Transcript
Episode 2: Conversations about Alaska Native Corporations
EMILY CHARASH: Hello, and welcome to My Summer in Alaska. I’m Emily Charash. On this episode, I'm going to give you a look into what my Alaska Native Corporations class looks like. This class I found to be really interesting, particularly because I'm not from Alaska and was not aware of all the history and dynamics surrounding Native Alaskan corporations. So to kick things off, I sat down with the professor of the course at an on-campus cafe to discuss the concepts we talk about in class.
BETTY ROSS: My name is my legal name is Betty Ross, but I usually go by Liz because we have a lot of Betty in my family. My favorite course that I developed, gosh, I don't know how many years ago is Alaska management, which is the course that you are registered in. A lot has happened and transpired, through the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. We cover the topic, the background of it. Some of the things that led up to the legislative act and the overall management and the formation of the Alaska Native Corporations. The lower 48 has reservations and sovereign tribes. However, in Alaska, President Nixon signed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, we were put into different regions or corporations, more of a westernized model. So, we hold shares in our corporation. We were given land and also, some money as compensation. There are 12 regions in the state of Alaska. So there are 12 regional corporations. There are numerous village corporations as well. The 12 regions were formed and then a 13th region was added. I am a descendant of the native village of and which is in the Bering straits region. And I also hold shares in the Bering Straits native corporation. My grandfather was the last traditional chief from the native village of Unalakleet. It is primarily a subsistence village. They live off the land. There's not a McDonald's that you just pull into and get a hamburger. Primarily the main staple is caribou, moose, fish The traditional way of living off the land is I would say very sacred to the Alaska natives. That's why the land is a very important aspect of our culture and our tradition. Although I grew up, primarily in the village because my dad was in the military, I've traveled all over the place, but we always came back to Alaska to visit, meet with family and visit with family. And so I learned a lot through them and a lot of the language skills. Though my mother has lost a lot of my language skills, I've picked up a new pack I've learned from my relatives.
EMILY: How do you feel teaching this course would be able to educate people on this?
BETTY: Well, I think it's very important to address. Students in the state of Alaska or those students that come from the outside. The reason why is because the Alaska native corporations, the 12th corporations have subsidiaries and there are throughout the world. And so it's important if there is someone that is. In the lower 48 and they want to work for a subsidiary of one of the 12 regional corporations. It's important for them to
understand the overall background of how the corporation was formed. Now, the corporations came out of the legislative act of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. However, you can't sell the stock, you can't buy them, you can transfer it, but the voting rights, are dependent on a few things.
Each corporation is a little bit different on how they handle that.
EMILY: What are some of the takeaways that a student could get from this class?
BETTY: Well, first of all, you'll get in-depth view of the act itself and some of the amendments and some of the key players that were instrumental in bringing forth this Alaska native claims settlement act. Willy Hensley is one of them. And I think it's important that individuals in Alaska understand it, the sustainability of the corporation for future generations is important. So, learning the Western model was probably a little more difficult at first. That's why there were some bumps in the road
EMILY: Can you share mindset on land and how that's different from a Western-style?
BETTY: Gosh, well, we value our land here in Alaska. It's one of the things like I said earlier is very near and dear to us. So you have to be protective of the land because it's going to, it has to sustain us for many years to come. Change is always prevalent in the environment- Changing with technology, changing with people, changing things will change. You have a lot of the younger generation that is so linked to social media and there are good and bad things about it. But the thing I think that pulls at my heart a little bit is that some of them aren't learning some of the traditional ways that got them here in the first place. And I think that's one thing that I think is quite a bit different is technology has changed the whole face of an Alaska native.
EMILY: I asked my professor if she had any recommendations for students who could speak to the kind of what we were talking about in class without hesitation, she recommended my next guest.
JILLIAN BJORNSTAD: My name is Jillian Bjornstad and we are at the University of Alaska Fairbanks. Currently, I'm working with rural student services and the rural Alaska honors Institute program. Going through college, I was a part of rural student services and I also participated in The rural Alaska honors Institute or RAHI in 2015. I grew up in Sandpoint, Alaska, which is along the Aleutian chain, in the Schumagin Islands, basically a small fishing community where a lot of people do subsistence fishing and commercial fishing. It's two and a half hour flight from Anchorage, Alaska, and even further from here. Pretty small, about 900 people or so everybody's pretty close. My graduating high school class was three kids. Yeah.
EMILY: That's crazy. What if you don't like one of them, is it over?
JILLIAN: It wouldn't be a good time I guess.
