Alaska native corporations invest in military
Failure to respect traditional cultures reaps profits but leads to social decay
By Ian Overton
A number of village and regional corporations are participating actively with the federal government and other major corporations in the globalized industry of marketing for war: missile development, defense contracting, and military base construction. This phenomenon is the result of a long process in which Native Corporations have adopted a corporate model for the use of Native resources.
In December of 1971, the U.S. Congress approved the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANSCA). ANSCA sought to provide resolution to the longstanding issue of Native land ownership and use, by creating business corporations to manage land development, provide services and opportunities for shareholders, and pursue investment opportunities. According to the charters of these Native Corporations, their overall goals are to provide dividends to its shareholders, by pursuing whatever business opportunities it can find; to use those dividends to advance non-profit social opportunities for Native peoples, for example in education, culture, health care, and industry; and to maintain the traditional hunting and gathering lifestyle of a subsistence economy. At the time of the creation of ANSCA Native leaders thought the corporate model would improve the quality of life for Native peoples, while helping them retain their traditional cultural values.
As reported by the Anchorage Daily News on December 23, 2005, a new subsidiary of Cook Inlet Regional Inc., ANC Research & Development, began contracting for research and development in space and missile defense engineering. Greg Razo, CIRI’s vice president of government contracting, noted that the subsidiary “will be working with a significant industry partner.”
It is not surprising that Native Corporations are highly involved in the business of war. The Anchorage Press reported in March, 2005 that no-bid government contracting with large Native Corporations has risen from $195.5 million in 1999 to $1.3 billion in 2003. As the Press article reveals, some village corporations, such as Olgoonik, of Wainwright, AK, have received more than $225 million in government contracts since 2002 to help construct “U.S. military bases and embassies from Alaska to Kosovo,” but much of the work is being done by the corporation’s non-native contracting partner, which in Olgoonik’s case is Halliburton. Also mentioned in the Press article is a Chugach Alaska Corp. subsidiary, Chugach McKinley, which won no-bid/ no-competition contracts to employ and oversee civilians assisting military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, and NANA Pacific, which in March 2004 was awarded a $70 million contract for work on the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr.
A twenty-year enrollment administrator for Chugach Alaska, now adjunct professor for Native History and Politics at UAA, Jim LaBelle, says, “Some companies are into government contracting and Department of Defense contracting big time. And they’re helping manufacture, and maintain, and operate military systems. And that’s okay for the majority of shareholders, because they put in directors… who are going after these federal contracts. … My own regional corporation, for example, is weighted heavily in Department of Defense contracting, and I support that 100%.”
Whether or not military contracting is aligned with widely espoused traditional native values, such as community sharing, respect for others, one’s self, and one’s elders, respect for the land, and respect for one’s heritage, for example, is a highly contentious issue that traces back to the passage of the Alaska Native Settlement Claims Act (ANSCA), by the U.S. Congress in December 1971.
With ANSCA, there was a shift in traditional native values to include ‘profitability’ as a core value, and to assimilate the tribal way of life into the mainstream of globalized free trade. In an interview conducted for this article, Professor LaBelle explained it this way: “Basically, these corporations are like any other company in America. They’re based on the ‘Western model,’ they have Boards of Directors, they have their officers, they have shareholders, so in that regard, for probably the most part, I think a lot of indigenous groups have, with regard to their economic development focus, adopted this Western model…. And I think even thirty-five years later it’s still looked on as an experiment. It’s been successful for many village and regional corporations, and then there’ve been a few that haven’t really benefited from this model. They’ve had failures, bankruptcies….
“Part of [that] had to do with the fact that [some] regional corporations were never adequately capitalized, [and] it takes money to make money. And if you don’t have much money to start off with, then you’re not going to have very much success in generating the profits that you could have, had you been adequately capitalized. I think the other problem just had to do with lack of training. I mean, one day we were traditional hunters, fishermen, and gatherers, and the next day we were expected to run multi-million dollar corporations. … So early leadership had no such training, or background, and so there were a lot of problems. Thirty-five years later, a lot of these village and regional corporations have educated their leadership, to run their village and regional corporations in the corporate Western model. To make them a viable organization.”
