Richard Peterson, president of the Central Council of the Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska since 2014, has been placed on leave following allegations from his former fiancée, Amelia Hayward, according to a blistering article in the Alaska Landmine. In a detailed Facebook post, Hayward accused Peterson of emotional abuse, manipulation, intimidation, sexual assault, and giving her substances without consent.
She also alleged he threatened her with violence and that she experienced political retaliation after their breakup. Hayward, who worked for Tlingit & Haida from 2021 until spring 2024, said the problems began shortly before she left both Peterson and her job. After her post was shared by the Landmine, multiple women came forward with additional allegations of harassment and intimidation involving Peterson.
Read the Alaska Landmine report with backup documentation at this link.
Peterson is Tlingit from the Kaagwaantaan clan, and was raised in the Haida Village of Kasaan, population 30, where he rose to leadership roles in his village. He was the president of the Village of Kasaan in 1998, was mayor and city council member in Kasaan, and is a founding member of POWTEC, one of Alaska’s first tribally owned 8(a) corporations. He drove millions of federal contract dollars to the corporation and its subsidiaries.
In 2023, the University of Alaska Fairbanks awarded Peterson with an honorary doctorate degree.
No charges have been filed against Peterson. The tribe posted a statement from Jacqueline Pata saying the matter is being handled with care, but asked people to not discuss it online or otherwise. This cone of silence approach is par for the course for some Native tribes that protect abusers, not as a bug but as a feature of their cultures.
Readers may recall that Pata, a prominent Alaska Native leader, resigned in 2019 as executive director of the National Congress of American Indians after 18 years at the helm. Her departure came in the wake of a sexual harassment scandal involving NCAI’s top attorney, John Dossett, who was ultimately dismissed after media scrutiny and criticism over how the case was handled.
Pata faced backlash from within Native leadership circles, including from fellow Tlingit Nicole Hallingstad, then NCAI’s Director of Operations, who resigned over what she described as the organization’s inadequate response.
Both Pata and Hallingstad were active in Sealaska Corporation and had long been viewed as political rivals, a dynamic noted in coverage of the scandal. Dossett said he was simply caught in the middle of a rivalry between the two women.
Pata is now the official overseeing Tlingit & Haida’s handling of the Peterson abuse allegations.
People to whom the law give special and preferential treatment, actually hurt others? And we should act surprised ?
If he had told all of his pursuits that he was really an LGBTQ girlyboy, he might have had a shot.
Paging Byron Mallot.
After abusing his victims did he eat them too?
The Kasaan village corporation was the first to sell its Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act timber, essentially leaving a 23,040 acre (one township, as awarded to most village corporations) clear-cut, (and no riparian stream and lake buffers). For many Alaskans it was the first realization that old growth rainforest timber exported as logs was (and still is) very valuable. Tongass National Forest timber had to be manufactured in Alaska, so the round log export value of that first sale had high dollar implications for Natives up and down the coast, and it really cast the die for the pulp mills and sawmills that would come to a sad end before the last village timber stand became a clear-cut. Alaska pulp mills and sawmills simply couldn’t compete with the round log export market.
On the other hand the arithmetic of a small village with so few residents meant that a tiny village suddenly had lots of tax-free millionaire families (Richard Peterson’s family likely among them). Many moved from the village for good to spend their new wealth. The winning bidder was, according to my recollection of about 50 years ago the conglomerate ITT Rayonier. It was often said that not one Kasaan person stayed to learn how to log, and as one might gather from Mr. Peterson’s photo there was little to no tradition of the locals being timber fallers and choker-setters. The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act took 44 million acres and $1 billion from US taxpayers and ceded it to people who were believed to be 1/4 (or more) Alaska Native in order for the Trans-Alaska Pipeline construction to proceed. There was an urgency created with the origination of OPEC that recommended a settlement rather than having the Native claim go through the courts. Attorney fees set a record that went unbroken until the Exxon Valdez oil spill. Apologies if this is a longer history than MRAK readers care to have.
It has always been a huge mystery to me on why native women hold native culture in such high regard when females and children were treated worse than dogs in much of it.