Alaska Business September 2022

GROWT H

Q

T

By Brad Joyal

By Crystal Biringer

By Tracy Barbour

By Katie Pesznecker

By Amy Newman

By Vanessa Orr

By Alexandra Kay

Andy Gryska ADF&G

years

1922-2022

Shaping tomorrow means something different for every Alaska business.

For some, it’s expanding operations to a new community. For others, it’s investing in technology to create new opportunities.

At First National, shaping tomorrow is our commitment to you.

Whether you’re a first-time entrepreneur or an established business, you can count on a century of local experience and innovative solutions to help you succeed today and tomorrow.

CONTENTS

SPECIAL SECTION: ALASKA NATIVE

48 SAY HELLO

Alaska Native greetings

50 SHINING STARS Village and urban corporations on the rise

By Tasha Anderson

58 ONE CITY, TWO CAPITALS

The living treasure of Juneau’s Northwest Coast art

By Scott Rhode

68 PRESERVING ALASKA NATIVE LANGUAGES The state of Indigenous languages in Alaska

By Richard Perry

76 MARINE MAMMAL HUNTRESS A tale of a Native woman on an epic quest

By Hope Roberts

82 SOLID FOUNDATIONS

Construction is a reliable business for Alaska Native corporations

By Rindi White

40 ALASKA’S BIG TWELVE An update on ANCSA regional corporations

By Vanessa Orr

Calista

ABOUT THE COVER

From December of 2017 to October 2020, Calista Corporation’s number of shareholders grew from 13,300 to more than 33,000. This is because Calista shareholders voted to expand enrollment, accepting applications from descendants of original shareholders as well as Alaska Natives who were eligible to enroll in 1971 but did not.

According to Calista President and CEO Andrew Guy, who is the subject of our cover this month, the corporation and its shareholders have “always been family oriented” and shareholders didn’t want to “leave such a big part of our families out of Calista.”

As Guy tells it, the corporation’s shareholders center him in his position: they give him purpose, drive him to work hard, and are also what he enjoys most about his job. The value of others was instilled in him at a young age. He recalls, “When I was a kid growing up, the directive we were given by our parents and elders was to go out and get a Western education on top of our traditional education so that we could bring that knowledge back to help our families and our people.”

Alaska Business (ISSN 8756-4092) is published monthly by Alaska Business Publishing Co., Inc. 501 W. Northern Lights Boulevard, Suite 100, Anchorage, Alaska 99503-2577; Telephone: (907) 276-4373. © 2022 Alaska Business Publishing Co. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced without written permission from the publisher. Alaska Business accepts no responsibility for unsolicited materials; they will not be returned unless accompanied by a stamped, self addressed envelope. One-year subscription is $39.95 and includes twelve issues (print + digital) and the annual Power List. Single issues of the Power List are $15 each. Single issues of Alaska Business are $4.99 each; $5.99 for the July & October issues. Send subscription orders and address changes to circulation@akbizmag.com. To order back issues ($9.99 each including postage) visit simplecirc.com/back_issues/alaska-business.

Photo by Janna Hardy

Clark Mishler

In my office in Midtown Anchorage I have a limited but important library. Most of it is the managing editor’s archive, which has almost every issue we have published since our inception. The few that are missing I plan to pilfer from the larger Alaska Business Publishing Co. archive in the future after it has been fully digitized—except for one issue. Despite checking everyone’s offices (sometimes with their permission), I’ve never been able to locate an individual copy of one of our older magazines: February 1988. We have a copy that’s bound into a larger volume, which is incredibly fortunate, but that little piece of our history is gone, and the archive in my office will remain one issue short for as long as it exists.

Also on those shelves are various books my predecessors and I have collected over the years, such as editing handbooks, historic texts, and style guides. I’ve personally added two art books: Menadelook: An Inupiat Teacher’s Photographs of Alaska Village Life, 1907-1932 and The Alaskan Paintings of Fred Machetanz. Each was a gift from a leader of one of the twelve Alaska Native regional corporations. They both feature art with themes of transition and change, acting as documentation of how “what was” changed to “what is.”

Anyone who has interacted with a representative of the Alaska Native corporations formed by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) knows that these organizations take their dual mandate to support their regions and shareholders through profitable enterprise seriously. They apply it to all their decision-making, whether acquiring a company, entering a new market, planning a cultural program, or funding a community project.

The leaders of ANCSA corporations know how critical it is to fund dividends, elder benefits, and scholarship programs; create jobs for their shareholders, other Alaskans, and people globally; and work tirelessly to preserve their culture and protect their lands.

The work is necessary because of multiple attempts to snuff their culture out. Interactions between Alaska Natives and other cultures have historically rarely ended well for the Alaska Natives. They suffered death, disease, and abuse as they endured years of deliberate attempts to destroy their way of life. The loss they have experienced is staggering: lands, whole languages, histories, and family lines.

And yet I am inspired by a sentiment expressed by Hope Roberts, an Alaska Native woman who owns and operates a sportfishing charter out of Valdez and is a guest author in this month’s special section: “Resilience is built into our DNA; where there is generational trauma, there is also transformational grace.”

Alaska Native regional, village, and urban corporations make up nearly half of the Top 49ers, Alaska’s largest local companies ranked by revenue; they have operations globally; they have subsidiaries and partners in every major Alaska industry; they employ thousands of people in and out of the state; they have scholarship and training programs; they are preserving their languages; they create and support platforms for art and performance; they train new generations in traditional skills; they celebrate and honor their elders; they develop programs to prepare their youth.

And they generously gift local editors with books that share their stories of loss and hope to fill up the holes in our libraries.

EDITORIAL STAFF

Managing Editor Tasha Anderson 907-257-2907 tanderson@akbizmag.com Editor/Staff Writer Scott Rhode 907-257-2902 srhode@akbizmag.com Social Media Carter Damaska 907-257-2910 enews@akbizmag.com Editorial Assistant Emily Olsen 907-257-2914 emily@akbizmag.com

PRODUCTION STAFF

Art Director Monica Sterchi-Lowman 907-257-2916 design@akbizmag.com

Design & Art Production Fulvia Lowe production@akbizmag.com Website Manager Taylor Sanders webmanager@akbizmag.com

Photo Contributor Kerry Tasker

BUSINESS STAFF

President Billie Martin

VP & General Manager Jason Martin 907-257-2905 jason@akbizmag.com VP Sales & Marketing Charles Bell 907-257-2909 cbell@akbizmag.com

Senior Account Manager Janis J. Plume 907-257-2917 janis@akbizmag.com

Senior Account Manager Christine Merki 907-257-2911 cmerki@akbizmag.com

Full-Charge Bookkeeper James Barnhill 907-257-2901 accounts@akbizmag.com

CONTACT

Press releases: press@akbizmag.com

Tasha Anderson Managing Editor, Alaska Business

Postmaster: Send address changes to Alaska Business 501 W. Northern Lights Blvd. #100 Anchorage, AK 99503

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Skating Uphill

Alaska college hockey programs embrace independence while aiming for stability

By Brad Joyal

The news became official on the last Friday of June 2019. The college hockey landscape would never be the same, and the UAA and UAF hockey programs were caught in the crossfire. Officials from both universities were surprised— stunned, really—to learn that seven of the ten schools they partnered with as members of the Western Collegiate Hockey Association were leaving the WCHA with hopes of creating their own conference without UAA, UAF, and the University of Alabama in Huntsville, the third WCHA men’s hockey team that was left behind.

Although there was a transitional period for both Alaska schools— each played in the WCHA during the conference’s farewell 2019/2020 season—the Seawolves and Nanooks were tasked with forging new futures without conference affiliation. That was especially challenging because college athletics schedules are often finalized years in advance, and both schools relied on their WCHA games to make up the bulk of their schedules.

“You’re frustrated that your program is in that spot and that there’s some uncertainty with what’s going to happen next,” says UAF head coach Erik Largen as he reflects on the

Sam Wasson | UAA

2019 announcement that Bemidji State University, Bowling Green State University, Ferris State University, Lake Superior State University, Michigan Technological University, Minnesota State University, and Northern Michigan University were leaving the WCHA. “You spend a little time with those feelings, but then you just have to move on and try to find solutions.”

UAA and UAF faced different challenges once the WCHA dissolved, but both institutions ultimately arrived at the same decision: college hockey is essential to Alaska, so the two programs would operate independently, without conference affiliation, for the immediate future.

Schedule Shift

After the COVID-19 pandemic sidelined UAA and UAF for the entire 2020/2021 season, both programs shifted their attention to the future. Fairbanks committed to playing the 2021/2022 season as an independent, but Anchorage found itself at a crossroads and faced potential extinction. In September 2020, the UA System Board of Regents announced it would eliminate alpine skiing, hockey, and gymnastics from UAA’s athletic department unless the programs could raise enough money through donations and pledges to cover two years of operating costs. UAA hockey had the biggest hill to climb, needing $3 million compared to the $880,000 and $628,000 the gymnastics and ski programs needed to raise, respectively.

While fundraising efforts organized under the banner “Save Seawolf Hockey” in Anchorage, Largen and UAF’s athletic department began filling out a schedule for its return to play in 2021.

“We were definitely behind the eight ball,” Largen says. “We ended up having some interesting road trips, and we had more away games than home games. That was kind of a consequence of not having as much time to prepare for the independent schedule.”

UAF was also experiencing changes behind the scenes, as it named Brock Anundson its new athletic director effective July 2021. By the time Anundson arrived, however, Largen had already completed the schedule.

“The benefit for me was Erik had already put together an unbelievable schedule from the previous year,” says Anundson. “When it comes to building the program as an independent, we started day one last year together on the phone with different conference commissioners and different head coaches gauging the landscape.”

An Independent Debut

The 2021/2022 season wasn’t the first time UAF had to go it alone. The Nanooks have a history of

operating outside of a conference, dating to the school’s inaugural 1925 hockey season. More recently, the program experienced success as an independent from 1987 until 1994, when it joined the Central Collegiate Hockey Association. Conference realignment swept the nation in 2011, and UAF accepted an invitation to join the WCHA for 2013.

The 2021/2022 season still was a unique undertaking for the Nanooks athletic department. In addition to scheduling games, Largen and support staff had the challenge of scheduling flights, bus rides, hotels, and practice sessions in markets where the program either hadn’t played in a long time or, in some cases, had never visited before. In all, UAF was the most welltraveled college hockey program in the nation last year, playing twenty regular-season away games. They made road trips to Arizona, Colorado, Maine, Minnesota, Nebraska, New York, and Vermont, and they also played an exhibition game against the US National Team Development U18 Program in Michigan.

For Anundson, Largen, and UAF’s players, experiencing different environments was a thrill.

“I know that, being in the WCHA, there was a lot of great competition and some really good teams, but I thought going independent was really cool to get to see a bunch of different schools we’ve never seen before,” says

Trade Shows Are Back

By Christine Merki, Account Manager

Mark your calendars, brush up on your social skills, and grab your lanyard! Trade show season is upon us. Next month, thousands of people from around the globe will file into downtown Anchorage for the trifecta of trade shows. This year’s lineup is being considered a contact sport, aka in-person. What makes a good trade show? People! Organizers are betting attendees will come back in droves for the three major November events:

Alaska Miners Association will host its annual convention at the Dena’ina Center November 6-10. The four-day conference will showcase dozens of vendors and speakers, as well as o er short courses on the minerals industry and Mine Safety and Health Administration courses.

The Annual Alaska General Contractors of Alaska Conference is scheduled for November 9-12 at the Hotel Captain Cook. This group knows how to build—and how to throw a respectable after-hours soiree!

And the 43rd Alaska Resources Conference, hosted by Resource Development Council, is scheduled for November 17-18, also at the Dena’ina Center. It will be teaming with industry leaders and experts on everything it takes to develop and drive resource development and Alaska’s economy.

If you do business with any of these businesses that heavily contribute to the state’s economy, it’s critical to advertise in this edition of the magazine, which is distributed at these events. Ad space

for the November magazine closes on September 20. Contact me or your account manager for rates and to reserve your space.

Christine has worked in Anchorage media for almost 20 years. Her writing talents have earned her top honors as a recipient of the Alaska Broad casters Association Goldie Awards. Her sales and marketing skills have helped countless clients connect with their target audience to achieve annual goals. She unapologetically lures clients in with her homemade raspberry jam and lives with her salmon slaying beau and a ferocious cat named Maggie.

CHRISTINE MERKI 907-257-2911 | cmerki@akbizmag.com

UAF head coach Erik Largen gives instructions on the Nanooks bench.

UAF Athletics

UAA hockey alum Matt Shasby was named the seventh head coach in school history in October 2021.

UAA Athletics

Colin Doyle, a senior forward from Campbellford, Ontario. “I thought it was a great experience going out east to play Maine and Vermont, and I think the New York trip to Long Island was awesome. Seeing New York City was a really cool experience, and then going to Duluth, Minnesota and Denver were really cool arenas with good fans. The barns were really electric there, so it was cool to play in front of fans like that and, at same time, see some pretty cool cities.”

Adds Brady Risk, a sophomore forward from Medicine Hat, Alberta: “Playing the Minnesota Gophers in Minnesota was pretty unreal. They had like 8,000 people there, and then we won and had a great night with the guys.”

Largen, a Fairbanks native and former Nanooks player, sees a bright side to going independent.

“When you’re talking about the student-athlete experience and what you want from that, I think there’s a lot of benefits to now being an independent because during their four years they’re going to get a

The suspension of UAA and UAF hockey programs ended the Nanooks’ eight-year streak of winning the four-game Governor’s Cup series. This season, the teams are scheduled to meet six times.

Todd Paris | UAF

chance to play in a lot of different places,” says Largen. “Outside of the hockey component, the other piece is creating an experience for them, whether that’s seeing the falls in Ithaca or going to NHL games or bowling—we want them to enjoy the

trips and have experiences they can look back on and remember fondly.”

Anchorage’s Ascent

On August 31, 2021, UAA Chancellor Sean Parnell announced that the school’s hockey program succeeded

Sam Wasson | UAA

in its $3 million fundraising goal and would avoid elimination. However, the school still faced challenges after not fielding a hockey team for two seasons. When UAA hockey alum Matt Shasby was announced last October as the seventh head hockey coach in UAA history, the race was on to build a coaching staff, a roster of players, and a game schedule in less than a year.

“I think that’s why they hired when they did—it needed to be done in order for whoever got the job to have a decent-enough time to get ready for the 2022/2023 season,” says Shasby, who played 127 games for the Seawolves from 1999 to 2003.

Unlike Largen and UAF, Shasby was starting from scratch.

“I kind of prioritized the schedule because, obviously, without a schedule, there’s no season,” says Shasby. “I was told most teams’ schedules were built out and that ‘You don’t stand a chance of building out a schedule.’ But I was pleasantly surprised that a lot of teams still had holes.” He managed to assemble a slate that, like UAF, puts the Seawolves on the road throughout the country, even playing six games against club teams, unaffiliated with a school.

There’s no season without players, either, but Shasby was able to point to scheduled games as a selling point when recruiting. The coach is bringing in twelve freshmen in addition to fifteen players joining as transfers.

“We don’t have a single guy from previous tenures. There was a two-year gap and all those players moved on,” says Shasby. “We want that freshman class to be a group of tough kids who know what it takes to persevere and aren’t going to whine when the going gets tough.”

Among the incoming freshmen is Brandon Lajoie of Eagle River, who says he’s always viewed the UAA hockey program as an inspiration. “It was always like, ‘Oh, I want to be like that. I want to do that in the future,’” he says. “It was always an inspiration and a goal in a way.”

Lajoie says he and his teammates understand what they’re up against, but they are excited to show that UAA is still a viable and competitive Division I program.

“I think all of us have a little bit of a chip on our shoulders and that we want to prove something,” says Lajoie. “I think everyone wants to come in and show the whole world, hey, we’re here to play and we’re not here to go away.”

“We don’t have a single guy from previous tenures. There was a two-year gap and all those players moved on… We want that freshman class to be a group of tough kids who know what it takes to persevere and aren’t going to whine when the going gets tough.”

Matt Shasby Head Hockey Coach UAA

Ending years in suspension, the UAA Seawolves return to the ice September 23 against Simon Fraser University. The British Columbia school competes against UAA in basketball, volleyball, cross country running, and track, but the hockey teams have never met before.

WORKING TOGETHER

Humanity’s most important accomplishments are achieved through inclusion and cooperation. Life is about figuring out how to navigate this world together while making it better for everyone. It’s about working together to ensure that what we’re doing today makes for a stronger tomorrow.

Our voice. Our vision.

“It’s nice to have some more games where we have a natural rival, so at least when we’re playing an away game we don’t have to travel so far… we’re going to save on our travel budget, and it’s going to bring in more revenue when they come here because it’s usually one of our higher-attended series of the year.”

Erik Largen Head Hockey Coach UAF

Rivals United

Ask Largen or Shasby about reigniting the UAA/UAF hockey rivalry, and both coaches set their eyes on the Alaska Airlines Governor’s Cup, the annual award to the team that wins more games against each other during the season. Both programs have six meetings scheduled this winter.

“It’s nice to have some more games where we have a natural rival, so at least when we’re playing an away game we don’t have to travel so far,” says Largen. “It’s built-in great attendance, so from a financial perspective… we’re going to save on our travel budget, and it’s going to bring in more revenue when they come here because it’s usually one of our higher-attended series of the year.”

Shasby agrees those in-state games are the biggest in the lineup. “That’s what college sports is all about, having those rivalries,” he says. “We need them to be a successful, thriving program because it’s only going to make us that much better. When we came back, I know Fairbanks and Fairbanks alumni were big supporters of Save the Seawolves. That relationship goes both ways and it’s huge for our program.”

Both UAA and UAF view their independent status as temporary and

aim to join a conference again. Both coaches say their athletic departments are monitoring the landscape of college hockey and weighing potential options. Shasby is also concerned about whether UAA can secure funding to remodel or rebuild the Seawolf Sports Complex rink.

“If we remodel our on-campus rink, then we don’t really have anywhere to play for a year during the remodel,” says Shasby, “so now we’re going to throw into the mix potentially exploring putting a new building on campus. If that’s not the case and we have to play a year in a rink around town, it is what it is.”

Playing an independent season convinced Largen that college hockey in Alaska is a resilient institution.

“No one has a crystal ball—it doesn’t matter how big of a program you are— you don’t know what it’s going to look like twenty years down the road,” Largen says, “but I would be shocked if during my lifetime Alaska Nanook hockey ever went away or wasn’t a strong program. I think there’s too much support in this community and around this campus, and I think hockey is a mainstay in Alaskan sports and culture and I don’t think it’ll ever go away.”

The Alaska Nanooks, in gold, and AlabamaHuntsville Chargers, in blue and white, were left to their own devices when the Western Collegiate Hockey Association dissolved its men’s division in 2019. Alabama-Huntsville suspended its program with no revival in sight.

COMMUNITY MATTERS.

Our community’s greatest resource is our people.

With a mission to unleash the full potential of every neighbor, United Way of Anchorage unites caring people to give, volunteer, and take action to remove barriers to opportunity and help local families access the building blocks of well-being - education, financial stability, and health.

How can you help?

Be a part of United Way’s Community Campaign. When families are strong, our whole community is stronger and more vibrant. Connect with us today to get started, 907.263.3800.

John Sims, President ENSTAR Natural Gas Company

United Way Community Campaign Chair

United Way of Anchorage

In Any Event

How to plan without missing the mark

By Crystal Biringer

Whether it's a baby shower or the Super Bowl, it’s still an event. All events may be different, but what do they have in common? And how can you be sure you have your bases covered?

First things first: if you think because you have planned one event you’ve planned them all, you are sadly in for a rude awakening. At Toast of the Town we have been producing events for a combined forty-plus years, and our experience is that no two are alike. Each has its own distinct identity, look, and feel, which is what makes them something to remember. Your event's identity is important to understand and have fully fleshed out at the beginning of your planning process. Nailing down what the highest value of your event is and who that value targets as attendees is essential.

Orzel Photography

For example, if you are hosting a nonprofit gala with a $3,500 minimum table purchase price, typically you find that the table hosts are corporate executives or private philanthropists who like to attend formal social events. Both typically range from 45 to 65 years old. Of course, there are always exceptions, but planning for the majority and having options for the minority is always the smartest play.

Meet the Demographics

Planning for your attendee demographic can greatly impact your event and how it is designed. There are comforts, considerations, and interests that may change the type of table seating you decide to have, the type of entertainment you decide to host, the time the event is held, and so much more. To make things a little more helpful in spelling this out, we would like to introduce you to our mock personas: Bob the Baby Boomer, Greg the Gen Xer, Molly the Millennial, and Gretchen the Gen Zer.

Bob the Baby Boomer is between 58 and 76 years old. He would prefer a program that starts around 4 p.m. and ends before 9 p.m. He won’t be happy if the event has a reception without the option of seated tables available. Bob will appreciate food and drink options without having to stand in a line such as at a bar line or buffet. Make sure that whatever registration software you use is user-friendly for the less tech savvy and provide printed programs onsite instead of relying on event apps. This way your attendees without smartphones (trust me they are out there) can easily navigate your event when they arrive without the frustration of trying to figure out how to use tech that they are not accustomed to. There are always exceptions to this, and when we generalize like this it's only because we want everyone to be comfortable, confident, and able to enjoy the event.

One of the worst things planners can do is over-complicate their event with hard-to-navigate elements that are unnecessary and create stress for attendees. Something as simple as an event app that you intended to make your event more eco-friendly might not always be the best fit for this demographic.

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Greg the Gen Xer is 42 to 57 years old. He is likely in upper management or a director role within his organization. He appreciates luxury and ease in his events and treats them as a way to get together with business acquaintances and friends in a formal or professional atmosphere. What does that mean in how you design? Simply put, when it comes to the tech, decor, food, and drinks… level up! Social networking time is important to him, so having lots of opportunities for that built into the program will be something he appreciates. Pre- or post-event receptions that give him access to keynote speakers or VIP attendees are high on his radar and thus are a value add to your event.

Molly the Millennial is 26 to 41 years old. She is all about the marketing message and the people that support it. Molly wants to surround herself with movers and shakers that have influence. How do Molly’s needs translate into event planning? Event apps that allow for networking and chat rooms are a great place to start. Molly is drawn to events that look like they are using the most cutting-edge event tech and eco-friendly methods

One of the worst things planners can do is over-complicate their event with hardto-navigate elements that are unnecessary and create stress for attendees. Something as simple as an event app that you intended to make your event more eco-friendly might not always be the best fit.

Pacific Northern Academy’s Illumination Gala in May featured table service for Bob the Baby Boomer, posh decor for Greg the Gen Xer, and a narrative spectacle for Molly the Millennial.

Orzel Photography

Keeping Alaska’s Future Bright and Connected

When we look at the people that make up MTA’s workforce, we see the spirit of Alaska.

Our line crews, engineers, member service teams and more represent the talent and drive that make this state so unique.

