Initial Report and Recommendations - Alaska Department of Law

The literature has often decried the problems that Alaska Natives living in ruralvillages face in trying to adjust to the modern world of “economic development” but hasoffered only limited recommendations for realistic change. The issue is neither simplenor singular. There are vast differences between regions of Alaska, and any one potentialsolution, though possibly applicable to one or two villages in a certain region, will notapply to villages in other parts of the State. 27The Alaska Natives Commission published its final report in 1994, which againprovided statistics, testimony, and recommendations about the economy in rural Alaska,and 10 years after that, in 2004, the ISER released The Status of Alaska Natives Report,one section of which related to the remote rural economy. Here are highlights from theSummary of Findings from that section:• The entire remote rural region has an economy about the same size as Juneau’s.• With some notable exceptions, the billion-dollar petroleum, mining, and seafoodindustries in remote rural Alaska produce little economic benefit for localresidents. (The exceptions are the Red Dog Mine and the CommunityDevelopment Quota [CDQ] program. 28 )• Local residents get only a small share of the value of the world-class salmonfisheries in southwest Alaska – about 10 percent in 2002.• Federal money makes up the biggest share of outside money coming into remoterural areas. About $670 million came into the region in 2000.• Government and service jobs make up much bigger shares of jobs in remote ruralareas than in Anchorage – many of these are with non-profit Native organizationsthat now manage most health care and other federal programs for Alaska Natives.• Job growth in remote rural Alaska in the 1990s was overwhelmingly in servicejobs.• Small remote communities with low base incomes can sustain very few trade andother local support jobs that are common in urban areas – most jobs have to besustained with money from outside sources.• Unemployment is high in remote rural areas, but the published unemploymentfigures still underestimate the job shortage in remote rural areas – the figuresinclude only people actively looking for work, and local residents don’t look forwork when they know there are no jobs.• Per capita income in remote rural areas remains little more than half ofAnchorage’s.2728A portion of the preceding was based on the Alaska Natives Commission Final Report, Volume II, 1994,pp. 83 and 84.For more information on the CDQ, see http://www.cdqdb.org/Alaska Rural Justice and Law Enforcement Commission - Page 21