Cook Inlet Region Inc.: This Alaska Native regional corporation is a modern-day success story.

AuthorStricker, Julie
PositionAlaska Native Business News

In 2000, Christmas came twice for I Cook Inlet Region Inc. shareholders. In late December, the ALASKA Native regional corporation announced a $500-per-share dividend payout. The payout meant most of its 6,200 shareholders who each hold an average of 100 shares, each received a check in the mail for $50,000, mostly tax-free.

The record dividend is just one indication of how far the Anchorage-based corporation has traveled in its 30 years since incorporation. Although today it is financially the most successful of the 13 regional corporations created under the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (based on net income), CIRI had some big hurdles to negotiate before it found that success. (Arctic Slope Regional Corp. is the most successful based on gross revenue.)

ANCSA divided nearly $1 billion and 44 million acres of land between Alaska's Natives, creating 13 for profit regional corporations to manage and invest the payout. CIRI's share was $34 million and 2.4 million acres.

There was only one problem: Most of CIRI's land was based in the most densely populated around Anchorage. part of the state, Much of the land was already in private hands or lay in Southcentral's rugged, scenic, but uneconomic mountains and glaciers.

CIRI successfully sued to be allowed to select federal surplus lands in Alaska and later elsewhere in the United States. CIRI chose these lands wisely, beginning with profitable oil and gas properties in Cook Inlet and valuable real estate elsewhere in the country.

Today, CIRI is the only regional corporation with selected lands outside the state, as well as the largest landowner in Southcentral Alaska. But President and CEO Carl Marrs notes that not all the lands CIRI has selected have been conveyed.

"We're still in litigation with the department over lands we haven't got yet," Marrs says. "Thirty years later is a little ridiculous." However, its land and resource base fueled CIRI's expansion into a variety of industries inside Alaska and around the country.

It's this diversity that is one of the keys to the corporation's success, Mans acknowledges.

Even CIRI's shareholder base is diverse. CIRI encompasses Alaska's urban center, where Natives from all over the state have moved. Its shareholders are of Athabaskan, Southeast Indian, Inupiat, Eskimo and Aleut descent. About a third live in Anchorage, a third in other parts of Alaska and a third in the Lower 48.

Focusing on relatively low-risk investments in real estate and...

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