Alaska Natives and Rural Alaska Issues

My time in villages, and Alaska Native tribes and organizations, and local government in rural Alaska, covers many places and many years.  This gave me a close-up, hands-on, look at the challenges facing villages and tribal and local governments throughout Alaska.

This includes:

*   Desperate affordable housing shortages    *   Climate change

*  Worn-out water and sewer systems              *   Painful electricity prices  

*  Limited economies and jobs                              *   Aging ports and docks

*  Gut-wrenching inflows of drugs and alcohol    

*  Unreliable telephone, broadband, and Internet systems

*  Agonizing public safety limitations,

    particularly regarding

    investigating violence against Native women

Many cities on the road-system struggle with these challenges as well.

As Alaska’s Congressman, I will do all that I can to help the people in villages and rural areas, and rural and urban local governments, effectively address these challenges, and to strengthen sovereignty, self-determination, economic development, independence, and self-sufficiency.

                                                                                       

In addition to the tribal work experience described below, I have personal experience in terms of tribal adoptions.

·       Tlingit adoption as an Eagle – Killer Whale related to my daughter’s Tlingit mother who is a Raven. Adopted at a potlatch in Haines, Alaska in 1984.

·       Unangax̂ (Aleut) adoption respecting my services as CEO of the Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association, 1985.

Overview of work experience:

·       Village - As a young man, I started my professional career working in an isolated Alaskan Athabascan Indian village off the road system. 

·       Regional tribal governing body - Chugachmiut - Next, I served as the founding Health Director of the regional tribal governing body for the Chugachmiut tribe in lower Cook Inlet, Resurrection Bay, and Prince William Sound, an area about the size of Iowa.

Among other things, I led the delivery of the first village-based dental and eye care services that many in the Chugach villages ever had. I also grieved when people died in some villages because weather prevented their medical evacuation to higher-levels of care.

I also served as the Vice-Chair of the statewide Association of Regional Health Directors, comprised of the health directors of the twelve Alaska Native regional tribal organizations. We lobbied for more and better health care resources with the federal and Alaska legislatures, and negotiated with senior officials in the executive branches of the federal and Alaska governments.

·       Regional tribal governing body - Unangax̂ - Next, I served as the CEO of the Aleutian Pribilof Islands Association (APIA), one of twelve Native regional tribal organizations covering the state, and the Aleutian Housing Authority (AHA), one of twelve Native regional housing authorities covering the state.  APIA and AHA served an area about the size of Oregon. 

At APIA, I was part of the Aleut leadership team that successfully funded and lobbied the U.S. Congress and President Reagan for compensation for the internment of Aleuts in abandoned canneries in Southeast Alaska during WWII. In one of these camps, 80% of the Aleuts had died of exposure and neglect.  At the AHA, I led our team in designing and constructing 100+ homes throughout the Aleutian chain in some of the most remote areas of the planet.

At the AHA, I led our team in designing and constructing 100+ homes throughout the Aleutian chain in some of the most remote areas on the planet.

AFN - As the CEO of APIA, I served on the AFN Board of Directors.

·       Local Government Manager and Covid-19 Incident Commander

Most recently, I served as the Manager, and Covid-19 Incident Commander, of the two largest municipal governments in Bristol Bay, the heart of the world’s largest, $2 billion annually, red salmon fishery:

Bristol Bay Borough and the

City of Dillingham (Interim)

In each of these areas, the local governments, tribes, and communities, the canneries, and the fishermen, did a heroic job of collaborating to minimize community-spread of Covid during the influx of thousands of cannery workers from around the world for the summer commercial fishing seasons.