Milestone tribal sovereignty achievements such as helping Juneau residents get help after last year’s record flood as well as major threats to such progress under the Trump administration were highlighted in a State of the Tribe address by Chalyee Éesh Richard Peterson, president of the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, during the opening day of its 90th annual Tribal Assembly on Wednesday.
About 120 delegates from 21 communities in Alaska, Washington and California are participating in the three-day assembly at Elizabeth Peratrovich Hall that continues through Friday, when a constitutional convention is scheduled as part of the proceedings. The opening day also featured video speeches by Alaska’s three-member congressional delegation and an in-person speech by Lt. Gov. Nancy Dahlstrom, with varying degrees of partisan spin on many of the same issues raised by Peterson in his address.
Peterson, serving his sixth two-year term as Tlingit and Haida’s president, emphasized person-to-person relationships with officials in citing many of the tribe’s achievements during the past year and the current efforts to cope with actions such as funding freezes by the Trump administration. He opened his speech by noting the symbol for this year’s assembly is the Chilkat robe, which as a traditional weaving ties directly to the assembly’s theme of “Honor the Past, Empowering the Future.”
“These robes are not just expressions of beauty or ceremony,” he said. “They are also symbolic of our governance and our clan systems…They remind us that governance for our people is never just about laws. It is about relationships, responsibility and respect. Our elders and weavers pass down this art form with care, not just to preserve it, but to ensure that our knowledge systems, our laws and our ways of being are carried forward. That’s a sacred responsibility and, like the robe itself, our future is something we weave together.”
A landmark occurrence in those efforts was the role Tlingit and Haida’s Tribal Emergency Operations Center played after a record glacial outburst flood last August damaged about 300 homes, along with other property and infrastructure, Peterson said. He said the center was “one of the clearest examples of how we hold each other up, especially in the face of crisis,” with officials providing more than 5,000 pounds of food and 40,000 pounds in other goods to more than 380 households affected by the flood.
“This was more than emergency response,” he said. “This was sovereignty in action during the response. The Alaska National Guard reported directly to our incident commander Sabrina Grubitz, a moment that speaks volumes about the respect that we’ve earned through years of relationship-building, preparation and proven leadership. That work led to a stronger partnership with the City and Borough of Juneau, who now formally recognizes our jurisdiction and emergency response. We’ve also worked in lockstep with FEMA, the state of Alaska and CBJ, including multiple trips to Washington, D.C., to advocate for a coordinated and properly resourced response.”
Tlingit and Haida’s efforts also helped secure a federal disaster declaration from then-President Joe Biden, and the tribe’s emergency operations center “has now become a national model for business-led emergency response,” Peterson said.
Also highlighted by Peterson as “a powerful moment” was its first transboundary mining conference hosted in Juneau last August.
”We brought together tribes, First Nations, scientists, federal and state agencies, Canadian officials, and advocacy organizations to address the growing threat of mining pollution in our transboundary rivers,” he said. “These rivers don’t just flow through our territories. They sustain our communities, our foods and our way of life. This conference didn’t happen overnight. It was a result of years of advocacy, building coalitions, showing up in international spaces and making it clear that Indigenous voices must be at the center of any serious effort to protect these waters.”
Efforts to pass on traditional knowledge and culture to future generations was also highlighted by Peterson, said Tlingit and Haida’s cultural heritage program “hosted over 160 classes with support from 60 instructors, offering more than 83 different types of cultural teaching, from formline to drum making, weaving, beading, language, dance and more. That included 104 classes in Alaska, 47 in Washington, three in California and eight by virtual.”
“These aren’t just art classes or skill-building workshops,” he said. “They’re healing spaces. Reconnecting with culture is a path to reconnecting with ourselves. These classes help restore identity and open the door to community level healing, especially for those who are separated from culture because of boarding schools, relocation or systemic erasure.”
But the struggle to continue some of those programs under the Trump administration was also raised by Peterson, including a traditional foods distribution program to communities established during the past two years.
“This program was helping us rebuild that connection to our food, to our health and to who we are,” he said. “Unfortunately, this administration has ended the program. The termination and funding impacts 20 tribes, 35 tribal communities across Alaska, with roughly $5.3 million in lost funding in 2025. That wasn’t just a budget cut. It was a setback in a much longer fight, one we’ve been pushing to get for generations and we’re not stopping because this is what stewardship looks like.”
A different form of tribal stewardship is particularly prominent at the moment due to a mass downsizing of federal employees at the Mendenhall Glacier Recreation Area, with Tlingit and Haida’s eight cultural ambassadors now playing a bigger public interaction role at Juneau’s most popular tourist attraction. Peterson said “the cultural ambassadors program is one of the clearest examples of what stewardship looks like when it’s grounded in advocacy, community and culture” — but the cuts to the U.S. Forest Service that is part of the partnership with Tlingit and Haida are discouraging.
“It’s a reminder of something we said all along: Tlingit and Haida doesn’t just want co-management. We want real management,” he said. “Because administrations change, budgets get cut, staff come and go, but we’re still here. We’ve always been here and we will always be here to care for these lands, tell these stories and welcome people to our Indigenous territories in a way that’s rooted in respect and our truth.”
Also of concern is a planned $1.6 billion cut to the Department of the Interior’s budget, which is about a third of its funding and would likely have a significant impact on tribal programs, Peterson said, adding he plans to make a trip to Washington, D.C., during the coming days to discuss the matter with administration officials and the congressional delegation.
The all-Republican delegation, in their short prerecorded speeches to the Assembly, largely reflected broader comments they have made about President Donald Trump’s agenda since he took office in January. U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski, one of the congressional Republicans who has publicly criticized Trump, said she is working to ensure tribes are exempt from the administration’s efforts to ban diversity initiatives and reaffirm Congress’ authority in levying tariffs Trump has been unilaterally imposing.
U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, a Trump supporter, highlighted an Alaska Native veteran land allotment program he and Murkowski are working to extend. The senator also discussed the fentanyl epidemic — which Tlingit and Haida declared its highest priority issue at last year’s tribal assembly — stating the Trump administration is cracking down on Biden’s “open borders” that Sullivan claimed was a primary cause of the problem.
First-term U.S. Rep. Nick Begich III, in notably shorter remarks, offered thanks to the tribal government for helping “ensure that the next generation carries on the torch of responsibility in our communities,” without discussing specific issues.
• Contact Mark Sabbatini at mark.sabbatini@juneauempire.com or (907) 957-2306.
