Tanana Chiefs Conference (TCC), the traditional tribal consortium of the 42 villages of Interior Alaska, is based on a belief in tribal self-determination and the need for regional Native unity. TCC is a non-profit organization that works toward meeting the needs and challenges for more than 10,000 Alaska Natives (mostly Alaskan Athabaskans) in Interior Alaska.
TCC main campus in downtown Fairbanks, with the Chena River in the foreground.
Organizational structure
The Tanana Chiefs Conference is a non-profit organization with a membership of Native governments from 42 Interior Alaska communities. The full Board of Directors are 42 representatives selected by the village councils of member communities. The board meets each March in Fairbanks.
The nine-member Executive Board is elected by the Board of Directors. The president of the Board of Directors is elected by the full board and serves as the chief executive officer of the corporation. Programs funded by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the Department of Labor and the Alaska Native Health Services are available to tribal governments, and eligible Alaska Native and American Indians. Services financed by the state of Alaska are provided for all residents of the region.
In 2006 Tanana Chiefs Conference had almost seven hundred full-time employees and numerous part-time and seasonal positions. About two-thirds of the staff members work in village positions, and about two-thirds of the employees are Alaska Native.
The history of the Tanana Chiefs Conference (TCC) reflects the importance of balancing the traditional Native values with the modern demands facing us as indigenous peoples. TCC works toward meeting the health and social service challenges for more than 10,000 Alaska Natives spread across a region of 235,000 square miles (610,000km2) in Interior Alaska.
TCC's movement into the modern era began with the advancement of non-Natives into the Interior. Tribal leaders strengthened their loose confederation to protect traditional rights.
The first land dispute came in 1915 when the chiefs organized to protect a burial ground in Nenana from the Alaska Railroad. As a result, the railroad avoided the cemetery. Conflicts became an increasing problem; the threat of loss of Native land grew after statehood in 1959.
The Alaska Statehood Act recognized Native land rights, yet the state administration began planning as though it did not. It had two plans that were of particular concern. One was to build a road to the Minto Lakes area northwest of Fairbanks and the Rampart Dam project. That project and another ill-conceived idea - creating a harbor at Point Hope on the Northwest coast with nuclear blast - contributed substantially to the rise of the land claims movement. A remarkable array of young, educated Native leaders began pushing the land claims toward a suitable outcome.
One of the first was Al Ketzler Sr., of Nenana. He helped organize a meeting of 32 villages at Tanana in June 1962. Out of this meeting the Tanana Chiefs Conference was incorporated.
Acting as the conference's first president, Ketzler contacted national Indian organizations and met with the Alaska Native Brotherhood, an organization formed in Sitka by Tlingits and Haidas of southeastern Alaska in the early part of the 20th century. He also met with the Barrow-based Inupiat Paitot, the forerunner of the Arctic Slope Native Association, and with the Association of Village Council Presidents in the Lower Kuskokwim area. In 1963, Ketzler flew to Washington, D.C., to present a petition from 24 villages asking Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall to freeze state land selections until the Native land claims were settled. Ketzler left TCC from 1964 until 1969 to go back to Nenana, but other young leaders - Ralph Purdue, John Sackett and Tim Wallis - took over. In October 1966, TCC met in Anchorage with other Native leaders from around the state, including the active and vocal delegations from ANB and ASNA, and formed the Alaska Federation of Natives.
In 1968, Alaska Natives were ready when oil was discovered on the North Slope. The first land settlement bill had been introduced in the United States Congress, and claims had been registered for most of the land in question. Secretary Udall, acting on Ketzler's petition, had frozen the status of land titles in the absence of a Native land claims settlement in late 1966. The land freeze sharpened the interest of the state and the oil companies to settle the land disputes. After a historic struggle in which Ketzler and dozens of other Alaska Natives lived in Washington, D.C., for weeks, Congress authorized a settlement of more than 40 million acres (160,000km²) and nearly $1 billion to Alaska Natives through a corporate structure.
The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) of December 1971 set up 13 regional for-profit corporations for Alaska Natives - 12 in the state and one based in the Lower 48 for Alaska Natives living in the continental United States and nearly 200 village corporations. The act created the regional corporations for the management of land and financial assets, and overseeing the development of natural resources. Village corporations, representing individual Native communities, have their own natural and financial resources to maintain.
TCC incorporated Doyon Limited as the regional for-profit corporation for the specific purpose of making a profit for their stockholders. The act left a place for non-profit corporations to administer health and social service programs for the people. The Tanana Chiefs Conference became the non-profit corporation for the TCC region.
