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The Inupiat of Northwest Alaska live in two worlds. One world is thousands of years old and encompasses traditions and practices that have been handed down for generations by a people who have endured in one of the world's harshest environments.
The other is a mere 30 years old, brought about by a piece of landmark legislation that has brought jobs and educational opportunities to a region the size of Indiana. On any given week, residents may drive a truck at the world's largest zinc mine one day, and pick berries or hunt for caribou or sea] the next.
Behind this dichotomy is the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, which divided $962.5 million and 44 million acres of land between 13 regional corporations to settle aboriginal land claims and to speed the construction of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline. (The 13th Regional Corp. did not receive land in the settlement.)
NANA Regional Corp., the Kotzebue-based corporation for Northwest Alaska, received approximately 2 million acres of land and almost $44 million. All but one of the region's village corporations merged with NANA in 1976, and more than half of its shareholders today live in the region and participate in a subsistence lifestyle.
NANA started with 4,000 shareholders, but later voted to enroll the children born since incorporation, and now has 10,120 shareholders. Only one other corporation, Arctic Slope Regional Corp., has enrolled descendants. Stock in the other corporations must be inherited or gifted from the original enrollees.
Creating jobs for shareholders has been a priority from the start, says Helvi Sandvik, president of NANA Development Corp., which oversees the corporation's business holdings.
"NANA leaders recognized early on that as a corporation we could contribute far more to the individual shareholders by looking for business investments that would generate employment opportunities for our shareholders," Sandvik says. "In the early days, NANA got involved in businesses that provided jobs that matched the...