Subsistence rights and disaster relief take center stage at 2025 Alaska Federation of Natives convention

Alaska Natives from across the state grappled with two dramatic issues at the Alaska Federation of Natives annual convention last week: The immediate devastation of the impact of typhoon Halong and yet another legal challenge to subsistence.

Subsistence
AFN President Ben Mallott addressed subsistence issues during his report on the first day, saying that with state of Alaska asking the U.S. Supreme Court to decide if rural Alaskans should still have preferential fishing and hunting rights when fish or game harvest quotas are restricted, the subsistence rights of Alaska Natives are under attack.
The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act establishes a “rural subsistence priority.” This means that rural Alaskans who rely on fishing and hunting to subsist get fishing and hunting priority over sport or commercial uses on federal lands. The Katie John case established subsistence priority to fish in navigable U.S. waters. In 2021, the Alaska Department of Fish and Game periodically began to open the Kuskokwim River to fishing by all state residents, directly opposing the federal government’s closing of parts of the Kuskokwim to everyone but rural subsistence users. The federal government sued the state, and in 2024, Federal District Court Judge Gleason rejected the state’s argument and put a permanent injunction in place.
The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld that injunction, finding that rural subsistence priority applies to navigable waters and fish populations that subsistence users have traditionally fished.
The State of Alaska now has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to consider the case and to decide on the issue.
“Subsistence is again, and will always be, AFN’s top priority. We are in a very unprecedented situation right now,” said Mallott. “We are under attack.”
“If we lose, it’ll be an almost impossible task to go to gain that ground back,” he said.

Halong disaster
The disaster in the villages hit by ex-typhoon Halong was at the forefront of every speech. Last week, the remnants of the typhoon slammed villages in the southwests Alaska, sending houses floating off their foundations and leaving over 1,000 people in need of evacuation. Mallott touched on this in his speech, addressing those affected by the disaster, saying that “I want [you] to know that we are with you today.”
“This will take a long time for our communities to recover,” he said. “When one of our communities is being hurt, all must support them.”
Then, he ceded the stage to the blanket dance. Singers from the NANA region sang “Aarigah” and Haida dancers performed a dance as people left cash on a blanket on stage and donated money via a QR code on the projector screen. The money raised went to the Alaska Community Foundation’s Western Alaska Disaster Relief Fund.

They came from Ketchikan and St. Lawrence Island, from Utqiagvik and Bethel, to Anchorage. Thousands of delegates, over two hundred vendor booths and exhibitors, and 13 dance and drumming groups gathered for the annual three-day convention and two Quyana nights, the much-loved evening dance festivals. This year’s theme was “Standing Strong, Standing United.”
Attendees browsed wares and artwork from all over the state, picking over delicate beaded slippers, intricately carved ivory sculptures, and contemporary Alaska Native artwork. Out in front of the Dena’ina Civic and Convention Center, vendors sold jarred salmon. The concessions booth upstairs sold both cheeseburgers and fry bread. On the second floor, there were workshops on energy development, listening sessions focused on integrating tribal perspectives in rural development, and even more vendors. Upstairs, visitors from the Chitose Ainu people of Japan, the Cherokee Nation and Hawai’i gave talks and sat on panels. At night, people gathered for the sold-out Quyana nights, welcoming dancers and drummers from all across the state.

Keynote address
Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium President and CEO Natasha Singh gave the keynote address. In her speech, she highlighted how Native peoples need to come together to build healthy communities, as well as how state revenues relying too heavily on oil and gas have led to reliance on an unpredictable revenue source. Singh said that investments in Alaska’s capital budget, which funds community projects, infrastructure and schools, were one third this decade than they were the previous decade.
“While our students struggle, the resources to support them have fallen further and further behind,” she said.
Singh called on communities to take action and advocated for more funding of education systems. She said that the schools are struggling, and students deserve better.
“Basically, we’re broke, and we’re past due on rent,” she said. “Our children deserve better, our villages deserve better, and our state deserves better.”

Gambell dancers
Students weren’t only a topic of conversation – some attended the convention. The Qughsatkut Dancers, a dance group from the Gambell School, opened the afternoon session on Thursday with a performance.
Shem Rose Koonooka, who leads the group, said that she has been teaching at the school in Gambell for 24 years. She’s led the dance group on over ten trips to festivals and events. Dance is a way for the community to come together, and the dancers in the group have been singing and dancing ever since they were little kids.
“We get to have singing and dancing every Friday for half hour for the whole school,” she said. “And the community comes and joins us, too.”
“It was very fun, yeah, but I was scared,” said Janissa Noongwook, a junior in high school.
“We feel proud to represent our home,” said Josephine Ungott, a senior.
“And our culture!” added Noongwook.