MTA’s team has ensured that our members can rely on us for decades to come, and that we will be prepared for whatever life throws at us.

Whether we are connecting Alaskan residents throughout the state, partnering with our communities, or modernizing the way our team works, the focus remains on our people.

In today’s world, the health and education of our communities is dependent on us being connected, and MTA will always remain at their side to make sure Alaskans have what they need.

around. She wants and needs to feel something that is lasting when she leaves the event. Storytelling is important to her, and she expects interactive elements to be built into the event. This is a great opportunity to wow!

Gretchen the Gen Zer is between 18 and 25 years old. She is drawn to events that look like they will greatly impact the world's future. Eco-friendly solutions are a must. Technology heavy event engagement is the way that she will get the most out of your event.

Creating opportunities that allow her and other attendees to contribute to larger collaborative elements during the event is a great way to impact her experience. Recruiting presenters or emcees that have large social media followings and consistently post on their pages pre-event will help to market to people like Gretchen. She wants to spread the message after she leaves because she was really connected to what was presented at the event—and as a planner, you should give her every modern tool to do that.

But Wait a Second…

What if Bob, Greg, Molly, and Gretchen are all at the same event? How do you manage planning for that?

Plan for it all. Look at the areas that overlap and do both. For example, handle registration with easy-to-use software that Bob can navigate; the app is available but he doesn’t have to use it. Also, printed programs are available onsite for those who want them. Select speakers and emcees who have large social media followings and promote the event through various social platforms. Make a pre-event reception available at an additional ticket level, giving those who want to attend more access to speakers and networking time. Provide food and drink via table service and/or pre-made and grab-and-go, depending on your event style. Recycle bins are frequently present, and reusable water bottles are provided. There are event app chat rooms available while the event is live, showing a list of all the attendees, and lounge-style environments are created for all other networking and breakout environments. The event ends with a story that ties into the opening presentation to really leave an impression. Provide a tangible item to attendees to take with them, and something that ties in with your marketing message to help them to remember that message every time they look at it.

It can be intimidating, but people host events for a reason, and that reason is that it's more impactful and memorable than traditional marketing alone, such as a card in the mail. Ask yourself, how many events can you remember and how many cards can you remember? Events are an experience that can last a lifetime.

Founded

Crystal Biringer is president of Toast of the Town, an event planning and management agency in Anchorage.

in 2015, the leadership team has more than forty years of combined experience in event design, management, and consulting throughout the Pacific Northwest.

If Greg the Gen Xer attended the Science of Reading Symposium in April, he would’ve appreciated a chance to chat with Carey Wright, then-superintendent of education for Mississippi, after she delivered her keynote address.

Orzel Photography

We Bank On Alaskans

At Northrim, we focus on serving the unique needs of Alaska and our neighbors who live here. We provide customized solutions to power your business, including specialized products such as fully FDIC insured sweep options and competitive analyzed accounts. See how a Northrim expert can help your business achieve more.

Data Castles

Next-gen firewalls and managed IT security

By Tracy Barbour

As a growing company with locations across a wide geographical area, Alaska Rubber Group (ARG) thrives on employing top-of-the-line technology. The Anchorage-based business has made a huge, successful push with digital transformation over the past few years. Having a solid and secure IT infrastructure allows ARG to give customers access to services when, where, and how they need them. It also enables the company’s remote employees to connect and communicate consistently across teams scattered throughout Alaska, Washington, and Oregon.

But none of this would be possible without the help of a good IT provider, says Mike Mortensen, CEO and president of ARG, a supplier of belts, hoses, and ropes to the oil and gas, mining, fishing, timber, agriculture, marine, and construction industries. “Because of the tools we have deployed the last few years, it has really brought our company together and helped us streamline processes and procedures,” he says.

ARG relies on a range of managed services provided by Arctic IT to support its complex computer network and growth-oriented strategy.

“Having a partner like Arctic IT— which is not only servicing us with the tools we need today but is looking around the corner for what’s coming, partnering with us and understanding our vision, and coming to the table to provide ideas and solutions to help us prepare for growth—has been key to us,” Mortensen says.

Many organizations like ARG are integrating the latest technology to protect their network, information, and other assets. They’re using nextgeneration or next-gen firewalls (NGFWs) that not only filter network traffic but incorporate more complex functions—deep packet inspection (DPI), intrusion prevention systems, virtual private networks (VPNs), content filtering, and secure sockets layer (SSL)/ transport layer security inspection— to help IT administrators monitor and respond to security threats. This advanced technology, often facilitated by third-party providers, is helping companies detect suspicious activity and block modern threats like advanced

malware before they can have a negative impact.

Important Features

Every business should have a firewall installed, but with the increasing threat landscape, it’s now even more important to leverage the increased security provided by a next-gen firewall, says Erik Fredrickson, program manager for information security at Alaska Communications. “Nextgen firewalls offer greater security protection flexibility than a traditional firewall by protecting devices from a much broader spectrum of threats,” he says.

Conventional firewalls are primarily limited to information contained on the hardware itself and rigid rules for classifying traffic, including internet protocol (IP) address and IP port. Using these methods, it’s difficult or impossible to allow valid business applications while blocking known threats. “Hence, traditional firewall rulesets can be more vulnerable to dynamic attacks that take advantage of common port/protocol openings found in all organizations, such as those that allow standard web traffic,” Fredrickson says. “The static rulesets in traditional firewalls also create an endless stream of

change requests

“Because of the tools we have deployed the last few years, it has really brought our company together and helped us streamline processes and procedures.”

Mike Mortensen President and CEO Alaska Rubber Group

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TIPS TO MAXIMIZE YOUR NEXT-GEN FIREWALL

Make sure the firewall product you choose can perform in your environment with all the services turned on. Don’t try to save money by picking and choosing features.

Train staff or engage in professional managed security services to ensure proper configuration. Otherwise, they can lead to a false sense of security.

Make sure as much network traffic as possible is going through the next-gen firewall. Its advanced features provide the maximum value if all data goes through the firewall. Don’t set it and forget it. Security is never-ending.

Next-gen firewalls do not replace other security measures. They shine as part of a comprehensive security strategy.

Source: Erik Fredrickson, Program Manager, Information Security for Alaska Communications

that consume significant amounts of a security team's time.”

A next-generation firewall has all the features of a standard firewall, but it also uses many resources outside of the firewall, such as threat intelligence feeds. “Next-gen firewalls have the ability to perform DPI, which is inspecting the contents of the IP packet instead of just the packet header,” Fredrickson says. “Since the contents of the packets are known, DPI allows administrators to apply additional security, such as data loss prevention rules by searching for specific patterns or data sets.”

With this sophisticated technique, next-gen firewalls compare packets— which comprise user data and control information—to databases containing application identifications. Organizations can then define which applications to allow or deny in their network environment as well as assign appropriate access to users and groups inside and outside the organization. Next-gen firewalls also can compare packet contents to databases containing threat IDs.

In essence, a next-generation firewall builds upon existing firewall technology to deliver an improved set of features. This allows the firewall to detect and block malicious traffic, allow or restrict connectivity to specific applications, and decrypt SSL traffic in transit, according to Mitch Kitter, director of security architecture and planning at GCI.

“While traditional firewalls allow for protections at a port level, they are unable to monitor applicationlevel traffic,” Kitter says. “NGFWs do, however, have the ability to be aware of the content transmitted to and from applications. This enables organizations to have stronger protection against malware and viruses that may be hiding within applications or web pages.”

Ideally, next-gen firewalls should understand modern protocols and web applications and process traffic beyond traditional, stateful packet inspection, says Kuda Mazorodze, Arctic IT’s security operations manager. Typical NGFW capabilities include intrusion detection and prevention, softwaredefined wide-area network, content filtering, advanced malware protection,

domain name system filtering integration, remote access VPN, and site-to-site VPN. In Alaska, the most common advanced firewall features Mazorodze is seeing are site-to-site and remote access VPN, content filtering, and intrusion prevention.

One of the main benefits of nextgeneration firewalls is their ability to handle modern web 2.0 applications that otherwise would be invisible to a traditional firewall, Mazorodze says. Businesses can define granular rules to govern network traffic. “This could include prioritizing business communication protocols like video/ voice conferencing and identifying and deprioritizing traffic that a business may consider non-essential,” he says. “Traffic management in this manner helps with maintaining the availability of key business resources and maintaining productivity.”

NGFWs also offer network-level protection against harmful code/ applications by filtering out dangerous or inappropriate content before it reaches endpoints—such as a laptop, mobile phone, server, or virtual environment. “This is essential because many cyber criminals have turned to encryption to hide their nefarious activities,” Mazorodze says, “but thanks to SSL inspection on next-generation firewalls, companies can scan encrypted traffic [and find threats] to stop security evasion by encryption.”

Threat Intelligence and Geo-IP Filtering

Businesses are layering various sophisticated firewall technology to protect their information, network security, and reputation. Real-time threat intelligence and user and event behavior analysis (UEBA), for example, are increasingly valuable tools. “Threat intel feeds can be used to populate dynamic lists of known bad IP addresses and domains, which are then used in rules that block or restrict highrisk traffic automatically,” Fredrickson says. As for UEBA, he explains that it “learns your digital behavior and will flag anomalies. For example, your employees might always use the same four web applications to perform their jobs. If an employee starts suddenly using a different application, the UEBA system will send a flag, and the next-

“Next-gen

Erik Fredrickson, Program Manager for Information Security, Alaska Communications

gen firewall can perform an automated action, such as allow or deny use.”

Another popular technology is GeoIP filtering, which allows businesses to scrutinize traffic from places that are known for launching cyberattacks. For instance, if a company only conducts business in the United States, it could set a protocol to block incoming traffic from Russia or China.

Companies are also adopting multifactor authentication (MFA) and identity management services for everything from online banking to social media activities. MFA dramatically enhances security because it grants users access to a network, system, or application only after confirming their identity with multiple credentials, such as a password, token, or biometrics. When enabled, MFA blocks 99.9 percent of automated cyber attacks, according to Microsoft.

In addition, remote work is accelerating the use of technology advancements. With many workloads transitioning to cloud environments and more people working from home, several related technologies support cloud workloads and a remote workforce, according to Kitter. They are secure access service edge (SASE), cloud access security broker (CASB), and zero trust network access (ZTNA). SASE represents a cloud-based network architecture for delivering secure access for users and devices. CASB enables firms to have greater control of their data as it transits in and out of cloud environments like Dropbox or Microsoft’s O365. ZTNA functions like a VPN but with user, application, and device specific controls.

Businesses are also integrating modern security solutions with endpoint detection and response. A prime example is Microsoft Defender for Endpoint. The security platform combines antivirus, antimalware, ransomware mitigation, and other forms of threat protection with centralized management and reporting to create advanced protection.

Leveraging External Resources

Finding and keeping skilled cybersecurity personnel to capitalize on NGFWs and other high-tech security features can be both challenging and

expensive. However, partnering with a managed service provider like Arctic IT, Alaska Communications, or GCI can give companies access to mature technologies.

Take, for example, the partnership between Alaska Safety Alliance and Arctic IT. The small nonprofit has relied on the managed solutions and technical expertise of Arctic IT for the past seven years. “We are not IT experts, but we offer fairly technical services,” says Alaska Safety Alliance Executive Director Cari-Ann Carty. “Having Arctic IT there has been really crucial to us delivering successfully to our customers.”

Arctic IT gives customers access to Cisco Meraki next-gen firewalls that are capable of up to layer 7 or application visibility into network traffic. Traditional firewalls only analyze traffic at layers 3 and 4. “The Cisco Meraki cloud-based console helps consolidate network and security management in one place, which eases deployment management,” Mazorodze says. “We believe that security can be likened to the layers of an onion, and nextgeneration firewalls are only one part of the layers. Security no longer starts and ends at the perimeter, and we believe in taking the zero-trust approach by authenticating devices, users, apps, et cetera.”

There’s no silver bullet when it comes to protecting a business, Fredrickson says. Today’s threats require more than just a next-gen firewall, which is why Alaska Communications also emphasizes layers of security.

Security products can seem overwhelming and unattainable for businesses, Fredrickson says. That’s why many companies opt to work with a trusted partner who can devise a solution suited to their unique needs and budget. “When selecting a provider, look for a partner who understands your business and industry,” he advises. “The more invested your partner is in your business, the better the outcome. In addition to a trusted partner for security services, we recommend having a third-party security audit at least once per year. We recommend outside audits to our managed security customers.”

“Many cyber criminals have turned to encryption to hide their nefarious activities, but thanks to SSL inspection on next-generation firewalls, companies can scan encrypted traffic [and find threats] to stop security evasion by encryption.”

Kuda Mazorodze Security Operations Manager Arctic IT

Undergraduate Patty McCall works with Fisheries Professor Trent Sutton, right, and master’s candidate Nick Smith collecting live samples from the Chena River for their research on the life dynamics of Arctic brook lampreys.

On the Hook!

A roster of sports fish in Alaska’s Interior

By Alexandra Kay

Homer has its halibut, the Kenai its kings, Bristol Bay is famous for its sockeye, and Southeast harvests herring. Far from Alaska’s 6,640 miles of coastline, though, anglers find plenty of opportunities for sport fishing. The Alaska Department of Fish & Game (ADF&G) counts an average of nearly 102,000 resident angler days each year in the Arctic/ Yukon/Kuskokwim region, plus more than 44,000 non-resident angler days. And they’re not snagging salmon—at least, they have plenty of other options. Region III, which encompasses about 80 percent of the state, is home to thirty-seven freshwater and brackish water fish species, of which several are targeted as sport fish.

There’s burbot, referred to as the poor man’s lobster, an eel-looking fish with mottled skin ranging from black to gray to olive or even yellow. It’s popular with sport fishers mainly for its flavor. It is the only freshwater species of cod, which may be why it’s so good to eat. Unlike other freshwater fish, burbot spawn in midto-late winter, which makes them active during ice fishing season. “A lot of people use set lines for burbot in the winter,” says Andrew Gryska, Tanana area biologist for ADF&G. A relatively long-lived and slow-growing fish, burbot typically average three to five pounds, with some fish getting up to about eight pounds, which is not uncommon in the Yukon and

Andy Gryska

ADF&G

Tanana rivers. Burbot live in rivers, both clear and glacial, and in many lakes throughout Alaska, but not in Southeast. The largest burbot sport fisheries occur in the Tanana River and lakes in the upper Tanana, Upper Copper, and Upper Susitna river drainages.

Sheefish, the largest member of the whitefish family, can travel up to 1,000 miles in a year looking for food, spawning sites, and spots to overwinter. Found in large northern rivers and lakes, sheefish are large white or silver colored fish without spots or other markings and have a lower jaw that extends beyond the upper one and a mouth full of small, densely packed teeth. “Sometimes called the tarpon of the north, sheefish are big and aggressive,” says Brendan Scanlon, Northwest and North Slope

area biologist for the ADF&G Division of Sport Fish. “The state record for one is fifty-three pounds, and there are several places where you can catch fifteen- to thirty-pound fish pretty easily.” Sheefish can grow more than 3 feet long and spawn multiple times over their thirty-year lifespan.

“The Native population does a lot of sheefish fishing, and those are more found in the Northwestern Interior more than the Central Interior,” says ADF&G spokesman Tim Mowry. “We do have them in local rivers but not as abundant as some of the other rivers farther up.”

Some Lesser-caught Fish

Least cisco is a slender, medium-sized fish that gets up to about 19 inches long and is generally caught via spearfishing,

says Gryska. It’s typically brownish to dark black with silvery sides and belly. They can be found in the Yukon and Kuskokwim River drainages as well as in most lakes and streams north of the Alaska Range and from the Arctic coast to Bristol Bay.

Humpback whitefish is distinguished from other whitefishes by the hump behind the head of the adult fish. It’s a medium-sized fish that can grow to about 26 inches long. Another spearfishing fish, it’s typically dark brown to midnight blue dorsally, fades to silver on its sides, and has a white belly. It can be found throughout several water bodies within the Yukon River, Kuskokwim River, Tanana River, Kvichak River, Susitna River, Copper River drainages, as well as the Alsek River near Yakutat. Humpback

An Arctic char, which are the northernmost freshwater fish in the world.

Andy Gryska | ADF&G

whitefish have been known to spawn under ice in the Kuskokwim River as late as mid-November.

Broad whitefish is, well, broader than other whitefish species. It has an elongated body and silvery scales and typically weighs up to eleven pounds. It can be found in Alaska’s freshwater drainages of the Bering Sea, including the Yukon and Kuskokwim, and the drainages of the Chukchi Sea and the Arctic Ocean. Broad whitefish is generally spearfished and is an important subsistence fish in Alaska.

Round whitefish have rounded cigarlike bodies and pointed snouts. These fish rarely exceed 24 inches in length. They inhabit almost every type of river and freshwater habitat north of the Alaska Range.

The Grand Slam

The poster child for sportfishing in Alaska is the Dolly Varden, currently the featured image on the main page of the ADF&G website. Unless it’s a picture of an Arctic char; the twin species are very similar to each other, and both are related to salmon. Dolly Varden are found everywhere in Alaska, says Scanlon, but “the biggest are found in the north and west part of the state.” They live in coastal areas and in streams in the Interior and the Brooks Range. There are two types of Dolly Varden in Alaska, a southern form and a northern form, which can get much larger, and they vary in color depending on age and habitat. Dolly Varden, named for a Charles Dickens character who wore a bright printed dress, can grow to more than 30 inches in length and weigh up to twenty-seven pounds, which is the state record. “They’re really interesting,” notes Scanlon. “They go to sea and come back, but they don’t spawn and die like salmon do. They live to spawn several times over their lifetime.”

Arctic char are the northernmost freshwater fish in the world. They are somewhat larger than Dolly Varden and have fewer and larger spots. They vary in color depending on the time of year and their environmental conditions and can grow up to 38 inches long and weigh up to thirty pounds. They spawn annually or every other year, and when spawning their lower body and lower fins are orange to red in color, with males more colorful than females.

Arctic char are found in lakes in the Brooks Range, the Kigluaik Mountains north of Nome, the Kuskokwim Mountains, the Alaska Peninsula, Kenai Peninsula, Kodiak Island, and in a small area of Interior Alaska near Denali Park. ADF&G does not consider Arctic char as important a sport fish as Dolly Varden, which has greater numbers across a wider area.

Rainbow trout is another salmon cousin that anglers prize for its fighting ability. While they occur naturally in the fresh waters of Upper Cook Inlet, the Kenai Peninsula, on Kodiak Island, and in the Copper River drainage, they’re hatchery-reared in other places in the state. “What sets the Interior apart is we don’t have native stocks of rainbow trout,” says Mowry. “All of the rainbow trout is stocked by our fisheries.” In 2012, a hatchery was built in Fairbanks, and those fish are used to stock more than 120 lakes in the Interior several times a year. There are two kinds of rainbow trout in Alaska: a streamresident type that lives entirely in freshwater with maybe short periods in estuarine or near-shore marine waters, and steelhead, which migrate to the ocean to mature before returning to their home waters. Rainbow trout get their name from a reddish stripe along their sides, blending with their bluegreen dorsal sides and silvery bellies, though exact coloration depends on habitat, age, and sex. Trout also have small black spots covering their backs, upper fins, and tails. In the Interior, stocked rainbow trout rarely exceed 20 inches long.

Lake trout are closely related to rainbow trout and similar in shape, but their coloration is different: irregularlyshaped yellow or cream spots on a dark background. Lake trout typically grow to about twenty-five pounds, but they can be larger—the current record is fortyseven pounds. Lake trout are broadly distributed in northern and southern Alaska, but they are not found in the Yukon River basin. Unlike rainbow trout, lake trout spawn in the fall rather than spring, and these fish can live a long time. “Some of our oldest fish on the North Slope can be fifty years old,” says Scanlon, and ADF&G has recorded one individual that lived for sixty-two years. In deep, cold lakes, there’s a chance to catch a really large lake trout.

Arctic grayling are one of the fish that attract anglers both from within and outside Alaska.

Andy Gryska ADF&G

An Arctic grayling, the most widely found fish in Alaska’s interior.

Andy Gryska | ADF&G

Arctic grayling is the most widely found fish in Alaska’s interior. “They’re well-adapted to the situations here,” says Gryska. It’s this species that attracts so many of Alaska’s anglers, both those from within the state and those who travel to fly fish for the species known as the sailfish of the north. Relatives of salmon that never leave freshwater, Arctic grayling can live for more than thirty years and grow up to two feet in length and weigh just over five pounds. Its most distinctive feature is a large, sail-like dorsal fin. According to ADF&G, fly fishers won’t find Arctic grayling in Southeast Alaska or Kodiak Island (unless it’s stocked) or in the Aleutians, but it has the largest natural range of any sport fish and occupies nearly the whole mainland.

The only non-salmonid among the top inland sport fish, northern

pike can be found in the Yukon, Tanana, and Kuskokwim rivers and all the way to the Arctic coast, from the Canadian border to the Seward Peninsula and southwest to the Bristol Bay drainages. “Northern pike are a voracious fish,” says Mowry. “They like to eat, so they’re always foraging, and people can catch big pike here.” Mowry says illegally stocked Northern pike have become a pest in some areas of the state, but that’s not the case in the Interior. Sometimes called a water wolf, northern pike have an elongated body and head, a broad snout shaped somewhat like a duck bill, and many sharp teeth which are constantly replaced. It has a single, soft-rayed dorsal fin located far back on its body. A northern pike can grow for twenty years, reaching four feet in length and up to forty pounds, with

the female growing larger than the male.

Along with the five species of Pacific salmon, these six fish are considered the Grand Slam for Alaska fishermen. Anyone who catches a Dolly Varden, Arctic char, rainbow trout, lake trout, Arctic grayling, and northern pike, as well as a king, silver, red, pink, and chum salmon has achieved the summit of Alaska sport fishing. Crystal Creek Lodge in King Salmon advertises a week-long package during a window in July when all eleven species are present in the region, and any guest who achieves a Grand Slam within that week is duly honored.

Less ambitious anglers can be satisfied knowing that Alaska’s 3,000 streams and 3 million lakes, far from saltwater, offer a lifetime supply of worthy opponents.

While the Kenai Peninsula and Katmai area earn top ranks from fly fishing experts, the Yukon River drainage is also a recommended destination for northern pike and sheefish.

Andy Gryska | ADF&G

The foundation of Calista Corporation is our people. We are proud of their dedication and hard work to provide economic opportunities and infrastructure in rural Alaska communities.

Jeanie Gusty/Yukon Equipment/ Rural Alaska Sales

Alaska Native Corporations

The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) was signed late in 1971 and paved the way for Alaska Native regional, village, and urban corporations to organize. While 2021 saw the 50th anniversary of the act itself, many of the corporations that were the result of the legislation date their creation anywhere from 1972 to 1974—and a few even later, as some early corporations merged to better meet the needs of their shareholders.

Considering the time and energy devoted to crafting the landmark act, it’s fitting to celebrate it and the corporations for more than one year.

