in the communities that have not been met,” she said, citing a board member who put it to her in those terms.

More than 220 Alaska tribes got direct payments from both coronavirus bills. The average allocation was nearly $8 million, and every tribe got at least $2.6 million, even the 18 Alaska tribes who have fewer than 100 members.

(A handful of tribes are still waiting for their full distribution. The Treasury Department had trouble sending to some bank accounts, among other delays.)

Jacobsson said tribes are buying ambulances and equipment for their health clinics and planning utility upgrades. She said it’s a lot to manage for a smaller tribe used to an annual budget of maybe $300,000.

“We have people that have called and said they’re scared and they’re overwhelmed,” she said. “But they’re also grateful and excited at the same time.”

The Harvard Project on American Indian Economic Development did a deep dive on the ARPA distribution to tribes, focusing on the per-person amount each tribe got. What they found is that small tribes got an outsized share of the funds, thanks to the formula the government used to distribute the money.

Harvard Project co-director Joseph Kalt said once ARPA became law in March, the Treasury Department was under pressure to quickly send the money to the tribes.

“But in the process, they produced results — allocations of monies — that I think are fairly judged to be highly inequitable,” he said.

Two tribes really stood out in the Harvard Project analysis: one in Alaska and one in California. They each reported having just three members and got around $3 million from the two coronavirus bills.

One of those was Telida, in Interior Alaska. Telida Chief Steven Nikolai Sr. put the size of the tribe somewhat higher. He said Telida has “about five” members. That still leaves Telida with more than $500,000 per tribal member.

Nikolai said the tribe hasn’t decided how to spend its money. He and other tribal members live in the neighboring village of Nikolai now, having left Telida years ago, after the school closed. They are thinking about installing piped water in their homes, he said, so they don’t have to fetch water from the river.

Kalt, from the Harvard Project, doesn’t begrudge the tribe’s good fortune, but he said Telida is very much the exception.

“Just under 90% of all citizens are in tribes that got less than $10,000 per capita,” Kalt said.

Alaska’s largest tribe by far is the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes. It received nearly $200 million from the two coronavirus bills. But with more than 32,000 members, that amounts to only $6,000 per person.

The reason small tribes did well under ARPA starts with how Congress wrote it. The law specified that the first billion dollars should be divided equally among the tribes. It came to $1.64 million per tribe. The Treasury Department distributed the rest by tribal population and the number of employees, but with a million dollars minimum per tribe. So every tribe, even if it has just a few members and an administrator, became eligible for at least $2.64 million in ARPA funds.

In the village of Circle, tribal grants administrator Toni Wiehl keeps her eye on deadlines and program rules. So far, Wiehl said, her tribe of 300 has built six cabins and made improvements to the homes of the 85 members who live in Circle. The tribe also supplied groceries so that members didn’t have to risk infection with a trip to a Fairbanks supermarket.

“We purchased, [for] a lot of the households that are under-income, wood and fuel,” she said. “We also replaced everyone’s tanks and stands for the Toyo stoves. We’ve done a lot of great things for the community.”

Circle received $4.4 million from the two coronavirus bills. But that’s just the direct tribal payments. Wiehl said she participates in weekly calls to learn about other funds in the COVID relief bills that tribes have to apply for separately.

“A lot of tribes don’t know what they’re eligible for,” she said. “Nor do they know the loopholes.”

And the clock is ticking. Tribes were on tight timelines to spend CARES Act money. A lot of it went to buy supplies and was distributed to tribal households to pay utility bills and for improved bandwidth for online school and work.

Tribes have more time to decide what to do with their ARPA funds, which can be spent on capital improvements. Still, if tribes don’t allocate their ARPA money by the end of 2024, they risk having to give it back.

There is a phrase that Iñupiaq elder Vernita Sitaktun Qutquq Herdman likes to say: “When Natives fight Natives, someone else is winning.”

It’s the mentality behind a new initiative from First Alaskans Institute, a non-profit that focuses on empowering Alaska Native people. The program, called “Being Good Relatives,” aims to increase collaboration between Alaska Native tribes and Alaska Native corporations.

“People have noted for many years about the need for our tribes and corporations to bring their power together, and work through some federally created divides that make it hard for tribes and other entities to have the relationship that we know that they could have,” said La quen náay Liz Medicine Crow, Lingít and Haida, president and CEO of First Alaskans.

