Category: Alaska News

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A small-dollar collections suit has made a Lutak Road property one front in an unresolved, statewide conflict over land sovereignty. And despite losing the lawsuit — in which a tribal government defendant argued the borough’s tax policy ran afoul of federal law — the borough says its stance on the issue remains unchanged.

Last September, the Haines Borough filed suit against the Central Council of Tlingit & Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska seeking unpaid sales tax from a business owned by the tribe. 

The business in question was two short-term rental cabins known as the Gathering Place. A parcel overlooking Lutak Road, the Gathering Place property was originally granted by the federal government in 1981 as a Native allotment to Erma Lawrence, but had since changed hands twice, most recently purchased by the tribe in 2023.

It wasn’t the first time the issue had come up at that property. The tribe has for a number of years argued against the borough’s policy of collecting sales tax from the Gathering Place. The tribe first withheld sales tax collected at the business in 2023. Pointing to a borough exemption from sales tax for foreign, federal, state, and municipal governments, Tlingit & Haida president Chalyee Éesh Richard Peterson advocated that tribal governments be made exempt as well.

In a letter that year to then-Mayor Doug Olerud, Peterson said the tribe would pay the tax in a “good faith” effort to negotiate a more durable change to borough policy. Those changes, however, never came, and last year, borough officials said the tribe had once again collected tax at the business but had stopped remitting it to the borough. In September, after months of tax delinquency notices, the borough filed the small claims suit.

Filing suit was standard borough procedure, written into code, for collecting delinquent tax. The amount in question, $7,500, was relatively small — small enough to be heard in small claims court, the lowest level of the state’s court system. Even after meeting with leadership from the tribe, borough staff said they saw no reason why the tribe should be exempt from that process, or from paying sales tax.

“We are just asking them for delinquent sales tax that they owe to the borough,” borough sales tax administrator Jessie Badger said at the time. “We’re not taxing them, we’re taxing their patrons.”

According to those who have presided over it, Haines’ small claims court is a relatively informal setting, in which the local magistrate has the latitude to hash out disputes — often over issues like dog custody — bringing conflicting parties toward some kind of compromise. Generally, there aren’t lawyers involved or strict courtroom procedures to be followed. But when the tribe filed its response to the suit with Haines magistrate Paul Korchin, it came as a multi-page filing written by the tribe’s attorney, Agatha Erickson.

New legal arguments 

For months prior, the conversation had centered on a decision to be made by the borough: whether it should exempt the tribe from paying sales tax. Even after communications back and forth with Tlingit & Haida officials, Haines Borough officials had used policy toward nonprofits as a reference for whether the tribe would be exempt.

“There is really no reason Tlingit & Haida is not paying taxes on their vacation rental,” borough manager Alekka Fullerton said at the time. “It has nothing to do with their mission. On the other hand, if it was something that was directly related to their mission, maybe they wouldn’t have to pay sales tax.”

But the main argument in that filing was not about the 

borough’s decision to grant or deny an exemption. Instead, the tribe argued, the borough had no authority to collect tax in the first place. Because of the parcel’s status as a Native allotment, the tribe argued that it — and not the borough — held regulatory power over the land.

“It is well established under federal Indian law that, absent clear congressional authorization, a state or locality may not levy a tax directly on a Tribe or its citizens for activities that occur within Indian Country, including Alaska Native Allotments,” Erickson’s filing read. In a footnote, Erickson cited a 1995 Supreme Court case, Oklahoma Tax Commission v. Chickasaw Nation.

The filing also argued the borough was not permitted to sue Tlingit & Haida in the first place due to the tribe’s immunity from suit as a sovereign government, a status that can be waived only by Congress or the tribe itself.

Ultimately, neither of the tribe’s arguments was ever really tested in the local courthouse. About eight months ago, just after the new year, the case petered out to an anticlimactic end. The borough lost the case, but largely because staff forgot to file a response to the court.

The borough “did not intend to not respond,” borough manager Alekka Fullerton said last month.

Nevertheless, without any argument from the borough in the record, the tribe’s arguments were the only ones for the magistrate to consider. In the resulting one-sided proceeding, Korchin came down in favor of the tribe.