One of the corporations celebrating half a century of operations in 2022 is Calista Corporation, whose land entitlement in the Yukon-Kuskokwim River Delta comprises 6.5 million acres, approximately 10 percent of Alaska’s entire land area and roughly equivalent in size to the state of New York. Most of this land is “split estate,” an arrangement in which Calista has rights to the subsurface estate and each of the fiftysix villages in the region has rights to the surface.

It's been leveraging those lands, in addition to its allocation of funds from ANCSA, to see some phenomenal growth in five decades.

After fifty years, Calista is celebrating several significant milestones: in 2022 the corporation reached a total lifetime distribution of $100 million in

dividends to its shareholders, and in 2021 the corporation had record revenue and profits, “which was pretty good in terms of the challenges we faced during the pandemic,” according to President and CEO Andrew Guy. At Calista, Guy explains, “We’re a pretty team-focused company, so a lot of our workers are encouraged to—and do— work as a team.” When the pandemic hit, the corporation focused on keeping a team approach while physically separated and teleworking.

Calista saw an opportunity in learning how to work differently during the pandemic, so it plans to keep a hybrid approach to its workspaces. “We know a lot of our employees do more and are more productive teleworking without office distractions,” Guy says, “but we still have projects

where we need employees to be there [in the office], so we will continue to do both.”

The corporation plans to build on the success it has already found, and Guy says it has recently acquired three new companies to continue its expansion in the tech market. “We continue to expand the areas that we know that we’re good at, and

Calista

that’s what we’ll be doing this year,” he says.

Calista is just one highlight among many when surveying ANCSA corporations and Alaska Native businesses. Updates on all twelve of the regional corporations and many of the village corporations can be found in the following pages. Beyond the ANCSA corporations, many Alaska Native individuals have taken great strides, as well, such as Hope Roberts, founder and owner of Surreel Saltwaters, who describes her journey to find a place in business and in her culture in “Marine Mammal Huntress.” She of course is not alone in her efforts to maintain Alaska Native culture, and in “Preserving Alaska Native Languages” we explore what’s being done to keep traditional Alaska dialects active.

Our special section also looks at Alaska Native corporations in the construction industry in “Solid Foundations.” In part because of the Small Business Administration 8(a) program, which allows minority-owned companies to participate in set-aside and solesource government contracting, the construction industry has been a launching point for many ANCSA corporation subsidiaries. In fact, every one of the twelve regional corporations has a connection to this industry, as do many of the village and urban corporations.

And finally, “One City, Two Capitals” looks at the efforts of Sealaska Heritage Institute to perpetuate the Indigenous cultures of the Panhandle and establish Juneau as the capital of Northwest Coast art.

Across the board, when we reach out to Alaska Native corporations, small business owners, and nonprofit organizations, we get reports on growth. As we take stock of fifty years of operations, we look forward with great anticipation to the next fifty.

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Alaska’s Big Twelve

An update on ANCSA regional corporations

By Vanessa Orr

June 2022 was a big month for golden anniversaries. All twelve Alaska Native regional corporations marked their 50th birthdays, six months after they celebrated the anniversary of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act that authorized them. The past halfcentury has seen all twelve—and a few village corporations—grow into the largest Alaskan-owned companies, mostly outpacing the revenue of the richest Lower 48 tribe (the Shakopee Mdewakanton Sioux Community in Minnesota, though it splits earnings among less than 800 members). Heading into the next half century, the corporations are exploring new ways to increase revenue, fill top positions, and ensure that they protect their lands, their shareholders, and their descendants.

AHTNA

In 2021, Ahtna continued a multiyear trend of financial success.

Ahtna’s revenues and profits reached the second-highest total in its history, eclipsed only by 2020. In the first half of 2022, Ahtna exceeded budgeted earnings while keeping expenses down. Ahtna, representing the Copper River region, remains focused on increasing shareholder hire and corporate equity in its collaboration with other major companies. Ahtna Marine & Construction Company (AMCC) entered into a mentorprotégé joint venture with a marine construction company and is now executing environmental dredging and dam construction projects for the US Army Corps of Engineers. Last year, as a tribute to the late Ahtna elder and subsistence rights leader Katie John, AMCC unveiled a new dredging vessel bearing her name, which enables the company to bid for jobs beyond the US Coast Guard’s offshore demarcation line. While Ahtna enabled its employees to work from home at the onset of the pandemic, it is currently taking a

CIRI and its partner Maple Springs Living opened a new assisted living facility in South Anchorage in July of 2022.

DOYON signed an agreement with Wiseman Metals to search for gold, silver, copper, and zinc in the northern Interior.

KONIAG increased shareholder benefits for the Kodiak region, including a $2.1 million contribution to the shareholder settlement trust.

NANA approved spending $660,000 toward construction of a new village store in Deering.

SEALASKA extended eligibility for Class D (descendant) stock to descendants whose blood quantum is less than one-quarter.

AHTNA remains focused on increasing shareholder hire and corporate equity in its collaboration with other major companies.

ASRC was ranked 131st on Forbes' annual list of America's largest private companies at the end of 2021.

BBNC surpassed its highest revenue year in FY2022, earning just shy of $2.2 billion. BSNC experienced its 18th year of positive financial growth and paid a $1,500 bonus to its elders.

CALISTA passed a milestone of $100 million in lifetime distributions to shareholders in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region.

ALEUT CORPORATION defined a tactical growth strategy for the next five years and established a new strategic ten-year revenue and income goal.

CHUGACH ALASKA sold 6.4 million carbon credits in 2020 and 2021, generating nearly $70 million in net proceeds.

Affairs

cautious and measured approach to having employees return to its offices.

ARCTIC SLOPE REGIONAL CORPORATION (ASRC)

Approaching $4 billion in annual revenues, ASRC has established itself as the largest Alaskan-owned and operated company and was ranked 131st on Forbe s' annual list of America's largest private companies at the end of 2021. ASRC distributed $87.5 million in dividends, or $60 per share, and achieved record revenues and its second highest adjusted earnings, up $34 million from 2020. COVID-19 imposed a suspension of acquisitive growth during 2020 and 2021 and limited support for growth capital expenditures, yet ASRC invested $115.3 million in capital projects and smaller strategic acquisitions. These acquisitions and capital investments now represent approximately 55 percent of ASRC's consolidated adjusted earnings and are a large component of its dividends. ASRC plans to pursue additional acquisitive growth in 2022 and has a sizeable contract backlog, and early indicators are showing a strong 2022.

BERING STRAITS NATIVE CORPORATION (BSNC)

In fiscal year 2022 (FY2022), BSNC achieved a record-high half a billion dollars in revenue and record-high shareholder dividends: $6 million, including a $1,500 bonus for elders. In an impressive turnaround from the Nome-based corporation’s difficult early years, 2022 was the 18th year BSNC accomplished positive financial results. Construction continues to be one of BSNC’s fastest growing segments, helped by the acquisition in October 2021 of Central Environmental Inc. and four related sister companies, Central Recycling Services, C. I. Contractors, Environmental Management Inc., and Concrete Coring Company. Coupled with the May 2020 acquisition of Northwest Contracting, construction services continue to be a focus area for growth as BSNC leverages government contracting advantages. In November 2021 BSNC promoted shareholder Miriam

COMING SOON

Aarons to vice president of corporate communications and announced in June 2022 the hiring of Kim Cunningham as chief financial officer.

BRISTOL BAY NATIVE CORPORATION (BBNC)

According to president and CEO Jason Metrokin, BBNC surpassed its highest revenue year in FY2022, earning just shy of $2.2 billion. The company expects to have a similarly strong year in FY2023, which began April 1, but continues to monitor what’s going on around the globe in terms of the war in Ukraine, government spending, and continued concern around COVID-19. Metrokin credits BBNC’s success to its diversified portfolio. In the government contracting sector, BBNC benefited from increased federal spending, such as medical and military facilities. Seafood had a great year, with this summer’s wild sockeye catch surpassing last year’s record harvest of nearly 42 million fish. Tourists are returning to Bristol Bay for bear viewing and fishing, as well. BBNC recently acquired

Fairbanks-based general contractor GHEMM Company to add to its industrial services business line.

In October 2021, board chairman Joseph Chythlook stepped down from that position, remaining on the board, and longtime board member Russell Nelson became the new chairman. BBNC continues to monitor the uncertainly around the Pebble Mine project, including the EPA’s decision on the 404 Clean Water Act Permit, which is expected to occur later this year.

CALISTA CORPORATION

Calista shareholder enrollment continues to grow, and the company recently passed a milestone of $100 million in lifetime distributions to shareholders in the YukonKuskokwim Delta region. Yulista Holding, Calista’s main holding line, hosted an open house at its new Alabama headquarters in Redstone Gateway, near Huntsville, in November 2021. In June 2022, Yulista added to its aerospace and defense holdings by acquiring Troy7, a woman-owned small

business specializing in missile and aerospace engineering. Additionally, Yulista acquired Demil Transport Services (DTS) in June 2021. DTS is a trusted leader in range sustainment and provides services specializing in range residue recycling and range maintenance, adding to Yulista’s existing range operations and maintenance capabilities. In 2022, Calista is working to attract new business acquisition opportunities to continue growth while working to mitigate the economic impacts of the pandemic.

CHUGACH ALASKA

Chugach Alaska delivered recordbreaking profits for shareholders in 2020 and 2021. The $43 million in operating profit and $54.9 million in net income for 2021 is second only to 2020’s record operating profit and net income of $93 million and $93.4 million, respectively. The decline from 2020 to 2021 is mainly attributed to the expected decrease in carbon credit offset (CCO) sales as its stock of carbon credits tapers off. Chugach Alaska sold

6.4 million CCOs in 2020 and 2021, generating nearly $70 million in net proceeds and a $16.6 million tax benefit for the region, which spans the coast from the tip of the Kenai Peninsula to Cordova. The corporation is still trying to resolve subsurface split estates with the federal government. Although well past the 18-month deadline for the federal government to identify land exchange options in consultation with Chugach, the company remains engaged to ensure the spirit and intent of this legislation is followed.

Chugach Alaska is building a diversified portfolio by exploring investment opportunities in privately held businesses, private equity, and real estate. In 2021, Chugach announced three leadership appointments: shareholder Peter Andersen was promoted to president of Chugach Commercial Holdings; Angie Astle was appointed president of Chugach Investment Holdings; and Scott Davis was appointed president of Chugach Government Solutions, leading eleven subsidiaries with 4,000 employees. Chugach Alaska distributed $24.2 million in federal CARES Act

funds to shareholders, shareholderowned businesses, and other nonprofit and tribal entities statewide.

COOK INLET REGION INCORPORATED (CIRI)

CIRI delivered exceptional financial performance in the past year and continues to engage in projects and investments that provide long-term value and benefits for the corporation’s shareholders and descendants. In the fall of 2021, CIRI worked with its affiliated nonprofits to distribute federal CARES Act relief funds. The corporation’s $111.8 million share was directed to Native healthcare, child and elder needs, homelessness and housing instability, workforce re-entry, and family impacts from the pandemic. CIRI and its partner Maple Springs Living opened a new assisted living facility in South Anchorage in July of 2022, and in September CIRI marks the 10th anniversary of its Fire Island Wind project. New programs for shareholders and descendants are intended to provide cultural and education benefits

and strengthen connections between CIRI stakeholders and their culture and heritage for a diverse group of cultures and ages. Sarah Lukin joined the CIRI executive team in June of 2021 as the corporation’s chief strategy officer.

DOYON, LIMITED

The regional corporation for the Interior had total revenue and operating income of $283 million in FY2021 and net income of $37 million after taxes. Doyon hired 316 shareholders throughout the country and paid $22.1 million in shareholder wages. Doyon distributed an annual dividend in December of $1,425 for the typical shareholder with 100 units, plus an additional payment in May 2022 of $1,287 in mineral revenue. Exploration for new mine prospects continued in the eastern Interior and at the Flat project in the Upper Kuskokwim region, and in June the company signed an agreement with Wiseman Metals to search for gold, silver, copper, and zinc in the northern Interior. Doyon also more than doubled its investment in Tectonic Metals and now owns nearly

a quarter of the Canadian company exploring the Goodpaster mining district. Doyon partnered with Hilcorp for a third summer of oil and gas exploration in the Yukon Flats.

The company also created a carbon offset program with its Lands Department utilizing 235,000 acres of Doyon land. The program establishes partnerships with companies to offset emissions by utilizing tree coverage, providing revenue for Doyon while highlighting the value of the boreal forest. Doyon also formed a tourism joint venture with Huna Totem Corporation named Na-Dena’, which immediately acquired 80 percent of Alaska Independent Coach Tours. The joint venture is also developing a cruise ship dock at Klawock, hoping to replicate Huna Totem’s success in Hoonah, with the first port calls scheduled next summer.

KONIAG

According to Koniag President Shauna Hegna, this fiscal year looks to be one its best ever, continuing

Koniag’s trend of year-over-year growth. Koniag’s recent growth allowed it to increase shareholder benefits for the Kodiak region, including a $2.1 million contribution to the shareholder settlement trust. Approximately 98 percent of Koniag’s revenue is generated by its operating companies, and much of the growth is driven by the government services sector. Koniag added three Alaska-based companies to its energy and water sector in the past couple of years: TecPro in June 2021; Great Northern Engineering in February 2021; and Big G Electric & Engineering in October 2020. Hegna says tourism is starting to rebound from the pandemic, and bookings at Koniag’s Kodiak Brown Bear Center now exceed pre-pandemic levels. In 2022, Koniag expects to see its earnings grow through organic growth in sectors and acquisitions, and the company remains optimistic about the future.

NANA

NANA is completing its first year under a new president and CEO, former

state legislator John Aġnaqłuk Lincoln. The Kotzebue High School graduate had been working for NANA since 2016, most recently as vice president for external affairs. Stepping into that role, as of February, was Elizabeth Saagulik Hensley, former general counsel for Maniilaq Association, the health and social services nonprofit for the NANA region. Maniilaq’s former CFO, Lucy Aŋasuk Nelson, also joined the NANA leadership team as vice president in charge of administration. The third new vice president named in February was Sandra “Sandy” Salaktuna Kowalski, formerly assistant superintendent of Northwest Arctic Borough School District, now overseeing NANA’s shareholder relations.

NANA paid $18.5 million last fall for its FY2021 dividend to more than 15,000 shareholders, matched by a $1,200 bonus to elders under a program established in 2008. This spring saw another $10.8 million dividend. “Higher fuel, food, and other costs are impacting NANA’s shareholders wherever they live,” says board chair Utuktauraq Ely Cyrus. “The board is

grateful that NANA’s strong financial position makes this dividend possible.”

The board also approved spending $660,000 toward construction of a new village store in Deering, $715,000 to buy six 10,000-gallon tanks for a new fuel storage facility in Ambler, and $260,868 for construction labor in Kobuk. NANA is entering the last decade of revenue from Red Dog Mine, expected to cease operations in 2031, but the corporation has prepared by diversifying into facility maintenance, engineering, construction, and government contracting.

SEALASKA

Sealaska’s business platform is based on contributing to the health of oceans through sustainably produced seafood, environmental remediation, construction, and engineering to address coastal erosion and other impacts caused by rising sea levels, as well as seismic and other seafloor engineering to support offshore wind energy development. In 2022, the company acquired three companies

with expertise in ocean health: IceMar, AG Seafood, and Causeway Geotech.

In June 2022, Sealaska shareholders voted to extend eligibility for Class D (descendant) stock to descendants whose blood quantum is less than one-quarter. (The previous standard was one-quarter or more Alaska Native blood, as documented by the Bureau of Indian Affairs.) That change keeps Sealaska busy for the remainder of the year enrolling thousands of new shareholders. Sealaska’s leadership team is stable; recent board elections returned four incumbents to the board. Sealaska has been open to and accepting of remote work for quite some time, but the pandemic firmly established that work can be done well and productively with a remote workforce, so the company does not plan to require that its employees to return to the office.

THE ALEUT CORPORATION

In May 2021, The Aleut Corporation (TAC) board of directors accepted the resignation of Thomas Mack as

president and CEO. Skoey Vergen became president and CEO in December. New hires include Cynthia Tisher as chief financial officer and Mandy Hawes as the new chief operating officer. Kate Gilling was hired in December 2021 as communications director.

In January, the board defined a tactical growth strategy for the next five years and established a new strategic ten-year revenue and income goal. The board approved TAC’s recommendation to close its subsidiary, Alaska Instrument Company, because of decreasing revenue streams with no path for growth. In July 2022, Aleut Aerospace Engineering in Colorado Springs was awarded a $10.9 million federal contract to continue its training efforts on behalf of the US Space Force 319th Combat Training Squadron and 533rd Training Squadron at Peterson Space Force Base. As the fiscal year closed, Vergen reported that the swift and rigorous changes that the board and TAC management implemented are moving the corporation in a positive direction.

YUGTUN/CENTRAL YUP'IK

Central Yup’ik is one of the Yupik languages in the Inuit-Unangan language family. This welcome, Cama-i, quyana tailuci!, literally means “Greetings, thank you for coming!”

DEG XINAG

Deg Xinag is the language of the Deg Hit’an people, one of the Athabascan languages in the Na-Dene language family. This welcome, Ndadz dengit'a?, literally means “Hello, how are you?”

DENAAKK'E/KOYUKON

Denaakk’e is one of the Athabascan languages in the Na-Dene language family. This welcome, Enaa neenyo, literally means “It is precious that you came!”

DENA'INAQ'/DENA'INA

Dena’ina is one of the Athabascan languages in the Na-Dene language family. This welcome, Naghe nduniya!, literally means “Welcome!”

DINAK'I/UPPER KUSKOKWIM

Dinak’i (Upper Kuskokwim) is an Athabascan language in the Na-Dene language family. This welcome, Do'ent'a?, literally means “How are you?”

DINJII ZHUH K'YAA/GWICH'IN

Dinjii Zhuh K’yaa, also known as Gwich’in, is an Athabascan language in the Na-Dene language family. This welcome, Nakhwal’in shoo ihlii, translates roughly to mean “I am happy to see you all.”

DOOGH QINAQ/HOLIKACHUK

Doogh Qinaq (also known as the Holikachuk language) is an Athabascan language in the Na-Dene language family. This welcome, Etla, s'coy, literally means “Hello, my grandchild.”

HÄL GOLAN/HÄN

Häl golan, also known as the Hän language, is an Athabascan language in the Na-Dene language family. This welcome, Nänjit dähònche?, translates roughly to mean “Hello, how are you?”

INUPIATUN/INUPIAQ

Inupiaq is one of the Inuit languages in the Inuit-Unangan language family. This welcome, Paglagivsi, literally means “Welcome!”

NEE’AANDEG’/TANACROSS

Nee’aandeg’, also known as Tanacross, is an Athabascan language in the Na-Dene language family. This welcome, Nts'é t'ínt'eh?, translates roughly to mean “Hello, how are you?”

SM’ALGYAX/(COAST) TSIMSHIAN

Sm’álgyax is a Tsimshianic language spoken in Southeast Alaska and Northwestern British Columbia. This welcome, Ama sah gya'wn, translates roughly to mean “It is a good day today.”

AKUZIPIGESTUN/ST. LAWRENCE ISLAND YUPIK

St. Lawrence Island Yupik, also known as Siberian Yupik, is one of the Yupik languages in the Inuit-Unangan language family. This welcome, Quyaakamsi tagilghiisi, literally means “Thank you all for coming!”

SUGPIAQ/ALUTIIQ

Sugpiaq (Sugt’stun in the Sugpiaq language) or Alutiiq is closely related to the Central Yup’ik language in the Inuit-Unangan language family. This welcome, Cama'i, literally means “Hello, welcome!”

LINGÍT/TLINGIT

Tlingit is one of the languages in the Na-Dene language family. This welcome, Yak’éi haat yigoodée!, literally means “It is good that you have come here!”

UNANGAM TUNUU/ALEUTIAN ALEUT

Unangam Tunuu is the language of the Unangax^ (also known as Aleut) people and one of the Inuit-Unangan languages. This welcome, Aang, literally means “Yes” or “Hello.”

XAAT KÍL/HAIDA

Xaat Kíl, also known as Haida, is a language isolate, meaning it does not have any known genetic relationship to other languages. This welcome, Sán uu dáng gíidang?, translates roughly to mean “Hello, how are you?”

SOURCE: AK Division of Community and Regional Affairs

Shining Stars

Village and urban corporations on the rise

By Tasha Anderson

Bill Roth | McClatchy-Tribune | Alamy

n addition to twelve regional corporations, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) allocated lands and funds to more than 200 village corporations. As with their regional counterparts, the village corporations are mandated to make a profit and use it to benefit their shareholders and villages. It’s no surprise that, among hundreds of corporations, no two have chosen the exact same path to meet that mandate. Below are highlights and updates for a handful of the village and urban corporations.

Ukpeaġvik Iñupiat Corporation

Ukpeaġvik Iñupiat Corporation (UIC) states, “During the development of ANCSA, our leaders were creative and resourceful in adapting to the changing world around them, just like our ancestors had been. When UIC was established, Barrow was still very much a subsistence-oriented community. We knew little about business, let alone running an ANCSA-mandated, multimillion-dollar corporation. Whalers became corporate executives overnight, and we rose to the challenge.”

Fifty years later, UIC has become one of the largest village corporations with 4,000 employees, fifty-four subsidiaries, and more than 2,900 shareholders. This year it welcomed a new trail-blazing leader: President and CEO Pearl K. Brower joined the corporation in April, after thenpresident and CEO Delbert Rexford announced his retirement. At the time of the hiring announcement, Brower said, “After serving as a member of the board of directors this last year, I know we have an amazing team across our entire company, and I look forward to building on the foundation our board and outgoing president Delbert Rexford has laid for us. A bright future for our families, and our corporation, are important to me as we envision a healthy, strong community for generations to come.”

A month later in May, UIC announced a different kind of acquisition, a

LOOKING BACK.

Moving forward.

For more than four decades, our traditional Iñupiaq values have provided the foundation for our corporate success, guiding Arctic Slope Regional Corporation toward its full potential. While we continue to look back for guidance, we remain focused on the future and committed to serving our shareholders and benefiting Alaskans.

We are proud of the contributions we’ve made to Alaska, and look forward to continued growth and success as one of Alaska’s leading businesses.

Pearl K. Brower President and CEO

majority interest in HC Contractors, a Fairbanks-based construction company specializing in infrastructure and heavy civil construction services. At the time of the acquisition, UIC COO Jeevan Pokharel said, “We look forward to partnering with HC’s team and continuing to deliver vital, worldclass infrastructure engineering and construction services in Alaska. This definitely places UIC as a dominant force in the heavy civil industry.” The acquisition adds to UIC’s construction industry expertise, which has been built through subsidiaries such UIC Construction and Qayaq Construction, among others.

