The governor of Alaska is sending a welcome video. The mayor of Anchorage is sending a welcome video. Sen. Lisa Murkowski is attending via Zoom, and it’s not clear that Sen. Dan Sullivan, a Marine reservist, will fly back from Washington, D.C. in time for the Alaska Federation of Natives convention in Anchorage that starts Thursday. After all, there is a war developing in the Middle East over ethnic and religious differences and land issues that divide Israelis and Palestinians, Jews and Hamas.
Even Rep. Mary Peltola, who is scheduled to speak to the AFN main body on Saturday, may be detained in Washington for the Speaker of the House vote. She is on the agenda for AFN’s Saturday afternoon lineup.
The reality is that AFN has become thought of as a radicalized organization, and some leaders in Alaska are actually relieved to be too busy to attend. After all, some leaders still remember when a few at AFN turned their backs on Gov. Mike Dunleavy and his wife Rose and raised their fists in the air while Alaska’s First Lady, who is Native, was on the stage in 2019.
The top sponsor for AFN’s convention this year is the group that brought open primaries and ranked choice voting to Alaska: Alaskans for Better Elections. AFN has a resolution supporting that new voting system that went into effect in 2022, which catapulted Mary Peltola into office.
Other top-level sponsors are GCI and Visit Anchorage. Missing from the sponsorship list are several Native corporations and groups. For instance, Arctic Slope Regional Corporation is missing, having separated from AFN. Doyon Ltd. also withdrew its membership in 2019 over disagreements with the direction of the organization. Sealaska, Aleut Corp. and Calista are missing as sponsors. These are some of the biggest companies in Alaska, created by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, and are Native corporations that have vast resources, contracts, and sub-enterprises. Tanana Chiefs Conference is not a sponsor of the convention, nor is Tlingit-Haida Central Council, both powerful regional groups.
AFN still has other sponsors, but there appears to be strong differences between factions of Native leaders when it comes to the more controversial issues that have become front and center at the organization, whose leaders are President Julie Kitka, and co-chairs Ana Hoffman, and Joe Nelson, former husband of Rep. Peltola and father of two of her children.
An unspoken topic and one that isn’t being reported by mainstream media is the missing and indigenous leaders not playing a lead role at AFN in this era.
