Ahtna Inc.

• Author: STRICKER, JULIE
• Position: Statistical Data Included - Company Profile

New management strategies are enhancing the profitability of this Alaska Native corporation.

The Copper River Valley is a land of stunning natural beauty. Surrounded by the glacier-capped mountains of the Wrangell-St. Elias, Chugach and Alaska ranges, the Ahtna people have for centuries made their living from the vast river that pierces their land.

Much of that land borders Wrangell-St. Elias National Park and Preserve, the largest unit in the National Park Service, and one of the least visited. In 1999, fewer than 30,000 people traveled to the park, which includes the continent's largest assemblage of glaciers and the greatest collection of peaks above 16,000 feet. It also features a live volcano, 14,163-foot Mount Wrangell, which often is capped by a plume of steam visible from the nearby Richardson Highway.

"I think this is going to be the next Denali Park area," says Ahtna Inc. President and CEO Ken Johns. "We need to bank on our tourism--design this area to access some of our park lands."

Ahtna Inc. encompasses a rural area as big as the state of Ohio, with eight villages dotting the region. Tourism is the main economic engine in the Copper River Valley, with an estimated 70,000 visitors annually. But jobs are scarce, and many residents struggle to rise above the poverty line.

Historically, the Ahtna people played a major role in copper trading, using the rich deposits in the Wrangell-St. Elias mountains. Trade routes extended from tidewater into Alaska's Interior. When the trans-Alaska oil pipeline bisected their land in the 1970s, the Ahtna Natives looked to it for opportunities in the modem world.

In 1971, Congress passed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, which gave Alaska's Natives 44 million acres of land and nearly $1 billion to settle land claims. Ahtna, Inc., one of the three groups whose land is crossed by the pipeline, received $13 million and 1.8 million acres of land under the deal. Ahtna also hoped that proximity to the pipeline would mean contracts and jobs for some of its shareholders. Few appeared.

In 1980, Ahtna merged with seven of the village corporations in the region, giving each village a seat on Ahtna's 13-member board of directors with veto power on decisions relating to community resources. Only Chitina elected to stand alone.

That move enabled Ahtna to manage the region's resources as a whole, without the villages having to scrape together their own administrations. Glennallen-based Ahtna funneled the...