Goldbelt, Incorporated

Goldbelt was formed originally with 2,722 shareholders and today represents more than 3,900 Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian shareholders and their descendants in Southeast. The company states, “Goldbelt is committed to making a significant and positive difference in the lives of our shareholders,” and year after year it is delivering on that promise.

Goldbelt owns and operates the Goldbelt Tram, which rises to 1,800 feet from the cruise ship dock in downtown Juneau and is the only aerial tramway in Southeast. It’s part of the urban corporation’s Alaska group of subsidiaries.

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“We protect the environment because this is the land where we grew up.”

Evan Polty Jr. Lead Mechanic, Donlin Gold Born in Pilot Station and Resident of Russian Mission

According to Goldbelt CEO McHugh Pierre, “2021 was the most successful in Goldbelt history,” which was the third consecutive record-setting year for the corporation. In addition to seeing an increase in its number of employees in and out of Alaska, Goldbelt reports approximately $500 million in gross revenue for 2021— approximately 80 percent growth in gross revenue from 2020 and more than double the $240 million that Goldbelt earned in 2019.

Pierre attributes this success to the board of directors’ 2016 strategy to diversify. “Goldbelt now has thirty subsidiary companies in every state, every US territory, and in five foreign countries,” he reports.

Goldbelt, the urban corporation for Juneau, organizes its many subsidiaries into two groups: federal government contracting and the Alaska group. The Alaska group comprises the Goldbelt Tram, Goldbelt Transportation, Goldbelt Security, and Goldbelt Seadrome Marina.

In January, Goldbelt Transportation signed a contract with the Alaska

Department of Transportation & Public Facilities to run two confirmed routes on the winter ferry schedule: the first was a roundtrip route between Juneau, Hoonah, and Gustavus and the second, also roundtrip, traveled between Juneau, Tenakee, and Angoon. Goldbelt Transportation secured an additional contract for three more routes in March, and one special-event contract in August to transport people to Kake for the Kake Dog Salmon Festival. While the contracts bring money into the coffers, they also provide more transportation options for the corporation’s shareholders. “I’m appreciative of the opportunity to serve our villages and the Southeast community,” says Goldbelt Transportation Captain Clint Songer.

In January, Goldbelt Security was awarded a $51.6 million contract from the Department of Defense to purchase COVID-19 antigen over-the-counter test kits, which was part of the Biden Administration’s efforts to deliver 500 million at-home tests to Americans at no cost. According to Goldbelt, “The

[Department of Defense] solicited the support of Goldbelt Security directly for the test kit initiative after working with Goldbelt Security previously to provide over 1 billion needles and syringes in vaccine support.”

Gana-A’Yoo

Gana-A’Yoo means “friends” or “friends together” in Athabascan, and according to the corporation, “At all the Gana-A’Yoo companies, we take that to heart.” The corporation represents the Yukon River villages of Galena, Koyukuk, Nulato, and Kaltag, and the majority of its (at present) 1,200 shareholders are Koyukon Athabascan.

Revenues to pay dividends are generated through a handful of subsidiaries that provide facilities maintenance and management, food service, janitorial services, waste management and recycling, construction, and project management, as well as other areas of expertise.

According to Gana-A’Yoo, “As a historically nomadic people who relied on each other, the concept of sharing is a pivotal one in Athabascan

tradition.” That tradition influenced the company’s shareholders to approve the creation of a new class of shares for descendants of original shareholders, the first village corporation to do so in the Doyon region. “The majority of voting shareholders said ‘yes’ to opening enrollment to eligible descendants of original shareholders, born after 1971. These are exciting times,” says CEO Dena SommerPedebone in the corporation’s newsletter, Tl’eeyegge Hut’anne’ Descendants with a one-quarter blood quantum can apply for twentyfive life estate shares. Descendants of any age may apply, but the shares are non-voting until the shareholder is 18 years old. Gana-A’Yoo is issuing new shares for a period of ten years or until 100,000 additional shares are awarded, whichever comes first.

As one Gana-A’Yoo shareholder states in the newsletter, “Our children are our legacy; they need early knowledge of our corporations, lands, et cetera. Involvement is key; what better way is there for them to gain knowledge but to make them a part of the organization.”

Choggiung Limited ANCSA entitled Choggiung to 161,280 acres of land in western Alaska encompassing the greater Dillingham area. In 1981 it merged with Ekuk and Ohgsenakle villages, which brought with them an additional 138,240 acres, and the joint corporation is on the precipice of another kind of expansion.

In February 2022 the Choggiung board of directors unanimously approved a resolution that makes a formal recommendation to shareholders to vote in favor of opening enrollment to descendants of Choggiung shareholders. It’s now up to the shareholders, who are voting on the resolution this month.

If the amendment is approved, twenty-five life estate shares (meaning they cannot be gifted or inherited), or Class B stock, will be issued to each new enrollee, assuming they meet the eligibility criteria. According to Choggiung, research conducted by the UAA Institute of Social and Economic Research indicates that there are approximately 1,800 living lineal descendants that would qualify, which would be a significant addition to the

corporation’s current enrollment of approximately 2,200 shareholders.

Choggiung is also expanding its business operations; earlier this year one of its wholly owned subsidiaries, Choggiung Investment Company, acquired N&N Property in Dillingham. N&N Property owns several buildings as well as “land in downtown Dillingham equipped for a grocery and general merchandise retail business,” according to Choggiung. Choggiung Investment Company was a minority owner prior to the March 2022 acquisition, when it purchased the remaining 51 percent of the company from United Companies Inc., a subsidiary of Sea Lion Corporation.

“The new ownership interest gives us the chance to develop long-term operating plans. With this autonomy and flexibility, we have a heightened excitement about the future of the store,” states Choggiung’s Spring 2022 newsletter.

Chenega Corporation

Chenega Corporation represents the village of Chenega, which has certainly seen its share of turmoil. The original village was destroyed in the 1964 Good Friday earthquake, and more than onethird of its residents died. According to the company, the village suffered “the highest percentage of loss of life of any community in the earthquake and tsunami catastrophe.”

In 1971, ANCSA granted the original residents of Chenega title to more than 70,000 acres, which led to the corporation’s establishment in 1974. In 1984, a group of former villagers established a new location for Chenega on Evans Island in Prince William Sound.

Those new roots have grown Chenega into the wealthiest of all ANCSA village corporations, with revenue in 2020 just under $1 billion. As the company has found success, it has continued to develop infrastructure and resources in the rebuilt village.

For example, an expansion of the small boat harbor includes related shoreline improvements and work on an “appropriately sized and positioned” breakwater.

Design for Phase 1, the breakwater, is scheduled to be complete by the end of this year, and Chenega anticipates

Cape Fox Corporation’s communications team won several awards in 2022 for its marketing campaigns promoting Ketchikan, including its website for Sweet Mermaids, a bakery and café on Front Street.

that construction for this phase will be completed in one season.

One of Chenega’s core principles is to “attract, develop, compensate, reward, and retain a world-class workforce,” which requires a peoplefirst commitment. In 2022, Chenega was recognized again as a Top Ten Military Friendly Company: it ranked 4th overall as a military friendly employer, 1st overall as a military spouse friendly employer, 8th overall as a military friendly company, and 8th overall as a military friendly brand. According to the company, “Our years-long success in being a Top Ten Military Friendly Employer is due in part to our military-friendly policies and quality workplace environment. This positioning helps prepare veterans for a smooth transition into new civilian roles at Chenega; more than 23 percent of our current employees have past military experience.”

Cape Fox Corporation

Thousands of years ago Tlingit ancestors settled at Cape Fox in the Alexander Archipelago, near the tip of what is now the Alaska Panhandle. Around the turn of the 20th century, they left that site and settled in Saxman on the outskirts of Ketchikan.

According to Cape Fox Corporation, “Our own Alaskan Native history is like a legend,” one that is told today through an award-winning communications team. In January the corporation received two AVA Digital Awards: a gold award for its digital and social media campaign for the Cape Fox Lodge and Baranof Fishing marketing partnership and a platinum award for the design of the website portion of the Faces of Ketchikan campaign, which connects travelers to restaurants, shopping, lodging, transportation, activities, and events in Ketchikan.

The Faces of Ketchikan’s print campaign also won a gold Hermes Creative Award in 2022, as did the website for Sweet Mermaids, a bakery and café on Front Street in Ketchikan. In a news release about the Hermes awards, Cape Fox Corporation stated, “Over the past few years, Cape Fox has increased its digital media, branding, public relations and communications, electronic media, and advertising initiatives. Cape Fox is proud to

stand out with an award-winning communications team.”

The communications team’s awardwinning work promotes Cape Fox Corporation’s endeavors to support its nearly 400 shareholders. The commercial group is grounded in the tourism industry and includes the Cape Fox Lodge; several eateries such as Sweet Mermaids, Bar Harbor Ale House, and 108 Taphouse; the Cape Fox Village Store, which sells fine Tlingit arts and gifts; and Cape Fox Tours, all of which focus on Southeast.

The village corporation has more than 700 worldwide employees, and outside of Southeast its growing federal contracting group provides government and commercial clients with emergent technology solutions, professional services, and healthcare services. The newest subsidiary in the federal contracting group is quite new: Cape Fox Endeavor was founded in 2021 and focuses on partnering with its customers to address organizational challenges, sharing its expertise in professional, technology, legal, medical, and engineering services.

In December 2021 the US Marine Corps delivered supplies and personnel to Galena, one of the villages represented by Gana-A’Yoo, which literally means “friends together.” According to the company, “The concept of sharing is a pivotal one in Athabascan tradition.”

Alaska Peninsula Corporation

According to Alaska Peninsula Corporation (APC), “Our lands are vast. Our lands are plentiful, sacred, and rich with opportunity. Our waters are pristine and abundant with life-sustaining purity. These are the elements of life unique to our people.” APC is one of the largest landowners in the Bristol Bay region, with more than 400,000 acres. Though named for a region, APC is indeed a village corporation, a merged entity representing more than 800 shareholders from Port Heiden, South Naknek, Ugashik, Kokhanok, and Newhalen. It operates seven subsidiaries that provide environmental consulting, remediation and research, construction, logistics and transportation, and administrative services, among others.

To house those subsidiaries and its corporate offices, in 2021 APC acquired a commercial office building with approximately 6,000 square feet of space in Anchorage. Previously APC leased the building, so buying instead

of leasing reduced its facility costs by more than 50 percent. With the purchase APC was able to complete some minor renovations, including new paint and remodels on the first floor to accommodate a board room with conferencing capability.

One of its subsidiaries, Talarik Research & Restoration Services, was awarded a multi-year prime contract by the US Air Force to remove soil contaminated by PCBs at the Port Heiden Radio Relay Station. The project is a follow-up to a previous Talarik Research & Restoration Services project at Port Heiden for the US Army Corps of Engineers.

Field work began this summer, and the subsidiary plans to hire locally for labor while subcontracting equipment and operators from Aniakchak Contractors, a subsidiary of the Native Village of Port Heiden. The remediation project is slated for completion at the end of September 2023. According to CEO Dave McAlister, it’s the largest single contract awarded to an APC subsidiary to date.

Sgt Jackson Ricker | US Marine Corps | DVIDS

One City, Two Capitals

The living treasure of Juneau’s Northwest Coast art

By Scott Rhode

“W

e used to say—this is something we used to say—that we don’t have a word for art,” says Rosita Worl, emphasizing her own Tlingit heritage. Even though she has a PhD in anthropology, the president of Sealaska Heritage Institute (SHI) was surprised when she learned the Tlingit language can in fact convey the concept.

It happened at a council of traditional scholars. Worl recalls, “Our meetings are all held in Tlingit and we have

simultaneous translation, and the translator came running out and said, ‘What is that word, At.nané?’ It was actually the chair, Ken Grant, who said, ‘It refers to an iconic event between a supernatural being and a human being.’”

When At.nané is memorialized in a visible form, Worl explains, the result is recognized as art. When invested with sacred importance, such as a clan crest, it becomes At.óow

The art of the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian people of Southeast Alaska

and British Columbia is particularly distinctive for one of its foundational features: formline design. The term itself, barely fifty years old, describes an aesthetic system that developed around the same time as Greek vase painting yet is still inspiring new works of graphic art, clothing, jewelry, architecture, and totem poles.

“There are very specific rules around how the different forms and shapes are put together,” says Kari Groven, art director at SHI. “You can

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Bronze copies of wooden totem poles outside the Walter Soboleff Building blend a design system carried through a hundred generations with a metal alloy introduced to living generations of Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian people.

Carter Damaska | Alaska Business

see that there are some key types of shapes that are repeated over and over again. You can’t just put them together randomly. There’s a strict system with a lot of personal interpretation opportunity in there.”

The rules evolved over time but achieved their familiar form thousands of years ago. Lee Kadinger, SHI’s chief of operations, observes that the rich ecology of the temperate rainforest afforded the luxury of intricate designs and wooden monuments. “There was far less worry about gathering food here,” he says. “A lot of that time was poured into art, and that’s why you see such a complex art form.”

After contact with Europeans, the rules were in danger of being forgotten. Even as the artifacts themselves were coveted by collectors far and wide, the cultures that produced them were diminished by disease and assimilation.

Worl recalls, “After we had a juried art show in 2000, the master artist Robert Davidson told me he thought that our art was deteriorating. So I freaked out because art is the basis of our culture.”

Sealaska Heritage Institute, a nonprofit founded in 1980 to perpetuate the indigenous cultures of the Panhandle region, evidently had work to do. That work was organized around a strategy with one clear goal: establish Juneau as the capital of Northwest Coast art.

Phase One

Worl’s “freak out” triggered fifteen years of planning and fundraising, which culminated in 2015 with the grand opening of the Walter Soboleff Building, named for the longtime chairman of the SHI board of trustees. More than merely a museum or gift shop—although tourists visiting downtown Juneau can easily appreciate both of those things— the exterior commands attention with its decorative flourishes, and the interior accommodates a gathering space for a living culture.

Built with yellow cedar timbers and hammered copper, the Soboleff Building also incorporates forwardlooking elements. Kadinger points to the clan house inside, featuring glasswork by Preston Singletary. “They didn’t have glass a thousand years ago here, but we do now,” he says. “It’s

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The Sealaska Heritage Institute Arts Campus, across the street from the Walter Soboleff Building (to the right of this picture), is designed to resemble a giant Tlingit bentwood box. The plaza, formerly the parking lot of Sealaska Corporation headquarters, is inlaid with Ravenstail patterns from Tsimshian weaving.

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very traditional, but it’s moving into the contemporary.”

Likewise, on the street, a trio of totem poles are matched by copies cast in bronze, a material unknown to Tlingit metallurgy. Kadinger says the design shows how tradition adapts to new ways, “progressing into the future while reflecting on its past.”

For the time being, the building is not historic at all. Not officially. When SHI proposed new construction in the vacant “pit” kitty-corner from Sealaska Corporation headquarters, where the Skinner Building burned down in 2004, the local Historic Resources Advisory Council said no. Victorian or Art Deco designs would fit in the district, SHI was told, but Native architecture was not considered historic.

To let the Soboleff Building go forward, the boundary of the historic district in downtown Juneau was redrawn to exclude the lot, with the intention of amending the rules later. “Now our work is to remedy the historic district, to be more inclusive of Native art and architecture, and then to add us back in,” Kadinger says.

Worl, President, Sealaska Heritage Institute

Native voices drove the development of the Soboleff Building, but the art director is not Alaskan at all. Groven is from Norway, and she came to

Juneau as a singer in a band. She helped the Juneau Arts & Humanities Council convert an old armory into the Juneau Arts & Culture Center, so SHI hired her as part of the launch of the Soboleff center.

To fulfill its artistic mission, the institute decided something was still missing. That vacancy was filled in June with the grand opening of the Soboleff Building’s next-door neighbor.

Creative Space

Hallways still smell faintly of cedar inside the brand-new Sealaska Heritage Arts Campus, across South Seward Street from the Soboleff center. The main floor contains workshops for metal and wood crafts, with huge windows visually uniting the interior with passersby outside. Upstairs contains rooms for weaving and skin sewing. Groven points to six refurbished factorygrade Bonis Brothers sewing machines around the studio. She says artists had input about the height of workbenches and chairs, and at the weavers’ request the blueprints included a “wet room” with a sink and stove for dyeing.

“In the same way that jazz has been declared a national treasure, we think this 4,000-yearold art tradition that is coveted around the world should also be recognized as a national treasure of our country.”

Rosita

Lessons in traditional crafts have been part of SHI’s program for years, and the Soboleff center includes an art studio, but Worl says borrowing other people’s classrooms and conference rooms was not enough. The institute needed its own space.

The architecture echoes the Soboleff building, resembling a giant wooden box decorated with formline designs, surrounded by garden plantings of devil’s club, or S'áxt' , used medicinally by Tlingit people. “We strove to build a work of art that befits the great traditions of our ancestors,” Worl says. “We have taken an ancient art form

and rendered it on metal in a modern way, and we have created monumental bentwood boxes. To me, it expresses the antiquity of our culture but in a new and vibrant way.”

The campus encompasses approximately 6,000 square feet, plus outdoor space for monument-sized works. Formerly a parking lot, the plaza is paved with black-and-white geometric designs of the Ravenstail tradition and includes a wooden awning attached to the Sealaska Corporation building. The covered area becomes a performance space for gatherings in the plaza, which can also be set up

as an open-air market. Kadinger says this feature was inspired by a town square in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

The plaza had its shakedown in June hosting the return of Celebration, the biannual gathering of Alaska Natives from across Southeast.

Watching over the plaza is an unusual sentinel: a 360-degree totem pole. The first of its kind in Alaska, the design uses the entire circumference of the totem to depict the four cultural values that guide SHI programs. Haida carver TJ Young enlisted Tlingit and Tsimshian assistants to ensure representation of the three tribes of Southeast Alaska.

“We

work of art that befits the great traditions of our ancestors.

have taken an ancient art form and rendered it on metal in a modern way, and we have created monumental bentwood boxes. To me, it expresses the antiquity of our culture but in a new and vibrant way.”

Rosita

Worl, President,

Sealaska Heritage Institute

SHI raised $13 million to create the arts campus, and though the building is open, the project is not yet complete.

Still to Come

More totem poles are on the way. The first ten of thirty poles are scheduled to be raised next year for Kooteìeyaa Deiyiì, the Totem Pole Trail. Each totem will be placed along a pathway from South Seward Street to the Juneau Public Library, past the cruise ship passenger dock.

“That’s something you would’ve seen 200 years ago,” Kadinger says. “If you came on the water, you would’ve seen totems adorning the waterfront.”

Sealaska Corporation donated the logs, and the Mellon Foundation awarded a $2.9 million grant for SHI to hire carvers from around Southeast Alaska to create the first batch of totems. The designs are meant to represent Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian clans—not unlike the flags of all fifty US states that fly along the road leading to downtown Juneau. The first poles are dedicated to

Áak’w Kwáan and T’aaku Kwáan, the Tlingit clans that originally inhabited the area.

Kadinger says the Totem Pole Trail gives SHI another visual aid to integrate into the school curriculum, “giving that identity to Native youth so they can say, ‘This is my clan’s pole.’”

The educational mission of SHI is expanding through its partnership with UAS. Starting this fall, the university is offering a bachelor’s degree in Northwest Coast arts. Further, SHI negotiated an articulation agreement with the Institute of American Indian Arts to help UAS students more easily transfer credits to the school in Santa Fe. The arts campus is also configured to host college-level classes, both in person and by distance learning.

How to Become a Capital

The Totem Pole Trail is phase three of SHI’s plan to make Juneau the Northwest Coast arts capital. According to the strategy laid out in 2017, the Soboleff Center and Arts Campus were phases one and two.

There is a fourth phase, but Worl says she is not at liberty to discuss it.

One major initiative she can discuss, though, is the effort to have Congress declare Northwest Coast art a national treasure. “In the same way that jazz has been declared a national treasure, we think this 4,000-year-old art tradition that is coveted around the world should also be recognized as a national treasure of our country,” Worl says. Such a declaration might take a while; Congress is also sitting on a similar resolution to declare stage magic a national treasure.

A declaration, if it comes, would not make Juneau the capital automatically. Designating a seat of government is one thing, as Juneau was in 1900, but a city becomes the capital of an art form through innumerable gestures. Those include, as Kadinger points out, incorporating Native design and place names, visible on guideposts and in sidewalks. For instance, in 2018 the City and Borough of Juneau renamed the intersection outside the Soboleff Center “Heritage Square,” and the pavement at Front

and Seward Streets is decorated with formline-inspired insets.

“We’re well on our way” to becoming the capital of Northwest Coast art, Kadinger says, “and we have a lot of exciting work coming up.”

Of course, Sitka has its Fine Arts Camp and Ketchikan is Alaska’s First City, so why should Juneau grab a double helping of capital status?

“In Juneau, we are a hub and we’re a gateway to the region,” Kadinger explains. “We’re buying from artists that live in Hoonah as well as other small communities. We’re flying

artists in to take our workshops. Sometimes we’re Zooming them out to those communities.”

Juneau has also invested in welcoming visitors, which adds to its cultural centrality. SHI has a policy to promote cross-cultural understanding for visitors, provided it has no adverse impacts for the land or its people. Worl says SHI makes a conscious division between culture that can be shared and what must be held sacred.

As a latter-day magnet for tourists, the place known to the Tlingit as Dzántik'i Héeni is positioned to

propagate Native culture as a valuable feature of the visitor experience, as well as for its own sake.

“We’ve gone through climate change and an Ice Age, warming periods. And then we went through a not happy part of our history when we had these cultural encounters,” Worl says. “Even with all of these things that have happened, we survived as an Indigenous people. So there must be some good things in our culture that we can offer to the larger society. For us to have the opportunity to educate visitors and the public, that is very rewarding.”

Raven and Eagle stand back to back on Alaska’s first 360-degree totem pole, across South Seward Street from the Walter Soboleff Building.

Carter Damaska | Alaska Business

Preserving Alaska Native Languages

The state of Indigenous languages in Alaska

By Richard Perry

Alaska Native people have faced social and cultural harm that includes epidemics, dislocations, language loss, boarding schools, and more. For decades, communities in every region of Alaska have held culture camps to preserve and restore their cultural heritage and language. The need for these opportunities has grown greater as Elders, who are community experts in language and customary practices, have passed away.

Language is a core foundation for Indigenous cultural identity and heritage, so the loss of Indigenous Elders has been extremely troubling, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic. The damage to Indigenous communities and language revitalization efforts has been devastating. In Kodiak, for example, from 2020 to early 2022, half of the first-language speakers of Kodiak Alutiiq passed away, leaving no speakers of the northern Kodiak dialect and approximately seventeen speakers of the southern dialect.

Additionally, the limited ability to meet face to face has affected language and

cultural activities, especially for Elders who are less able to take part in Internetbased communication. Fortunately, this has become less of a problem thanks to COVID-19 vaccination efforts.

With all of these factors, it is a crucial time to preserve and revitalize languages that are endangered or in dormancy.

