No one involved with the split between the Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN) and Alaska’s most profitable company – Arctic Slope Regional Corp. (ASRC) – is publicly saying much of anything of substance about the reasons why, but this parting was clearly inevitable.
That is part of the story, but the differences between the state’s Native corporations and AFN are deeper than that and trace back to well before political interest groups and some of the media declared a “climate crisis.”
One might well credit a 1993 decision by U.S. Department of the Interior for this breakup.
That one simple act immediately created dueling political power structures – on one hand the corporations dependent on success in the world of business and on the other the tribes largely dependent on government funding.
And government funding is most available to those in need.
That is where climate change enters the picture today. Tribes have embraced it in the hopes of obtaining government help to relocate villages, boost community services and more.
Before climate change, the need was for schools, public water and sewer systems, airports, public housing, health centers, law enforcement and more that villages lacked because they didn’t have the economies or population base to support such services on their own.
And the corporations never made enough money to provide those things, which largely only served to fuel the idea the corporations were providing for the select few while many suffered in substandard housing in need of various services in struggling villages.
The division in some ways parallels the philosophical differences that pit those on the right and the left in the U.S. today.
Push-pull
For decades now, this has been the complex dynamic in a world with no clearcut good guys and no real bad guys. It’s a world of grey. The Claims Act hasn’t helped everyone, but it has boosted the lives of thousands if not tens of thousands of Alaskans and made Alaska Native-owned companies power players in the 49th state.
On their own and through a vast network of subsidiaries, those companies employ tens of thousands of people both Natives and non-Natives in Alaska and across the country.
No other Alaska Native corporations make the Forbes list of 220, but most are now doing well financially. The problem is the flood of success the Claims Act brought after its near-failure in the 1980s did not lift all boats.
Much of rural Alaska today remains poverty-stricken.
Propublica and the Anchorage Daily News are in the midst of an expose’ on the “lawlessness” of the region. For reasons unknown, they have willfully sidestepped the key, economic part of that issue. Rural Alaska has crime problems for the same reasons Chicago’s South and West sides, Baltimore’s Fairfield Area and North St. Louis have crime problems.
“What is also notable is that the young people, based on their knowledge and experience, explicitly make the connection between violence and jobs…asserting, ‘more jobs, less violence.’
“In the words of the young people:
- “Jobs solve violence. If you are busy working, you don’t have time for violence.
- “There are so many people who don’t have a job, and they get into the wrong things.
- “Bring youth employment… everyone wants drugs and violence to stop, well then…get us off these streets and get us in some work clothes and you will see the change.
“Young people tell us, based on their experiences and knowledge, that they believe there is a connection between joblessness and crime in their neighborhoods. While not everyone who is without a job engages in violence, these quotes suggest that of those who do, economic reasons are often a motivating factor. Further, they suggest that providing jobs deters them from seeking economic solutions that may involve them in illegal activities.”
The problem of joblessness is much the same on some of the country’s poverty-stricken Indian reservations.
“…The lack of job opportunities is a critical problem on reservations. The hope of many observers is that economic development will someday provide jobs for reservation residents who need them, but we cannot afford to wait on the promise of economic development. What is needed is a large-scale public jobs program,” Gary Sandefur, a member of the Chickasaw Nation and former director of the American Indian Studies Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison has observed.
“This program could be modeled after existing workfare programs in that individuals who receive public assistance would be expected to participate. To provide a sufficient number of jobs, new public service jobs would have to be created. The most important lesson to be learned from the reservations may be that it is economic, social, and physical isolation from the majority society that produces what we have come to call underclass behavior.
“This isolation has produced extreme poverty, high unemployment, unstable families, low rates of high school graduation, and high rates of alcoholism and/or drug abuse and crime on reservations and in central cities. These effects occur even, as is the situation on the reservations, where other aspects of social organization, such as kinship and community systems, seem strong. So the key to improving life for members of the underclass may lie in reducing their physical, social, and economic isolation.”
High hopes
ANCSA was to have helped Alaska sidestep the disaster of the Lower 48 reservations while resolving legal issues as to aboriginal land ownership in the 49th state.
Instead of isolating Alaska Native people in enclaves as elsewhere in the country, Alaska Native leaders and the U.S. government cut a deal to integrate into the capitalist economy of the United State the ancestors of the residents in control of the Alaska landmass at the time of white contact.
