Indigenous Affairs
RSSIndigenous Affairs in Alaska covers Alaska Native and American Indian governance, tribal institutions and cultural life. It spans ANCSA corporations, tribal councils, subsistence rights, language revitalization, repatriation of ancestral remains, and federal tribal policy.
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Week of Jul 13
A Nome teacher heads to Stanford to rethink how schools teach
A Nome reading teacher is off to Stanford for a Ph.D. — studying how Inuit knowledge and values can be built into what schools actually teach.
by Melinda Communities.News4mo ago1 min read
A Native org is coaching Yukon harvesters on how to testify effectively
Tanana Chiefs Conference is running a July 24 workshop coaching Yukon harvesters to testify effectively on salmon policy — pressing a bycatch argument that scientists say is only part of the story.
by Maggie AlaskaNews4mo ago1 min read
Week of Jul 6
BBNC kicks off shareholder season with a salmon-day picnic
BBNC's shareholder season kicks off Aug. 8 with a salmon-day picnic in Anchorage, tours eight communities, and builds to the Oct. 3 board vote in Naknek.
by Walter AlaskaNews4mo ago1 min read
At a remote Interior camp, sobriety is celebrated the Athabascan way
Old Minto, a remote Interior camp that roots addiction recovery in Athabascan tradition, holds its Annual Sobriety Potlatch July 23 — celebrating sobriety the way the culture always has.
by Maggie AlaskaNews4mo ago1 min read
Bering Straits bets big on federal contracting, just as the business gets harder
Bering Straits Native Corp. bought nine federal contractors, doubling down on government work just as awards to Native-owned firms drop and the 8(a) program comes under fire.
by Walter AlaskaNews4mo ago1 min read
BBNC subsidiary offers shareholder enrollment help July 25
Bristol Bay Native Corporation shareholders can update stock records and enroll descendants at a free open house with brunch on July 25 in Anchorage.
by Maggie AlaskaNews4mo ago1 min readFrom 
Fewer geese on the Y-K Delta, and a proposal to let hunters take fewer
White-fronted geese are declining on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta, so Alaska wants to cut the bag limit from 10 to 6 — in a region where geese are a staple food. Comment by Aug. 5.
by Bill AlaskaNews4mo ago1 min read
A Tlingit artist crossed the border to teach Anchorage kids an ancient craft
A Tlingit artist traveled from British Columbia to Anchorage to teach kids the ancient art of bentwood box making — a watertight box bent from a single seamless plank.
by Maggie AlaskaNews4mo ago1 min read
More from Indigenous Affairs
Alaska Native ivory carvers can now sell their work in all 50 states
A new federal law lets Alaska Native artists sell walrus-ivory handicrafts in all 50 states, fixing a mess where anti-elephant-ivory bans accidentally swept up legal Native carving
by Walter AlaskaNews4mo ago2 min read
Goldbelt gets a new chair as its biggest bets take shape
Goldbelt named a new board chair a year after installing the last one — just as the Tlingit-owned corporation pushes its biggest development bets, a Douglas Island port and the Eaglecrest gondola.
by Melinda Communities.News4mo ago1 min read
An Unalakleet playwright brings Alaska's hardest truths to the stage
An Unalakleet playwright turned her work in suicide prevention into The Bird Blind — a story of abuse, addiction, and survival in an Iñupiaq village, told in its own voice.
by Maggie AlaskaNewsadded 4mo ago2 min read
Registered Alaska Native artists can keep selling fur on Etsy
Registered Alaska Native artists can keep selling fur on Etsy after Sen. Sullivan won an exemption — but unregistered makers are still cut off when the ban starts August 11.
by Walter AlaskaNews4mo ago1 min read
Bering Straits promotes a shareholder into its executive ranks
Bering Straits promoted Nome shareholder Brittany Daletas to VP of operations — a step in something ANCs keep working at: growing their own shareholders into the people who run them.
by Alaska News4mo ago1 min read
A new book makes the case that saving the Haida language now means 'immerse or die'
A new Sealaska Heritage book argues the Haida language is down to one option — full immersion — and that saving X̱aad Kíl is itself an act of tribal sovereignty.
by Maggie AlaskaNews4mo ago1 min read
Two Indigenous peoples, linked by a migratory bird, trade what they've learned
A Māori delegation shared a model of health at Sealaska Heritage — spirit, mind, body, and family as four walls of one house — with the people who once learned language revival from them.
by Bill AlaskaNews4mo ago1 min read
The Army apologized for bombing a Tlingit village. It only took 156 years.
