Alaskan bruise.

• Author: Gonzalez, Jesus R.
• Position: Letter to the Editor

One omission from your article ("Polar Fleeced" by Benjamin Wallace-Wells, July/August) is the tremendous negative impact that the Alaska Native Corporations (ANCs) "legal loopholes" have had on legitimate small businesses around the nation. Federal agencies across the country have funded mega-contracts to ANCs by taking contracts intended for small firms and bundling them into large contracts to award to ANCs. As a result, hundreds of millions in small contracts have been taken away from legitimate small companies and handed to ANCs.

Jesus R. Gonzalez

President

Builtek Contractors, Inc.

Albuquerque, N.M.

I find it amazing that the editors of your publication would spend the money to send a writer all the way to Alaska on research and then allow publication of such a far-fetched, misleading article.

The Chugach people are a proud and resilient group. They have been through a great deal and continue to move ahead. I am honored to serve them, and every day that goes by, I feel a greater kinship with the shareholders of this corporation. You do them a huge disservice portraying them as country bumpkins. I would like to call the writer's statements about the villagers bigotry; however, pure ignorance is probably closer to the truth. Chief Gary Kompkoff is one of the most honorable men I have ever known. I take a great deal of pride in knowing he places his trust in me. Knowing him as I do, I can only imagine the pain he is feeling for his village and his people as a result of the writer's stupidity. Gary and the residents of the village of Tatitlik are gracious and welcoming. I suspect, however, this article will cause them to be less so in the future, and that truly is the real shame.

In response to Mr. Wallace-Wells's implications that it is the large defense contractors and white owners of ANC subsidiaries who are benefiting from the advantages the ANCs enjoy, I offer the following:

1) All of Chugach Alaska Corporation's (CAC) subsidiary companies are wholly-owned and controlled by Chugach shareholders. The Board of Directors of the parent company and of every subsidiary are CAC Native shareholders.

2) Many employees of the subsidiaries and the parent are native shareholders, including many in executive and middle management positions, project level managers, and many other widely varied positions. The contracting programs and so-called "loopholes" that are mentioned are not designed as "jobs" programs but rather, business development...