Alaska’s Indigenous legal landscape is unique when compared to the rest of the Lower 48: there are Alaska Native regional and village corporations, which oversee around 44 million acres of Indigenous land. And then there are 231 federally recognized Alaska Native tribes, which have a government to government relationship with the United States.

“They’re different entities that derive their authority from different places, each operating to take care of our Alaska Native people, but operating with different missions, drivers, and responsibility,” said Barbara ‘Wáahlaal Gidáak Blake, Haida, Lingít, and Ahtna Athabascan, who works as the Alaska Native Policy Center Director at First Alaskans Institute.

It’s an interesting dynamic. The corporations and tribes technically serve the same Alaska Native people in their region, and sometimes even have overlap in leadership. Still, in the past there have been times that the two entities were at odds with each other over community decisions like resource development. Even when there aren’t disagreements, some have found it difficult to fully coordinate plans.

Medicine Crow doesn’t think this is a coincidence, but rather the result of federal policies intended to divide the community.

“Our tribes and our corporations were not set up to have a great relationship … And it speaks volumes to how strong and amazing our people are, that they’ve been working since the inception of these different entities, to always try to protect our people,” she explained. “People want to see our corporations and our tribes coming together and really utilizing their strengths together on behalf of our Native peoples.”

50 years after ANCSA established Alaska Native corporations, the community is finding new ways to bridge these types of institutional divides.

“Being Good Relatives” is one example. The program first started in 2018, with an event that promoted dialogue between corporate leaders, tribal councils, and the Indigenous Alaskans they both serve. The approach was simple: create a forum where everyone felt safe to have difficult conversations. Discussions highlighted specific local concerns, but also focused on strengthening relationships and laying the groundwork for better communication in the future. Most importantly, participants centered cultural solutions.

“The work comes from what they’re willing to come into the room with and share, and then be able to do with one another,” said Medicine Crow.

The forums are typically organized by region, seeing as each region has slightly different topics they might want to address. The understanding between each region also runs deep — with each one having their own separate traditions, cultural history, and family ties.

First Alaskans Institute had planned to host more in person events, but the COVID-19 pandemic put a pause on that idea. Now, they’re looking at ways they can recreate it virtually.

“Unification doesn’t mean 100 percent agreement or uniformity. But it means that we can come together and make a decision that together working on behalf of our people, we will get further than one would fighting each other,” said Medicine Crow.

This type of collaboration is increasing in other parts of Alaska as well. In early October, the Organized Village of Saxman and Cape Fox Corporation, Saxman’s village corporation, announced the creation of the joint Community Development Corporation. The new organization will lead a development project intended to revitalize the region. It’s a historic move that brings leaders together to act in unison, according to the Organized Village of Saxman’s President Joe Williams Jr.

“Never before in the history of Saxman have OVS, the City of Saxman and Cape Fox Corporation, the ANC of the Village of Saxman, met to discuss the future of Saxman. I have been working for 26 years to make this reunion happen and it finally happened!”, he said in a press release.

Similarly, the Alaska Native regional corporation Sealaska recently created a fund that will support regional solutions led by a combination of village corporations, tribes, and local businesses.

First Alaskans Institute hopes to continue facilitating programs like “Being Good Relatives” in the coming years.

“If their region is interested in doing this work, First Alaskans would love to be able to be in support of that,” said Blake.

This story is part of a joint project between Indian Country Today, Alaska Public Media, and Anchorage Daily News on the 50th anniversary of the landmark Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. Funding for ICT’s ANCSA project is provided in part by the Alaska Center for Excellence in Journalism and the Solutions Journalism Network. Stay updated on ICT’s ANCSA project using #ANCSA50. Read more in the series here. 

At first glance, Metlakatla looks similar to many of the other villages in Southeast Alaska: glacier-cut coastlines, dense temperate rainforests, dramatic mountains in the backdrop. But locals know better — there is something distinctly different about the place. Spend enough time there, and you’ll notice it too. Metlakatla Indian Community is the only federal reserve in Alaska, and is not a part of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.

“It’s not just a feeling or perception. ANCSA is a fundamentally different system than a reservation system,” said Gavin Hudson, Tsimshian, who is the Metlakatla Field Representative to the Bureau of Indian Affairs and was previously on the Metlakatla Tribal Council. “And those differences are reflected in how a community views itself.”

