Bill would require state to officially recognize 229 tribes<\/a>]<\/ins><\/p>\nTurnover in the Legislature means there was a recurring need to educate new lawmakers on tribal governments and their histories and context, Zulkosky said. A bill that would formally recognize tribes in Alaska passed through the House of Representatives last year but the coronavirus pandemic ended the Legislature early. Legislatures work in two regular sessions in two years and any bills not passed within that time must begin the legislative process from the beginning.<\/p>\n
Zulkosky is sponsoring a similar bill this year, but said it’s going to take more than a bill to repair the state’s relationship.<\/p>\n
Tribal governments say their right to govern themselves isn’t actually derived from U.S. law but simply from the fact tribes have been self-governing for centuries before the arrival of Europeans, said Nicole Borromeo, executive vice president and general counsel for the Alaska Federation of Natives.<\/p>\n
Whether the state recognizes tribal governments wasn’t necessarily a focus for AFN, she said, noting the group wants to have a positive working relationship with the state.<\/p>\n
Tribal leaders emphasized the relationship between tribal governments and state and federal authorities is not oppositional, and that the goals of tribal governments often aligned with state and federal governments.<\/p>\n
In an email, Dunleavy spokesperson Jeff Turner said the administration values its tribal relationships and employs 18 tribal liaisons, including rural policy adviser John Moller and Southeast community relations liaison Bill Thomas. Liaisons engage with tribes on a continuous basis where tribes and state government intersect on public policy, the email said.<\/p>\n
“The State of Alaska has recognized tribes for many years, tribal sovereignty is not something the state can grant or take away,” Turner said. “It is also important for both sides to acknowledge that relationships require, at a minimum, a commitment to working together. Our responsibility and obligations extend to all Alaskans including tribal communities.”<\/p>\n
Working toward common good<\/p>\n
Peterson, Borromeo and Zulkosky all pointed to tribal health organizations’ partnership with the state in response to the pandemic as sovereignty in action. Tribes — as sovereign governments — and the services they provide bring resources into the state that wouldn’t otherwise be available.<\/p>\n
“Tribal governments bring in millions, if not billions of dollars,” Peterson said. “The Indian Health Service, that’s because of tribes. (Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium) exists because of tribal authority.”<\/p>\n
Both entities have been instrumental in rollout of COVID-19 vaccines at state and local levels. <\/p>\n
But the fact the state often works with tribal governments, yet doesn’t formally recognize their sovereignty has been a point of contention.<\/p>\n
“The irony there is just so thick,” Peterson said. “I count how many times the answer for so many services is compacting with tribes, yet there’s no formal recognition of tribes’ sovereignty.”<\/p>\n
In his State of the State address, the governor said he wanted to strengthen Alaska’s sovereignty to be a more independent state. But when it came to his own administration and tribal sovereignty, there was room for improvement, Borromeo said.<\/p>\n
The governor is willing to learn and listen, Borromeo said, and has worked with tribal governments on compacting to provide state services. Tribal compacting is when the state and a tribal government reach an agreement for the tribe to provide services such as K-12 education, which by law should be provided by the state.<\/p>\n
“Healthy tribes make healthy communities,” Peterson said. “As you see tribes develop more on economic sovereignty and build resources that are our own and not tethered, that makes for stronger and healthier communities all around.”<\/p>\n
• Contact reporter Peter Segall at psegall@juneauempire.com. Follow him on Twitter at @SegallJnuEmpire.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Feds need to ‘show their work.’ <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":531,"featured_media":68701,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":9,"footnotes":""},"categories":[9,4],"tags":[185,230],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-68700","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","category-news","tag-alaska-natives","tag-state-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68700","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/531"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68700"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68700\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/68701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68700"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68700"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68700"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=68700"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}