The U.S. Army formally apologized for its 1869 bombardment of a Tlingit village — the standout in a year Sealaska Heritage Institute spent building a culture's permanence into stone and record.
by Maggie AlaskaNews4mo ago1 min read
Coming up
ANCSA: Why It Matters
The Hotel Captain Cook, 939 W 5th Ave, Anchorage, Alaska, United States
Class
Public Comment Deadline: Dingell Act Native Allotment Relinquishment (GS-5241)
Public notice
NAGPRA Repatriation Request Deadline
Public notice
NAGPRA Repatriation Eligibility: BLM Alaska Human Remains
Public notice
About Indigenous Affairs
Indigenous Affairs in Alaska takes in Alaska Native and American Indian governance, tribal institutions and cultural life. It spans the regional and village corporations created under ANCSA, tribal councils and consortiums, and the peoples of the state, among them Tlingit, Haida, Athabascan, Yupik, Inupiat and Aleut.
Recurring questions include corporation shareholder elections, scholarships and distributions, the return of ancestral remains and cultural items from museums and federal agencies, language revitalization, tribal authority over fish, wildlife and land, and tribal health and elder programs funded by federal grants.
The Alaska Federation of Natives brings these institutions together at its annual convention, and federal agencies such as the Bureau of Indian Affairs and the Indian Health Service fund many tribal programs. Subsistence hunting and fishing rights are a closely related subject.
More from Indigenous Affairs
Yukon Chinook sonar count 34% below average; fall chum added to concern list
Yukon Chinook count at 95,370 by July 6, down 34 percent from average and short of Alaska and Canadian escapement goals. • Fall chum designated a stock of management concern, forcing communities to restrict harvest on two salmon species at once. • Summer chum run tracking above 900,000 fish, offering some relief for subsistence harvesters.
by Maggie AlaskaNews4mo ago2 min read
New book argues Alaska Natives lost hundreds of millions in pandemic relief
A new Sealaska Heritage Institute book argues Alaska Natives lost several hundred million in pandemic relief after ANCSA corporations were shut out of ARPA funding.
by Maggie AlaskaNews4mo ago2 min read
NMFS creates rodent detection dog exception to Pribilof dog ban
NMFS lifted a 50-year dog ban on the Pribilof Islands to allow certified rodent detection dogs to inspect vessels, protecting seal rookeries and subsistence harvests from invasive rodents.
by Maggie AlaskaNews4mo ago2 min read
Week of Jun 29
Drums from Japan and West Africa, together on one Anchorage stage
Japanese taiko group Chokoma joins Anchorage's Oni iLu West African drummers at Discovery Theatre Aug. 1 — two thunderous traditions, one stage. Tickets $32.
by Maggie AlaskaNews4mo ago1 min read
North Slope mayor: 'Nothing about us without us'
The North Slope mayor used a Founders' Day message to demand the region get a real voice in federal and state decisions about its land — a bid for leverage it doesn't formally hold.
by Walter AlaskaNews4mo ago2 min read
Bethel wants to charge owners who let buildings sit empty and rot
Bethel would charge owners to leave buildings empty, and help demolish burnt-out ones — waiving the cost if the owner rebuilds, or filing a lien if not.
by Maggie AlaskaNews4mo ago2 min read
54 years of the North Slope Borough
Fifty-four years ago, Iñupiat leaders founded the North Slope Borough to tax the oil built on their land and govern their own homeland — an anniversary the mayor marked this week.
by Maggie AlaskaNews4mo ago2 min read
Rough water off Alaska's Arctic and Northwest coasts, easing by Sunday
Small craft advisories are up for Alaska's Arctic and Northwest coasts through Friday — winds near 25 knots, seas to 7 feet — before things calm down by Sunday.
by Maggie AlaskaNews4mo ago1 min read
Alaska's high court reversed a decision to end a Native mother's parental rights — over how the state made its case
The Alaska Supreme Court reversed a Native mother's parental-rights termination, finding the state's ICWA cultural testimony too vague to meet the law's high bar.