The issue has been quiet since, and the Gathering Place didn’t operate as a rental this summer. Even so, the issue of whose land it is to tax, regulate, and otherwise govern continues to loom.

Despite losing the case, the borough has not changed its policy regarding sales tax on allotment land, Fullerton said last month. If the Gathering Place resumes commercial operations in the future, the borough will attempt once more to collect sales tax.

That stance doesn’t have to do with land sovereignty, the borough argues.  

“I think it is really important to keep property tax versus sales tax straight,” Fullerton wrote in an email this summer. “The Gathering Place on Native allotment, we recognize this is a Native allotment, therefore there is no property tax.  The Native allotment status, however, does not mean commercial activity taking place on the land is exempt from sales tax since the users who pay the sales tax are not tax exempt.”

But the question remains of how the borough will, in the future, respond to arguments about broader regulatory jurisdiction over allotment land. 

That possible collision course is not unique to Haines, and neither is the tribe’s argument about jurisdiction over allotment land.

The Lawrence allotment, where the Gathering Place is located, is 160 acres of an estimated 3 to 5 million acres of land in Alaska granted to individuals under the Alaska Native Allotment Act of 1906. Even though a century has passed since such allotments were first granted, it remains an open question who exercises the right to regulate and govern them.

For instance, while Tlingit & Haida argued in the Haines case that it holds the power to tax allotment land, the State of Alaska and the Trump administration disagree.

Both hold that allotments like the Lawrence allotment on Lutak Road are firmly within the governing authority of state and municipal governments, citing a 1993 opinion from the federal Department of the Interior that was, for much of the last 30 years, the federal government’s position on allotment jurisdiction.

The opinion says that in federal Indian law, so-called “Indian Country” has generally been the jurisdictional boundary line, with tribes holding power within Indian Country and states holding power without. Federal statute specifically names allotments as one category of Indian Country.

But in the opinion, Interior solicitor Thomas Sansonetti argued Alaska was an exception: that Alaska Native allotments were created in a substantively different context from allotments in the continental United States, and thus did not confer to tribes the same sovereignty over allotment land.

“Particularly in the absence of a tribal territorial base (e.g. a reservation), there is little or no basis for an Alaska village claiming territorial jurisdiction over an Alaska Native allotment,” he wrote.

The Alaska Department of Law last year, in a press release, called federal government efforts to roll back that opinion “unlawful.” 

The release quoted then Attorney General and current gubernatorial candidate Treg Tayor as saying, “we are asking a court to reaffirm what it has already said—the State maintains primary jurisdiction over Alaska Native Allotments.” 

Uncertain lines of debate

The state and federal governments are currently aligned in their support of that 1993 opinion, but that hasn’t always been the case. The federal government’s position has been set by Department of the Interior administrative policy, not federal statute. As such, the federal government has alternately affirmed, contradicted, and reaffirmed the state’s position with successive presidential administrations.

“We struggle here in Alaska in that we have a lack of case law,” said University of Alaska Fairbanks tribal law expert Kevin Illingworth earlier this summer, explaining why so much of the allotment sovereignty debate is left to administrative policy. “What guidance we get from outside of the courts, either the Department of Law or the federal Attorney General’s office, has been completely partisan and easily predictable just based on who is pulling their strings.”

The borough’s involvement in the debate is just one in a number of cases litigating the issue, some nearby.

In 2021, Tlingit & Haida butted heads with the City and Borough of Juneau after the municipality tried to regulate the tribe’s fireworks sales at a Douglas Island allotment. In that instance, the tribe similarly asserted its regulatory authority over the allotment.

When a Juneau assembly member argued that there was no tribal land in Juneau, Peterson called it “about the most irresponsible and incorrect statement I’ve heard,” KTOO’s Jeremy Hsieh reported at the time. “It’s offensive. We’re selling fireworks on an Indian allotment. That is restricted land, that is Indian land.”

This year, at the same location, the tribe opened the Two Coppers Casino, which it says it has the right to operate due to the land’s status as an allotment, giving it sovereign jurisdiction. That position was backed by the National Indian Gaming Commission a year and a half ago, after the Biden administration reversed federal policy and supported tribal sovereignty over Alaska Native allotments.

