Two Alaska Native tribal groups get millions from Biden tribal grants

By
Suzanne Downing
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58

The Biden Administration today announced the the Tribal State Small Business Credit Initiative awards, which are being given directly to tribal governments under the American Rescue Plan.

A total of $73 million will be allocated to 39 tribal governments to support tribal enterprises and small business owners. Fifteen of the awards were announced today.

The Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope, approved for up to $2.9 million, will administer an equity/venture capital program. Through this initiative, the ICAS Economic Development Department will invest in tribally owned small businesses.

Similarly, Ninilchik Village, approved for up to $689,038, will focus on an equity/venture capital program aimed at providing engineering services. Ninilchik Village Tribe has about 1,000 members, including American Indians who have settled there and been accepted into the tribe.

The 2023 SSBCI awards represent a substantial increase from the program’s original allocation in 2010, with President Biden’s American Rescue Plan, which has driven the national debt to over $32 trillion, contributing more than six times the previous funding amount.

The reauthorization and expansion of the SSBCI program under the American Rescue Plan are projected to benefit 100,000 small businesses nationwide, facilitating the flow of tens of billions of dollars in new small business financing over the next decade, the White House said.

Now the Administration will go on tour to tout the awards. President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, First Lady Jill Biden, and other administration leaders will travel across the country over three weeks, highlighting the administration’s spending on manufacturing, infrastructure, and cost-saving initiatives. It’s a campaign tour in thin disguise.

58 COMMENTS

  2. Traveling to rural communities in the AK Bush can be hazardous! Hopefully, the slick crew comprising of the Biden’s, Harris’, their entire Cabinet, Daddy’s Little Princess and Peltola’s all fly on the same bush transport plane thru Lake Clark Pass on a foggy night?
    One can only wish for an early Christmas!

  3. I expect we’ll see some rare, exquisite beading on some beautiful parkies of some kinfolk coming up. :*)

    • Let me edit that “I hope I see more rare exquisite beading and I’ll put in my order right now!”.

  6. So where are the native corps contributions?

    Isn’t this, allegedly, part of the purpose of native corps? To help improve the conditions of their people?

    • You people keep thinking Alaska Native Corporations have 100% authority over the contribution to Alaska Native people social and economic development. They don’t, they offer shares, talent banks, business directories, and some assistance. They can be limited, that’s why other Tribal organizations exist. To

      • Yet so many are very wealthy and in big business. Go figure.

        Here in the Southeast, a native org is trying to corner the healthcare market for our entire region.

        So according to you, native corps are a big grift?

        • Masked avenger you more likely know this that SEARHC been financially struggling for 25 years, they need more money. If they can be the region’s health primary care center. They’ll add more private insurance holders to their customers other than the poor Medicaid and IHS dependents. After Ethel Lund’s retirement and Ken Brewers sudden passing still in office, SEARHC been a sinking ship. That’s one reason I got out of Juneau cause I didn’t want to be at SEARHC, ANTHC and SCF was better until about 2012 health care service declined so I started working myself harder for private insurance to pick my own health team. SEARHC, ANTHC, SCF they don’t really need to hold itself accountable when majority of their beneficiaries don’t know any better, don’t have real money, and don’t give their tribal health businesses any competition cause the customer can go somewhere else.

      • Tribal leaders are going to have to figure out how to get this upcoming generation born after 2000 not to be dependent on the services provided through tribal services unlike their parents and boomer grandparents. If my generation of millennials were paying private insurance and still using ANTHC then maybe ANTHC and SCF wouldn’t be dependent on federal monies to be like Providence who can afford assisted living homes for the community members who can pay. You know many of those homeless identifying as Native over 50 need an assisted care facility. They can’t get the medical care cause they didn’t work to have something for old age. Be unfair to those Natives who did work if they have to pay for others old age medical care forsaking the likely they having something to pay for their old age care. As a community we been far too dependent on Federal and state money. Look at us Today. We really have nothing if the federal government ceased to exist. We’d have nothing. Should’nt that threaten and scare Alaska Natives how dependent we are in this nation money to continue our sovereignty.

