ssues that typically trouble most Alaskans are multiplied in the state’s more remote villages. Up-to-date infrastructure, access to housing, and affordable groceries cannot be simply taken for granted.

Residents of the North Slope Borough have these obstacles against them, but they also have allies on their side. The borough is home to the state’s richest homegrown business, Arctic Slope Regional Corporation. The eight village corporations in the region are also forces to be reckoned with, particularly in the Slope’s largest and northernmost community. Ukpeaġvik Iñupiat Corporation (UIC) is taking steps to make life easier for its shareholders as well as other Slope residents.

“With 4,400 employees nationwide and 3,000 employees in the Lower 48, UIC does quite a bit of work out of state, though that is still for the benefit of our shareholders and our home,” says UIC Chief Administrative Officer and Deputy General Counsel Richard Camilleri.

The largest city in the North Slope Borough, Utqiaġvik is home to 4,622 residents, of which 63 percent are Iñupiat. Although it is a modern community, subsistence hunting, fishing, and whaling are still important to the local economy, and many residents who work full- or part-time continue to hunt and fish for much of their food.

In 2023, UIC began expanding its shareholder base, accepting the children of original shareholders. Starting this year, grandchildren of original descendants became eligible to enroll. Over the past two years, this has added 1,100 Class B shareholders. UIC currently serves 3,800 shareholders with both Class A and Class B shares.

According to Camilleri, the corporation’s overall focus is on growth, sustainable development, and how those connect to community wellbeing while still tracking with Iñupiat values. To this end, UIC is focusing this year on housing and food security.

“Housing is not only a regional issue, but an issue for the entirety of the state,” says Camilleri. “It’s even more of a challenge in rural Alaska.”

As the majority landowner in Utqiaġvik, UIC has prioritized land sales to shareholders in an effort to make home ownership more accessible. Since 2023, the corporation has sold fifteen residential lots to shareholders and facilitated five lot trades, enabling shareholders with land parcels outside of the current road infrastructure to trade their land for land connected to the road system and municipal infrastructure.

“In 2024, we reviewed our land use policy which governs how we own the land—basically our treatment of the land from A to Z—through the lens of wanting to support our shareholders to achieve the goal of home ownership,” explains Camilleri. “We looked at how we could make the process easier when accessing a lot, buying a lot, and building on it.”

In addition, UIC’s Lands and Real Estate department sold four existing residential units to shareholders in 2024, and two more house sales are underway. These homes, which were owned and maintained by UIC, were formerly rented to shareholders but are now being transitioned to individual ownership.

To make lots more accessible, UIC’s Arctic Operations and Development company created a program offering discounted gravel sales to shareholders. The gravel for house and driveway construction has been a major success; in 2024, UIC sold 4,500 cubic yards of gravel—more than $90,000 worth—at a discounted price to shareholders. UIC also made nearly 500 pilings available to shareholders for building above the tundra, and more pilings are available.

The company is considering a program to provide more affordable access to augering or drilling equipment and services to place the pilings, as well as ways to get affordable lumber and building materials into Utqiaġvik, which would make it more accessible to outlying villages as well.

UIC recently participated in a housing summit in Anchorage, during which UIC President and CEO Dr. Pearl K. Brower spoke, as well as leaders of other UIC subsidiaries, including UIC Construction and Bowhead Transport.

“The summit, which was hosted by the North Slope Borough, included everyone who could potentially play a role in the buying, selling, and constructing of a home, including financers, banks, lenders, realtors, construction companies, and cargo companies,” explains Camilleri. “We talked about housing challenges, construction costs, and shortage issues—challenges that are similar to those of our brother and sister companies in villages across the state.”

These challenges include being located off the road system, a limited construction season, the high costs of construction, and the availability of contractors—including electricians, plumbers, and more—who most often don’t live in these remote communities and have to be flown to work.

“When you think in terms of labor and resources, it’s difficult in Alaska to recruit and fill positions because people are often competing with each other to take the top talent. There are a lot of job openings and a limited work pool applying to them, which is compounded even more when it gets down to the village level,” says Camilleri.

Utqiaġvik and other Slope communities also struggle with the aging of the current housing stock.

“Families are often faced with having multiple generations in the same house because of our limited housing stock,” says Camilleri. “We’re sending our young people out to get trained, earn degrees, and advance their educations, and we want them to come back home. But it’s hard to come back without a place to stay.”

He adds, “When a young couple’s only option is to move back in with mom and dad, it makes it difficult to achieve the goals that we want: to have a successful and thriving community.”

In 2024, UIC established the Charles Etok Edwardsen Jr. Wetlands Mitigation Bank (CEEMB) near Utqiaġvik, in partnership with Ecosystem Investment Partners. The CEEMB is the first wetlands mitigation bank on the North Slope, and UIC now offers more than 1,000 mitigation credits to developers in need of compensatory mitigation planning during permitting. The UIC Mitigation Bank will preserve in perpetuity almost 2,300 acres via a conservation easement within the borders of the protected Barrow Environmental Observatory.

“The CEEMB is very close to our community and is used for subsistence, and through the mitigation credits we can monetize the land without developing it,” says Camilleri. “The revenue from the program goes to UIC through the board of directors’ designation, and those funds will be spent on support services that benefit our shareholders, inclusive of our work with housing.”

UIC’s focus on food security manifested this winter in a partnership with Alaska Commercial Company and Kannika’s Market.

Utqiaġvik anticipated a surge of visitors during one week in February for the Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission’s annual Whaling Captains’ Convention and the North Slope Borough-hosted Kivgiq celebration, which brings hundreds of visitors and often includes Iñupiat groups from as far away as Canada and Greenland. All those guests need to eat, but Utqiaġvik’s supermarkets only have so much shelf space.

Thus, UIC donated warm storage space so that Alaska Commercial Company could expedite delivery of 75,000 additional pounds of groceries, including 55,000 pounds of dry goods, 10,000 pounds of chilled food, and 10,000 pounds of frozen food. Kannika’s Market was able to handle an additional twenty pallets of supplies.

In addition to short-term support to local grocers, UIC is also looking toward long-term solutions that might include working with local grocers on the operation of each store and inventorying the retail space available that could allow grocers to provide more goods and services—not just to help the corporation’s shareholders but the whole community.

Camilleri says that UIC will continue to do everything in its power to put shareholders first and to support them at home. More than half of its shareholders are in Utqiaġvik and other North Slope communities.

“All we can do is plan ahead to the best of our ability, and that includes putting time and effort into keeping track of what is happening where, and how to plan for it,” he says. Camilleri cites the example of tariffs against Canadian goods, which could increase the cost of lumber and other construction materials, but then they were paused the day he heard about them.

He adds, “There are a lot of moving parts, and it requires us to stay informed and up to date so we can plan ahead as much as possible.”