With the land claims settlement, a major goal had been accomplished. But other pressing needs remained. Under the leadership of Mitch Demientieff, a 20-year-old University of Alaska student when elected TCC president in 1973, TCC developed a regional health authority for tribal health programs. The organization acted quickly when the Indian Self Determination and Education Act of 1975 allowed it to become the responsible provider for dozens of programs in the region. Contracts with the Bureau of Indian Affairs were established to transfer the responsibility for management and delivery of services such as housing, lands management, tribal government assistance, education and employment and natural resources programs to TCC.
The Chief Andrew Isaac Health Center, across from Fairbanks Memorial Hospital, is TCC's primary health care facility. Left: Beginning stages of construction, May 2011. Right: Nearing completion, June 2012.
Contracts with the Alaska Area Native Health Service were established for Community Health Aide services, outreach services, environmental health, mental health and substance abuse services, and other programs in a gradual sequence. In the late 1970s, TCC successfully bid to receive a number of grants from the state of Alaska for delivery of health care, social services and public safety services to all residents of the interior.
In 1980, TCC moved to decentralize the operations of its programs away from Fairbanks, through the establishment of subregional offices in Fairbanks, Fort Yukon, Galena, Holy Cross, McGrath and Tok. During the 1980s, this process allowed for more local employment, attention to subregional program priorities, and better access by TCC clients to information and services.
In the mid-1980s, under the leadership of President William C. "Spud" Williams, TCC successfully assumed management of the Alaska Native Health Center in Fairbanks (renamed the Chief Andrew Isaac Health Center after the late Traditional Athabascan Chiefs from Dot Lake) and the contract health care program. In the late 1980s, other new facilities and services were developed, including the Paul Williams House, the CAIHC Counseling Center, the new TCC Dental Clinic and Eye Clinic, and several remote-site alcohol recovery camps.
Tanana Chiefs Fire Crew in 2019
Underlying all these programs are the commitments started by the Tanana Chiefs generations ago where the two rivers meet. The commitment translates into political advocacy for land rights and self-determination. It means working for a strong priority under law for the subsistence rights of rural Alaskans. And it includes support for local village governments that choose to enforce their own laws under their own authority.
Demographics
The Tanana Chiefs Conference region covers an area of 235,000 square miles (610,000km2), an area equal to about 37 percent of the state of Alaska, and just slightly smaller than the state of Texas. The total population of the region is 86,130, of which 10,623 are Natives. About one-half of the entire Native population resides in Fairbanks, which is the only urban area in the region.
Interior Alaska is the central region of Alaska's territory, roughly bounded by the Alaska Range to the south and the Brooks Range to the north. It is largely wilderness. Mountains include Denali in the Alaska Range, the Wrangell Mountains, and the Ray Mountains. The native people of the interior are Alaskan Athabaskans. The largest city in the interior is Fairbanks, Alaska's second-largest city, in the Tanana Valley. Other towns include North Pole, just southeast of Fairbanks, Eagle, Tok, Glennallen, Delta Junction, Nenana, Anderson, Healy and Cantwell. The interior region has an estimated population of 113,154.
The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) was signed into law by President Richard Nixon on December 18, 1971, constituting at the time the largest land claims settlement in United States history. ANCSA was intended to resolve long-standing issues surrounding aboriginal land claims in Alaska, as well as to stimulate economic development throughout Alaska.
Galena is a city in the Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area in the U.S. state of Alaska. At the 2020 census the population was 472, slightly up from 470 in 2010. Galena was established in 1918, and a military airfield was built adjacent to the city during World War II. The city was incorporated in 1971.
Minto is a census-designated place (CDP) in Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area, Alaska, United States. As of the 2020 census, the population of the CDP is 150, down from 210 in 2010. The name is an anglicized version of the Lower Tanana Athabaskan name Menhti, meaning 'among the lakes'. After repeated flooding the village was relocated to its present location in 1969. The former village site is now known as Old Minto.
Nenana (Lower Tanana: Toghotili; is a home rule city in the Yukon-Koyukuk Census Area of the Unorganized Borough in the Interior of the U.S. state of Alaska. Nenana developed as a Lower Tanana community at the confluence where the tributary Nenana River enters the Tanana. The population was 378 at the 2010 census, down from 402 in 2000.
The Tanana River is a 584-mile (940 km) tributary of the Yukon River in the U.S. state of Alaska. According to linguist and anthropologist William Bright, the name is from the Koyukon (Athabaskan) tene no, tenene, literally "trail river".
The Nenana River is a tributary of the Tanana River, approximately 140 miles (230 km) long, in central Alaska in the United States. It drains an area on the north slope of the Alaska Range on the south edge of the Tanana Valley southwest of Fairbanks.
This article discusses transportation in the U.S. state of Alaska.
