ANCHORAGE — An Alaska tribal nonprofit set up decades ago to advocate for 56 Native communities is under fire from some of its member villages whose representatives say the sitting leadership has hijacked authority from the tribes that created the organization in the first place.
One of the protesting villages is calling for an emergency meeting today and Wednesday in the regional hub town of Bethel, where the targeted Association of Village Council Presidents is based. The meeting is not sanctioned by organization leaders, who say the gathering was set without the required two-thirds of member villages. Organization officials have announced their own series of village meetings planned for August around the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta region ahead of their annual convention in October.
“AVCP is being run by attorneys, by non-tribal members; they and their consultants are bleeding it dry,” Mike Williams, a tribal leader in the village of Akiak, wrote in a July 6 memo to the villages about the meeting. “The tribes have no choice but to take it back under control.”
The organization has been under close scrutiny over allegations of misspent federal funds that emerged after 30 employees were laid off in December. At the time, the organization cited economic conditions as the reason. Months later, former AVCP president Myron Naneng resigned from his long-held post. Tribal activists say board chairman Henry Hunter told them at a June convention that the organization had been near bankruptcy last fall. They also say the sitting leadership has failed to answer specific questions about the organization’s finances.
Hunter did not return a request for comment, and Naneng could not be reached. Acting president Michael Hoffman said in an email to The Associated Press that the campaign against them is the work of a small group of tribal members who have long sought to replace AVCP with a regional tribal government.
Officials say many of the people laid off have been rehired and the organization is implementing a quality improvement plan. Memos to member villages sent in recent months say internal reviews have not shown any evidence of any intentional wrongdoing within the organization. They also note an audit of recent years is underway.
Hoffman said officials spent a full day answering questions at last month’s meeting with village representatives.
“The AVCP Executive Board is hard at work, our organization is strong and steady, and simply put a handful of delegates are not satisfied with the answers to the questions they have asked of us,” Hoffman wrote.
Delegates from the protesting villages say they want formal recognition of AVCP bylaws that identify the member villages as the rightful full board of directors who manage the organization. The way they see it, the sitting executive board was created to carry out decisions made by the villages, but instead has illegally hogged the control for itself.
Nick Andrew Jr., the tribal administrator in the village of Marshall, said that amounts to insubordination.
“When that happens, when communications are severed due to petty power struggles like this, it reflects poorly on the administration,” Andrew said. “It leads to a lot of speculation from the tribes of what’s going on.”
It’s unclear how many villages are aligned with the Akiak faction. But close to half of the villages so far have indicated their delegates will participate the meeting, according to Harold Napoleon, a delegate representing the village of Paimiut.
Williams, an alternate village delegate, said the tribes have never gotten satisfactory answers about the organization’s financial health after questions about its management and financial health were prompted by the layoffs and closure of its Bethel hotel. KYUK-AM also has reported that documents it obtained show almost a decade of misspent federal grant money. The documents show at least $1 million from the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families account went to a flight school.
Williams said the perception is that the organization has become too secretive after questions were raised.
“We haven’t gotten answers to the questions the tribes have posed,” he said.