Fifty years ago, the community of 1,400 was caught in the crosshairs of a monumental decision: should they keep their reserve status, or should they join other Indigenous Alaskans as part of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act?

If they had chosen to participate in the ANCSA system, they would have received a sizable payment and the means to create a village corporation and regional corporation. They also would have been granted a significant portion of the surrounding acreage. However, the way they could have interacted with this land would’ve changed — their reserve status would have been revoked, and they would have to go through the corporations to manage the land, not their own tribal government.

In some ways, the island town was already different from many other Indigenous Alaskan communities, making their land claim options unique as well. Metlakatla originated in 1887, when Anglican Missionary William Duncan led a group of 826 Tsimshian people from British Columbia to start a new settlement in Alaska. Congress officially established it as the Metlakatla Indian Community, Annette Islands Reserve in 1891.

There were only a handful of other federal reserves in the state prior to ANCSA. As the Alaska Federation of Natives described, there was an eclectic mix of Indigenous groupings at the time, including tribal organizations, regional non-profits, individual village tribes, urban Native groups and tribes that had federal reservations, like Metlakatla. More than 200 village tribes did not have federally recognized reserves and therefore did not have a back-up option beyond ANCSA. If Indigenous claims were not addressed, they would have likely lost all of their land. In contrast, tribes with federal reserves still would have been able to hold on to their reserve land allotments if they did not join ANCSA. Ultimately, every other community with a reservation, apart from Metlakatla, chose the ANCSA terms.

It wasn’t an easy decision for the tribe to make, said Hudson. His dad recalled a time of intense debate, which even divided some families who couldn’t agree. In the end, it came down to a community-wide vote, resulting in today’s dynamic: Alaska’s lone reservation.

“Our council at the time refused to take part in [ANCSA] because they wanted to keep their sovereignty, and make their own decisions on what to do with the lands and waters within the reservation — and there was no price for that,” he said.

The pressure to choose ANCSA would’ve been intense, according to Charles Wilkinson, professor of law emeritus at the University of Colorado. Wilkinson specializes in public land law and federal Indian policy, and has done extensive research on history in the Western U.S. From his historian’s perspective, Metlakatla’s decision stands out.

“The truth is, there was huge pressure to terminate. It was a huge decision, and it was hard. You had to have to really want it,” said Wilkinson.

Metlakatla wasn’t the only tribe that faced these options.

Around 20 years earlier, the Klamath tribe in Oregon had the choice to terminate their reserve status as well. The termination would remove their federal services and land ownership, in exchange for a monetary payment. Like in Metlakatla, the debate in the Klamath community was highly controversial. Some wanted to accept the deal, others felt they should keep their tribal sovereignty. Outside forces only made the pressure worse — both the federal government and the logging industry heavily lobbied Klamath to accept the terms.

The motivations behind the lobbying were clear. At the time, Klamath managed one of the largest ponderosa pine forests in Oregon and was one of the wealthiest tribes in the nation. The logging industry wanted access to this land, but couldn’t do so as long as Klamath’s sovereign status remained.

“It was resource land that characterized most of the terminated tribes,” Wilkinson said. In Metlakatla’s case, it was the oil industry that sought a speedy settlement. For Klamath, it was loggers pushing the deal forward. Different resources, but the same idea.

In 1954, the Klamath Termination Act officially ended the tribe’s oversight of the area after a majority of the community accepted the new arrangement. Years later, the tribe’s sovereign status was restored, but their original land base was never returned.

Both Metlakatla and Klamath were part of a larger tribal termination trend common during that era, although in some cases it was only years later that the termination aspect of a policy became clear.

“I don’t think Metlakatla thought it was termination at the time, but I do think they recognized they had special hunting and fishing rights, and thought that it was really important to get that aspect of it right,” Wilkinson said.

Even with this recognition, there still would have been some aspects of the outcome left to chance. Tribal sovereignty, in a legal sense, was different 50 years ago. The Bureau of Indian Affairs was oftentimes the primary governing power, rather than a tribe’s own government. There were also fewer legal protections for hunting and fishing rights.

“There wasn’t anything to make you think sovereignty was a really good option either,” Wilkinson said.

This dynamic caused many Alaska Natives to be wary of an unproductive trustee relationship with the federal government. In this lens, ANCSA represented an opportunity for self-determination and further autonomy over their homelands. Ideally, this definition of land would include fishing and hunting rights.

