Tlingit & Haida gets $1.05 million for Angoon youth classes and kinship caregivers

Two federal awards totaling about $1.05 million will bring pregnancy-prevention classes to Angoon and fund navigators to help relatives raising Tlingit & Haida children get the benefits they apply for.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) signed both with the Central Council of the Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska on Sept. 24. Both begin Sept. 30.

The larger, $595,949, covers the first year of Wayfinders: Strong Roots, Healthy Futures, funded through the Tribal Personal Responsibility Education Program. The application requests about $2.99 million over five years; the remaining four years, about $2.4 million, are not guaranteed.

Wayfinders serves Alaska Native and American Indian youth ages 10 to 19, and pregnant or parenting youth up to 21. About 40 youth in Juneau will get weekly classes. About 10 in Angoon, which the application calls a fly-in or ferry-only community, will get multi-day sessions each quarter. Classes use FLASH, a pregnancy-prevention curriculum, plus lessons on healthy relationships, school and career success, and life skills.

The project builds on three years of Wayfinders programming and a signed letter of commitment with the Chatham School District and Angoon School. The American Institutes for Research will evaluate it.

The second award, $450,349, funds a three-year kinship navigator project, guiding relatives raising children to benefits and legal help, for tribal citizens across Southeast Alaska and Washington state. Tribal data show an average of 45 kinship-caregiving households a month in tribal benefits systems. Their applications are denied 24 percent of the time, and processing takes 30 days on average.

The tribe will adapt the Washington State Kinship Navigator model, rated "supported" by the federal Title IV-E Prevention Services Clearinghouse, which rates programs' evidence. It will consult with the Port Gamble S'Klallam Tribe, the model's first tribal adapter, and the University of Washington's Indigenous Wellness Research Institute, which will also evaluate the work. An advisory board of elders and caregivers will oversee it. Staff will be a half-time manager and two half-time navigators, one in Alaska and one in Washington.

The kinship project plans to serve 45 to 50 households in year one and 90 to 120 by year three. The record does not say how caregivers reach the navigators.

HHS records list $8.4 million in fiscal 2026 awards to the tribe. No one from the tribe, the Angoon school or kinship caregivers is quoted; figures are the tribe's own.