In exchange for the Native leaders dropping legal claims to all of Alaska, the government agreed to grant them title to 44 million acres of their choosing in the 49th state, help them set up 12 regional corporations and myriad village corporations through which to do business, and seed those businesses with $962 million in capital – almost 134 times the $7.2 million the U.S. government paid Russia for the Alaska territory in 1867 but only about 48 times the purchase price when adjusted for inflation.
The Claims Act was a noble social experiment designed to help Alaska Natives negotiate their own path into an unknown and always evolving future. The late Gov. Wally Hickel, who in his first term helped establish the groundwork for the deal, later summed things this way:
That was in 1967 and both mining and logging were viewed somewhat differently than they are now in a state prone to a fair bit of NIMBYism. And by the time the Claims Act became law in 1971, Hickel was gone from Alaska to Washington, D.C. to serve as President Richard Nixon’s Secretary of the Interior.
Nixon would eventually fire Hickel for telling him to listen to young Americans protesting the War in Vietnam, but on other fronts, Hickel saw Nixon in a kinder light than many.
Of the Claims Act, Hickel later wrote, “This was the positive Nixon who enjoyed doing things that were innovative and right, the side of him which, tragically, was lost later in his administration.
“Before he would sign the bill, President Nixon wanted to know if the settlement was agreeable to the Native community; so the AFN called a special meeting on December 16, 1971. Two days later the Native representatives present voted 511 to 56 to accept the terms, in which they would receive title to one-ninth of Alaska and nearly $1 billion. I was present as President Nixon was connected by telephone to a meeting hall at Alaska Methodist University (now Alaska Pacific University) in Anchorage to receive the news of the Natives’ vote.”
Author and attorney Donald Craig Mitchell, the one-time general counsel for the AFN, would later discover that the entire episode was fake news. Nixon signed the Claims Act into law half a day before the AFN vote and then flew to New York City with his wife to see a play. The president’s phone call to AMU was but theater. After the AFN vote, AMU’s Ken Bass, who had an open line to Washington, D.C. from a payphone in the university lobby, told the White House press office to cue an audiotape prerecorded by Nixon congratulating AFN on the vote.
Nixon would not be the last president to use the state and its people as a prop. Democrat President Barack Obama did the same on his climate change/global warming tour in 2015. It included a visit to a mock fishing site and a totally fictional, made-for-TV meal of bear-killed salmon with a reality star Bear Grylls. The salmon had been sourced at a Seward fish processing plant, but the mainstream media gobbled up the Grylls-Obama fairy tale about the actor finding the carcass along an Alaska stream.
AFN origins
The AFN board in the lead up to ANCSA was made up of representatives of what would come to be the 12 regional corporations resident in the state. That would change as the corporations fought to fend off early complaints that they weren’t doing enough to help average Alaska Natives.
“By the late 1980s, folks in the villages had come to realize that ANCSA wasn’t going to do jack shit for most of them, but had created a small cadre of individuals inside the regional corporations (and larger village corporations) who were quite financially prosperous,” observed one of those deeply involved in AFN at the time.
It didn’t help that the corporations were struggling to learn to play in the game of business and made some bad decisions. Several of them might have gone under if not for the late Sen. Ted Stevens and others who came up with the idea for legislation allowing the corporations to sell their net operating losses to other companies looking for tax breaks.
A crafty politician, Stevens attached a rider to a Senate bill that opened the door for sales, and David Rubenstein of the Carlyle Group quickly began marketing them to major U.S. companies.
The sale of NOLs as they came to be called basically allowed the corporations to recapitalize without asking the government for more money and helped Rubenstein build a fortune that eventually turn him into one of the country’s richest men.
Stevens would later help develop the so-called 8A contracting preference for Native corporations doing business with the federal government as well. The contracting has reportedly been worth billions to the corporations.
But corporate leaders recognized early on they were never going to be able to pick up the costs of supporting all jobless shareholders, something that left some of those shareholders resentful that they weren’t getting their fair share.
To try to tamp down the growing resentment, the AFN decades ago brought into the fold private, nonprofit entities thought to be more representative of the interests of village people. Among them were the Bethel-based Association of Village Council Presidents, the Fairbanks-based Tanana Chiefs Conference, and the Juneau-based Tlingit Haida Central Council.