“When they said land, they meant more than what American law means when it says land. In American law, if you’ve got land you got some things, but there are a lot of other rights you don’t have,” he said.

The ambiguous legal future of land, sovereignty, and subsistence rights would have made any termination decision at the time more unclear. Sovereignty and tribal land rights have evolved since the 1970s, and the number of lawyers that specialize in this area have significantly increased. But back then, there would have had to have been some betting that their idea of the future would turn out correctly.

According to Hudson, the risk payed off.

“I would be confident saying that most of us in Metlakatla still think that it was the right decision to keep the reservation,” he said.

Today, the island reserve has a thriving fishing and tourism industry, with several Tsimshian cultural programs and museums open to visitors and locals alike.

Like other villages in the state, they still face a set of unique rural Alaskan obstacles. Climate change has strained the local economy, salmon runs have been weaker, and high costs of food, energy, and internet can burden households.

Where they differ from other Alaska Native villages is in management. The Metlakatla Indian Community has authority over its fisheries, forests and legal system, while most other Alaskan communities also have to coordinate with the state government.

The setup makes Metlakatla similar to neighboring tribes in the Lower 48. In fact, their community is part of the Bureau of Indian Affairs’ northwest department rather than the Alaskan department, like the rest of the state’s Indigenous communities.

“In general, I think that we have more in common with the tribes of the Northwest region in terms of governance, governing, managing minerals and forests, fisheries and hatcheries,” Hudson said.

It has also created a slight disconnect between Metlakatla and other Alaska Native communities. While many Alaskan villages encounter the same challenges in relation to climate change and rural development, the mechanisms they are able to use and institutions they must go through are different. These contrasts are reflected in policy considerations. When Hudson spends time with Indigenous Alaskans from other regions at the Alaska Federation of Natives each year, he is regularly surprised at how little he relates to conversations about community plans and present day dynamics.

Despite the contrasts, Hudson is always happy to hear about the successes of the regional corporations. He also acknowledges that there are some beneficial aspects of ANCSA, such as additional economic development opportunities or extra funds for heritage centers and cultural initiatives. However, it’s like comparing apples to oranges — the two systems are so unrelated in his mind, that it’s difficult for him to even imagine what life would be like in Metlakatla had they chosen ANCSA instead.

“Having a reservation … it goes to the very core of who we are,” he said.

Travel elsewhere in Alaska, and one might hear the inverse of this statement, with reservations seeming like a foreign concept for those who grew up part of ANCSA.

Governance distinctions aside, Hudson believes there are more parallels across Alaskan Indigenous communities than there are differences. He hopes in coming years, the southeastern region and statewide Alaska Native population will find ways to cooperate more outside of their existing institutions.

“Even though there are differences that are undeniable. We still have friends and relatives all across Alaska,” he said. “We’re still Alaska Native. And we still stand in solidarity with our Indigenous brothers and sisters across the state.”

This story is part of a reporting collaboration between Alaska Public Media, Indian Country Today and the Anchorage Daily News on the 50th anniversary of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. Funding for the ANCSA project was provided by the Alaska Center for Excellence in Journalism. Read more stories from the series.

After four months of construction and years of waiting, the village of Akiak turned on high speed internet for all its residents on Nov. 15. It’s the first community in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta to bring broadband to all its residents.

Akiak Chief Mike Williams Sr. said that the first thing his son-in-law did that morning was to download a movie.

“He said he did it in one minute,” Williams Sr. said.

He said that the same task would have taken tens of hours with the internet service they had before.

“We’re ready to do celebration today in our community, and everyone is invited,” Williams Sr. said.

Akiak will be offering the service to residents for free for the first year. The village is paying for its broadband project with coronavirus relief funding. After the first year, internet service will still cost a fraction of what it did before, and it’ll be over twice as fast.

Akiak’s broadband is powered by low Earth orbit satellites. It’s a newly available technology that can deliver high-speed internet to rural areas that cables can’t reach.

Although Williams Sr. and the tribe have been talking about broadband for years, the construction project began and was completed in a single summer.

“I’m very excited and very, very proud of what we’ve been able to do as a tribal government,” Williams Sr. said.

He said that Akiak will now turn its attention to helping other Y-K Delta tribes bring high-speed internet to their communities.