Defining Priorities

According to the Alaska Native Language Preservation and Advisory Council (ANLPAC) 2022 Report to the Governor and Legislature, Alaska is home to more than twenty-three Indigenous languages.

Today, no Alaska Native languages are considered “safe” or merely “vulnerable” as defined by the council.

“We tweaked the definitions in a few spots,” says Roy Mitchell, staff research analyst for ANLPAC. “We had labeled what was previously listed as

extinct to dormant, meaning there are no conversational speakers left. The shift at the council is really pushing to not buy into negative labels. We’ve been using dormant for a few years now, rather than say there are no speakers left [or extinct].”

Mitchell is a linguistic anthropologist specializing in Iñupiaq and a PhD candidate at the University of California Berkeley. He has been a student of Alaska Native Calista Corporation

Larry Kairaiuak, Technical Assistance Manager Alaska Region Training & Technical Assistance Center

languages since 1976, supporting Alaska Native languages in many regions throughout Alaska.

Mitchell explains that many nonNative people, including policy makers and teachers, may operate in ignorance of Alaska Native language loss or that in the past Alaska Native students were forbidden to speak their languages. The history of language suppression and loss is still felt with ongoing intergenerational trauma. The normalization of Alaska Native languages is key in addressing past decades of forced assimilation practices.

“The council has been asking for state government, both the executive and legislative branches, to actively make the survival of Alaska Native languages a high priority,” Mitchell says. “That continues to be a major issue. The state has and is continuing to do some things to improve the status of Alaska languages, but it is still nowhere close to the level that's needed.”

Training and Technical Assistance Federal program and grant support is available through the Administration for Native Americans (ANA), a program office of the US Department of Health and Human Services. ANA runs the Alaska Region Training & Technical Assistance (T/TA) Center that works

“We want to see more projects funded throughout Alaska so that some of the challenges that our tribes and communities face can have a platform to improve the conditions that hinder us from growing and enhances the lives of our communities.”

to strengthen the capacity of Native organizations in Alaska to develop, apply for, and manage communitybased projects that increase selfsufficiency. Alaska is a region of its own, along with T/TA centers for the entire Eastern, Western, and Pacific regions of the United States.

T/TA Center Technical Assistance Manager Larry Kairaiuak, who is Yup'ik, worked in grant management for the private sector and state government before joining the federal office.

“There does not seem to be a center within any federal programs like the free training and technical assistance centers that ANA has in its four regions,” Kairaiuak says. “We support state and federally recognized tribes, our relatives in the Pacific Island state and territories, and in the continental United States. Being part of Alaska Region T/TA Center

to provide guidance, support, and encouragement from the beginning of the application process to completion of an ANA funded project, that is extremely rewarding.”

ANA’s FY2021 appropriation was more than $57 million. In FY2020, ANA was able to provide approximately $47 million to community-based projects across the three main ANA programs: Social and Economic Development Strategies, Environmental Regulatory Enhancement, and Native Language Programs.

The share for language programs totaled $13.7 million, split between $6.8 million for Preservation and Maintenance (P&M), $5 million for language grants such as Esther Martinez Immersion, and $1.9 million for Native Languages Community Coordination Demonstration projects.

The ANA P&M program provides funding for projects to support assessments of the status of the Native languages as well as the planning, design, restoration, and implementation of Native language curriculum. Projects take place in urban, rural, and

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reservation settings through materials development, training for language teachers, and direct instruction in and outside of a classroom.

Unagam Tunuu Achigassalix, or Teach the Aleut Language, is a P&M project that the Aleutian Pribilof Island Association is working on. It connects several language learners with two speakers, working to increase the number of speakers in the Aleutian region. This project started right before the COVID-19 pandemic, so in-person classes did not occur. They immediately adjusted to a method of virtual meetings so that the program could carry on.

Tamamta Liitukut, or Everyone is Learning, from the Sun'aq Tribe of Kodiak, just completed a Native Language Community Coordination Demonstration project through ANA. It was a Kodiak Sugpiaq Alutiiq language education continuum project to increase the number of speakers and instruct young children at the same time.

“We want to see more projects funded throughout Alaska,” Kairaiuak

Larry Kairaiuak Alaska Region Training & Technical Assistance Center

says, “so that some of the challenges that our tribes and communities face can have a platform to improve the conditions that hinder us from growing and enhances the lives of our communities.”

In a review of language projects that ended between 2015 through 2020, ANA has supported eighty-seven different languages across the United States and Pacific Basin. ANA funded projects for eighty tribes and Alaska Native villages, thirty-five nonprofit organizations, eighteen K-12 schools, and eleven tribal colleges and universities.

Teaching Teachers

Students at Dzantik'i Heeni Middle School in Juneau preserve a bit of Tlingit language and culture the moment they learn their school’s name. It’s simply the Indigenous name of the place where Alaska’s capital city is situated, which translates as “Base of the Flounder’s River.”

Frank Kaash Katasse, from the Tlingit clan Tsaagweidí, is a teacher at the middle school. He is not only an educator but an award-winning

actor, director, producer, improviser, and playwright. Katasse received his bachelor’s degree in theatre arts from the University of Hawai’i Mānoa. And his studies continued at UAS.

“I received a grant called Haa Yoo X’atángi Deiyí: Our Language Pathway. This was through Sealaska Heritage Institute to go back to school,” Katasse says. “The program involved sending a cohort of people to go back to school at the University of Alaska Southeast and study Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian and learn to be teachers, resulting in a Type M Limited Teaching Certificate.”

The certificate in Indigenous Language Teaching prepared students to work in the growing language revitalization field, including within tribal organizations, tribal corporations, school districts, and nonprofit organizations.

In Katasse’s case, he was hired at Dzantik'i Heeni Middle School in year two of the three-year grant. “I ended up learning through experience last year,” he says. “It was great, there's something to be said about learning by jumping right into it.”

“Here I am teaching about 150 Tlingit language learners…

It’s a very popular program, right up there with gym, art, music, and now Tlingit.”

Frank Kaash Katasse Teacher

Dzantik'i Heeni Middle School

Frank Kaash

Katasse Dzantik'i Heeni Middle School

THE STATUS OF ALASKA NATIVE LANGUAGE SPEAKERS

Language Family Language

Inuit-Unangan

Inupiatun (Iñupiaq): Estimated <2,500 highly proficient speakers in Alaska

Yupigestun / Akuzipigestun (St. Lawrence Island Yupik): Estimated < 1,000 highly proficient speakers

Yugtun/Cugtun (Central Alaskan Yup'ik / Cup’ik): Estimated <10,000 highly proficient speakers

Cup’ig (Nunivak Island [Yupik]): Data unavailable

Unangam Tunuu (UnangaX Aleut): <80 highly proficient speakers

Sugt’stun / Alutiit’stun (Sugpiaq/Alutiiq [Yupik]): About ~80 highly proficient speakers

Juneau’s board of education recently approved new oral narrative standards for its Tlingit Culture, Language, and Literacy program. It is available to kindergartners through fifth graders in the Juneau School District. When the standards were adopted last November, the district’s director of teaching and learning support, Ted Wilson, told KTOO that the curriculum ought to expand to other age groups as fluent teachers become available.

Na-Dene

Dena’inaq’ (Dena'ina): 5 highly proficient speakers

Denaakk'e (Koyukon): Data unavailable

Holikachuk: 0 highly proficient speakers

Deg Xinag: 2 highly proficient speakers

Dinak’i (Upper Kuskokwim): <5 highly proficient speakers--perhaps as few as one or none

Benhti Kokhwt’ana Kenaga’ (Lower Tanana): 1 highly proficient speaker

Sahcheeg xut'een xneege' (Middle Tanana):0 highly proficient speakers speakers

Dinjii Zhuh K’yaa (Gwich'in): <250 highly proficient speakers

Hän: 2 highly proficient speakers in Alaska

Dihthaad Xt’een Iin Aandeeg’ (Tanacross): <10 highly proficient speakers

Nee'aanèegn' (Upper Tanana): ~7 highly proficient speakers; ~ 25 proficient secondlanguage speakers in Alaska

Koht’aene kenaege’ (Ahtna): ~25 highly proficient speakers

dAxhunhyuuga’ (Eyak): 0 highly proficient speakers

Lingít (Tlingit): ~50 highly proficient, first-language speakers plus ~20 highly proficient second-language speakers

Weta (Ts'etsa’ut): 0 highly proficient speakers

“In other language programs, a lot of times the revitalization efforts are centered around clubs or something after school,” Katasse says, “where parents can come and participate or something. Here I am teaching about 150 Tlingit language learners. With that many students, it's a bit too many to also include parents. It’s a very popular program, right up there with gym, art, music, and now Tlingit.”

Katasse reaches his students in class using various games, both online and board games. The students can also earn class “money” by answering questions, and then use the tokens to buy candies, stickers, and other small gifts. Students are having fun and learning Tlingit along the way.

Katasse admits there is much he still needs to learn. “I am an intermediate speaker at best,” Katasse says. “In the spring of 2020 after I was awarded my grant, that is when I began to study Tlingit, so my language proficiency is not that high, but it's enough for me to teach. I am on my own journey as a Tlingit language learner too.”

Next for Katasse is preparing for Tlingit II. “For the upcoming year and those students moving forward,” Katasse says, “I have to figure out what I'm going to teach them. For language learners in middle school especially, we're playing games and keeping them engaged. We want them to want to come back.”

Katasse notes that some of his 150 students never spoke any Tlingit at all, and some are not Alaska Native of any kind. That doesn’t matter, he says.

Haida

Tshimshianic

Xaad Kíl (Haida):3 fluent speakers in Alaska plus perhaps 2 highly proficient second-language speakers

Sm'algyax: 4 highly proficient speakers in Alaska Source: Alaska Department of Commerce, Community, and Economic Development Division of Community and Regional

“It was such a beautiful experience when I began hearing the Tlingit language start to overflow into the halls and out of the classroom,” Katasse says, adding, “I would hear them making fun of each other in Tlingit.”

Marine Mammal Huntress

A tale of a Native woman on an epic quest

By Hope Roberts

When times are hard I tell myself, “Where there is a will, there is a way.” I am a Tlingit-Gwich’in-Koyukon Alaska Native woman who owns a deep-sea fishing charter, Surreel Saltwaters. After twenty years in the Operating Engineers union, thanks to Local 3 in Hilo, Hawai’i, I have been built to work in an industry dominated by Caucasian males.

I have never felt accepted by many social arenas as a Native woman, and like my parents and their parents, I have been challenged.

My maternal grandfather was a child prisoner survivor who went to boarding school in Wrangell. My paternal grandfather passed from emphysema, which he contracted working as a laborer during the early pipeline days.

You can imagine how hard boarding school was on my maternal

grandfather, a child under the age of 10, and the effect his experience had on my mother. Both my mother and grandfather succumbed to alcoholism, which led to cirrhosis of the liver.

Yet resilience is built in our DNA; where there is generational trauma there is also transformational grace.

I made myself accepted, I watched the people that I wanted to be like, and I have made myself into the person I wanted to be.

Divided from Culture

I was not afforded the opportunity to build a fish wheel with my grandfather or learn to smoke the fish into strips.

Food is life, Indigenous food is power, it is healing. [I would like to] create an online platform and use that, as well as modern and primitive tools, to normalize feeding children in the foster system their Indigenous “soul food.”

For years, I felt like my spirit was screaming to be on the coastal waters, and I did not know why. I had no idea that harvesting and learning to be a marine mammal huntress was embedded in my DNA memory. It is—I have never felt so at home before anywhere. Not when I harvested moose (with two little girls, one being a baby, in tow), not berry picking, not even fishing for salmon.

I was alive for the first time when I harvested my first sea otter, and even more so with my first harbor seal. The meat was the sweetest meat I had ever tasted, and the blubber was the best grease I had ever tasted as it melted in my mouth. I felt like my spirit, which always seemed to be a subconscious thing, was now conscious. It was everything I had been looking for.

I knew in my heart that there were more individuals who felt like me and I was going to find them.

The Business Transformation

I knew I was a businessperson when I was 8 years old. I started my first one based on hunger in a low-income apartment building in Fairbanks.

I used to play outside across the street from a grocery store called Market Basket. I saw that many people did their weekly grocery shopping on the weekends and had a tough time carrying their bags three stories up. I saw a need to help people, so I did. I carried bags of groceries for people. At first, it was just out of kindness. When I was tipped five dollars for the first time, I realized it was a needed service. I began waiting outside the apartment buildings on the weekends to help people for tips, and then I would cross the fourlane road to buy a deli burrito, which I had been privileged to try once when we had an extra $0.69.

It was very rewarding, especially since by the end of the month a lot of times we would be out of food and

food stamps. This is where my love for business began.

Despite my early start in business, I was late to college. I give myself grace in the fact that I could not start my college career until I was well over 30. I look at it this way: I have to catch up at least four generations behind me for the four generations in front of me. I have to break chains, get an education, and show my friends and family that getting out of poverty and staying out is possible.

It is hard and seems hopeless at first when there is no one breaking the trail for you, but it is doable. While 84 percent of people born in poverty stay there, you can be the other 16 percent. On the other side of that statistic, I build my decolonized self through marine mammal harvesting, and I feel rich in that.

Before I started Surreel Saltwaters, I had never been on a fishing charter. Last year marked our fourth successful year in business.

Living the Dream

Despite success, I started getting bored, and I had to liven things up. I thought about all the people who

I look at it this way: I have to catch up at least four generations behind me for the four generations in front of me. I have to break chains, get an education, and show my friends and family that getting out of poverty and staying out is possible.

The Marine Mammal Protection Act allows Alaska Natives like the author to take sea otters, seals, polar bears, or whales for subsistence food or for making handicrafts. Harvest and trade of marine mammal parts is otherwise severely restricted.

Surreel Saltwaters

support us: the Alaska Native people who were raised in a cultural lifestyle their whole lives but who still came and paid us to sport fish.

After five fabulous sport fishing years, I wanted to share this healing time with other Alaska Native people who want to be on the waters.

I had for years planned on helping others learn to hunt on the water, but I could not figure out how until one day it clicked: just invite them.

In April 2022, I did just that. I asked a Tlingit elder, two scientists, and a board member who serves the Prince William Sound Native villages and natural resources departments to join me.

My dear friend had asked relentlessly in meetings to be taught to hunt, and I heard what she needed.

I was honored to show an Alaska Native leader where her ancestors roamed, where her spirit would be filled, and where we could speak freely without any outside influence that would, well, influence the conversations.

The day was wonderful: I saw half smiles turn into full-blown, lifechanging joyous grins.

Surreel Saltwaters is a fully Alaska Native owned company that is branching out: we are using our existing infrastructure to reintroduce the cultural art of marine mammal hunting to people like me, people who have lost the culture within the last hundred years to some tragedy— be it the boarding school era, substance abuse that probably came from the boarding school era, or

Surreel

Saltwaters

natural disasters, such as the 1964 earthquake.

In the 281 years since the Russians first arrived, Alaska Native people have had to adapt to several outside influences without speaking Russian or English. Even after those years, approximately 70 percent of Alaska’s coastal living Natives are still more than one-quarter Alaska Native. This blood quantum being one of the stipulated rules for legally hunting marine mammals is a fair rule.

We should be reconnecting those who are hurting the most to their ancestors’ healing skill and art of marine mammal hunting. I am overjoyed to use my sport fishing infrastructure to do just that. To help others heal through marine mammal hunting, I continuously find ways to invite them along. I have also started researching ways to fund the harvests, as it can be costly: the hides are expensive to tan, and the meat and blubber need to be processed in a semi-protected covering when we bring them to land to teach others. Protected, you see, from bears, the dominant species in our hunting area.

Boats and Beyond

Since that hunt in April, I have become a semifinalist in MIT Solve’s 2022 Indigenous Communities Fellowship [a program for social impact innovation sponsored by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology]. There were solvers from all over the world, 1,100 applications total. My solve is: reversing acculturation by addressing generational trauma to change cycles of addiction by introducing Native harvesting and food to foster children.

I became a foster parent in 2020. There are so many issues that kids in state custody face, but the one that stands out to me, that I was strongly drawn to, is the lack of Indigenous foods provided to the 1,991 Native children in foster care. As of publication, that is 67 percent of the population of children in foster care in Alaska. Most of those children are in the Southcentral region, where I live.

Food is life, Indigenous food is power, it is healing. My solve will create an online platform and use that, as well as modern and primitive tools, to normalize feeding children

in the foster system their Indigenous “soul food.”

And I can’t stop here. I also wrote to the Na’ah Illahee Fund in Seattle about keeping marine mammal harvesting Indigenous, which helps those who need it, using the ancestral art for good and not Western ideal profit.

The American Indian women’s philanthropist group awarded my project one of five fellowships, and I’m planning to make a short documentary about the project in the future.

Many other Alaska Natives grew up with parents struggling with mental health and/or substance abuse who have no connections to and lack skill and time on cultural waters, participating in the cultural harvesting of marine mammals.

My history, my various businesses, and my business degree helps me help others in this respect. Where there is a will, there’s a way.

Hope Roberts is an Alaska Native woman and the owner and operator of Surreel Saltwaters, surreelsaltwaters.com, a sportfishing charter and sightseeing

company based in Valdez.

Hope Roberts (left) uses infrastructure and resources from her sport fishing charter business, Surreel Saltwaters, to help other Alaska Natives experience marine mammal hunting.

Surreel Saltwaters

Solid Foundations

Construction is a reliable business for Alaska Native corporations

By Rindi White

Alaska Native corporations are tied to the land in a very tangible sense. All twelve of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) regional corporations own companies that move the earth, lay foundations, erect structures, or provide construction materials. Construction is just one flake in a blizzard of business activities, but it is an important one. There are millions of dollars to be made in private sector building projects, plus billions more in public works.

Steady at the Helm

With the passage of ANCSA, Arctic Slope Regional Corporation (ASRC) was initially conveyed approximately 3 million acres. It then signed oil and gas exploration leases with several companies on its land, a move that helped the corporation underwrite some of its first businesses, such as fuel distribution company Eskimos, Inc. and tourism company Tundra Tours.

Today, ASRC operates six business segments: government services, energy support services, industrial services, petroleum refining and marketing, construction, and resource development.

ASRC Construction is a holding company that operates six companies, most of which contract directly with the state, federal government, and private clients. The group includes: ASRC Civil Construction, ASRC Earthworks, ASRC SKW Eskimos, ASRC Builders, ASRC Prime Constructors, and Builders Choice Lumber.

ASRC Construction Director of Operations Paul Kari says the six companies offer a variety of talents, allowing ASRC to pursue a wide range of opportunities.

“There aren’t many projects that come out to bid that we don’t take a look at, that we don’t have some ability to navigate,” Kari says. “In the last twenty-two years we played a part in the F-22 buildout [at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson], pursued the F-35 [at Eielson Air Force Base] and the LRDR [Long Range Discrimination Radar]; we pursued for both vertical and civil, both in the 8(a) and competitive market. We’ve been involved in the ebb and flow of state projects.”

Calista

Kari says ASRC leadership strives to gauge where the market is going and tailor its approach to responding to that need. In the last twenty years the corporation has gone from being a contractor that is “really comfortable” doing projects that total between $1 million and $15 million to an entity that is capable of executing projects exceeding $100 million.

“We’re less afraid of the bigger opportunities out there,” he says. “As you gain experience over time, you get more comfortable.”

It can be difficult to grow a company and keep it right-sized for current needs. Kari attributes ASRC’s success to stability among ASRC leaders.

“We’ve obviously grown as it comes to the size of the projects and the team in general; a lot of that has been due to the stability that ASRC has provided,” he says. “Leading management has not been terribly reactive; they put good leaders in place and let them lead. We’re not just trying to grow for growth’s sake but to maintain the opportunities that we have.”

ASRC employed 14,030 people in 2021, of which 2,905 worked in Alaska. Within its ASRC Construction business line, Kari says the companies peak out at about 500 seasonal employees, with between 200 and 300 year-round, not including subcontractors.

“That’s more than doubled in the last twenty years, in terms of our maximum staffing; that mirrors the growth in our revenue,” Kari says.

“The Alaska construction market provides stable opportunities; our focus is performing well for our core clients while keeping an eye on the right opportunities outside of the state,” Kari says.

ASRC’s construction companies are currently working on a variety of jobs: Village Safe Water projects; finishing a school construction project in Aniak; working on the Bettles, Ekwok, and New Stuyahok airports; renovating the historic World War II era Fort Wainwright Hangar 1; and completing seismic upgrades at the historic Fort Wainwright chapel.

ASRC’s relationship with its shareholders goes beyond that of a typical business/shareholder relationship.

ASRC Construction built a fuel storage vault at the Long Range Discrimination Radar power plant at Clear Space Force Station, a US Army Corps of Engineers and US Department of Defense project.

ASRC Construction

“Beyond the traditional aspect of being a shareholder of a corporation with potential for dividends, shareholders also play vital roles within our organization through employment. From construction craft positions to those in a variety of management roles, shareholders benefit from continuing education opportunities, training, and professional development,” he says.

Kari explains that the company also strives to hire locally when it works in

remote areas. Sometimes that means hiring ASRC shareholders in nonASRC villages. Often it means hiring people in the village in which the project is happening regardless of shareholder status.

“We understand that the more of that we leave in the community, inherently it is more successful for us. Some [we have hired] have joined us and continued outside that opportunity and found a new career,” Kari says.

‘Steady and Increasing’

Bristol Bay Native Corporation (BBNC) has a lengthy list of construction related subsidiaries, some wholly owned and others in partnership with other corporations. It operates many of its construction activities outside of Alaska. For example, BBNC’s SES Group operates out of Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and the CCI Alliance of Companies has offices in Maine, Florida, Georgia, and Alabama.

The lumber distributor Builders

Choice is one of six companies in the ASRC Construction family.

ASRC Construction

In Alaska, it is also a minority owner of the Bristol Alliance of Companies, which is based out of Anchorage; Choggiung, the village corporation for Dillingham, is the majority owner. The list of projects the Bristol companies perform inside and out of Alaska is staggering: repairing the Chester Creek drainage, performing formerly used defense site cleanups at remote camps around Alaska, and designing and building a new post office at Chena.

Also on the roster is Bristol Bay Industrial, which engages in construction operations through its member companies in Alaska and the Lower 48, including oilfield-related work in Kenai, Valdez, and on the North Slope. BBNC also owns Alaska Directional Drilling, and it recently acquired GHEMM Company, a Fairbanks general contractor.

Alaska Directional Drilling recently completed laying a 300-mile fiberoptic cable network called AlCan

ONE between the Canadian border and North Pole. GHEMM Company recently secured a $20 million project to build a 51,000-square-foot transit garage in Fairbanks for the Fairbanks North Star Borough.

The Alaska Directional Drilling and GHEMM Company purchases are a strategic effort to recognize companies that are already at the head of their field, says Scott Torrison, chief operating officer for BBNC.

Arctic Slope Regional Corporation recently built a new playground at the school in Tuntutuliak.

