an organization for Native-corporation CEOs. “After this past election, our people are walking on air. There’s enthusiasm, and there’s optimism. There’s also a recognition that Alaska faces many challenges.”
But this time, Native expertise is available, Reitmeier said. Ahead of taking office December 1, governor-elect Bill Walker and his Tlingit lieutenant governor, Byron Mallott, sought diverse advisors and opinions. Co-directing the Walker–Mallott transition team was Bethel Native Corporation’s Yup’ik CEO Ana Hoffman, also co-chair of the Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN), the state’s largest Native organization.
More prominent Native transition-team members included First Alaskans Institute president Elizabeth Medicine Crow, who is Haida and Tlingit; University of Alaska Kuskokwim Campus director Mary Pete, who is Yup’ik and an Obama appointee to the U.S. Arctic Research Commission; former fish and game deputy commissioner Craig Fleener, Gwich’in Athabaskan; and Bristol Bay Native Corporation’s Yup’ik vice president and general counsel, April Ferguson.
“The new administration reached out to rural Alaska,” said AFN’s Athabaskan general counsel, Nicole Borromeo, another transition-team participant. “Native people feel included. This feels different.”
Full Story at IndianCountryTodayMediaNetwork.com
image credit Stephanie Woodard