The Association of Village Council Presidents has implemented a COVID-19 vaccine mandate for employees. Under the policy, all employees must be fully vaccinated against the virus by Jan. 4, 2022. The timeline gives employees over six weeks to comply.

“Due to the safety of our employees and our community, along with the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA)’s new regulation regarding mandatory vaccination for employers with over 100 employees, AVCP has officially instituted a mandatory COVID-19 vaccination policy,” AVCP Communications Director Gage Hoffman wrote in an email.

A U.S. appeals court has stayed this federal regulation issued by OSHA, temporarily blocking it from taking effect. The Dunleavy administration, along with other states, private employers and religious organizations, have joined the legal challenge against the OSHA requirement.

Association employees can receive a medical or religious exemption instead of getting vaccinated. Exempted employees will be required to get tested for COVID-19 weekly.

AVCP employs 313 workers.

The Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation and the City of Bethel have also implemented COVID-19 vaccine mandates for employees.

Juneau’s local governments are steering extra money to some child care providers.

These providers are having an especially hard time finding and keeping workers in the pandemic labor market. Being short-staffed means they can’t enroll as many kids as they have space for, and that often means running at a loss. Even with higher wages and bonuses that government grants helped make possible, the outlook is not good.

For example, Little Eagles and Ravens Nest Child Care Center opened in February of 2020 and has continuously advertised for several openings.

Pay starts at a little over $17 an hour, which is on the high end for this kind of work in Juneau. And unlike typical, privately owned child care businesses, these entry-level jobs come with tribal government benefits.

“We now offer professional development courses and classes that we pay for. As well as, you know, university credits that we would pay for. We have health insurance, life insurance, retirement,” said Executive Director Jamie Shanley. “We’re employees of Central Council of Tlingit and Haida, so our benefits are wonderful. We have holiday pay, paid leave, family leave — and we still can’t find people. So it’s very grim.”

Since October, she’s even been able to advertise a temporary, $4 per hour bonus. It’s federal stimulus money going through the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska. She said she could use five more employees, but hasn’t gotten a single application for months.

“There’s nothing,” Shanley said.

Other child care providers in Juneau don’t enjoy the tribe’s support and can’t be as competitive. Discovery Preschool, for example, is offering a $500 hiring bonus, but for a job that starts at $13 an hour.

Discovery Preschool and others do get financial assistance through a program the Juneau Assembly started last year, run by the Southeast Alaska Association for the Education of Young Children.

Blue Shibler is the nonprofit’s executive director. She said before the city started paying stipends to qualified child care providers, the average starting wage for entry-level child care workers in town was about $11 an hour. Now it’s about $13.

“Which is still not great. I mean, it’s not even competitive with McDonald’s right now,” Shibler said.

Juneau’s local McDonald’s doesn’t advertise pay for its entry-level workers, but according to third-party labor websites like ZipRecruiter and GlassDoor, it’s around $12 or $13.

Local child care jobs usually don’t come with any benefits.

“Not even paid sick days,” Shibler said. “You look at no paid sick days in the middle of a global pandemic? It’s not a real attractive field to enter.”

A normal business would probably raise the price of its services to cover its costs. But with child care, it’s easy to price-out your customers. If child care costs more than a parent can earn working, then why work?

“Child care as a business model is in market failure. It does not function in a business market,” Shibler said.

This is why the city stepped in and started giving child care businesses grants last year. The city initially paid for it with CARES Act money, then kept it going this year with local money. But the labor problem is tripping up that program, too, because it’s based on the number of children a provider serves.

Shibler said every provider participating in the city’s grant program is under-enrolled, even though most have waitlists.

“So they have families wanting to fill their empty spots. But they’re not able to take any additional children because they can’t find staff,” she said.

It’s a circular problem.

“I mean, most child care centers, they have overhead that doesn’t change much if they have fewer children,” Shibler said. “Their rent is still due. Their bills are still due.”

Right now, the city’s got hundreds of thousands of dollars left over in unspent child care subsidies. On Monday, the Juneau Assembly had a brief discussion about what to do with the leftover money. Assembly member Michelle Hale asked to send it along to participating child care centers as if they were operating at capacity.

“Everything we can do to help the child care providers right now is just critical,” Hale said.

There were no objections.

A lot more federal relief for child care is on its way, though state administrators have been slow to release it.