Alaska Native Corporations: Terms and Tales: Specific language reflects unique origins and goals.

• Author: Simonelli, Isaac Stone
• Position: ALASKA NATIVE SPECIAL SECTION

Alaska Native Corporations (ANCs) were an entirely new way to resolve long-standing issues surrounding Indigenous land claims in the United States. With this unique solution came new terms, as well as new twists on common corporate words. Understanding the language of ANCs provides deeper insights into the organizations, their origins, and their goals.

While many terms only play a role for ANCs, other terms that are shared across corporate entities take on slightly different meanings within an ANC. At the top of the list is shareholder, because a shareholder of an ANC is different from an IBM shareholder or some other company that someone bought publicly traded stocks in.

The rights and responsibilities of an Alaska Native shareholder are different than the rights and responsibilities of a shareholder of Boeing or General Motors or Amazon," says Bristol Bay Native Corporation President and CEO Jason Metrokin.

In the early 1970s when Alaskan Native people were literally enrolling to be shareholders of this new Alaska Native Corporation, I don't know that people really understood what it was going to be like to be a shareholder of Alaska Native Corporation.

While shareholder benefits for ANCs are similar to other corporations in that many of them choose to pay out dividends, they can also provide additional benefits including scholarships, funeral services, cultural programs, and community development.

Shareholders

There are three types of ANC shareholders: original shareholders, voting shareholders, and nonvoting shareholders.

Original shareholders are Alaska Natives who met the criteria established when the corporations were created through Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) in 1971. These were the people whose names were submitted to the Bureau of Indian Affairs to create the corporations and establish shareholders.

"There can be extra perks associated with being an original shareholder for many Alaska Native Corporations," says Eyak Corporation Vice President and General Counsel Brennan Cain, pointing toward what are known as Elder dividends.

Unlike shares a person might own in a publicly traded corporation, the shares established through ANCSA cannot be sold or traded. They can either be handed down through wills when an original shareholder dies or can be gifted to a downstream relative, such as child, grandchild, niece, nephew, brother, or sister.

In the case where a shareholder wills their shares to a non-Native spouse...