ASRC Construction

A barge is loaded with cargo, including trucks and equipment, to be delivered to Wales, the westernmost mainland city in the United States.

ASRC Construction

design-build services for 250,000 square feet of new Sprung structures at Fort Wainwright. The project included ten structures providing heated space for the Stryker Brigade to maintain and operate critical equipment, plus two new combat readiness training facilities for Brigade personnel.

“Acquiring really good companies with really good leadership and people is really the core of what we’re interested in. We work to support the leaders and their unique cultures,” he says.

It supports BBNC’s overall mission to benefit shareholders and add to the economic capacity of Bristol Bay.

“Our policy is ‘steady and increasing,’” Torrison says. “If you were a shareholder, you can count on quarterly dividend payments that are likely to increase each year.”

Hiring shareholders is part of the overall picture, he says, but it doesn’t only mean hiring them at BBNC companies.

“Some shareholders want to work for us, some want to do other things. We do what we can to support shareholders in whatever career direction they want,” Torrison explains.

Diversification and Strategy

Calista Corporation, with more than 35,000 shareholders—the most of any Alaska Native Corporation— operates more than thirty subsidiaries in defense contracting, construction, real estate, environmental services, natural resource development, marine transportation, oilfield services, and heavy equipment sales, service, and rentals. Eleven of those companies

are part of Calista’s construction and environmental service holding line, which includes seven Brice companies operated by Brice Inc.; Yukon Equipment, STG Inc., STG Pacific, and Tunista Construction are the remaining four.

“We do construction, whether it’s vertical or civil; we do environmental investigations and remediation; we do logistics—marine logistics, and we have Yukon Equipment, which is a heavy equipment sales and rental company,” says says Sam Brice, holding line president.

Brice says approximately 70 percent of their operations are in Alaska and 30 percent are Outside.

“It’s diversification for when Alaska is in a down state, like the last few years, with oil being down and the pandemic— it’s slow,” Brice says.

Much of the work outside Alaska is federal contracts, mostly for the Department of Defense, the US Army Corps of Engineers, and the Federal Aviation Administration. The various companies do some private work as well, he says, such as site development.

Nine of the eleven Calista Brice companies have thick portfolios of Alaska work. Brice Inc. is working on several rural airports for the Alaska Department of Transportation & Public Facilities and aims to finish Emmonak’s city dock this year, Brice says. The company is also working to deliver aggregates and building materials to thirteen villages this summer for the Association of Village Council Presidents Rural Housing Authority.

Brice Environmental is working on projects on Shemya Island for the US Army Corps of Engineers–Alaska Division and for Raytheon, which operates an L-Band radar site at Shemya’s Eareckson Air Station. Brice Environmental and Brice Civil are both supporting the activities of Donlin Gold project, where there is ongoing drilling this summer. Brice Builders is busily upgrading grounding systems at eleven remote radar sites across Alaska.

Meanwhile, STG Pacific is working on a $10 million joint venture project with Davis Constructors & Engineers to build a new Lake Hood hangar for the US Fish & Wildlife Service. STG this

Bristol workers place rip rap along the shoreline of Lake Andrew in Adak to protect the South Davis Road landfill from erosion.

Bristol Alliance of Companies

Bristol Bay Native Corporation's SES Group of Companies provided

SES Group of Companies

summer finished installing 1,200 steel pilings at the Nome Airport to help stave off runway settlement, a project on which STG was a subcontractor to Knik Construction. STG also subcontracted work to install new pilings for a hotel in Bethel.

“If there’s a project out there, one of our companies are looking to see if there is a fit, whether as a prime contractor or as a subcontractor,” Brice says.

Calista Brice employed about 650 people in the second quarter, a number Brice expected to rise in the third quarter. About 10 percent of Calista Brice employees are Calista shareholders; another 6 to 7 percent are shareholders in other Alaska Native corporations.

Similar to some other Alaska Native corporations, the Calista Board of Directors uses a formula-based approach to provide distributions to its shareholders. This approach ensures that shareholders benefit from the company’s steady growth.

Calista’s spring distribution is based on shareholder equity, which is basically the net worth of its business. Its Akilista distribution, generally distributed in November, is based on Calista’s investment portfolio, which is not dependent on business performance.

“Due to financial discipline and strong performance of our business investments year-to-year, our board has authorized paying distributions that keep increasing faster than the increase in our shareholder base,” Calista Board Chair Robert Beans said in a recent company newsletter.

Across the board, Calista is gearing up for the Donlin gold project, which it hopes will be as successful to the regional native corporation as the Red Dog Mine in Kotzebue, on land owned by the NANA Regional Corporation.

Calista owns the subsurface estate the proposed Donlin mine would be located on. It’s valuable for the corporation and for its shareholders, Brice says. “It would provide an opportunity for people to stay in the region, have a good job and be able to spend time in their communities, spend time with family, continue their subsistence lifestyle.”

Calista subsidiary Brice Inc. is building a dock for the City of Emmonak.

Calista

Brice Civil and Brice Environmental, both 8(a)-certified spinoffs of Calista Brice, supported this season’s exploration for Donlin Gold on land where Calista owns part of the mineral rights.

Calista

STG, which specializes in operating cranes and laying foundations, installed 1,200 pilings at the Nome Airport this summer.

Calista

For a hotel being built in Bethel, STG applied its expertise in pilings as a subcontractor.

Calista

A Light Touch

ConocoPhillips Alaska shrinks its

footprint with an eye to sustainability

By Vanessa Orr

ConocoPhillips set some major milestones in 2022, producing its first oil from the Fiord West Kuparuk reservoir and setting a new drilling record from a land-based rig. The company’s optimization of new technologies and commitment to sustainable development has enabled it to reduce its footprint in the environment by extending drilling from fewer well pads, providing increased revenue and employment opportunities in the state.

The company has even bigger plans, including continued investment in Alaska and a goal of achieving net zero on its operational emissions by 2050. But there are challenges as well, according to Erec Isaacson, president of ConocoPhillips Alaska.

“As you look at development in the Arctic, the key thing to remember is that it’s not easy,” he says. “With the regulatory environment we have and experiences that we’ve had, we’ve proven that we have the right talent and creativity in the company to achieve our goals. Our many years of history operating responsibly in Alaska reflect our focus to ensure regulatory and environmental concerns are mitigated.”

Success Stories

On May 18, 2022, the Fiord West Kuparuk reservoir produced its first oil. “The project used extended reach drilling technology [ERD], the first of this type in Alaska, which will continue to play a vital role in developing Alaska’s resources with minimal environmental impact. The team was able to overcome the

challenges of implementing a new technology, landed the well, and got it on production,” says Isaacson.

Fiord West Kuparuk is a satellite of the Alpine field that is being developed from the existing CD2 pad in the Colville River Unit and is currently producing approximately 11,000 barrels of oil per day.

For areas with existing gravel roads, ERD technology eliminates the need for new gravel pads, additional pipelines, or more roads and enables companies to access 60 percent more acreage from a single pad. Using the Doyon 26 rig, ConocoPhillips set a North American land drilling record of 35,526 feet from the CD2 pad.

“When we begin building roads and pads [at Willow], we expect that we will be able to reduce road height by 25 percent through use of insulation, which means less gravel moved, lower road heights, and fewer impacts. This has the potential to reduce disturbance with caribou movements and subsistence activities.”

Erec Isaacson, President, ConocoPhillips Alaska

The injection well is being preproduced for approximately six months prior to being converted to permanent injection service when the company is ready to drill the next well.

Having seen the success of ERD technology, ConocoPhillips plans to review other opportunities where the innovative drilling method can be

used. “When we look at all of the other opportunities we have up there on the western North Slope, there are other reservoirs that could benefit from ERD,” Isaacson says, suggesting that this could include drilling more wells on the Fiord West Kuparuk field.

“ERD will allow us to maximize the potential of existing pads and to reach areas that we otherwise could not get to because they are environmentally sensitive environments or are economically challenging,” he explains. “We’ll be looking at these subsurface opportunities, at the cost, and how long they will take to drill, as well as evaluating the economics of other opportunities in the company's global portfolio to determine how many of these projects will be considered for future drilling.

“When you look at the North Slope, we have a history of continually optimizing how we develop from a sustainability standpoint and from a cost perspective with each new set of wells, pads, and fields,” says Isaacson. “ERD is another tool that will allow us to do that.

Erec Isaacson, President, ConocoPhillips Alaska

“Our goal is to operate sustainably, reduce environmental impacts, and minimize the footprint of our well sites and production facilities,” he adds, noting the continuous improved footprint design on the western North Slope, Kuparuk, and Greater Mooses Tooth projects.

Exploring New Technologies

ConocoPhillips is constantly implementing new technologies for operations, according to Isaacson, as well as for drilling and developing new wells.

“This runs across the whole spectrum: from logistics, where we use the latest technology to manage how to move things around and store them more efficiently, to data analytics to analyze the performance of our subsurface operations and fine tune them,” he says. “We use integrated planning technology to improve our procedures and operations on the North Slope.”

Isaacson points to the Willow project, where the company has had the opportunity to design from scratch, integrating the innovations and technology developed over many years of working on the North Slope.

“When we begin building roads and pads over there, we expect that we will be able to reduce road height by 25 percent through use of insulation, which means less gravel moved, lower road heights, and fewer impacts. This has the potential to reduce disturbance with caribou movements and subsistence activities,” he says.

“We’re also using different technologies with our contractors in the way that we mine gravel there,” Isaacson adds. “We are using continuous mining methods with reduced blasting which more efficiently extracts and moves gravel with fewer noise impacts.”

The company is also implementing 4D seismic technology at Willow to

monitor the efficiency of its fields, create more intelligent wells, and control and maximize reservoir performance.

Behind the scenes, the company is creating digital twins of all of Willow’s facilities, which will allow the company to set up and visualize systems before performing turnaround or maintenance work in the field.

Another innovation is the Willow project’s power supply, using high efficiency turbines and waste heat recovery.

“When Willow comes online, its greenhouse gas emission intensity is expected to be among the lowest reported for North American and OPEC countries, based on recent oil production data, making it very sustainable and efficient,” says Isaacson.

Continuing Development

Greater Mooses Tooth Unit #2 (GMT2) produced its first oil at the end of 2021, and the company is

For areas with existing gravel roads, extended reach drilling technology eliminates the need for new gravel pads, additional pipelines, or more roads and enables companies to access 60 percent more acreage from a single pad.

ConocoPhillips Alaska

still actively developing that project.

After roughly ten months of drilling, ConocoPhillips has completed the ninth well of a thirty-six-well program and expects to continue to drill at the site for approximately two more years. GMT2 is expected to produce 30,000 barrels per day at its peak production.

Since 2000, ConocoPhillips has drilled fifty-eight exploration wells in the area, including twenty-eight within the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska.

“We still see significant oil and exploration opportunities within our areas of existing infrastructure, as well as exploration opportunities nearby,” says Isaacson. For instance, this season the company will drill exploration wells on state land south and slightly west of Kuparuk in an area called Bear.

“In the short term, depending on how [Bear] goes and Willow goes, we’ll see what else we want to do from an exploration standpoint,” he continues. “We have a good inventory of exploration projects and a nice inventory of development projects as well.”

Over the coming decade, ConocoPhillips plans to advance development opportunities in the Alpine field Colville River Unit, as well as the Kuparuk Unit to the east and the Prudhoe Bay Unit.

In Kuparuk, the company is planning to move forward on several projects, including Nuna, Coyote, and Narwhal, as well as plans to continue to develop viscous production and undertake additional West Sak development.

“We are focusing on well work to keep our existing fields healthy and online in Kuparuk,” Isaacson says. “There are lots of little things happening around our existing assets, which are impressive in themselves. They don’t get as much fanfare as Willow but end up being just as important for our future.”

On July 15, 2022, the federal Bureau of Land Management released a draft supplemental environmental impact statement for the Willow project, which opened a 45-day comment period. Following that, the supplemental environmental survey can be finalized.

“We anticipate receiving authorization from the BLM to proceed with the project by the end of the year and are

planning to begin construction on the project this winter season.”

Future Plans

With so many projects going on in the state, it’s no surprise that ConocoPhillips plans to continue to invest in Alaska.

“We see Alaska as an important part of our diversified global portfolio that includes long-cycle investments,” says Isaacson. “By the time we go through permitting and studies, it can take a decade or more to get to production. We have short-cycle investments elsewhere, and long-cycle investments help add balance.”

From a corporate standpoint, ConocoPhillips has a long-term commitment to emissions reduction and has adopted the Paris-aligned climate risk framework with the ambition to reduce emissions to net zero by 2050.

“This goes hand-in-hand with the way we work in Alaska, using decades of science-informed monitoring and engineering to make sure we do things sustainably while addressing stakeholder concerns,” says Isaacson. “We take a lot of pride in the longtime relationships we have with residents of the North Slope and the local contractors in Alaska who we work with day in day out.

“We are really proud of the achievements that our workforce has made in innovation, technology, and creating an atmosphere that is inclusive, diverse, and where everyone feels like they are contributing something when they come into the office,” he adds. “And we will continue to actively recruit Alaskans for positions, as the majority of our workforce calls Alaska home.”

the Doyon 26 rig, ConocoPhillips set a North American land drilling record of 35,526 feet from an existing CD2 pad.

With

ConocoPhillips Alaska

“[Extended reach drilling] will allow us to maximize the potential of existing pads and to reach areas that we otherwise could not get to because they are environmentally sensitive environments or are economically challenging.”

Erec Isaacson, President, ConocoPhillips Alaska

Destination Denali

Premier Alaska Tours pivots from concierge to host

By Katie Pesznecker

ECI Anchorage Design Strategy

Premier Alaska Tours built its business on providing Lower 48 and international tour companies an Alaska-based army of employees, vehicles, and expertise. Because Premier markets almost entirely to the national and international wholesale market versus the individual traveler, many Alaskans have never heard of them. That’s about to change: Premier is stepping up in a big way with an ambitious development at Denali National Park & Preserve.

The planned development will unfold across 50 acres on the shoreline of Otto Lake, just outside Healy, west of the Parks Highway. From the site’s 1,788foot elevation, the lodge-like boathouse and 300-room hotel will offer views of mountain scenery and, in the winter, blazing displays of aurora. Rounding out the complex: paved vehicle access, boardwalks for nature strolls, an on-site restaurant, employee housing, a bus maintenance facility, and more.

Peter Grunwaldt, co-founder and coowner of Premier Alaska Tours along with Tim Worthen, says the first-ofits-kind development will offer a new experience to the discerning Denali traveler. Premier already interacts with some 250,000 Alaskans and visitors annually. Some of that is off-season transport for military, industry, and schools. But the vast majority are interactions with tourists—transporting them via buses and luxury train cars, moving their luggage, taking them to the state’s special places, all at the service of other tour companies. Premier having its own branded hotel and property built into that experience makes sense, Grunwaldt says.

“We will build this product into their trip experience,” he says. “Most people who visit the park stay in the canyon where most of the hotels are. This is high on a plateau and the views are just amazing. I think you’ll have a bit of a wilderness feeling, closer to a wilderness experience than a city experience. It should be a really unique, special place in Denali National Park.”

First Foray

The Denali development is the first of its kind for Premier, whose brickand-mortar holdings to date consist of year-round offices in Anchorage and Fairbanks, seasonal workspace in

Denali, and facilities to maintain, clean, and park their fleet of 160 passenger buses, Sprinter vans, luggage haulers, and other vehicles.

For its foray into the hotel-owning business, Denali was the right place to start.

“Denali is the one destination that everybody thinks they have to go to,” Grunwaldt says. “Denali is the bottleneck. There’s spectacular scenery in other areas, but it doesn’t have the marketing Denali does. We historically cannot sell a vacation package in Southcentral Alaska that doesn’t include Denali National Park. If you sell a three, five, or nine-night tour, it might not include Valdez or Seward or Homer, but they all include Denali.”

Business is booming in Alaska’s most famous national park. Grunwaldt says his company is operating at capacity 30 percent above 2019 levels, before the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

“After a two-year break, it’s really welcomed,” he says.

In 2019, Premier purchased land from the Alaska Railroad—an endeavor that took some time and required Legislative action and the governor’s signature. With plans drawn up, Premier prepared to order materials to begin building Phase 1, the $6 million lakeside boathouse, in summer 2020.

“Up until March 2020 we were full steam ahead,” Grunwaldt says. But then COVID-19 hit. “We pulled the plug as soon as we knew there was no season.”

Coming out of the pandemic, Premier reassessed its risk tolerance in conjunction with its construction plans, and the focus now is on building the boathouse—a picturesque and multifunctional gathering space that could be used immediately and year-round.

“It’s a challenging time to be building, but we’re excited to use the boathouse next year,” Grunwaldt says. “There won’t be a hotel yet, but with the boathouse, we’ll do daytime programs, breakfast programs, evening programs, so people can really experience the wilderness and check out the trails.”

Scandinavian Clean

This summer, construction crews broke ground on the timber-frame boathouse. With a few dozen workers on site, some lived in existing cabins and others stayed in Healy. When complete,

Peter Grunwaldt Co-owner Premier Alaska Tours

“It’s fun being part of a business where people are excited to be here and we’re delivering something they’re excited to be spending money on… They’re going on an experience of a lifetime. They’re landing on a glacier in a float plane, they’re going rafting, they’re having a salmon bake dinner. It’s something they’ve dreamed about .”

BOATHOUSE FLOOR

the boathouse will have capacity to seat 200 for indoor presentations and educational programming, to use as an overflow waiting area, or for staging tour departures.

With huge chalet windows, sweeping lake views, and spacious decks with an outdoor fireplace, Grunwaldt imagines that the space’s versatility could make it an asset to

the Healy community, an option for events, weddings, and more.

“They don’t have a building like this, and we needed one for evening

Alaska Tours

Photo by Amanda Doney Umialik Employee

student groups and tour groups, he says.

Aesthetically, the building is “authentic Alaskan but Scandinavian clean,” Grunwaldt says. “It’s not log.

There’s too much of that already in Alaska.”

The boathouse is wood-framed with birch and maple wall paneling, and the interior appears bright, white, and

expansive—woodsy in a fresh, organic way. The hotel will have a similar look, Grunwaldt says, with restaurant and common areas that encourage fireside relaxation and comfortable socialization.

Otto Lake: Boathouse

Premier Alaska Tours

A rendering shows the timber-framed boathouse at Premier’s Otto Lake development. Construction was supposed to begin in 2020, but COVID-19 delayed the project by two years.

Premier Alaska Tours

If the project remains on pace, the boathouse will open in summer 2023 as construction begins on employee housing and then the hotel. The hope is to open the hotel in summer 2024.

Seamless Transition

Completion of the Denali complex will be a landmark achievement for Premier Alaska Tours, which got its start almost thirty years ago.

Grunwaldt and partner Worthen were coworkers for Regency Cruises, which was essentially the budget

cruise option before the company collapsed in 1995.

“They left the state when they went bankrupt, and our last paychecks bounced,” Grunwaldt recalls. “We had one van and two guys and said, ‘We could go to the wholesale market.’”

Premier’s business model from the get-go addressed a uniquely Alaska problem. Major Outside tour companies arrive with thousands of visitors who want to leave port and venture into Alaska to ride trains, see mountains, shop, and dine—but the companies

didn’t have infrastructure to support the logistics of these extended, secondary vacations.

That’s where Premier comes in. They supply staff, vehicles, and knowledge, stepping in as luggage handlers, drivers, guides, and more for droves of tourists who arrive via cruise ships from companies like Royal Caribbean International, Norwegian Cruise Line, Celebrity Cruises, and Silversea Cruises.

The ordinary traveler never knows the difference. For example,

Premier

disembarking from a vessel in Seward, visitors are checked in by an employee wearing the name tag and uniform of the cruise ship company—but the employee actually works for Premier. And the bus the travelers board? It’s a Premier luxury coach, but it bears the cruise line’s logo, thanks to vinyl decals that Premier prints.

“It’s our staff wearing that cruise company’s name tag, scarf, blazer, checking the guests in in the Seward terminal,” Grunwaldt says. “We check them in and out, move the bags, drive the buses, greet them at the hotel, serve their cocktails, act as their tour guide. We have luggage handling, bartenders, servers, people cooking salmon on the train, cooking your halibut and prime rib. It’s a different model from anywhere else in the world really. This is a full-on vacation package separate from the cruise. We are one-stop shopping for the cruise lines.”

In a regular tourist season, Premier hosts 70,000 train passengers in its luxury domed cars. The company pays a tariff to the Alaska Railroad, and the cars are attached to the back of a passenger train.

Some 50,000 people move through Alaska in a given summer on a multiday cruise tour package facilitated by Premier.

Taste Alaska

While acting in the guise of out-ofstate cruise lines has proved valuable to their clients, there was one major philosophical shift early in Premier’s approach to doing business.

“We thought that if we had really low prices, we would be successful,” Grunwaldt says. “What we found out really was that the guest experience and quality of service we could provide was what differentiated us from competitors.”

For example, Premier’s pancake sales went through the roof when they upgraded to offering their passengers a Talkeetna birch syrup. Ditto with Bloody Marys when they swapped out the vodka for an Alaska brand.

“When people are visiting Alaska, they want to taste Alaska too,” Grunwaldt says. “We do anything we can to source Alaska products. It may cost more, but the company has never been based on budgets. We look at customer

scores and service levels. If everyone goes home and says that was the best experience I could have had in Alaska, we know we’ll make money.”

This Alaska-focused philosophy extends elsewhere. For instance, when Premier bought its train cars, the interiors were filled with generic landscape paintings that looked nothing like Alaska. Premier promptly replaced the decor with Alaska Native carvings and art by Alaskans.

“When given the choice we always try to support our local community,” says Grunwaldt, himself a fifty-year resident with two children in grade school in Anchorage.

“If we can stop at a local restaurant, if we can work with local Alaskans, we always strive for that, and we’re always looking to develop that,” he says.

In this spirit, Premier strives for local hire, knowing proud Alaskans make enthusiastic tour guides and ambassadors. The company hires about 650 employees in the summer season, and many are teenagers who get their first jobs in roles like cleaning buses or greeting passengers at airports and terminals.

DOWNTOWN ANCHORAGE

business are equipment acquisition, interior decorating, and menu selection—and from his experience as a general contractor, he enjoys anything involved with construction. It’s a nice balance with his partner, Worthen, who has an accounting degree.

“It’s fun being part of a business where people are excited to be here and we’re delivering something they’re

With the Denali hotel project well underway, Premier is considering future developments in Homer, Seward, Talkeetna, or in Girdwood, where the company has secured a 10-acre mountainside site, approved for a 150room hotel in the Girdwood master development plan.

Still recovering from the pandemic’s economic impacts, staffing has

positioned to meet those demands,” he says. “We’ve got buses, trains, and most importantly, our team. At Premier Alaska Tours, the things we’ve been planning for the next ten years will help us be successful. We’re really proud of not only where we live but that we, as an Alaska company, are competing on a global level.”