Fish and marine mammals
AFN Board Member Jodi Mitchell said that AFN is concerned about the rural preference issues because it will directly impact subsistence practices and the Alaska Native way of life.
“It’s not just subsistence, but it’s also protecting our ways of life,” she said.
Other speakers focused on subsistence rights as well. Former Congresswoman Mary Peltola spoke on the second day of the convention, emphasizing that non-commercial harvest of fish and game accounts for just 1.4 percent of all harvest – the rest is commercial fishing.
Peltola said that subsistence is not just hunting rights, it is food security.
“When we’re talking about subsistence, we’re talking about food on the table, food security,” said Peltola.
A panel discussion around Native co-management on Friday emphasized new paths forward for subsistence management.
Craig Tribal President Clinton Cook Sr. said that co-management allows for Indigenous knowledge of their own lands to come to the forefront when resources are managed.
“Our people have always managed our lands,” he said. “Co-management means putting Indigenous knowledge and authority back in where it belongs – right in the hands of the people who live in this great land.”
The discussion around subsistence stretched into the resolution discussion on Saturday. A late resolution was introduced by the Nome Eskimo Community and Bering Straits Regional Caucus that focused on a draft bill introduced by Congressman Nick Begich to the House Natural Resources Committee that would amend the Marine Mammals Protection Act.
The draft bill redefines the standard for marine mammal population numbers from “maximum productivity” to “necessary to support continued survival.” According to the AFN resolution, the bill would also weaken the Marine Mammal Protection Act by revising scientific standards, hindering the ability to estimate abundance of marine mammal stocks, reducing permit review requirements, weakening injury reporting standards and “prioritizing permit expediency over careful scientific analysis.”
Nome Eskimo Community Tribal Council Member Loretta Bullard said that the community wasn’t even aware of the draft bill until a week and a half before the convention and felt that it had slid mostly under the radar.
“Folks were really not given the opportunity to fully analyze, vet it, talk about it,” Bullard said. “It was just very under the radar, pretty much statewide.”
Reducing the marine mammal population standards from maximum productivity to just necessary to support survival worries Bullard. She said that lower population numbers overall mean lower populations to hunt from, affecting the food stocks available to subsistence hunters.
“Let’s say we have 10,000 ugruk out there, if we get it down to 2,000 that that’s enough for survival of species, but it’s certainly not optimal for hunting,” she said.
Representative Nick Begich said that the draft bill was introduced to start a discussion if the high numbers of marine mammals in certain areas of coastal Alaska are preventing sustainable fisheries management.
“Well, I think if you speak with a number of the folks who live in coastal Alaska, what you’ll also hear is that the proliferation of marine mammals is also impacting the ability for folks to subsist in those areas of the state because of marine mammal predation,” he said.
Begich said that he has heard that seals, sea otters and other marine mammals are causing issues with the harvesting of oysters and fish.
“They’re causing challenges with oyster beds. They’re causing challenges in harbors for fishing,” he said.
The resolution in opposition emphasizes that the draft bill would reduce protections for marine mammals that Alaska Native peoples rely on for subsistence and place commercial and industrial interests over subsistence interests.
“If our Marine Mammal Protection Act language is substantially amended, it could really hurt Alaska Natives and all of western Alaska,” Bullard said.
Representative Begich said that he will continue to reach out to Alaska Native constituencies. If he sees a pathway for support, then he will pursue it, but if there isn’t support, he’ll go back to the drawing board. He said that the draft currently has bipartisan support, and he is only looking for a bipartisan path forward. When asked if he would still move forward with the bill if Alaska Native communities opposed it, he said that he wants to make sure that the bill reflects Native rights.
“I want to make sure that the bill is reflective of preserving the rights and capacities of the Alaska Native people to continue to subsist and utilize these marine mammals in their traditional ways,” he said. “If the bill does not do that, then we’re not going to continue with the bill.”
The resolution to oppose the bill passed at AFN with a unanimous roll call vote, a huge show of support.
Bullard said that the expression of support from across the state emphasizes how strongly Alaska Native communities feel about this issue.
“We do not want our congressional delegation amending the Marine Mammal Protection Act without our support, our advice, our guidance and our input,” she said.

Disaster Relief
The recent disaster in Western Alaska featured largely during the convention. Donations to those affected by the storm could be dropped off in a room on the second floor of the convention center. Many speakers started their speeches with thoughts of those in Western Alaska affected by the floods.
A late resolution was introduced that called for an immediate federal declaration of emergency and assistance for the effects of ex-typhoon Halong. The resolution passed. President Donald J. Trump has yet to declare a federal emergency. Alaska’s congressional delegation sent a letter to the president asking to approve Governor Mike Dunleavy’s request for a disaster declaration.
Senator Lisa Murkowski, speaking on the second day of the convention, spoke about visiting the village of Kipnuk.
“And as I walked by one house that was devastated, I looked in the window and here’s two Christmas cactuses,” she said. “Here in the midst of this devastation and darkness was the life of a plant, of two plants.”
Murkowski said that the work to recover from Halong will take years to complete. She said that more than the homes and buildings lost, the healing will be about those who have been displaced and the subsistence foods that were destroyed.
“How the people of this region… move forward will define them for generations,” she said. “This is a time to remember that again, when we come together we are stronger.”
Murkowski also mentioned that when the helicopter left Kipnuk, they brought along two dogs rescued from the village, as well as one other treasure.
“To Nelly from Kipnuk, know that I have your Christmas cactuses,” she said. “I want to return them to you because I want you to see them bloom, and they will.”

AFN passed 42 resolutions. The first block of resolutions, concerning subsistence, generated a lot of debate on the floor. Resolution 25-03 had its title amended to include “tribal,” after much debate over whether the word “rural” should also be added. Proponents of adding the word “rural” argued for it because it is the term used in ANILCA, which the state is attempting to challenge.
Kawerak submitted six resolutions, ranging from affirming tribal authority and access to locally produced foods, supporting the federal government maintaining control of Indian Education programming, supporting energy security in rural Alaska, advocating for funding of adult educational programs in Alaska, and asking for the streamlining housing applications and to address the housing crisis in Alaska. All six resolutions passed.
AFN Co-Chair Ana Hoffman resigned at the end of the convention. Gayla Hoseth will be the new Co-Chair alongside Joe Nelson.