Alaska Native Brotherhood 100 year anniversary: a century of progress.

• Author: Swagel, Will
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: Alaska Native Corporation Review

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The Alaska Native Brotherhood is celebrating its 100th anniversary at their Grand Camp convention in October in Sitka, and a number of Alaska's top leaders are expected to give speeches or send congratulations. After all, there is no organization more central to Alaska Natives' fight for citizenship and self-determination than the Alaska Native Brotherhood and its partner organization, Alaska Native Sisterhood. ANB members believe their organization is the oldest Native fraternal organization in the United States.

In a 1971 letter to the Anchorage Daily News, ANB Grand Camp president Frank Peratrovich, a state and territorial legislator and the brother-in-law of civil rights pioneer Elizabeth Peratrovich, objected to an article that referred to ANB as primarily a social organization. He listed some of ANB/ANS's accomplishments: claiming Native citizenship and voting rights, school desegregation, the extension of workers' compensation, pensions and aid to children to Alaska Natives, along with protections against discrimination.

ANB's lobbying is credited with helping form Alaska's sophisticated Native health consortiums and facilities. And with land claims: "It can be argued with documentation," says Gerry Hope, president of Camp #1 in Sitka, that ANB and ANS played a critical role in the negotiations for and passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act and the birth of Alaska Native Corporations.

History in the Living Room

Bertha Karras, a lifelong resident of Sitka, was personally changed by the activities of ANB/ANS. She was in the first group of Native students to attend the newly desegregated public schools. The same went for the churches and even the local movie theater, which had separate sections for Natives and whites. Karras remembers her mother, Annie Jacobs, and her brother, Mark Jacobs Jr,, both active ANB/ANS members working to get decommissioned WWII naval air base buildings to be used for Native health care and education. Today, the Southeast Alaska Regional Health Consortium, a campus of UA-Southeast, and the state-run boarding school Mt. Edgecumbe High School occupy the site.

Dennis Demmert, of Klawock, also saw history occurring in his living room when local ANB/ANS members came to his home for meetings to discuss land claims and other issues. Demmert has served a one-year term this past year as ANB Grand Camp President, representing all the local camps.

Demmert spent two decades teaching...