Otto Lake: Lodge

Premier Alaska Tours

meet in

Closing the Loop

Recycling still strong in the Interior despite a setback

By Rachael Kvapil

“The community wants a recycling program,” says Matt Pearson, recycling manager for the Fairbanks North Star Borough (FNSB). “There has been a long-time push from community members for a centralized location where they could bring materials and electronics.”

Pearson says people have many reasons for recycling, from stewardship of resources to reversing climate change. For the FNSB, the reason is more quantifiable. Each borough resident produces around 5.8 pounds of trash per person per day, above the national average of 4.4 pounds. Without recycling, every waste product ends up in the FNSB landfill on Sanduri Street in southwest Fairbanks, decreasing the lifespan of the 250-acre facility. As it stands, the landfill is designed to last until 2070. Once it’s filled, the borough will need additional acreage for a new dump site.

“Reducing or diverting material can extend the lifespan of the landfill,” says Pearson. “It can also reduce the amount of methane gas being released from discarded materials breaking down.”

Borough-led recycling began twenty years ago with the Used Oil Energy Recovery program, which serves as the primary fuel source to heat the main landfill building. Soon after, FNSB began exploring a borough-operated recycling service, which culminated in 2017 with the opening of the Central Recycling Facility (CRF) on the north side of town.

The government-run recycling center serves as the drop-off point for five materials: aluminum beverage containers, corrugated cardboard, mixed paper including newspaper and office paper, plastic bottles and jugs (#1 and #2), and electronics, which are processed by Green Star of Interior Alaska.

In less than five years of operation, the CRF has collected more than 2,043 tons of materials. Despite a learning curve during the first year, Pearson says the facility has run smoothly, minus a

small closure during the pandemic.

Oh, and one other hiccup. The CRF closed with the start of the municipal fiscal year on July 1 when the borough and the facility operator were unable to agree on a new contract. Borough officials expected procurement of a new contractor would take two to three months. As this article goes to press, the CRF may be back in action, or it will be soon.

What’s Trash, What Isn’t

The CRF is closed to anyone outside of FNSB boundaries; the facility only accepts items from residents and local businesses. As a public service, residents can drop off materials at no charge, while commercial entities pay a fee of $75 per ton for regular recyclables and $700 per ton for electronics.

“Processing and shipping recyclables to the Lower 48 is expensive,” Pearson explains. “Our recycling broker gets us the best prices for materials on the commodities market, but we aren’t making a profit, which is fine because we’re a government agency.”

“Reducing or diverting material can extend the lifespan of the landfill… It can also reduce the amount of methane gas being released from discarded materials breaking down.”

Matt Pearson Recycling Manager

Fairbanks North Star Borough

Matt Pearson Recycling Manager Fairbanks North Star Borough

FNSB residents can choose whether to recycle or not, so presorting recyclables out of their trash isn’t mandatory in the FNSB. Since regular trash pick-up is only available within Fairbanks city limits, residents outside those limits haul their own trash either to the landfill or to a nearby transfer site. At those sites, none of the transfer bins are set aside for recyclables; it’s just not worth it. Without constant supervision to ensure materials are sorted properly, the risk of contamination increases.

For those who choose to recycle what they can, CRF has a few guidelines beyond five basic accepted materials.

For instance, the recycling center accepts aluminum beverage cans but not aluminum pie or foil pans; shiny cardboard with pictures on it but not waxy food shipping boxes; mixed paper but not paper cups, plates, or towels.

The real tricky one, Pearson says, is #2 plastics, or high-density polyethylene (HDPE), commonly found in milk jugs or detergent bottles. HDPE bottles with a “neck” are manufactured using

“Processing and shipping recyclables to the Lower 48 is expensive… Our recycling broker gets us the best prices for materials on the commodities market, but we aren’t making a profit, which is fine because we’re a government agency.”

The Fairbanks North Star Borough Central Recycling Facility accepts #1 plastics and #2 bottles and jugs for recycling. Recycling Manager Matt Pearson says not all #2 plastic bottles are the same and encourages people to refer to informational material on the borough website for clarification.

FNSB Central Recycling Facility

The Fairbanks North Star Borough Central Recycling Facility provides covered bins for residents to place their sorted recyclables. Materials are then compacted in a baler, loaded for transportation to Anchorage, and then shipped to Washington for final processing.

FNSB Central Recycling Facility

a blow molding process and are easier to recycle. Containers without a “neck” made with the same #2 plastic, like butter tubs or yogurt cups, are manufactured by injection molding, which creates a very stable product that is more likely to be reused for storage. Injection-molded plastics crack and are difficult to bale; however, skipping the baling process means paying for “air weight” when transferred to the plastic recycler, so the CRF decided not to accept these items or shopping bags.

“We have comprehensive guides on our website to help people identify recyclable products and additional information on how to sort them prior to bringing them to the recycling center,” Pearson says.

He says presorting ensures that materials are collected and recycled properly, reduces drop-off time, and speeds up the baling process. Washing bottles prior to presorting helps the recycling center meet the industry standard of 0.5 percent or less contamination. Materials that are brought to the CRF are inspected for quality before compacting into bales. Bales are transported to Anchorage then barged to Washington for transportation to mills for processing into new products. When possible, cardboard and newspaper remain in Alaska; Thermo-Kool in Wasilla turns newspaper into cellulose insulation.

Gadget Graveyard

Electronics collected at the CRF have two potential fates: recycled as component materials or refurbished for resale. The borough partnered with Green Star of Interior Alaska for this service. Green Star takes electronics collected and sorted by the CRF and prepares them for shipment to downstream recycling vendors or for resale. Prior to the CRF temporary closure, Green Star received up to 2 tons of material weekly. Green Star Business Manager Sarah Marshall says thousands of items per year pass through their sorting process, such as TVs, desktop computers, laptops, keyboards, and monitors.

Marshall says volunteers determine which items to reuse or resell in the local warehouse. The remaining items are broken down and transferred to Total Reclaim, Inc (TRI), an electronics

recycler. Breaking down items includes removing all cables and wires; sorting materials by type (computers, monitors, TVs, cables/wires, et cetera); stacking and wrapping large items securely on pallets; and sorting, preparing, and packaging batteries by type for safe transportation. When there is enough to fill a 40-foot trailer (donated by Air Land Transport), the materials are shipped to the TRI facility in Anchorage. From there, TRI ships the electronics to its main recycling plant in Washington. TRI decides which items to refurbish for resale and which are further broken down into

component materials for reuse on the commodities markets.

“Electronics have a built-in obsolescence,” Marshall says, “which means residents, businesses, and organizations have to replace them more often. [Electronics are] a large quantity of items that contain precious metals and recyclable materials that we keep out of our landfill.”

Extending the life of the borough landfill is only one reason Green Star of Interior Alaska takes an active role in recycling. Cherissa Dukelow, Green Star program and outreach manager, says recycling prevents

the unnecessary strain on natural resources, especially when it comes to electronics (e-waste).

“The more precious metals we can recycle, the fewer metals we have to extract from the ground,” Dukelow says.

Mining the Kuskokwim

Donlin Gold is already extracting precious metals from the western Interior, even though the mine developer is still in the permitting stage. The company, in partnership with the Association of Village Council Presidents and other Yukon-

Sarah Marshall, Business Manager, Green Star of Interior Alaska

Kuskokwim entities, participates in the annual electronics recycling effort known as the “In It for the Long Haul” Backhaul Project.

Electronics are just as popular in the Bush as anywhere, and just as liable to wear out. The difference is that all those mobile devices, office appliances, game consoles, and TV sets that were delivered to remote communities at great expense and effort are, for practical purposes, stuck at the end of the proverbial road.

The solution, for the past five years, has been a barge owned and operated by the Native Village of Napaimute. Every summer, the barge visits communities along the Kuskokwim River to collect e-waste, such as discarded computers, old batteries, and more. This year, seventeen villages participated. Meanwhile, Grant Aviation, Ryan Air, and Alaska Air Transit fly materials to Bethel from thirteen other communities, including McGrath and Nikolai, at no cost to the communities or the project.

Items are stored in Bethel and repackaged for shipment to Anchorage or Seattle for disposal or recycling. By

In addition to collecting regular recyclable materials, the Fairbanks North Star Borough Central Recycling Facility also serves as the drop off site of electronics processed by Green Star of Interior Alaska, which sorts through electronics to determine what can be repaired, reused, and resold locally and what needs to be broken down, packaged, and shipped to Washington.

FNSB Central Recycling Facility

the end of 2022, the sixth year of the Donlin Gold backhaul program, Donlin Gold project partners will have collected nearly half a million pounds of harmful waste that would have otherwise ended up in landfills or waterways.

Kristina Woolston, external affairs manager for Donlin Gold, says removing waste from rural communities is extremely important. Unlike the Fairbanks landfill, most remote landfills don’t have liners that prevent toxic materials from leaching into the groundwater. Likewise, there aren’t as many options to dispose of materials off the road system.

“The majority of our employees and their families live and work in this area,” says Woolston. “Managing material disposal can have a long-term impact on their health and the health of the community.”

The High Road

The vastness of Alaska has presented an obstacle to statewide recycling efforts. In 1978, voters rejected a ballot proposition to impose a $0.10 fee for every beer or carbonated beverage container sold, partly because of the complication of refunding the fee in the Bush.

Although the initiative exempted vendors off the road or mainline ferry system, it would’ve required containers to have two separate labels depending on where they were sold:

“Alaska Refund – 10 cents” or “Rural Alaska – No Refund.” However, rural customers might buy containers in cities and then take them home, and transporting the empties back was more costly than the refund.

A decade later, though, stranded aluminum cans found an escape route. Alaskans for Litter Prevention and Recycling (ALPAR) and the Alaska Air Carriers Association teamed up for Flying Cans. The association’s member airlines donate backhaul capacity on their planes, giving about seventy rural communities access to recycling. According to ALPAR, more than 14 tons of cans were flown to Anchorage this way in 2019. ALPAR pays communities market rate for

cans, revenue which in turn often pays for local youth programs.

In 2009, ALPAR expanded the program to include Flying Bottles. It only applies to #1 plastic (polyethylene terephthalate, the most common water and soda bottles), and ALPAR doesn’t have enough cash to pay communities for the resource. And for both bottles and cans, communities must store materials indefinitely until air carriers have space available for the load.

Squirreling away recyclables is how Fairbanks is coping with the temporary shutdown of the borough’s CRF. Sure, residents could also choose to throw everything in the trash, but recyclable material need not be scrapped forever just because the borough isn’t collecting it for a little while. Private companies C & R Pipe and Steel and K&K Recycling are taking aluminum items.

Over the longer term, the FNSB might be able to expand service with increased collection hours. Pearson says the main obstacle has been limited space; a larger facility would allow more storage until materials are loaded in the baler. A large enough facility would allow the installation of a horizontal baler, which is easier to load than the current vertical balers and would increase the amount of material that could be loaded at one time. Procuring a contractor is just a bump in the road for the CRF.

“The more precious metals we can recycle, the fewer metals we have to extract from the ground.”

Cherissa Dukelow Program and Outreach Manager Green Star of Interior Alaska

Cardboard and mixed paper makes up the biggest component of municipal solid waste nationwide, yet more than two-thirds is recycled, the most of any material.

FNSB Central Recycling Facility.

Roadside

By Amy Newman

From top-notch burger joints to upscale fare, fresh seafood to fusion cuisine, Alaskans have no shortage of fantastic dining options—even outside of cities and larger towns. From roadside diners to intimate taverns and small cafés nestled in the woods, these small, locally owned restaurants along Alaska’s road system provide a dining experience so big, they are a destination unto themselves.

Long Rifle Lodge, Glacier View

The sight of Matanuska Glacier from the Glenn Highway is enough of an excuse to drive almost two hours out of Anchorage. The Long Rifle Lodge in Glacier View, serving food to match the spectacular scenery, is an excuse to stay for a while.

Opened in the late ‘70s, the restaurant has grown from just a handful of tables to a 70-seat dining room. Locals, tourists, and Alaskans come for the views and the ale-house-style menu after a day of exploring, heli-skiing, or whenever they’re in search of delicious, creative food.

“Great burgers, fish sandwiches, homemade black bean and quinoa burritos,” owner Kate Riddles says of the restaurant’s menu. “Our veggie burgers are made here too, [and] one of our summer favorites is our blueberry chipotle tacos.” The lodge’s pies, crisps, cinnamon rolls, and desserts are also all made from scratch daily.

The view is as impressive as the menu. The lodge, right along the highway, overlooks the bluewhite terminus of the 27-mile-long Matanuska Glacier. And for those times when the wildlife doesn’t make an appearance, the animals are on full display inside.

“We have black and brown bears, a Kodiak grizzly, a musk ox, mountain goat, Dall sheep, and many other Alaskan animal mounts on display,” Riddles says. “It’s a great place for tourists to come and see Alaska’s animals up close and personal without getting bit.”

The Long Rifle Lodge is located at Mile 102 of the Glenn Highway. Find it online at longriflelodge.co.

Flying Squirrel Bakery & Café, Talkeetna

Opened in 2009, the Flying Squirrel Bakery & Café is tucked into the woods on Talkeetna Spur Road, away from “the hubbub of ‘downtown’ Talkeetna,” says owner Anita Golton.

“We try to offer something for everyone, including counter-service style breakfast and lunch, woodfired pizza nights, and many options for vegetarians, glutenfree folks, and carnivores, too,” she says.

The café—called “the Squirrel” by locals—offers creative breads, sandwiches, wood-fired pizzas, and pastries. Whenever possible, dishes incorporate Alaska-sourced and Talkeetna-grown ingredients, such as carrots, zucchini, rhubarb, berries, barley, and birch syrup, including fruits and vegetables from Birch Creek Ranch, which is run by Golton’s husband Brian Kingsbury.

Breads are baked fresh daily in the wood-fired oven, which burns only locally harvested birch. The rotating

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schedule includes olive oil baguettes, bagels, Alaska barley bread, challah, and molasses multigrain. They’re sold by the loaf and used in the selection of sandwiches.

The café also has a large selection of desserts and pastries that pair perfectly with an organic espresso or coffee. The Squirrel is known for its rugelach (a Yiddish

croissant stuffed with nuts, raisins, or cinnamon) but also has muffins, scones, cookies, and brownies, plus a revolving selection of more decadent desserts like cappuccino cheesecake, raspberry truffle cake, and a chocolate grasshopper cake.

Flying Squirrel Bakery & Café is located at Mile 11 Talkeetna Spur Road.

Find it online at flyingsquirrelcafe.com or on Facebook @flyingsquirrelcafe.

McKinley Creekside Café, Denali Park

Fifteen minutes south of the entrance to Denali National Park & Preserve, the McKinley Creekside Café has been dishing out “fresh casual fare made with love” to locals,

Flying Squirrel Bakery & Café’s rotating bread schedule includes everything bagels, baked in the wood-fired oven.

Friday and Saturday evenings are pizza night at the Flying Squirrel Bakery & Café in Talkeetna. Pizzas are cooked in the café’s wood-fired oven, which burns locally sourced birch.

Flying Squirrel Bakery & Café

independent travelers, and small tour groups since 1997.

The café on the banks of Carlo Creek serves “homestyle meals of meatloaf and chicken pot pie, fresh Alaskan halibut and salmon, daily fish specials, fish tacos, prime rib, and the best hamburgers around,” says Holly Slinkard, who co-owns the café and adjoining cabins with her best friend

and business partner, Tracey Smith. “Everything we do is done by scratch. Every soup, every sauce, we bake our own bread—it’s crazy.”

The café uses locally sourced ingredients whenever possible, peppered with herbs and veggies from its on-site greenhouse and garden. In addition to the set menu, the café has a weekend brunch, house-smoked

ribs on Wednesday, and prime rib on Fridays. It also offers a boxed lunch to go for all-day explorers—it comes with a choice of one of three sandwiches or a quinoa bowl, plus a granola bar, bakery item, chips, and bottled water; guests can order the night before to have it ready for pick-up by 6:00 a.m.

The bakery is famous for its homemade Denali-sized cinnamon

Rhubarb straight from the café garden makes this strawberry rhubarb pie a Creekside Café staple.

McKinley Creekside Café’s blueberry pancakes are made from a family recipe shared by kitchen manager Kristina Miller.

McKinley Creekside Café

rolls (also available in a smaller Texassize) and its rhubarb-strawberry coffee cake, made with fresh garden rhubarb. The rhubarb also finds its way into the café’s rhubarb muffins, strawberryrhubarb pie and jam, and the occasional rhubarb lemonade. Guests can enjoy Alaska Artisan Coffee or a specialty cocktail out on the deck, soaking in the view of the Alaska Range to the west and, on occasion, a moose or two sauntering through the creek.

McKinley Creekside Café is located at Mile 224 of the Parks Highway. Find it online at mckinleycabins.com/ copy-of-cafe-bakery or on Facebook @mckinleycreekside.

Moose-AKa’s, Denali Park

Moose-AKa’s is proof that exquisite food can be found in the most unlikely of places. The Balkan-style tavern, named Alaska’s coziest restaurant by Food and Wine magazine, is tucked alongside gift shops and tour operators on the strip of boardwalk in Glitter Gulch, just outside the entrance to Denali National Park & Preserve.

Inside the small dining room, coowners Michael-Jared and Maja Waring are serving Eastern European cuisine that can’t be found anywhere else in Alaska.

“We serve dishes from Serbia, Bosnia, Croatia, Bulgaria, and Montenegro,” says Michael, who is the restaurant’s sole chef. “We are one of the few restaurants in the state that don't offer pizza, burgers, or seafood.”

Instead, the menu offers stuffed peppers, rice pilafs, and the eponymous moussaka, made with layers of potato, bacon, and ground beef. The beer and wine list includes Serbian imports that Michael says are only served at MooseAKa’s. He prepares each dish from scratch daily, with meat from Mike’s Meats in Eagle River and produce from Charlie’s Produce in Anchorage.

The menu is only part of the restaurant’s appeal. Moose-AKa’s approach to service is different, and part of what helped it earn that “coziest restaurant” designation.

“There is no server assigned to a table—we serve every table as a team. Our guests get to interact with the full staff, even myself as the chef

around us, and we incorporate that into the restaurant.”

It begins with the courtyard, designed to evoke the feeling of camping. The entry gate—a replica of one of the original entry gates to Denali National Park—leads to a campfire that’s always burning, surrounded by wood benches made by a local artist. There’s a deck to admire the mountain ranges, a horseshoe pit, a live music stage, and a replica of Bus 142, the infamous wreck that attracted hikers to the Stampede Trail (until it was removed in 2020).

The interior echoes the outdoors, with locally harvested birch trees behind the bar, and the walls are painted different shades of green and brown so that a 360-degree turn replicates the changing seasons. On one wall there’s a driftwood motif; on another, yak skulls from locally raised and harvested yaks; a third has polished airplane propellers attached to beer kegs.

Michael-Jared Waring Co-owner Moose-AKa’s

when the opportunity presents itself,” Michael says. “We have also adopted the European custom that allows our guests to relax and not feel rushed, and during the menu presentation, we inform them that we will not present the check until it is requested. This allows them to feel comfortable relaxing as long as they would like.”

Moose-AKa’s is located at Mile 238.9 of the Parks Highway. Find it online at moose-akas.com or on Facebook @Mooseakas.

49th State Brewing – Denali Park, Healy

Despite the name, the Interior outpost of the popular Anchorage eatery is located not in the town of Denali Park but in Healy, on the north side of the park itself. Dining at 49th State Brewing – Denali Park is not exactly the same as dining at the flagship Anchorage location. The restaurants share a name, but the experience, from the ambiance to the food, is designed to be different.

“The aesthetic in Anchorage is more refined, not as rustic,” says cofounder David McCarthy. “In Denali, it’s more about the ambiance of what’s

“Everything in that space, including this large centerpiece that is the fireplace, is part of this welcoming of the outside, inside,” McCarthy says. “You open the doors, and the forest and trees from the outside literally continue inside.”

The menu of 49th State BrewingDenali Park naturally includes some of the same items as the Anchorage headquarters, but some specialties are unique to the Interior.

“There is no server assigned to a table— we serve every table as a team. Our guests get to interact with the full staff, even myself as the chef when the opportunity presents itself.”

Artem Shestakov

Like the Anchorage location, 49th State Brewing – Denali Park’s menu is classic pub fare centered around sustainable Alaska foods. The menus have some overlap—like the Bavarian pretzel with cheese, the king crabby melt, and the yak burger—but other items on both the food and beer menu are only served at the Healy branch.

“We have sausages that are made with our beer, and they’re on the menu in the Denali location but not in Anchorage,” McCarthy says. “We have flatbread pizzas with unique toppings that are only up on that Denali location. We make beer at that location that is only served there. We don’t can it; it’s only on tap or growler.”

The differences in food, beer, and ambiance were intentional.

“We wanted to create this oasis that everybody could pull in and stop, whether they’re grabbing something to go, sitting to take a break, or grabbing some beer or soda to go,” McCarthy says. “We can’t even tell you how many people—truck drivers and locals going back and forth on the highway—use this as a stopping point.”

49th State Brewing – Denali Park is located at Mile 248.4 of the Parks Highway. Find it at 49statebrewing. com/denali or on Facebook @49thStateBrewingDenaliPark.

Monderosa Bar and Grill, Nenana

Less than an hour’s drive from Fairbanks, in a small log cabin 3.5 miles north of Nenana proper: that’s the Monderosa Bar and Grill. The

Monderosa has been serving burgers, chicken, sandwiches, and more for forty years. Visitors to the Monderosa are greeted by colorful hanging flower baskets and a large sign that makes a single, bold claim: “Still the Best Burgers in Alaska.”

stopping—the Monstrosity Mondo is a full pound of beef topped with bacon, American and pepper jack cheeses, and all the fixings.

As one review on Trip Advisor put it: “Three hours later, still full, didn’t eat it all.”

The Monderosa Bar and Grill is located at Mile 309 of the Parks Highway. Find it on Facebook @mondonenana.

Hilltop Restaurant, Fox

What began as a small, roadside shack in the mid-’70s has become a must-stop spot not just for truckers but for anybody in search of good food and friendly service along the Elliott Highway.

Hilltop Restaurant & Marketplace, just north of Fox and about a half-hour outside of Fairbanks, serves the hearty, homestyle meals expected from a roadside diner, with portion sizes to match. Pancakes, omelets, and biscuits and gravy for breakfast. Burgers, meatloaf, and chicken fried steak, plus soup and chili for lunch and dinner. But it’s the homemade pies that make drivers pump the brakes.

“We’ve been told we have the best burgers, but our signature is our pie,” says manager Kelly Lindig. “We have our own bumper stickers that [read], ‘I Brake for Pie!’”

“We’re well known for our hamburgers, but we strive for excellent quality in everything we serve,” says owner Donna Mather. “If you haven’t had a Mondo burger, you need to come try one.”

