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Frame from "Tanana Chiefs Conference: TCC 2026 Fall Summit - Day One General Session" · Photo source
Galena and Tanana tribes team up so neither takes a below-market BIA lease rate
Two Yukon River tribes are teaming up to negotiate what the federal government pays them for the buildings they use to run federal programs.
The Louden Tribe in Galena and the Native Village of Tanana agreed to negotiate their leases together so neither accepts a rate below fair market value, Tanana Chiefs Conference Chief Administrative Officer Victor Joseph said Thursday at TCC's Fall Summit in Fairbanks.
The worry is that a low rate in one village becomes the yardstick for the next. "We don't want them to say to us, well, they just did it, and so these are the dollars that we're going to be allowing you to," Joseph said.
The leases come from a federal program known as 105(l). When tribes run federal programs out of their own buildings, it pays for rent, depreciation, utilities, janitors and repairs. The Bureau of Indian Affairs describes these as facility-cost agreements more than traditional leases.
BIA has split Alaska into seven regions and is building a database of agreed rates to judge what's reasonable, attorney Rebecca Patterson told the summit. She said the agency hasn't shared that data.
Galena's lease shows how the process has played out. Brooke Sanderson, Louden's tribal administrator, said the tribe hired an Anchorage company to appraise its building and sent the appraisal to BIA in May. In October, BIA rejected the proposed cost per square foot by email and said the tribe could negotiate or seek a waiver.
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About Galena
Galena (Notaalee Denh) is a community on the Yukon River in the Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area of Interior Alaska. It is a checkpoint on the Iditarod Trail and home to the Galena Interior Learning Academy, a regional residential boarding school.
Schooling is a large part of its public life, from state funding for the boarding school and its facilities to the Galena School District's early learning programs. Like other Yukon River communities, it depends on barged fuel for its utility, and the price of that fuel and the supply of tribal housing recur as concerns.
Lightning fires burn in the country around Galena and nearby Huslia, close to Native allotments. Subsistence fishing along this stretch of the Yukon is part of everyday life.
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