Largely social service organizations, those entities and others like them are dependent on government contracts and grants.
The “board member expansion is when the Rubicon was crossed,” an observer from those days said. The growing tribal movement just added fuel to the embers.
“Before the sovereignty movement got completely up and running,” one source said, “the AFN board was expanded a third time to add 12 more members who each purportedly represented the ‘villages’ in each region.”
Who pays?
Meanwhile, insiders say, the corporations have continued to cover most of the costs of AFN even as they quietly started to pull away. The corporations formed their own ANCSA Regional Association in 2011. It has gone largely unnoticed though it is active behind the scenes.
The corporations fully understand business realities.
At the AFN conference in Fairbanks in October, ASRC opposed a climate change resolution warning that it could threaten Alaska resource development that generates a significant part of corporate revenue.
“They need it. And they did it eloquently and in a good way. Let’s stop the debate and give them what they want.”
Julie Maldonado, a consultant for the Institute for Tribal Environmental Professionals, later told Crouse that this is part of a trend of organizations turning to young people for answers to global problems.
“We have a whole lot to learn from them, And they can also see things much more clearly and be informed in ways that we don’t understand,” said the instructor in environmental studies at the University of California Santa Barbara.
Letting youth lead would mark a significant change for an Alaska Native community which has long prided itself on honoring the wisdom of elders.
Whether other corporations will now follow ASRC in using their pocketbook to suggest their opposition to this new idea remains to be seen.
Correction: The story was edited after publication to reflect that David Rubenstein’s involvement with NOLS came after they were created, not before, and to include the entire history of Nixon’s involvement with the signing of ANCSA.
Categories: Commentary, Politics
Once upon a time the peoples of Alaska were a self sufficient bunch, who fought bitter and brutal wars against neighboring tribes. They would move across the land seeking sustenance and shelter where and when it was available. Life was not a guarantee, death was always a slip of a foot away, one meal away, one heartbeat away. Then came the white man who offered security and chaos all at once. Some of the peoples of Alaska are only a generation or two removed from these times before the security and chaos that was brought to them, to discount the way it was before is to discount history. Letting the idealism and ignorance of youth decide for entire groups of people would be to discount history and the knowledge that history provides.
It is not only the youth that are speaking out, but many native elders as well.
Vice just did a story this month and it includes excerpts from a NOAA report that includes many native elder voices.
“We’ve never had 200 seals [dead] on a beach stretch before. This year we had…
One of the biggest concerns elders voiced in the new report is that the changes are occurring so quickly it’s becoming difficult to pass traditional knowledge along to younger generations.”
https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/qjdd4m/alaska-natives-speak-out-in-noaa-2019-arctic-report-card
Steve,
The article you linked to discounts the history of the Alaskan people in the same way that all of the people who are trying to exploit them do. Not long ago, just 100-150 years ago, the majority of the peoples of Alaska were a nomadic people. They didn’t need government assistance to move their village, they just moved their village when the time was right…when the food supplies waned or the sea iced receded or the game was hunted out. Now that the Alaskan people have settled into permanent settlements they are seeing things that they have never seen before because they are observing things their ancestors never saw before because their ancestors would have moved along to greener pastures, they would not have waited until the ocean was literally at their doorsteps to move.
You should try and understand the history of the Alaskan people before cutting and pasting from a report from an outside left leaning organization that is pushing the victim mentality instead of supporting the Alaskan people you live around.
I guess you had to drop the youth argument since there is ample evidence to show that elders also support the Climate Change movement and are very concerned of the changes they are witnessing…the reporter from Vice did a nice job of supporting that with first hand testimony.
That is the point.
I didn’t drop anything Steve, I was expounding upon what I previously wrote in response to your copy and paste of what somebody who has absolutely no understanding of what they are writing about. You discount history, the articles you copy and paste from discount history. You are free to do so, just as I am free to point out how you are wrong and where you are wrong.
