We need to talk about classism: The real reason ANCs don't deserve COVID-19 bailout funds by Frank Hopper

Maybe you’ve seen stories about how Alaska Native corporations are being prevented from receiving economic stimulus funds meant for tribes. Maybe your first reaction was to think, “That’s terrible! Alaska Native people need that money!” Well, as a shareholder in one of those companies, I can tell you Alaska Native corporations are not tribes, they are the last vestige of the traditional Native class system.

A peek under the rock

In what may be a hoax, an anonymous whistleblower sent an email to 18 tribal leaders on April 18 describing how the Department of the Interior has been leaking information about other tribes to four Alaska Native corporations for months

“Since March I have seen what I believe to be multiple breaches by federal employees in supplying tribal government information to regional corporations,” the whistleblower states in a text file uploaded to an anonymous Facebook page.

Writing under the username WhistleblowerNative, the whistleblower describes how spreadsheets listing the application data of other tribes was provided to four Alaska Native regional corporations by “individuals in Interior,” presumably the Department of the Interior.

“The ANCs [Alaska Native corporations] that got this list were looking to accuse tribes of inflating their numbers to produce confusion with Treasury and avoid a review of our numbers,” the whistleblower writes

A scheme to gaslight other tribe

The whistleblower goes on to explain the four ANCs involved in the conspiracy inflated their application numbers to get more of the stimulus money. They planned to launch a smear campaign against other tribes to deflect attention away from themselves, 

“They talked about tactics like digging up dirt on opponents and have even gone so far as to develop a media and legal discredit strategy to show ‘tribes like in the Northwest and Navajo and the pueblos (sic) are inflating COVID cases’ to get extra money.”

The whistleblower alleges the data leak has been going on for some time and involves more than just stimulus fund applications

“You all need to know that the data that got shared yesterday is just the tip of the iceberg,” the whistleblower writes

Is it a hoax?

I received a copy of the whistleblower’s email from a friend who’d seen it posted in a Facebook group. A list of the recipients was included, so I emailed them all, including the whistleblower, trying to determine if the message was a hoax

Only two recipients replied. One was Bryan T. Newland, President of Bay Mills Indian Community (Ojibwe), who speculated he was included as a recipient due to a recent article he wrote in Turtle Talk about the tribal need for stimulus funds.

“I can't speak to whether or not that email was a hoax. I try to take whistleblower complaints seriously, while maintaining a dose of skepticism,” Newland wrote

The DOI connection

While no names were given in the whistleblower’s message, it doesn’t take much to connect the dots, especially when the dots are so close together

On May 1, members of the House Committee on Natural Resources submitted a letter to the Department of the Interior requesting an investigation into possible ethics violations by DOI Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs Tara Sweeney.

The letter points out Sweeney recently served as vice president of the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, Alaska’s largest ANC, and is also a shareholder. It says her official recommendation to include ANCs in the $8 billion set aside for tribal governments constitutes an ethics violation.

“In addition,” the letter states, “it was recently reported that DOI released sensitive data from tribal governments’ CARES Act applications to the ANCs in an allegedly improper manner and/or for improper reasons.”

And, a May 5 article appearing on the website Western Values Project states Sweeney’s husband Kevin is a registered lobbyist for another ANC, the Bristol Bay Native Corporation.

The Tribes vs. the corporations

Three separate lawsuits against the Treasury Department have been filed by 18 tribal governments, seeking to stop ANCs from receiving stimulus funds. They all say Alaska Native corporations are private, for-profit companies, not tribal governments, and should not receive bailout money meant for tribes.

The three lawsuits were consolidated into one and on April 27, Judge Amit P. Mehta agreed with the plaintiffs and temporarily blocked the release of COVID-19 stimulus funds to ANCs.

Judge Mehta is withholding $3.4 billion of the $8 billion set aside for tribes. This amount will be used to pay ANCs in case it is decided they are eligible. In the meantime, the withheld amount will be in limbo, unavailable to other tribes and their governments.

If ANCs aren’t tribal governments, what are they?

In 1971, Congress passed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA), awarding 44 million acres of land and nearly a billion dollars to Alaska Native people in exchange for their giving up all aboriginal rights to the land.

The Alaska Federation of Natives and Republican Senator Ted Stevens pushed for a corporate model in which corporations owned by Alaska Natives would be established to manage the land and money they received from ANCSA. Each corporation represented a different area and the Alaska Native people in a corporation’s area would become its shareholders

But what wasn’t clear back then was how toxic the corporate mechanism is, how it is designed to consume resources, make relatively few people at the top of the corporate structure rich, and increase income inequality between social classes

A personal admission

I remember how proud I was when I received my first distribution check for about $1,000 in 1973 from my ANC, Sealaska.

But since then, I have seen many people hurt by Alaska Native corporations. Some were insulted at corporate gatherings, some were fined for speaking out against their ANC on social media.

I’ve watched as my ANC controlled corporate elections, enabling some executives to create dynasties that lasted decades. I’ve watched as my and other ANCs mowed down thousands of acres of old-growth forest, made millions off war through defense contracts, and sold leases to drill for oil in the Arctic. I’ve seen the financial statements listing the millions of dollars paid to ANC executives while common shareholders like me receive a yearly pittance

Don’t feel bad that ANCs are being left out of what they consider to be the free gravy train of government handouts. Alaska Native people are not being left empty-handed. There are over 200 federally-recognized tribes in Alaska who actually serve their people and they are receiving funds, just not as much as they desperately need, thanks to the ANCs

ANCSA created a new class of ruling elite who now fill the boardrooms of Alaska Native corporations. This new elite class controls tribal resources like a bunch of hedge fund managers. Their main goal is to make money, not govern. Any economic stimulus funds they might receive would no doubt make it into the yearly bonuses of this new ruling class.

Frank Hopper is a Tlingit freelance writer, born in Juneau, Alaska. He is a shareholder in the Alaska Native corporation Sealaska.