uarding the lobby of an office building. Watching the entrance gates at a conference venue. Patrolling a fairground, head on a swivel. Responding in the dark of night to a burglar alarm. Monitoring camera feeds from a remote panopticon. Private security takes many forms, and providers have many tools to protect clients’ assets.

According to Gitnux Market Data, more than 1 million security guards were employed nationwide in 2020, and revenues from contract security services totaled around $41 billion. Demand for these services is projected to reach nearly $46.2 billion in North America by 2024.

In Alaska, demand is growing as well.

ames tie the present to the immemorial past. The founders of Alaska Native corporations kept this principle in mind when they devised brands to represent both their business interests and their communities. The organizations draw their names from (in most cases) the Indigenous languages of Alaska.

Since 2014, Alaska has had twenty-one official languages: English plus Iñupiaq, two forms of Yup’ik, Alutiiq/Sugt’stun (also spelled Sugcestun), Unangam Tunuu (Aleut), Tlingit, and fourteen other languages in the Dene, or Athabascan, family. The law that designated these languages as official was a step toward correcting past policies of active suppression. In the last decade, language revitalization programs have trained tribal members (and interested outsiders) in the speech of Alaska’s original peoples.

The first lesson might come from reading a news article about an organization with an Alaska Native name. Pronouncing the name correctly is a dip into the vast pool of language learning.

n 1971, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) divided 44 million acres of land among more than 200 regional, village, and urban corporations to resolve land claims throughout Alaska. While many of these Alaska Native corporations (ANCs) have since made extraordinary strides thanks to these allotments, five communities were left out.

Haines, Ketchikan, Wrangell, Petersburg, and Tenakee are treated differently under Section 16 of ANCSA. The law notes that the Tlingit and Haida Settlement of 1959 had already awarded $7.5 million to tribes in Southeast, and land ownership patterns were considerably different there than in the rest of the state.

Other Southeast cities were included in ANCSA: Goldbelt, Inc. is the urban corporation for Juneau, and Ketchikan’s neighboring village, Saxman, is represented by the Cape Fox Corporation. A 1993 report by the UAA Institute of Social and Economic Research, which was mandated by Congress, found no blatant reason or explanation for the exclusion of the five landless communities.

rieda Nageak wishes that visitors to Alaska’s northernmost town could take home authentic souvenirs.

“We have a lot of visitors from all over the United States and from Canada and different places. They’re always wanting to buy something that is Barrow related or Iñupiaq related, but they can’t seem to find anything,” she says.

Shirts sold at the Alaska Commercial Company store in Utqiaġvik’s Barrow neighborhood, for example, show images of moose in a forest, neither of which are anywhere nearby. The Stuaqpak supermarket across the lagoon in Browerville carries apparel printed with eagles soaring over mountains—again, imagery alien to the tundra.

oredom is not an issue for visitors in Alaska. Travel along the road system unveils a vast ecosystem, a variety of wildlife, and multiple cultures within rural and urban communities. In Southeast, waterways take the place of asphalt, affording once-in-a-lifetime views to millions of tourists. Disconnected from the main road system, however, remote communities in Southwest, Interior, and Northern Alaska welcome the most dedicated and adventurous travelers. Visits to places like St. Paul Island, Kantishna Roadhouse, and Utqiaġvik (formerly Barrow) require more intensive planning than a casual cruise, but the effort is rewarded with glimpses of Alaska experienced by a select few.

y the middle of this century the population of Southeast is forecast to drop by 13 percent. All other parts of Alaska are expected to grow, but every community in Southeast is projected to decline. (The notable exception is Skagway, where the Alaska Department of Labor and Workforce Development anticipates a 45 percent population increase, the biggest percentage gain of any municipality or census area.)

The largest population drop is forecast for Prince of Wales Island, which could lose 31 percent of its residents by 2050. The only areas with comparable losses are the Yukon-Koyukuk area of the Interior, the Denali Borough, and the Kodiak Island Borough. Neighboring areas are forecast to grow, but Southeast is a huge swath of depopulation.

or the first time since the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) established its Brownfields Program in 1995 to clean up polluted properties, four Alaska Native regional and village corporations were awarded grants. This year, grants of $2 million each were awarded to Ahtna, Inc., The Aleut Corporation, Cook Inlet Region, Inc., and Ounalashka Corporation. The funds allow the corporations to address contaminated lands conveyed through the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA).

The grants were awarded through EPA’s Multipurpose, Assessment, Revolving Loan Fund, and Cleanup program and the Technical Assistance to Brownfields program. Both programs received funding boosts from the 2021 Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. In 2022, Congress added a new avenue specifically for ANCSA corporations and tribes in the Consolidated Appropriations Act. The new program makes $20 million available to build on the work started under the brownfields grants.

n Sugt’stun, the language of the Alutiiq people on Alaska’s southern coast, “Naswik” means “lookout.”

The four-story Chugach Naswik building will be one of the tallest buildings in Valdez when it is completed. From the intersection of Meals Avenue and Egan Drive—the southern terminus of the Richardson Highway—the property affords a tremendous view of Valdez Harbor and the surrounding Chugach Mountains, making it an ideal place to look out from, indeed.

Watterson Construction is building the 23,000-square-foot building, a mixture of nightly and short-term residential units and common space. It will have thirty-six units; six on the top floor will be two-bedroom, two-bath units, and the rest will be studio apartments, each with their own kitchens, and with a shared laundry room on each floor. The lobby and lounge area below will have a small kitchen and café space and seating area.

As a joint project of three Alaska Native corporations, Chugach Naswik is also a physical manifestation of looking out for a community in need, be they shareholders or others who dwell in the Land of Waterfalls.

n July, the Alaska Department of Natural Resources (DNR) Division of Oil and Gas released the final, adjudicated results of its November 2022 Beaufort Sea, Cook Inlet, and North Slope areawide lease sales. The lease sales were successful in that each generated bids that resulted in acreage awards, an essential part of the process of oil and gas development on state lands and waters.

In the final tally for the Beaufort Sea areawide sale, five of the six companies that submitted bids received at least one tract:

• Savant Alaska bid on three tracts and was awarded two totaling 2,987 acres
• Hilcorp North Slope bid on three tracts and was awarded all three totaling 6,400 acres
• Hilcorp Alaska bid on one tract and successfully won that award for 2,501 acres
• Lagniappe Alaska bid on one tract successfully for a total of 2,560 acres
• Samuel Cade bid on one tract successfully for 2,324 acres
• ConocoPhillips Alaska bid on two tracts but was not awarded either