Corporate leaders, who assert their right to participate in the cash economy of globalization, rigorously defend this shift in values. Sheri Buretta, President of the Association of ANSCA Regional Corporation President/CEOs, stated in a letter in the Alaska Native Corporation’s Annual Economic Report of 2005, that: “In 1971, our land claims were settled, and we embarked on a new course, integrating ourselves into the cash economy with corporate structures to build an economic base for our people. … This [no-bid government contracting through the Small Business Administration’s] 8(a) Program is helping us to bring economic self-sufficiency to our people, many of whom still live in Third World conditions, lacking the most basic amenities of even sewer and water.”
Despite this goal, social indicators for Alaska continue to decline, even though profits for big corporations are stated as increasing. Rape, suicide, imprisonment, and alcohol and drug abuse are significantly higher for Alaska than the rest of the United States, and more so in recent years. Many people are feeling the effects of hyper-inflated gasoline and utility prices, especially in rural areas. A Bethel-raised elder, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said that “people whose wages are not peanuts are having to leave because they are paying $300-$400 electricity bills.” She also stated that “Governor Murkowski has left the people there to rot.”
Other corporation, civil, and religious leaders cite the change in cultural values as a source of division and strife among Native peoples. One subsidiary director to Chugach Alaska Corp. cited how Natives born after 1991-2 do not have political representation as shareholders, unless their family grants shares of stock to them. Michael Gilbert, a youth activist and Doyyon shareholder, critiqued the non-involvement many shareholders have in electing their Board of Directors. “At a recent shareholder’s election,” Gilbert said, “Doyyon held a raffle. After the raffle nearly everyone left, and then the election was held.” Father Michael Oleksa, dean of St. Innocent Orthodox Cathedral in Anchorage, suggested in Alaska Humanity News, May, 2005, that “The underlying reason for this kind of anti-social and self-destructive behavior comes out of a century of cultural disruption… [Three generations] have been placed in the untenable position of having to choose between their own culture and the dominant one. The anger comes out more in the third generation [of today’s youth].”
ANALYSIS
The subsidiary director of Chugach Alaska Corporation described how native corporations have prioritized their region’s traditional values to embrace the cash economy of globalization: “The non-profit organizations [that provide services for elders, students, employment, cultural heritage, etc.] are funded by the corporations. So everything the non-profit side can do, essentially depends on the money the corporate side brings in.” In the United States, the overall political-economic policy is determines the degree to which privately owned corporations are responsible for helping improve the physical quality of life for an entire region, state or the nation. Native corporations in particular were designed with the directive of accomplishing this goal for their constituents. However, the specific national policy that aids all corporations in accomplishing that goal, typified by the administrations of Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy, was abandoned shortly before Native Alaskans even had the legal ability to develop their own lands.
Three months before ANSCA was ratified in 1971, the United States abandoned the fixed-rate exchange controls policy of the Bretton Woods monetary system, which Roosevelt had installed in 1944. FDR’s ‘fair trade’ gold-reserve system pivoted on the generation of national credit for corporate businesses, to fund the construction and maintenance of the basic economic infrastructure characteristic of a ‘first world’ nation, such as hospitals, schools, transportation, industry, and agriculture. At the Azores Conference on August 15-16, 1971, this system was replaced with the London-centered, speculative ‘free trade’ gold-standard system, which allowed financial and industrial corporations to outsource our nation’s logistical potential for the purpose of procuring greater profits. The distinguishing characteristic is the latter’s emphasis on financial capital, as opposed to physical logistical capital. The recent letter by Sheri Buretta demonstrates this emphasis most succinctly. It still remains to be seen if continuing in this manner will bring a greater quality of life to the Native peoples of Alaska, whether or not they are shareholders.
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