Tlingit & Haida wins $250,000 to modernize its tribal court

Alaska Native or American Indian children made up 69% of children in Alaska state custody as of 2025. A $250,000 federal grant is now funding a shift for the Tlingit & Haida Tribal Court: it is preparing to open child protection cases involving its own citizens, rather than only intervening in state proceedings.

The Department of Health and Human Services, through its Administration for Children and Families, awarded the money to the Central Council of Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska in Juneau. Award 90CS2050 runs five years starting Sept. 30, 2026. Two other HHS awards to the tribe share that start date: $1,437,982 for a five-year school-based youth mental health initiative and $1,572,239 for an overdose-response and community-readiness project.

The tribe reported 38,769 actively enrolled citizens as of Feb. 17, 2026, including 6,966 under age 18, across Southeast Alaska, Anchorage, the Puget Sound region, Portland and Northern California.

The court has a magistrate, a three-justice supreme court and a clerk's office. It was built to intervene in state child welfare cases under the Indian Child Welfare Act, not to open its own. Pending amendments to Title 04 of the Tribal Code, drafted in redline form and awaiting submission to the Judiciary Committee, would establish tribe-initiated authority to receive reports, screen and investigate cases, petition for custody, take custody and adjudicate permanency.

The existing Title 04 code gives the Child and Family Court jurisdiction over enrolled and enrollment-eligible children, concurrent with state, federal and other tribal courts. Under the Alaska Supreme Court's ruling in Mallette v. Adams, covered previously by Alaska News, the first-filed forum generally proceeds when parallel custody cases are filed.

A 2019 strategic action plan and an independent assessment completed Jan. 19, 2023, found no case management system and no records retention schedule. The procedural guide for Child in Need of Care cases has not been revised since June 2016.

Year one work includes rewriting that handbook, drafting a coordination agreement with Tribal Family & Youth Services, and redesigning guardianship and adoption packets. About 99% of current cases are brought by citizens without a lawyer. A 0.8 FTE project coordinator and an outside evaluator will work under the court administrator, overseen by a new advisory committee.

The grant record reflects only the tribe's application narrative.