In a letter delivering the gaming commission’s decision, associate commissioner Sharon Avery wrote that “tribes in Alaska are presumed to have jurisdiction over Native allotments, subject only to the two exceptions identified by the Department for off-reservation allotments: (1) when the Native Allotment is owned by a non-tribal member; or (2) when the Native Allotment is geographically removed from the tribal community.”

Avery’s argument was based on Biden-era federal allotment policy. Now that the Trump administration has reinstated the federal government’s previous position, the casino once again appears to challenge federal policy. While that Douglas Island casino is currently operating without any legal contest, the state is actively pursuing a similar case,  a casino on allotment land owned by the Native Village of Eklutna.

Other Tlingit & Haida efforts to exert sovereignty over tribal land have drawn legal challenges. In 2023, the State of Alaska sued the Biden administration over its decision to declare a Tlingit & Haida parcel in downtown Juneau as reservation land.

A history of litigation

Litigation, or the possibility of litigation, is often a “last resort” for Alaska tribal governments due to cost, Illingworth said. But Tlingit & Haida exists in a slightly different context from most tribes.

Unlike tribal governments like the Chilkoot Indian Association and Chilkat Indian Village, which were organized in the 1940s under the Indian Reorganization Act, Tlingit & Haida was formed specifically out of landmark litigation.

In 1935, the federal government passed a law allowing “Tlingit and Haida Indians,” as defined by the bill, to sue for compensation for land taken by the federal government. The law was in response to land claims officially initiated at a key Alaska Native Brotherhood convention in Haines.

The group filed suit in 1947 and, after nearly 20 years of litigation, won $7.5 million in compensation for land, including the Tongass National Forest and what was then Glacier Bay National Monument.

Following that ruling, the Central Council of Tlingit & Haida was given the authority to spend the money awarded. That has given the tribe “both money and a history of litigation,” Illingworth said — a contrast to elsewhere in the state, where funding streams have largely been directed toward Alaska Native corporations rather than tribal governments following the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, or ANCSA.

Tlingit & Haida President Chalyee Éesh Richard Peterson initially agreed to discuss the Haines Gathering Place lawsuit, but Peterson and spokespeople for the tribe did not respond to several weeks of requests for an interview and questions about the Haines case and allotment jurisdiction more broadly. The state’s Department of Law said it would not comment specifically on Haines’ small claims suit against the tribe.

For now, the Eklutna case continues to work its way through the courts, and Haines’ tax dispute remains dormant. Allotment policy also may hinge on an imminent new governor and new president in two years time; though now dropped out of the race, former gubernatorial front runner Tom Begich said in a July interview with the Chilkat Valley News that as governor, he had planned to call for a “near reversal” of the state’s current position on sovereignty over allotment lands. 

The post Sovereignty debate in Haines court, borough admin says no policy change forthcoming appeared first on Chilkat Valley News.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday announced that he had secured a deal with the Republic of Korea to spend $54 billion on a long-desired Alaska natural gas pipeline project, part of a $200 billion package of investments that include a major power plant in Texas and several nuclear power plants.

South Korea’s trade minister quickly shot down that claim, saying the government is simply reviewing the Alaska project and will proceed with investment “only if its commercial viability is established,” the Korea JoongAng Daily newspaper reported.

Trump spoke in glowing terms of an Alaska liquefied natural gas project as a sure accomplishment — even though half a century of efforts by state and federal officials and the energy industry have failed to make the project a reality, and even though Korean officials have disputed his claim that they are committed to investing in it.

“This alone will be one of the largest energy projects in American history and a gigantic win for the people of Alaska,” Trump said at the event, held in the White House’s Oval Office. “It will create up to 12,000 construction jobs immediately and 1,000 operational jobs. It’ll also save Alaska households up to $1,500, maybe even as much as $2,200 a year in energy costs. It’s amazing.”

The Alaska LNG investment is part of a “colossal package of investments” stemming from his trade and tariff policies that make “a major step toward securing our critical energy supply chain, ensuring American energy dominance, and making our partnership with South Korea and the entire Pacific region stronger than ever before,” Trump said.