  8. Ninilchik Village Natives? Serious? Most of those villagers are less than 1/4 Alaska Native, more like a 1/16th. A wee more than Elizabeth Warren. Moreover, everyone in Ninilchik spends all of their time fighting each other. The only ones who will end up walking away with the grant money will be lawyers.

    • Can’t blame those who can maintain their focus and keep moving forward amidst conflict and derision to increase their wealth. That’s the admirable feature why I am encouraged serving outsiders or tourists visiting Alaska cause unlike us the crowd that vacations press forward in life unlike the Alaskans I grown up around who complain, gossip, grumble, bicker about why something or someone is not right losing their opportunity to earn money.

    • You’re either Alaska Native or you’re not regardless, and no one cares what Elizabeth Warren thinks. The Tribes will handle the money how they want. They have self-determination, and many times Tribal members will gladly accept any help they can get. Usually people like to complain, but rarely lawyers get involved.

        • That be the day when Alaska Leadership across the state stop asking for grants and appropriations from D.C and Alaska to fund their infrastructure projects when their community pay for it themselves.

    • In My tribe the Choctaw, you have to be at least one eight to be on their rolls. In Alaska, I don’t think there is a degree. Look at Bryce Edgeman. He looks whiter then I do yet is elected as first native Alaskan speaker of the House. I’ve seen members of his family and they are white skinned and have red hair. Apparently in some parts of Alaska, all that is required is a state of mind.

    • Peabody is exactly correct. This is a Biden giveaway to fake Natives who drive around in their 2023 F-250s, new Ski-doos, and side by sides; then complain because their free dental work and free medical care is taking up too much time from hunting/fishing, and the local tavern. How do you think Elizabeth Warren got to where she is?
      How!

    • Some of Alaska’s biggest complainers live on the Kenai Peninsula, arms wide-open for handouts and free stuff, pretending to be poor, and Alaska Native. They’ll take all of the benefits that oil and gas has to offer them, then turn around and complain in newspaper editorials that they are being preyed on by bad neighbors like Hilcorp for nuisance sounds and unattractive sights. What a bunch of phoney miscreants and sophists. But, that’s the way they live.

      • Wow, Marla. This sounds like McKibben
        Jackinsky, alleged writer, Left-wing activist and part-time resident up in Ninilchik? I hear she lives in Oregon most of the year. What gets into these people’s minds?

        • Jackinsky has always been a big whiner and a far lefty. She wrote for the Clarion for years, always drumming up bad vibes. She spends the winters in a little beach town near Newport, Oregon. Like a lot of complainers she always has something bad to say about the oil companies, but she sure spends a lot of her time consuming oil products. Complete nut job. And lives on her dad’s property.

        • Jackinsky? Irish? LOL….
          “Sky” usually denotes Russian. Probably a relative of Putin. If it was “ski,” probably a relative of Frank Murkowski. Either way, that writer is an old sourpuss who spends little time in Alaska. And when she is in Ninilchik, it’s only to tend to get inheritances and to drum up discontent among other fake Natives, who hate the very oil companies that provide them their conveniences of life.

          • McKibb Jackinsky is a snowbird. She writes like a junior high girl. All political bent, no substance. Oregon can keep her. A miserable old woman.

  9. I hope it works out very well. They have been having a rough go of things for a very long time.

    • You confused homeless outcasts with people who left the village and came to Anchorage for a drink and stayed. In over 20 years of living in the bush, I’ve only heard of three village outcasts and that was in three different villages. It’s not a common thing and it’s not taking lightly by The villages. Usually it’s someone who’s done extreme harm to the village like rape a kid, habitual drug seller and smuggler. That’s sort of thing.

      • It’s called banishment, Gregory. And if they rape a child, the Troopers will take jurisdiction and arrest them regardless of Indian country law.

      • Your just plain confused. The villages banish their outcasts to anchorage and fairbanks regularly.

        • Yep. Banishment to the bars. They end up on 3rd in Anchorage, 2nd in Fairbanks, or underneath the bridges along the Chena River. Or in jail, waiting on assault charges.
          It’s a bit of a stretchy simile, but not unlike Mexico dumping their riffraff across the border for others to take care of.