by Maggie AlaskaNews4mo ago2 min read
SHI book documents the fraught origins of three Juneau totem poles
Sealaska Heritage Institute released a book on Juneau totem poles. It details how the Forest Service commissioned Native art while seizing Native land.
by Maggie AlaskaNews4mo ago2 min read
At The Aleut Corporation, a promotion is a window into how a Native corporation works
The Aleut Corporation promoted Theresa Cross to oversee operations across four subsidiaries — a look at how an ANCSA regional corporation works for its Unangax̂ shareholders.
by Melinda Communities.News4mo ago3 min read
Alaska's kings are down almost everywhere — here's the picture
From the Yukon to Kodiak to Prince William Sound, Alaska is closing or tightening king salmon fishing nearly statewide — a slow-motion decline now measured in decades, not seasons.
by Bill AlaskaNews4mo ago3 min read
A Juneau artist beads a warrior, a relative, and a record
A Tlingit artist told a Juneau audience her beaded robe is more than art — it's at.óow, a clan relative with spirit, carrying an ancestor's story to generations she'll never meet.
by Maggie AlaskaNews4mo ago2 min read
Fairbanks sets aside a day to care for its Alaska Native Elders
On July 13, volunteers across Fairbanks spend the day helping Alaska Native Elders with yard work, painting, tech, and home repairs — the community caring for its own.
by Maggie AlaskaNews4mo ago1 min read
Kawerak hauls 4,000 pounds of e-waste out of Nome
Nome shipped 4,000 pounds of old electronics to the Lower 48 — because rural Alaska's unlined landfills can't safely hold the poison inside them, so the only option is to haul it out.
by Alaska Newsadded 4mo ago2 min read
French anthropologist reframes Tlingit foodways as living relational system, not subsistence
A visiting anthropologist echoed what many Alaska Native people say: "subsistence" misses the point. Tlingit traditional foods are about connection, not calories.
by Bill AlaskaNews4mo ago2 min read
Tanana Chiefs Conference reshuffles its leadership
Tanana Chiefs Conference staffed up this week — a former lobbyist to lead advocacy, a new tribal-priorities director, and a split of its top health job as the system keeps growing.
by Maggie AlaskaNews4mo ago2 min read
A boat trip made Interior Alaska's needs visible. Who's responsible for them is the harder question.
A Tanana Chiefs boat trip showcased four remote villages' needs. Who's responsible for meeting them is a tangle of federal, state, corporate and tribal roles.
by Alaska News4mo ago3 min read
The ancestral parcels behind a quiet land questionnaire in Port Graham, Nanwalek
Families around Port Graham and Nanwalek are being asked how their Native allotments — ancestral parcels won by proving generations of use — should be managed. The deadline is Aug. 31.
by Maggie AlaskaNews4mo ago2 min read
A federal royalty-rule change could shortchange the states and tribes it's owed to
A federal plan to simplify mineral royalties could shortchange states, tribes, and Native owners, as an audit finds the agency isn't collecting what it's owed.
by Maggie AlaskaNews4mo ago1 min read
Veterinary care reaches rural Alaska, where dog-bite rates run high
Veterinary care is coming to about 80 rural Alaska tribal communities July 1, where Alaska Native children are hospitalized for dog bites at about twice the U.S. rate.
by Maggie AlaskaNewsadded 4mo ago1 min read
Alaska Native groups take the salmon crisis to a national tribal stage
Four Alaska Native groups took the salmon crisis to the national tribal stage, pressing for a bigger Native role in managing runs that have collapsed on the Yukon and Kuskokwim.
by Maggie AlaskaNewsadded 4mo ago2 min read
A remote Kodiak village tries tp fix its water
Karluk — a village 88 miles from Kodiak city, ringed by refuge — is replacing its failing water system, closing a gap most of America never has to think about.
by Walter AlaskaNews4mo ago1 min read
Week of Jun 22
Juneau's ski hill picks a new leader — in public
Eaglecrest is interviewing its lone GM finalist in open session Thursday — a returning Juneau face — while a mystery sit-down with Goldbelt raises the more interesting question.
by Walter AlaskaNews4mo ago2 min read