South Korea’s industry, trade and resources minister quickly shot down Trump’s claim about securing $54 billion for the Alaska project. Minister Kim Jung-kwan said the Korean government is simply reviewing the Alaska project and will proceed with investment “only if its commercial viability is established,” the Korea JoongAng Daily newspaper reported.

Trump made the announcement while flanked by a crowd of men that included three cabinet members, Republican Gov. Mike Dunleavy and U.S. Sen. Dan Sulivan, R-Alaska, and U.S. Rep. Nick Begich III, R-Alaska. Also in the group was Brendan Duval, chief executive of the Glenfarne Group, the investment company leading the current proposal for a natural gas project in Alaska.

The current proposal is to ship gas from the North Slope through a yet-to-be-built 807-mile pipeline from the North Slope to tidewater at Southcentral Alaska’s Cook Inlet, where it would be liquefied and put on tankers for shipment to Asian markets.

Alaska’s North Slope holds vast amounts of natural gas along with its oil resources. But geographic distance and costs have kept that natural gas stranded from markets, despite numerous schemes proposed over the years to build different types of pipeline systems to ship the product to either Asia or to the Lower 48.

The natural gas pipeline has been a perennial issue in Alaska elections, including this year’s U.S. Senate race, which is hotly contested. The energy investments Trump announced also affect Texas, another state where there is a competitive Senate race.

Trump and others who spoke at the ceremony spent much of their time praising Sullivan, whom he called “a great senator who is totally responsible for this pipeline,” and urging that he be reelected.

Sullivan is facing a stiff challenge from former Democratic U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola, who led in votes in the primary election. But Trump spent much of his time at Wednesday’s Oval Office event talking about retired Petersburg teacher Dan S. Sullivan, the third U.S. Senate candidate on the Alaska ballot whose candidacy has been challenged by state election officials.

“That Dan Sullivan is a disgraceful fraud,” Trump said.

“It’s so corrupt. The Democrats are corrupt. . . When they put up a man with his exact name, they picked him out of a hat. They said, ‘Anybody named Dan Sullivan in Alaska?”

Trump has said he is planning to come to Alaska to campaign for the senator and against the Petersburg candidate.

Sullivan, in turn, praised Trump and also described the natural gas pipeline projects as if it is a sure thing.

“Mr. President, I would say this is the most important project in our state by far,” he said. “This is the project that is going to keep our kids and grandkids in Alaska, with a great, bright future.  This is the project that our state has been working on to try to get done for almost a half century.”

Positive reaction, and also skepticism

Peltola, whom Trump did not mention but who finished 8.1 percentage points ahead of Sen. Sullivan in Alaska’s Aug. 18 open primary, issued a statement saying she welcomes Korean investment in the gas project.

She cited “bipartisan work” she did in the state legislature and Congress and said she will continue to do that work if elected to the Senate. “Today’s announcement is great news for Alaska, and I appreciate President Trump’s work to unleash Alaska energy. I look forward to continuing this bipartisan work with the President as Alaska’s next United States Senator,” she said in the statement.

Also issuing a positive statement was former State Rep. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins, a Democrat running for governor.

“Alaska should welcome foreign investment that helps responsibly develop our resources, creates good-paying jobs, and builds new markets for Alaska’s natural gas,” Kreiss-Tomkins said in the statement, in which he describes himself as “an enthusiastic champion” of the gas project. “I’m thrilled to see President Trump’s support, and interest from South Korea, for moving this project forward,” he said.

However, the statements made by Trump, Sullivan and others on Wednesday differ vastly from the position articulated by the Republic of Korea government, according to news reports in that nation.

The Korean government is not committing to spending any money on Alaska LNG, a project it considers to be a matter for further consultation, according to Korean publications. The actual commitment to Alaska LNG, as described in a memorandum of understanding, is to ‘explore the possibility of investment’ in the project, “while stopping short of making any binding financial commitment,” according to Korean reports.

Additionally, a law in Korea enacted earlier this year limits government investment in the U.S. to $20 billion a year.

One Alaska lawmaker pointed to the information from Korea as a reason to be skeptical about Trump’s announcement.

