COMMONWEALTH NORTH
PREAMBLE SUBGROUP
April 19, 2000
7:00 a.m.
Guests Arliss Sturgulewski and Perry Eaton;
Committee members Sue Mason, Janet McCabe, Joette Storm, Steve
Sheaffer, Joe Donahue, Duane Heyman;
Other Commonwealth North representatives Janie Leask and Jon Kumin.
Arliss Sturgulewski and Perry Eaton commented on a number of issues:
shifts in legislative power (decline of the "Native caucus");
changes in Native leadership ("changing of the guard" now in progress;
increasingly Native leadership found in health care and education, not in
politics);
change in where the Native community goes in order to get its needs met
(looks more to federal government than to State);
lack of money and will among legislators to actually travel to rural Alaska
to communicate with people and learn about the way of life there;
legal changes--court decisions relating to legislative apportionment
(summarized below);
significance of Native land ownership (98 percent of privately-owned land
in Alaska);
role of the Native corporations;
community groups (civic participation), rather than government, as the
most promising source of a solution;
the need for healthy and continuing dialogue;
the need for a new paradigm of what the goal is and what success looks
like. (For example, is a 40-hour a week job an appropriate employment
indicator in a Bush village?)