I get it, you think we should erase history and do what teenager’s want since that is the only way you see to get what you want done and some idiots think that it’s the cool thing to do, the problem is that that plan is not a plan and will not work. It’s pathetic that using children is the only way that some think they can somehow prove their point. Being an adult and having adult conversations is impossible so let’s resort to being children, the left is really losing it. Discounting history and facts is not a plan, it’s something that irresponsible idealistic children do when they do not get their way. Time to grow up Steve and come up with an actual plan, form an argument, develop the reasoning behind it, gather facts to support it, and then present it for the rest of the adults to judge it.
The reporter from Vice should stick to reporting upon things they are familiar with, or familiarize themselves with the people of Alaska, something you should do as well. How long have you been in the great land and you still know precious little about the people of Alaska…sad.
Steve O,
Your condescending comments prove nothing to no one.
Your ramblings on how history is lost and teenagers need to grow up is just more signs of the “Green Scare” sweeping our nation.
A good book by journalist Will Potter outlines this very subject: “Green is the New Red”.
Truth is many elders stand in solidarity with today’s youth…a sign of this was the latest article on AFN that showed an older member with her fist up in support!
Your attempt at switching the debate goes nowhere other than satisfying your own ego.
I can produce more than one article to show elder support but there is no reason to play into your side argument tactics all day.
Fact is the warming Climate is a concern for all ages throughout AK something that ACRS has NO interest in recognizing and that is why they are NO longer a part of AFN.
Steve,
I have no doubt in your ability to find articles to copy and paste ad nauseum, what would be refreshing is you were to actually formulate your own opinions and thoughts and then share them. Using leftwing sources to spread leftwing ideology is nothing new. I don’t need your elitist back east brand of intellectualism to tell me how things are in Alaska or with the Alaskan people. I have native blood in my family, I have worked with and around Alaskan Natives my whole life, I have family members who work for Alaskan Native Corporations, I am familiar with what it is I speak of. All your copy and pasted opinions are what is condensing, you really should inform yourself prior to putting on full display how little you understand.
“We have a whole lot to learn from them, And they can also see things much more clearly and be informed in ways that we don’t understand,” said the instructor in environmental studies at the University of California Santa Barbara.”
Nonsense and drivel. These children are simply being trotted out as mouthpieces for professional activists on the Left, like the above instructor in a nonsense neo-Marxist Critical Theory “field”, who is among the radicals who have infiltrated academia over the past few decades to indoctrinate said youth.
Rex Rock’s letter to ADN shows there is hypocrisy on both sides. The Greta Thunberg cult Native kids no doubt cash and spend their PFD oil fund checks. And Rock, who makes over $5 million a year, claims he deserves to kill more whales in the name of subsistence. Alaskan Natives are very divided, with shitshows in all camps.
Climate change is the latest attempt at a federal money grab. It has the extra added attraction of blaming the resource extraction / business world for its very existence. That, along with the religious nature of the belief system (it has a Pope, Original Sin, Basic Good, Evil, even resurrects indulgences) goes a long way to sell it to the poorly educated nonreligious.
Thanks for pointing out the dichotomy between the resource development / business native orgs and the social welfare ones. Hadn’t tabbed that as the rationale for the impending (ongoing?) split. Thinking about it, makes perfect sense.
Interesting the social side is furiously attempting to embrace the very sort of federally funded, organized, and run operation that turned the Lower 48 reservations into the horrific places they’ve become over the years, importing the entire mess up here. Kind of like what Chavez did in Venezuela embracing socialism. Those other guys never did it right. We are far, far smarter than they are and we’ll get it right. Not. So very sad for them, as they are choosing to travel a deadly path for their kids and grandkids. Cheers –
The fascist rocks have spoken: “Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) declared that the United States is “not an advanced society” and is devolving into a fascist country while campaigning alongside presidential candidate Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) in Los Angeles Saturday.”
The difference is obvious…look at ASRC’s six figure salaries and then look at the poverty in the “Y-K Delta”.
The break away moment came when the ASRC “Loyalists” saw their main man Dunleavy booed off stage at AFN over Climate Change.
These same disenfranchised natives on the west coast are also at the front line of our warming planet as many villages struggle to find the money to relocate.
It should come as no surprise that 2019 is on record to be the Warmest year ever in the history of record keeping in AK…which is around 100 years of data.
This divide will continue to further push the oil sympathizers of ASRC into their own corner as we move forward.
Even BP is looking to diversify and have 30 percent of it’s energy from renewables.