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Chief David Salmon was an indigenous Alaskan that served as Chief of Chalkyitsik and later First Traditional Chief for the Gwich'in people. He was known for his commitment to improving his community and working for the people. Salmon would use his position and influence as chief to begin many public works and create programs dedicated to helping the Gwich'in people. As an advocate for education, Salmon would spread his knowledge by creating traditional Athabascan items for display or teaching his community to keep Athabascan traditions alive. At the same time, Chief Salmon would be trained and become the first Episcopal priest for Interior Alaska and spend a lot of his life spreading his faith.
SS Nenana is a five-deck, western river, sternwheel paddleship. Two-hundred and thirty-seven feet in overall length, with a 42-foot beam, she was rated at 1,000 gross tons register. Nenana was built at Nenana, Alaska, and launched in May 1933. Marine architect W.C. Nickum of Seattle designed the sternwheeler, which was prefabricated in Seattle and put together at Nenana, Alaska, by Berg Shipbuilding Company. Nenana was built to serve as a packet. She could carry both passengers and freight. Nenana had accommodations for 48 passengers on her saloon deck. Up to 300 tons of freight, including two tons in cold storage, could be carried on her main deck. A Texas, topped by a pilothouse mounted forward in poolboat style, provided staterooms for a portion of the crew of 32. Nenana could push five or six barges on the Yukon River; but, because of sharp bends, only one on the Tanana River.
The 2008 Tanana Valley flood or the 2008 Fairbanks flood was a flood in late July and early August 2008 that affected several rivers in the central portion of the American state of Alaska. The city of Fairbanks, Alaska saw high water levels, while the towns of Nenana, Salcha, and Old Minto received heavy damage. The Salcha River and Tanana River reached their second-highest levels since record-keeping began, while the Chena River, which bisects Fairbanks, was kept below flood stage by the use of the Chena River Lakes Flood Control Project.
Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium (SEARHC) is a non-profit medical, dental, vision and mental health organization serving the health interests of the residents of Southeast Alaska.
The Alaskan Athabascans, Alaskan Athabascans, Alaskan Athapascans or Dena are Alaska Native peoples of the Athabaskan-speaking ethnolinguistic group. They are the original inhabitants of the interior of Alaska.
The Tanana Athabaskans, Tanana Athabascans or Tanana Athapaskans are an Alaskan Athabaskan peoples of the Athabaskan-speaking ethnolinguistic group. They are the original inhabitants of the Tanana River drainage basin in east-central Alaska Interior, United States and a little part lived in Yukon, Canada. Tanana River Athabaskan peoples are called in Lower Tanana and Koyukon language Ten Hʉt'ænæ, in Gwich'in language Tanan Gwich'in. In Alaska, where they are the oldest, there are three or four groups identified by the languages they speak. These are the Tanana proper or Lower Tanana and/or Middle Tanana, Tanacross or Tanana Crossing, and Upper Tanana. The Tanana Athabaskan culture is a hunter-gatherer culture and have a matrilineal system. Tanana Athabaskans were semi-nomadic and as living in semi-permanent settlements in the Tanana Valley lowlands. Traditional Athabaskan land use includes fall hunting of moose, caribou, Dall sheep, and small terrestrial animals, and also trapping. The Athabaskans did not have any formal tribal organization. Tanana Athabaskans were strictly territorial and used hunting and gathering practices in their semi-nomadic way of life and dispersed habitation patterns. Each small band of 20–40 people normally had a central winter camp with several seasonal hunting and fishing camps, and they moved cyclically, depending on the season and availability of resources.
Alice E. Brown was a member of the Kenaitze Tribe of Dena'ina peoples, who worked for Native Alaskan rights. She was the only woman to serve on the original Alaska Federation of Natives' Board of Directors and pressed for passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. Brown was posthumously inducted into the Alaska Women's Hall of Fame in 2010.
Mary Jane Fate was a Koyukon Athabascan activist. She was a founding member of the Fairbanks Native Association and the Institute of Alaska Native Arts and worked as a lobbyist for the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. She co-founded the Tundra Times newspaper and served as a director of the corporate board for Alaska Airlines for over two decades. She served as co-chair of the Alaska Federation of Natives between 1988 and 1989, the first woman to serve in the capacity, and was the third president and a founding member of the North American Indian Women's Association. Fate has served on various commissions and national studies of issues which affect indigenous people. She was the project manager of a study of women and disability, served as the only indigenous member of the U.S. Arctic Research Commission and was a member of U.S. Census Advisory Committee on indigenous populations. She has received numerous honors and awards for her activism on behalf of Native Americans and was inducted into the Alaska Women's Hall of Fame in 2014.
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