Keeping Cultural Traditions Alive with Modern Skills: Alaska Native Regional Corporation shareholders, descendants learn job skills, further education through grant programs.

• Author: Stricker, Julie
• Position: ALASKA NATIVE

In mid-winter, the night sky over Alaska's North Slope seems impossibly distant. But for an Inupiaq teenager, it could be the window to a future career.

That's because Arctic Slope Regional Corporation (ASRC), headquartered in Utqiagvik, each year sends shareholders to the US Space & Rocket Center's Space Academy in Huntsville, Alabama. Other shareholders may attend the Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program (ANSEP) or another of several programs focusing on STEM fields. ASRC also offers a variety of training programs focused on Alaska-based industries: construction, petroleum refining, operations and maintenance, and professional support services, for example.

ASRC isn't alone. All twelve of Alaska's Native regional corporations offer a wealth of programs to help shareholders and descendants learn new jobs and skills, further their education, and learn more about their traditional cultures. It's one of the things that sets these corporations apart from others in the Lower 48, and it's an integral part of their dual corporate mandates to create wealth for shareholders via for-profit ventures and to foster shareholders' educational, cultural, and social needs.

The corporations set up educational scholarships, but over time they also have added programs that provide grants for job training, leadership training, and cultural programs that benefit thousands of shareholders and their descendants. In 2016, a total of 121 shareholders participated in nine different training programs hosted by various ASRC subsidiaries, says spokesperson Morgan Thomas. These programs are geared toward meeting the corporations' needs in their subsidiary businesses.

Growing Our Own

"Growing our own is important," says Miriam Aarons, a spokesperson for Bering Straits Native Corporation (BSNC), who notes that fifty-one shareholders, descendants, and shareholder spouses are currently employed by the corporation or its subsidiaries. "BSNC gives hiring, promotion, training, and retention preference to BSNC shareholders, BSNC shareholder descendants, and BSNC shareholder spouses, in that order. BSNC descendants receive many of the same benefits as BSNC shareholders."

BSNC, based in Nome, operates subsidiaries in need of workers in the hospitality industry. They need CDL-certified truck drivers. The construction industry needs workers for general maintenance and for electrical and laborer positions. To help fill these jobs, BSNC provides apprenticeship opportunities in Nome for electrical and construction workers...