AK leaders are bought and paid for by big oil and ASRC is the epitome of this paradigm.
“the Warmest year ever in the history of record keeping in AK…which is around 100 years of data.”
Hahaha, the warmest year EVER in the less than 100 years of record keeping, and the first 50-60 years isn’t very reliable data. Good one Steve.
Hi Steve,,,
Just a note to keep things clearer.ASRC lands are generally north of the Brooks range.Y-K delta is Calista.Probably the red headed step child of the native corps.
ASRC,Doyon,Chugach and Ahtna all own land on the TAPS ROW,so in my mind they are price makers.
There was a time when Sealaska and CIRI were movers and shakers,doesnt seem to be the case now.
BBC is tied into slope byway of owning Peak Services.
I think at some point in the near future Aleut corp will come into there own by way of geographic importance, not necessarily oil related,but who can say.
The only reason the oilies are investing in renewables is to keep governments off their backs. Think of it as a protection racket. Nice little company you have there. Would be a shame if something happened to it.
As we move forward, indeed. There are a lot of people moving into their separate corners, which would be fine if you guys would leave the rest of us alone. Sadly, you refuse to do so.
Despite what you may read about global temps, the sun was very quiet this year, over 230 days without a spot. This sort of Grand Solar Minimum usually correlates nicely with bitter cold. Enjoy your renewables, shivering in the dark. Those of us with heat engines will be toasty warm.
And the foolishness of it is that it doesn’t need to be this way at all. You guys want zero CO2 emissions? Fine. Join me on Gen IV nuclear and we can have a discussion. Windmills and solar ain’t gonna hack it in the cold country. Cheers –
A 2020 prediction people thought would hapoen by now. So much for “Global Warming”.(sorry Steve S.) – “A 1968, Stanford University professor Charles Scarlott predicted that nuclear breeder reactors would make up the majority of U.S. energy production by 2018 as natural gas fades.
“Energy from water power, solar radiation, the wind, tides, or earth heat will not figure large in the totals. Power from nuclear power plants should be available in large amounts at low cost,” Scarlott wrote.
Wrong: In 2018, fossil fuels — petroleum, natural gas and coal — accounted for about 79% of total U.S. primary energy production in 2018, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration. About 12% was from renewable energy sources, and about 9% was from nuclear electric power. “
“The statewide average temperature for Alaska in 2019 is on pace to break a record set just three years earlier…
But according to University of Alaska Fairbanks climatologist Brian Brettschneider, even with temperatures dipping for much of the state, it’s looking like 2019 will still go down as the warmest calendar year ever in Alaska.”
https://www.alaskapublic.org/2019/12/19/alaskas-2019-likely-to-be-states-warmest-year-ever-yes-again/
Doubtful; it must have been warmer when the ice covering Alaska melted and Alaska had a jungle environment…………………….
Warmest year ever? Is that a joke or is it when they say “ever”, they mean the last 100 OUT OF 4,000,000,000yrs?
Hmm, a study concluded that “joblessness leads to poverty which in turn leads to crime (I want.something I didnt earn). Kind of like socialism. Move to the bush, remain in the bush, remain in the village, shunning outside life and law and order, expect JOBLESSNESS. It is NOT the governments responsibility to get YOU a job, put food in YOUR mouth, of give YOU a better life.
There used to be a saying – “you went were the jobs are”. Could careless if you are a “native” or not. Big deal..
Stop making excuses about YOUR failures.
Good point, Bryan. Not only are they embracing joblessness, but they are actively working to ensure no new jobs exist in their part of the world (Pebble, Donlin Creek, Ambler Road). Cheers –
A good start for helpng Alaskan Natives would be to stop giving them welfare for life because their are “no jobs”. They don’t want jobs because it would jeopardize lifetime welfare support. Cut welfare and they would “go to where the jobs are”. Sullivan, Murkowski and Young know this welfare issue is wrong and wasteful. But won’t touch it in the name of votes and preserving their jobs.
Well said james,
Im all for traditional substance way of life.As long as I dont have to subsidize it beyond normal treaty obligations.And theres plenty of non natives out there too living there dream as well.
More power to all of them..as long as it doesn’t mean I/we 300million or so
subsidize them.
In the end we are all socialists, but the hypocrisy of the right is so laughable