State Sen. Scott Kawasaki, D-Fairbanks, noted that Korea’s president had not backed Trump’s account.

Rather, Trump’s announcement seemed like one in a series of “boisterous” statements about things that people want, with details not provided, Kawasaki said.

“I think that, again, this is another bold pronouncement from a president who’s been known for making bold pronouncements but not following through,” he said.

It reminded him of Trump’s promise to build a wall at the Mexico border and make the Mexican government pay for it, Kawasaki said. “That never happened,” he said.

And he cautioned Alaskans against raising their expectations based on Trump’s announcement.

“I don’t want to tell the public and my voters that are just struggling, you know, trying to make ends meet that, ‘Don’t worry, the pipeline’s coming tomorrow; don’t worry, your gas problems are going to be solved overnight,’ because that’s just not going to happen,” he said.

Trump, in addition to making claims that are at odds with the Korean government’s public positions, made other questionable statements.

“For five decades, politicians have talked about the Alaska pipeline. I’ve been hearing about it from the time I’m a little boy: ‘The Alaska pipeline is going to be built someday.’ I was always fascinated by it,” he said.

It was unclear whether he was talking about the existing Trans Alaska Pipeline System, which has been shipping North Slope crude oil from Prudhoe Bay to Valdez since 1977, or the proposed gasline project. Discussions about either pipeline began after oil was discovered at Prudhoe Bay in 1968, when Trump, who is now 80, was 21.

Trump also claimed that he won the presidential vote in Alaska by 22 percentage points. His margin of victory in Alaska in 2024 was 13.1 percentage points.

Long history of international efforts

Wednesday’s announcement about Korean investment comes as part of a decades-long history of highly touted international agreements aimed at developing North Slope natural gas.

Those date back to 1977, when the U.S. and Canada struck a deal to develop an overland system that was to deliver natural gas to the Lower 48.

Other agreements were promoted in the 1980s and 1990s. At the time Yukon Pacific Corp., which ultimately held federal and state permits to build an LNG export project, was actively negotiating with would-be Asian partners and buyers. During the time, Yukon Pacific announced agreements with potential partners in Korea and Taiwan.

There were bold pronouncements about exports made during that era that were similar to those made in the Oval Office on Wednesday.

“ALASKA GAS IS POISED FOR EXPORT TO ASIANS,” said a headline in the Jan. 11, 1988, issue of the Journal of Commerce. The story referred to efforts by President Ronald Reagan and Japanese Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita to try to secure that Asian country as a partner in the Alaska LNG project.

Other international negotiations and agreements followed.

In 2008, for example, the China Petroleum and Chemical Corporation, also known as Sinopec, submitted a formal proposal to the administration of Gov. Sarah Palin to build an LNG project with a pipeline running along the existing oil pipeline’s route from the North Slope to the port of Valdez.

Nine years later, the Alaska Gasline Development Corporation — which became the main sponsor of the project — and the state announced a “Joint Development Agreement” with Sinopec and other would-be partners from China. Along with Sinopec, parties to the agreement were CIC Capital Corporation and the Bank of China. It was “the most significant step forward for Alaska LNG,” AGDC said at the time.

The signing of that agreement was witnessed by Trump in his first administration during a trip to China, according to AGDC’s account.

In February of 2025, Trump announced a “joint venture” with Japan on Alaska LNG in terms similar to those he used on Wednesday to describe what he said was a commitment for Korean investment.

At the time, Sullivan praised Trump in terms similar to those he used on Wednesday.

 “With his leadership, we will get the Alaska LNG Project built, which will create thousands of good-paying jobs, reinvigorate our American steel industry, significantly reduce our trade deficit in Asia, and deliver clean-burning Alaska gas for Americans, our military, and our allies in the Asia-Pacific, like Japan,” Sullivan said in a statement then.

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The landlords and landladies of this town should be ashamed of themselves. Rent has skyrocketed in the last year, rising alongside the cost of groceries, utilities, and gas. 

Why it has skyrocketed can only be boiled down to greed, as the two biggest landlords in town do little to nothing to actually maintain their apartments, houses, and businesses. 

When I first moved to town five years ago, finding a one-bedroom apartment at between $600 and…

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