EMILY: I'd be interested to hear about what you guys do in this office too.
JILLIAN: So basically, yeah. It was created a long time ago to help rural students adapt to urban living, which coming from New York, you probably wouldn't consider. Fairbank's really urban, but small towns and kids coming and not really used to the whole dynamic of college. So they do clubs and native dancing and crafts and, um, food nights too.
EMILY: Hmm, that's awesome.
JILLIAN: Wholesome
EMILY: it, that sounds so wholesome. Honestly. What are some of the problems people face and what are some of the solutions?
JILLIAN: The office offers a lot of students actually get homesick and miss their culture, and then kind of just provide this hub where you could meet with other people from similar backgrounds.
EMILY: did you experience that, like when you were in the transition period from your hometown to where you are?
JILLIAN: I think so a little bit, one of the big things I miss is the ocean. Coming here, I think I was around rural student services a little bit more my first year and finding that groove, I guess. And then once I found a community in my own department. There were times when in a student organization that I was the president of we'd create business plans that would help benefit rule or native communities basically. And we'd always try to incorporate something personal from someone in the group anyway, and like my freshman year, we did a driver's ed business that would help students coming from the village who didn't have l ike an actual driver's license to drive in the city.
EMILY: that's iconic.
JILLIAN: The advisor for that student organization at the time helped us learn how to drive and stuff and made sure we got our licenses. It was, it was good. That's awesome. Another thing I think I did a report on once was health security in rural areas, especially our area. When you come from the Aleutian Islands and you have a medical emergency, a plane has to fly out and they have to get you and then you have to fly back. And it's not very secure in a health way, like dangerous, basically. Right.
EMILY: And just to be clear where you grew up there, there's no access to roadways.
JILLIAN: Yeah. It's an island. Out in the middle of nowhere. Sometimes it's a little difficult to help people understand where you're coming from and things like that. I remember, for example, when I was in RAHI, there was an Alaska native dance class, but it wasn't exactly from my region. So I was the only person there from the same region and I volunteered to show them one dance from my community. So it's kind of just sharing where you can and kind of. Explaining your experiences in a different way.
EMILY: Thanks to Jill. I wanted to talk to someone who could give me the inner workings of a corporation and how the history we've been learning about in class has contributed to their corporation's formation. So I reached out to Koniag, a native corporation that represents the Alutiiq people. Here's some info about what they do from their website. Koniag s one of the 12 regional Alaska native corporations established by Congress in 1971 under the terms of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act or ANCSA. We're going to talk more about ANCA with our next guest. So hold on for that. Koniag was incorporated on June 23rd, 1972, to manage these assets on behalf of
approximately 3,400 Alutiiq shareholders. They're committed to creating opportunities and sustainable growth to fund benefits for their shareholders and their families. Shareholder benefits include driven educational and youth scholarships, elder distribution among others. Koniag promotes culture and advocates for the people and communities of the Kodiak Island region. So without further ado, here's the president of Koniag.
SHAUNA HEGNA: Hello, my name is Shauna Hegna. My family is from the villages of Afognak and Port Lions. Currently, I serve as the president of Koniag, which is the Alaska Native regional corporation that represents the 4,300 Alaska native shareholders who call Kodiak island home. I grew up in Port Lions, which is a small village of about 200 people on Kodiak Island. So it's only accessible by boat and plane. There are no roads that connect to my village. So if you haven't grown up in a small remote, rural community with 200 people, to put it in perspective, there were five people in my high school, graduating class. So, my identical twin sister, my third cousin, my first cousin, and my boyfriend at the time who I swear I wasn't related to. So very small, very remote community. I graduated from Port Lion high school, as I mentioned after high school graduation, I went on to college and I am a product of the University of Alaska system. So UAF has a special place in my heart as alumni.
EMILY: Something you said earlier- you said a term, “shareholder” for people that don't know what that means. Can you explain what this means?
