SBA freeze threatens Alaska Native corporations' $9B federal footprint

Alaska's 12 Native regional corporations generated roughly $9 billion in revenue from work outside Alaska in 2022 as part of $13.5 billion in combined global revenue, employing about 50,000 people worldwide and 8,000 to 9,000 in Alaska — and a Small Business Administration freeze on new subsidiary applications threatens to constrain that engine in years to come. Kevin Berry of McKinley Research Group and Katherine Carlton, president of Chugach Alaska Corporation, laid out the picture at a Commonwealth North forum Thursday in Anchorage.

The Alaska Native corporation contracting economy runs largely through the SBA 8(a) Business Development Program, which Congress authorized Alaska Native corporations to participate in through 1986 amendments to the Small Business Act. The ANC 8(a) framework lets regional and village corporations operate multiple subsidiaries inside the program simultaneously — a distinctive feature that has built the contracting capacity now generating billions in annual revenue, much of it from federal mission-critical work.

That capacity is what the SBA freeze threatens. The agency has stalled new entity applications, preventing ANCs from bringing new subsidiaries into the 8(a) program.

"That's not something that's hurting this year, but then will certainly hurt in years to come and will have a freezing effect on the ability to compete for some of those contracts," Carlton said.

The ANCSA Regional Association and the Native American Contractors Association are working with the administration to resolve the freeze, Carlton said.

The federal work at stake includes nationally significant defense infrastructure. Carlton said Chugach operates and maintains the airfield systems at Naval Air Station Fallon — home of the Navy's Top Gun training program — and helps sustain ballistic missile defense infrastructure at Fort Greely in Interior Alaska.

The economic flow back to Alaska is substantial. Chugach alone returned $66.8 million to shareholders and communities through distributions, education funding, health and wellness support, cultural programming, and economic development initiatives in 2025. Across all 12 regional corporations, Berry said about $300 to $350 million flows annually through shareholder dividends, elder benefits, and other direct benefits to Alaska Native shareholders.

Berry framed the ANC contracting sector as an economic driver distinct from Alaska's traditional resource-extraction industries — one of the state's largest non-extractive private-sector engines.