There are two Mondo burgers to choose from—the classic or the monstrosity. The classic is a halfpounder topped with mayonnaise, lettuce, tomatoes, onions, pickles, and a choice of American, Swiss, or pepper jack cheese (there’s also the Mondo bacon cheeseburger, which is the classic Mondo with bacon). For heartier appetites—or anyone planning to drive straight through to Anchorage without

Hilltop’s pie options are plentiful. Coconut, banana, and chocolate cream pies piled high with luxurious clouds of whipped cream. Blueberry, three berry, apple, rhubarb, and strawberry rhubarb. Butterfinger, peanut butter, and the Fatman, a walnut shortbread crust layered with cream cheese and chocolate fillings. The pies are displayed diner style— individually sliced, plated, and placed in a see-thru refrigerated case.

Hilltop’s pies have such a devoted following, a customer once caused a minor panic on its Facebook page when she posted that she’d been told the restaurant had lost its pie lady.

Not to worry, the restaurant reassured her. The pie lady was still baking; they simply must have called the wrong number.

Hilltop Restaurant is located at Mile 5.5 of the Elliott Highway. Find them on Facebook @Hilltop-Truck-Stop.

The Monstrosity Burger at Monderosa in Nenana has a full pound of ground beef, two cheeses, bacon, and all the fixings. Monderosa

The interior of 49th State Brewing – Denali Park is designed to feel like the outdoors with driftwood and birch motifs, yak skulls, and a color scheme that replicates the changing seasons.

Artem Shestakov

Enstar

One Canadian company is taking over Enstar Natural Gas from another. Calgary-based TriSummit Utilities agreed to acquire Alaska’s largest energy utility from fellow Alberta firm AltaGas in a transaction valued at US $800,000. In 2012, AltaGas paid $1.2 billion for Enstar’s previous holding company, Michigan-based Semco Energy (which included a Michigan gas utility). When the deal closes in early 2023, TriSummit says Enstar’s management and operations in Anchorage will be unchanged. enstarnaturalgas.com

Sitnasuak Native Corporation

A subsidiary of the Alaska Native corporation for Nome is integrating its military uniform supply chain by acquiring a South Carolina company that prints camouflage fabric. Sitnasuak Native Corporation’s defense contractor, SNC Technical Services, is one of the largest American producers of uniforms and tactical gear for the US armed forces. Since 2017, its key supplier of government-authorized camouflage patterns has been Bennettsville Printing. Now SNC Technical Services is taking over Bennettsville Printing. The company will continue to operate under the same name and business structure. snc.org

Alaska Rubber Group

Disruption in the industrial distribution sector offers further opportunity for Alaska Rubber Group (ARG) to expand. The Anchorage-based company’s latest acquisition is Industrial Supply Inc. of Bellingham, Washington. The company fabricates

and sells hydraulic hose fittings, lifting and rigging products, industrial chemicals, and abrasives. The addition expands ARG to twelve locations across Alaska, Washington, and Oregon; the company acquired Pacific Hose & Fittings in Portland last November. alaskarubbergroup.com

Resolve Alaska

Two maritime support companies in Dutch Harbor are joining forces. The Alaska subsidiary of Floridabased Resolve Marine acquired MAC Enterprises. While Resolve Alaska specializes in vessel salvage, rescue, and emergency response, MAC Enterprises brings expertise in welding and diving, hull inspection and surveys, mooring, marine and freight transport, and off-season vessel security. Resolve Alaska provides shipyard and marine services for commercial and fishing vessels from its waterfront Dutch Harbor facility, aviation from Anchorage, and vessel support from Kodiak with a fleet of tugs, barges, and heavy-lift and crane equipment. resolvealaska.com

eTrac | Woolpert

A worldwide architecture, engineering, and geospatial firm with an office in Wasilla is the choice of the US Geological Survey to process hydrography data collected in Alaska. Ohio-based Woolpert, doing business in Alaska as eTrac, is tasked with acquiring and delineating interferometric synthetic aperture radar data covering 3,000 square miles. The data helps map and model surface water and flow patterns for flood management, coastal resilience, and conservation planning. etracinc.com

Utopian Power

The Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly approved a 25-year lease for Utopian Power to install a 2-megawatt solar farm on top of a decommissioned 40-acre waste dump in Sterling. Terms call for $10,000 in annual rent, plus the borough would receive a 12 percent royalty on electricity sold to Homer Electric Association. Utopian Power was founded in Alaska but is now incorporated in Michigan. The borough also granted a property tax exemption to Anchorage-based Renewable Independent Power Producers for a separate solar farm in Sterling. utopianpower.com

Business Impact NW

Alaskan entrepreneurs have access to microloans backed by the US Small Business Administration thanks to a partnership with Business Impact NW (BIN), a Washington-based nonprofit consulting firm. Micro, in this case, could be anywhere from $5,000 to $50,000. BIN’s Anchorage office extends financing to business owners who might not satisfy the stricter regulations of commercial banks. businessimpactnw.org

Bristol Bay Native Corporation

The lands department of Bristol Bay Native Corporation launched a mobile app called Bristol Bay Online! to collect, preserve, and promote indigenous place names. Apple iOS users can click on map locations throughout the Bristol Bay region to learn their names in the Yup’ik, Alutiiq, and Dena’ina languages, including audio pronunciations. bbnc.net

ECONOMIC INDICATORS

ANS Crude Oil Production

482,360 barrels

7.2% change from previous month 7/28/2022

Source: Alaska Department of Natural Resources

ANS West Coast Crude Oil Prices

$108.77 per barrel

-4.5% change from previous month 7/29/2022

Source: Alaska Department of Natural Resources

Statewide Employment

362,900 labor force

4.6% unemployment 6/1/2022, Adjusted seasonally.

Source:

MOVES

Bureau of Land Management

 The US Bureau of Land Management (BLM) named Steven Cohn as the new Director of the Alaska State Office in Anchorage, responsible for managing 70 million surface acres and 220 million acres of federal subsurface mineral estate. Cohn’s career in federal service began with BLM more than two decades ago. He is returning to BLM from The Nature Conservancy, where he was the Alaska state director since 2018. Cohn holds a bachelor’s degree in government from Harvard University and advanced degrees from the University of California at Berkeley Rausser College of Natural Resources.

Mat-Su Senior Services

 Brandi Burchett has been selected as the new CEO of Mat-Su Senior Services, the largest nonprofit senior campus in the MatanuskaSusitna Borough. Burchett moved from North Carolina to Wasilla in 2019, leaving the role of vice president of behavioral health services at a federally qualified health center. Burchett earned a master’s degree in counseling from Webster University. This year, Burchett is completing an MBA from the University of Mount Olive in North Carolina.

AOGA

 The trade association for the oil and gas industry in Alaska has a new Regulatory and Legal Affairs Manager. Tamara Maddox joined the Alaska Oil & Gas Association

(AOGA) after serving as an associate attorney at the Alaska Public Offices Commission. In her new position, Maddox evaluates government actions and coordinates AOGA’s response. Maddox grew up in Anchorage and obtained a bachelor’s degree from Fayetteville State University in North Carolina. She earned her JD from Seattle University School of Law.

Alaska Railroad

 The Alaska Railroad Corporation (ARRC) promoted Seward Port Manager Christy Terry to the position of Director of External Affairs, responsible for public, community, and government relations efforts. Terry joined the state-owned railroad in 2010 as the Seward operations manager and was promoted to port manager in 2015. Prior to ARRC, she spent nearly a decade working for the City of Seward. Terry’s public service includes three terms as an elected official, most recently as Seward’s mayor; her three-year term expires this year.

Alaska Support Industry Alliance

 Catherine Chambers joined the Alliance as the new External Affairs Coordinator, responsible for communications strategy, arranging events, and legislative advocacy. Chambers, whose background is in marketing, returns home to Anchorage after nine years in New Mexico.

Landye Bennett Blumstein

 Landye Bennett Blumstein made Karl Kaufman a Partner in the law firm. Kaufman focuses his practice on federal and state taxation, estate planning and administration, tax-exempt organizations, and Alaska Native law. Kaufman obtained his JD from the University of Oregon School of Law in 2007 and a Master of Laws degree in taxation in 2010 from New York University School of Law, where he was a Graduate Editor on the Tax Law Review.

ASL Environmental Sciences

 ASL Environmental Sciences brings Julek Chawarski aboard as Biological Oceanographer, responsible for developing consulting services for ocean monitoring clients and developing new tools for hydroacoustic studies. Chawarski completed a master’s degree in marine biology at the University of Maine and is completing his doctorate in fisheries science at Memorial University of Newfoundland. Earlier this year, he traveled by icebreaker to the North Pole as part of the European Fisheries Inventory of the central Arctic Ocean.

AFDF

The Alaska Fisheries Development Foundation (AFDF) hired two new staff members and is hosting two Alaska Sea Grant fellows.

 Hannah Wilson comes to AFDF as Development Director after two years as an Alaska Sea Grant mariculture

Cohn

Burchett

Maddox

Terry

Chambers

Kaufman

Chawarski

fellow with NOAA Fisheries, where she helped develop the Alaska Aquaculture Permitting Portal. Her work with AFDF includes management of seafood sustainability certifications for salmon and cod, outreach with AFDF members, and collaboration with the mariculture industry. Wilson holds a master’s degree in natural resource management from the University of Montana.

Julie Cisco serves as Executive Administrator, supporting the executive director and providing administrative services to AFDF’s partner organization, Genuine Alaska Pollock Producers. Cisco also takes over organizing the Alaska Symphony of Seafood event. Val Motley with FPN Events is transitioning away from the event after approximately twenty years.

 The first of this year’s Sea Grant fellows, Ben Americus, joins as a Science Policy Coordinator. Americus grew up in Cordova, gillnetting chum salmon in Prince William Sound. He earned a bachelor’s degree in microbiology from Montana State University. For the last five years, his graduate studies through Oregon State University have involved the genetics of salmon parasites.

 A Sea Grant fellowship brings Robin McKnight to AFDF as Mariculture Development Coordinator. McKnight was born and raised in Seward. She has been in the Westfjords of Iceland earning her master's degree in coastal and marine management while finishing her thesis on women captains in maritime tourism.

Stantec

Stantec expanded its Buildings practice in Alaska with two hires in its Anchorage office.

 Karen Zaccaro joins the firm as an Associate Architect and Senior Project Manager. Zaccaro has more than twenty years of architectural design experience in Alaska, with a focus on educational and community spaces. Since joining Stantec, she has concentrated on industrial distribution projects. Zaccaro earned a bachelor’s degree in architecture from the University of Arizona and holds degrees in sociology, child development, and education from California State University, Fresno and San José State University.

 Michael Macedo joins the firm as Senior Mechanical Engineer. Macedo has more than twenty years of design experience in Alaska, with an emphasis on new construction and renovation projects. Since joining Stantec, Macedo has worked on the Kenaitze Indian Tribe Education Center in Kenai, repairs to the Fort Wainwright Fitness Center, and a renovation to a semiconductor testing facility. Macedo earned a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from UAF.

R&M Consultants

 Cody Beckes joined R&M Consultants as a Project Engineer in the firm’s Surface Transportation Group. In this role, Beckes oversees analysis and design tasks related to road and highway projects. Beckes has ten years

of experience in design, inspection, analysis, public involvement, and survey work on small- and large-scale road improvements. He is originally from Minnesota and moved to Alaska after college.

Nortech

 An environmental engineer at Nortech passed the Principles of Engineering exam to earn a Professional Environmental Engineering license from the State of Alaska. Haley Michael graduated from the Northern Arizona University honors program with a degree in environmental engineering. Michael is experienced with hazardous material assessment and demolition design, tank inspections, contaminated site assessment and remediation design, and spill prevention planning. She joined Nortech in 2017 and is now a project manager.

UAA Business Enterprise Institute

 Margo Fliss is the first Entrepreneurship Development Professional (EDP) certified in Alaska. Fliss is the manager of strategic engagement at the University of Alaska Center for Economic Development at the UAA Business Enterprise Institute. The EDP credential, a new credential offered by the International Economic Development Council, is designed to build the foundational skills of those supporting entrepreneurship in their communities. Fliss holds a master’s degree in public policy from Mills College and a bachelor’s degree in political science and government from UAF.

Wilson

Cisco

Americus

McKnight

Zaccaro

Macedo

Beckes

Michael

Fliss

College sports are big business. The heftiest public employee salary in forty states goes to a college football coach. In its annual analysis, USA Today found the fifty highest paid state employees nationwide in 2021 were coaches of college football or basketball, all making seven figures. Looking at the top three in each state, more than half of the 150 coach football.

Alaska is unusual, not having any college football programs, so a different public employee drew the state’s top paycheck: $371,475 for the executive director of the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation (abruptly dismissed last December, which some critics compared to firing a football coach during a winning season–but that’s a whole other story). An investment officer with the Permanent Fund was #3, and in between was a state prison psychiatrist at #2, which tracks with other states. In most places where football coaches aren’t in the top spot, the biggest public paycheck goes to an MD, either in a public health agency or medical school. Other than Alaska, the only exceptions are Rhode Island, where the state university president is paid the most, and Delaware, where the biggest paycheck goes to… the veterinarian for the Thoroughbred Racing Commission. Sports!

This edition of Alaska Trends springboards off Brad Joyal’s “Skating Uphill” about the suspension and revival of the UAA and UAF hockey teams. Looking at the most recent revenue and expense data for both schools’ athletics programs from 2020 is undoubtedly an outlier: UAF didn’t play hockey until last fall, and UAA is out of action until later this month. That’s one huge asterisk for all the data on these pages. There are other sports, though, and these numbers offer a peek behind the scenes.

On your marks, get set, go!

Nanooks

Since the '30s the UAF sports mascot has been the polar bear. In 1963 the Polar Bears became known as the Nanooks, the Iñupiaq word for polar bear. uaf.edu/universityrelations/guidelines/logos/history.php

Sourdough Turned Seawolf

The UAA school teams were originally known as the Sourdoughs and the logo was a smiling gold panner.

The moniker "Seawolves" was adopted in 1977, coinciding with UAA's official membership in NCAA. alaska.edu/uajourney/history-and-trivia/uaa-logo-history-1/

Athlete Student Aid

The combined aid to student athletes from UAA and UAF in 2020 was $5M

SOURCE:

US Department of Education, Equity in Athletics Data Analysis

Revenue by Gender

For every $1 UAA spends on coaches, UAF spends 65¢

2020 Total Revenue

$7,837,362 was generated by UAA's athletic program

$7,721,634 was generated by UAF's athletic program

UAF rifle squad has won 10 championships, the most of any collegiate shooting team campussports.net/2022/06/04/ what-college-athletic-programs-ex ist-in-alaska

$3M

raised by UAA hockey boosters to spare the program for the 2022/2023 season

AT A GLANCE

What book is currently on your nightstand? I review books for the University of Alaska and other academic presses, so… I can’t tell you.

What charity or cause are you passionate about? I really support traditional Native games. It does such great things for our Native youth and others.

What’s the first thing you do when you get home after a long day at work?

[She laughs] First thing I do is run and cook a pot of rice. Rice goes with everything.

What vacation spot is on your bucket list? Rome.

If you could domesticate a wild animal, what animal would it be?

[She laughs] Probably a mountain goat. Not only have they great horns but they also have great wool.

© Sydney Akagi

Rosita Kaaháni Worl

Rosita Worl’s Tlingit name, Kaaháni, means “woman who stands in the place of a man.” During her life, Worl has made the place where she stands her own.

As an enthusiast for cultural survival with an eye toward changing institutions, Worl studied anthropology at Alaska Methodist University (now Alaska Pacific University) and then earned her master’s degree and doctorate from Harvard. She now leads Sealaska Heritage Institute, a nonprofit arm of the regional Native corporation for Southeast, preserving and promoting the traditions of the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian people.

“I love to look out at our beautiful country here in Southeast, and it gives me great joy to look at our beautiful environment,” she says. “I’m sold on Southeast.”

Worl herself is a link to the past for her many grandchildren, whom she considers her greatest contribution to society. “Being able to see them and their development and their growth—to me that’s so exciting,” she says. “I’m so lucky to be able to be near my children and my grandchildren.”

Alaska Business: What do you do in your free time?

Rosita Worl: I am compulsive about work, and my fun work has to do with reading fun stuff that relates to my work. The other big thing for me is I love to have Sunday family dinners. That takes me most of the day, cooking for ten to twelve people.

AB: What’s the most daring thing you’ve ever done?

Worl: People might think going whale hunting was daring. To me it was great field work… when I went to Baffin Island… I think that was probably the scariest thing I’ve ever done: ride on a snowmachine over sea ice that’s covered with seawater.

AB: What are you superstitious about?

Worl: We have some beliefs down here about Kóoshdaa Káa (Land Otter Man)… You have to be really careful when you go

in the woods, otherwise you could be lured off by Kóoshdaa Káa. The scariest thing for me is thinking that I might have an encounter with Kóoshdaa Káa. Whether Kóoshdaa Káa is real or not… it’s just like bigfoot. None has ever been captured.

AB: What’s your favorite local restaurant?

Worl: McGivney’s… plus Donna’s. Donna’s is one of my favorite places here in Juneau, especially for breakfast.

AB: Dead or alive, who would you like to see perform live in concert?

Worl: The Ink Spots.

AB: What’s your greatest extravagance?

Worl: [She laughs] I kind of like to think I’ve gotten over it, but I don’t think so: I love jewelry… I love pearls, and I’m dying for Tahitian pearls.

AB: What’s your best attribute and worst attribute? Worl: I don’t know if they say I’m a control freak, but I pay close attention to a lot of details. I’m reminded that I’m supposed to be up here at the policy level, but sometimes I worry about little things. That’s maybe my worst attribute… My best attribute? I like to think that I’m a friendly person and I like to meet all kinds of people. As I’ve grown older, I’ve really learned to appreciate people, just looking at people. I think I learned that from Dr. [Walter] Soboleff, where he saw the goodness in people. I like to look at people’s faces, and I love all of the diversity that we have, especially in Alaska.

49th State Brewing CompanyNorthern Hospitality ................................ 51 49statebrewing.com

Afognak Leasing, LLC 83 afognakleasing.com

Afognak Native Corporation ................... 44 afognak.com

Ahtna, Inc. 113 athna.com

Airport Equipment Rentals .................... 131 airportequipmentrentals.com

Alaska Communications Systems ............. 3 acsalaska.com

Alaska Dreams Inc ................................... 91

Alaska Humanities Forum ........................ 31 akhf.org

Alaska Pacific University 55 alaskapacific.edu

Alaska Travel Industry Association ........ 101 alaskatia.org

Alaska USA Federal Credit Union ............ 73 alaskausa.org

Altman, Rogers & Co. .............................. 62 altrogco.com

Anchorage Chrysler Dodge .................. 117 accak.com

Anchorage Sand & Gravel 110 anchsand.com

Arctic Slope Regional Corporation ......... 51 asrc.com

ASRC Construction 79 asrcconstruction.com

ASTAC - Arctic Slope Telephone Assoc .. 79 astac.net

AT&T ........................................................... 9 att.com

Avis Rent-A-Car ....................................... 63 avisalaska.com

Bristol Bay Native Corporation ................ 81 bbnc.net

BSI Commercial Real Estate, LLC 85 bsialaska.com

Calista Corporation ................................. 37 calistacorp.com

Central Environmental Inc 111 cei-alaska.com

Chugach Alaska Corporation ................ 115 chugach.com

CIRI ........................................................... 45 ciri.com

Color Art Printing, Inc. ............................. 41 colorartprinting.com

ConocoPhillips ........................................ 57 alaska.conocophillips.com

Conrad-Houston Insurance Agency 13 chialaska.com

Construction Machinery Industrial ........... 2 cmiak.com

Cook Inlet Tug & Barge Inc 61 cookinlettug.com

Credit Union 1 ........................................ 116 cu1.org

Davis Wright Tremaine Llp ....................... 75 dwt.com

DesertAir Alaska ....................................... 49 desertairalaska.com

Design Alaska ........................................... 69 designalaska.com

Donlin Gold 52 donlingold.com

Dorsey & Whitney LLP ............................. 70 dorsey.com

Doyon, Limited ........................................ 47 doyon.com

Equipment Source, Inc 89 esialaska.com

First National Bank Alaska ......................... 5 fnbalaska.com

Great Northwest Inc ................................ 46 grtnw.com

Hotel Captain Cook 103 captaincook.com

KeyBank ................................................... 19 key.com

Landye Bennett Blumstein LLP ............... 65 ancsa.lbblawyers.com

Lynden.................................................... 132 lynden.com

Material Flow & Conveyor Systems, Inc. 84 materialflow.com

Matson Inc. .............................................. 67 matson.com

MTA - Matanuska Telecom Association.............................................. 21 mtasolutions.com

Nana Regional Corp .............................. 109 nana.com

NCB 61 ncb.coop

Nenana Heating Services, Inc ................. 33 nenanaheatingservicesinc.com

New Horizons Telecom, Inc. ................... 71 nhtiusa.com

Northern Air Cargo 124, 125 nac.aero

Northrim Bank ......................................... 23 northrim.com

NOVAGOLD ............................................. 69 novagold.com

Nu Flow Alaska......................................... 92 nuflowalaska.com

Oxford Assaying & Refining Inc............... 97 oxfordmetals.com

Pacific Pile & Marine 123 pacificpile.com

Pacific Seafood Processors Association . 31 jobs.alaska.gov/seafood

Parker, Smith & Feek ...................................7 psfinc.com

Personnel Plus Employment Agency ...... 13 perplus.com

PND Engineers Inc. 59 pendengineers.com

Price Gregory International Inc............... 95 pricegregory.com

Ravn Alaska 43 ravnalaska.com

Resolve Marine ........................................ 64 resolvemarine.com

Samson Tug & Barge ............................... 33 samsontug.com

Schwabe, Williamson & Wyatt 11 www.schwabe.com/industries-indian-country-alaska-native-corporations

Sitnasuak Native Corporation ................. 53 snc.org

Southcentral Foundation 77 southcentralfoundation.com

Stellar Designs Inc ................................... 19 stellar-designs.com

T. Rowe Price ........................................... 35 alaska529plan.com

Think Office ........................................... 121 thinkofficellc.com

Turnagain Marine Construction .............. 55 turnagain.build

UAF eCampus 29, 93 ecampus.uaf.edu

Udelhoven Oilfield System Services, Inc ... 95 udelhoven.com

Ukpeagvik Inupiat Corporation ............... 87 uicalaska.com

Umialik Insurance Company ................. 100 umialik.com

United Way of Anchorage ....................... 17 liveunitedanc.org

US Ecology 107 usecology.com

USI Insurance Services ............................ 27 usi.com

Visit Anchorage ...................................... 105 anchorage.net

Voice of the Arctic Inupiat ....................... 15 voiceofthearcticinupiat.org

West-Mark Service Center..................... 109 www.west-mark.com

Yukon Equipment Inc 39 yukoneq.com

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