SHAUNA: 1960s in America, civil rights movements going on- there are lots of tribal reservations in the lower 48 that, and I'm not saying I agree with this, but at the time, the public perception was that tribal reservation was not as successful as they could be. That happens to also corresponds with when oil was discovered on Alaska's north slope. So what does that mean? That means Alaska is a brand new state. We just got statehood a few years before that. And the state and the federal government is trying to figure out what do we do with Alaska? Right? It was called Seward's Folly, right? Because it was. People were thinking that we were too dependent, that we were a failure. And so elected officials tried to figure out what do we do with Alaska and how do we make it independent. And then all of a sudden oil is discovered on the most Northern borders of Alaska and this feeding frenzy ensues as the federal, the state governments, private oil companies, private citizens are all trying to vie for a piece of Alaska's oil, rich land. And at that time, Alaska natives look around and go we're going to lose everything right? Many of our communities did not have running water. Many did not have electricity. Most did not have phone systems. The only way you could communicate in our villages at that time was by CB radio. That was the context in which the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act was passed. And so at that time, people literally passed the hat similar to what you do at church to raise enough, you know, 1$ and a $5 donations to fly laska native leaders to Washington DC to negotiate a land settlement with Congress. Alaska natives really wanted to know that we had fair title to our land that we owned our land outright. And we also did not want to recreate the tribal reservation system in Alaska.
Congress didn't want to recreate it because remember in the 1960s, there was this perception that it was not as successful as it should be as they were negotiating that setup. Congress worked with Alaska natives to create Alaska native for-profit companies that are owned by Alaska native shareholders. So every Alaska native person that was alive on the date that the act was passed in 1971 could apply to receive 100 shares in a regional corporation and 100 shares in a village corporation. And so that's how we have shareholders, but what's interesting is our shareholders are not living in high rises. They're not on park avenue, buying and selling their stock on the stock market. In fact, you can't buy or sell our shares. Our shareholders are married to us for life. The only way that you can receive shares in a native corporation is if you are Alaska native and one of your family members gift them to you, or if you inherit them when one of your Alaska native relatives passes away.
EMILY: Can you tell me a bit about your organization? What do you guys do and what is the mission?
SHAUNA: Yeah so Koniag was one of 13 regional corporations that were founded under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. So four generations, Alaska native people, fought for our right to own our own land. For access to subsistence, resources, economic development opportunities, and those types of things. So in 1971, through a legendary congressional act, the Alaska native claims settlement act corporation, Native corporations were established. So Koniag is one of 13 regional corporations and there are more than 200 village corporations. And so we own the land, the traditional land on Kodiak island that our people have lived off of for 7,500 years on behalf of our Alaska Native shareholders. So our mission is to operate for-profit companies to make a profit so that we can provide dividends and other really important benefits to our Alaska Native shareholders, like, elder benefits, funeral assistance programs, college scholarships, scholarships for children, those types of things. And so I'll tell you some stories about some of the folks that we've worked with just the last year. So no one can have a conversation in 2021 and 2020 without talking about COVID-19 in Alaska. One of the biggest struggles that we had was access to food security. So when you think about Alaska, so many of our communities are not connected by road. So the only way that you can get groceries, for instance, in a village-like Port Lions, where there is no grocery store is to actually travel by boat or plane to the nearest hub community, which is Kodiak city. So for my parents who still live in our village, that means that they had to charter an airplane, which is a little small prop airplane, and fly 15 minutes to Kodiak city to get their group. Well, of course at the height of the pandemic, there was no way for you to get access to groceries in those instances because you can't socially distance on an airplane. That's why none of us flew in 2020. So one of the things that Kodiag did was work with our village to fund expansions to the community gardens. So people like my parents who are elders could have access to fresh fruits and vegetables during the pandemic. Another example is there was a girl from my village who was 11 years old she had to communicate by zoom with her and when you're in a remote community where
broadband is already slow and very expensive, the rates became astronomical when she had to zoom with her teachers all day and her parents' wifi bill went up to $900 in a month, a month for one, one wifi bill. And so Kodiag had a scholarship program, where we provide funding to children ages three years through 12th grade to do any type of training camp or event that's going to help them to be successful. So in those instances, she applied for and received a scholarship to help pay her broadband bill so that she could have access to the same level of education is every American student has a right to access. So during the pandemic, in particular, those are some of the programs that we offered to our Alaska Native shareholders every day, no matter if it's a pandemic or not, we fund college scholarships. We have students that are working on everything from, you know, how to become a mechanic all the way to Ph.D. programs abroad, and we provide college scholarships so that they can pursue those dreams.
EMILY: What does that mean for you to see these types of things? SHAUNA: That's why I get up every day. I feel like I have to pinch myself every day. When you graduate from college, you should have a job that you love. I get to implement programs and services that change people's lives for the better. And I think that it doesn't get any better than that.
EMILY: Thanks so much to Shauna. And thanks so much for listening to this series of my summer in Alaska. This podcast is presented by the University of Alaska Fairbanks, a special thanks to producer Marmian Grimes, and Samara Taber. Thank you to everyone at UAF. For more information on the classes that I took, you can check out uaf.edu.