  13. Administrative costs are “supposedly” capped at 5%, 3%, & another 3% for 11% total. “Administrative costs for the main capital allocation are capped at 5 percent of SSBCI funds for the first tranche [portion] and 3 percent for each of the second and third tranches” (SEE ‘https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/136/SSBCI-FAQs.pdf).

    So for example, 11% of 2.9 million is at least $319,000 (plus any indirect/direct costs) which will go to those lucky administrator(s) while dispersing the funds to the equity/capital program(s) in the Alaska Tribal government’s jurisdiction (at least 90%-10% may go to outside jurisdiction with justification). Just cost of doing business in the SSBCI world of “free federal money” being handed out to tribal governements that might influence future votes for the current administration/congressional members. Good luck and I hope that some of this federal money actually does some good for these tribal governments and their city/town/village.

  14. My mother a lifelong nondrinker came to Anchorage for greater educational opportunity and economic opportunity. Actual opportunity for Alaskan natives is usually unavailable due to social friction that has only marginally improved through generations. The social frictions are comparable to those seen in the southern states in the 1960s. Not much has changed. Usually it is the Irish literally shoving natives out. Out of the social circles, families, businesses. Social cleansing on a daily basis in Anchorage. Anecdotes? I have them.

    • The Irish were historically one of those groups that were pushed out. I have Irish heritage and I can tell you none that I know are unfriendly towards natives. Yes I’m an Irish native hybrid. But going by some of the post on this board, hatred towards Alaska natives is commonplace.

    • Really? Please explain this ‘Irish problem’ here in Alaska. Who are they, who are they ‘shoving out’, and how are they doing it?

      • I already have. HIstorically they gravitate to new western frontiers. Then their clannishness takes over. In the UK, their homeland, their options like everyone else’s are socially static with the monarchs triumphing over everyone They make up for it when they get to America. They become politicos and cops in exaggerated numbers. They feign cherubicness but they are a tempermental, violent bunch. They always rag on natives but the Irish have their gimmics as well. And don’t try to bully for them. They don’t need it. They are and were a large difficult part of the mercantile class. They earned this diatribe.

  15. Tribally owned small businesses will finally have the funding needed to open up more locally owned weed stores. Its a marvelous opportunity to strengthen the local economy instead of the “outsiders” cashing in on the gravy train. The cash flow through the weed stores in the bush have skyrocketed since weed is bought and sold “legally”.

    Dont forget the old slogan from the seventies “There’s no hope without dope on the slope”

    Special thanks going out to Papa Joe. Our votes finally paid off in millions to us and trillions to the taxpayers. Hey wait a minute… who got the rest?

  16. They have no fuse. They throw down before they think. A lot are clannish in the extreme. Many have Roman/Italian blood in them as well. They have historic traumas from collective near death interractions with neighbors. They are historic overdrinkers a bit like the Russians of old. Any country or family given to overdrinking aka alcoholism gains poverty and poor health and increased interludes with the constabulary. They are an insular island culture. They think they are superior to any they perceive as not Irish. Their social mobility in the US and Alaska particularly they jealously prize and wrest from the captured underlings the people of the land. They can’t believe their good luck relative to “the natives” they fear bracket creep in the extreme. They deserve their thuggish calling out right now. They are a part of the homeless problem to solve. Government needs awareness in their direction for their occluding malice toward the people of the land in Alaska. Back off Jack at the feeding trough. Get it?

  17. Come to T’ink of it, the Oyrish were part and parcel of making the south what it was in looking so hard for that “MORE perfect union” of states. So, if we’re gonna get after the nates we got to get after the oyrish playing defense at the feeding trough, supervising first tier public employment opportunities cutting opportunities off at the ankle, the water front and everywhere else. They are, exactly, part of the problem Bronson is trying to fix right now.

  18. “Now the Administration will go on tour to tout the awards. President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris, First Lady Jill Biden, and other administration leaders will travel across the country over three weeks, highlighting the administration’s spending on manufacturing, infrastructure, and cost-saving initiatives. It’s a campaign tour in thin disguise.”
    They don’t call it “walking around money” for nothing.

  19. Natives have had to listen quietly and patiently regarding what are counted as faults of our tribes. Is it any more comfortable to see something similar lobbed at this bunch for examplle? I’ve been insulted off jobs by these guys harmed by these people. Here is their wee mirror today.

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