COMMISSIONER THOMPSON: And just while we're getting started, we will be rather informal. We have another hearing following this one at 1 o'clock. We would like to break as close to noon as possible. We will be informal as long as we have a few people signed up; but if we get a rather large crowd, as we might, if we do, we would ask that we limit the testimony to ten minutes if we start getting additional people, to make sure that everyone has an opportunity to testify.
And if we are unable to gee you in this morning, there is a spillover hearing that will take place Saturday morning as well. So, we will stay on an informal mode and allow the witnesses that we have as much time as they would like to testify; but if the list gets a bit crowded, we would indulge you, and ask if you would indulge us, if we would limit you to maybe ten minutes. But the next person who signed up that I see is Ron Brower. We'd like to welcome Ron Brower and hear his testimony please.
And one final thing, if you would state your name, the community you're from; and if you happen to have written testimony, we'd appreciate that being submitted. Welcome, Ron Brower.
MR. BROWER: Thank you, Mr. Thompson. I was advised on a short notice here to appear before this panel. My name is Ron Lynch Brower, Sr. I'm currently President for Ukpeagvik Inupiak Corporation, a 'village corporation in the North slope; and also I'm the AFN representative for our villages for the Arctic Slope Region.
I understand our subject this morning is in dealing with economics; and I want to present to you our situation as we view it in the Arctic Slope. For the mo -- for quite a number of years, we've had some hardship with regard to economic opportunity and development, especially at the village level. Even though we have Prudhoe Bay located in our area, one of the biggest difficulties that we have gone through in deal -- doing economic opportunity, has been in the lack of training and the necessary education to provide the necessary skilled force required to do various projects.
I think this has been one of the weakest areas. Even though our villages are located in a fairly good environment there, economic opportunity has been far and few in between, which results, in many instances, that our Native community; or members of our Native community, you know, in many instances are not employed, which is probably a con -- problem throughout many of our other regions.
There's a very high contingent of transient personnel, most of who have these jobs that many of our people would like. Unfortunately, as I mentioned, that it's the training and skill level required that normally keeps them from being employed in the job market.
One of the biggest things we have is a situation where being a -- our communities are subsistence-oriented communities; and when it comes to dealing with the 8-to-5-type jobs, there is a conflict that occurs when we have seasonal hunting activity taking place to meet our nutritional needs for the upcoming year.
We’re heavily involved in a cash economy in the very short time that we've had village corporations, and we still have people within our companies that have minimum education. Some of 'em -- some of our board of directors’ education
does not exceed the fourth grade, but they have a wealth of
experience, which they bring to the table. I think, in our
case, UIC has been fortunate in being able to pursue various
projects and diversifying from -- into 0the.r fields of business.
UIC's involved in insurance -- fire and casualty homeowners'
insurance, which is, I believe, the only type of its kind that's
owned by a Native corporation.
Of course, we’re involved in construction,
and barge transportation, and in other technical services.
This has proved to be a profitable
direction for our corporation. However, it does not allow --
or has not provided the opportunity for many of our shareholders
to be employed. We, of course, employ a lot -- as many shareholders
as we ha -- can; and, in many instances over the year, our
shareholder hire may be 50, 60 percent. Compared to other entities,
we felt that was a fairly good margin.
We do a lot of work in other villages, and we have adjusted some of our management style from dealing with management by goals and objectives to include management by values. This is an important ingredient in doing business with the Native community, which is not exercised by many other transient companies doing work in villages. And, at this point, our company has continued to grow; and we are heavily involved in training of our shareholders, so that we can develop certified skilled employees for the long term. I think -- in that direction, I think we have been fortunate, in that we have been also profitable enough to be able to do so. Recognizing that many areas are not as economically well off as the Arctic Slope is in many cases, this we have used to our advantage -- to our best advantage, and we'll continue to do so.
However, there's several areas of concern that our people do have. We do lack skilled people in the field of health, in the field of business, and several other fields of labor. And, even though the oil industry has been somewhat supportive of training, many of our people don't work there. They're -- they live in their home environment, and we have -- we are in a clash, in many instances, between the need for the cash economy and the need for our subsistence economy to be balanced, so that we may have a -- at least a healthy year both ways.
At this time, one of the areas that we see a need for development especially is in the area of arctic research. This has a potential for providing many of our rural communities opportunities for not only educating -- getting educated in the field of arctic research; but also being a participant with the various federal/state governments Compared to other areas, the United States spends very little in terms of arctic research and hardly employs many of our Native people in that field. So, naturally, we look to other areas to provide economic opportunity, to provide jobs, and make improvements where we can.
One of our objectives has been to develop a partnership between local government, tribal government, and our private sector. In doing so, we have come out with a fairly strong and unified community working together. This has allowed us, both the government, the private sector, and our tribal governments to begin to prosper and work together as a partnership. This, I think, is working quite well; and we anticipate this relationship to continue for a long period of time. And we're doing a number of projects with our local government. Whether it's the state or tribal government, we work -- our objective has been to develop a cooperative relationship, which will address our concerns -- economic, socially, and otherwise.
This year -- this past year, I think we -- one of our successes is that we've been able to implement our home-site program, which included some changes, I think. For the first time, the feds and the state have had to deal with subsistence subdivision, which is a new situation. And both parties really were not prepared to deal with something such as a subsistence subdivision. This plan allows space for our people to continue their subsistence activity; it allows us to, over time, provide jobs to the local community; and it bolsters up our economic relationship with the local and private industry for a long period of time, I would say.
And I think we'd like to encourage the Commission to look at our communities, and see this -- the type of design that we have developed in the Arctic Slope can be useful for other areas. I hope you will have much success in your current mission, and thank you for the opportunity.
COMMISSIONER THOMPSON: Thank you, Ron. Questions of Ron? John? Martin?
MR. SHIVELY: I have a -- would you expand just for a minute, Ron, on your orient -- you mentioned management by values. Give us some examples, or how has it worked, and how is it being implemented with your corporation?
MR. BROWER: When we as a corn -- when our village corporation is involved in doing a project in a different village, for example, maybe we may be involved in construction of schools in various locations. What we have done is we have taken our management team; we meet with the village rep; we meet with the students in the community; we meet with the elders, the tribal and the city councils; and we meet with various officials, families, within a community; and we spend a day or two discussing with them what their community values are.
We, as being a transient company coming into their territory, we like to explore what kind of values. We look at the cultural basis of the community, the economics; and the social structure within that community; and we look at the traditional values, and some -- well, most of which we discuss, and then we take those values -- the community values -- the social, moral, and other values, and lay out the ground work if we're going to do a project in a community. We use that as a ground base, and instruct our employees of the type of behavior that they would be expected to conduct themselves in a village situation.
You know, we were at one village, and we were pointing this question out, and so -- in that village, our response -- we had a silence there for awhile, and the response came back:
"Well, we expect in your -- from your
workers no alcohol to be brought into our community. When
you are done with
your project, we don't expect you to leave any babies behind."
So, (laughing) we -- those are just examples of what we experience. There's -- this has been a good exchange between our company and the village.
We also employ as many people from the village as we can, or wherever we are doing a project. We exercise as much local hire as we can -- resident hire in the villages, as we go about doing various projects. And this has been a very fruitful experience for our company.
COMMISSIONER THOMPSON: Well, thank you, Ron. We compliment you on your local-hire initiatives. I think that's true across the state; but we compliment you on implementing it with your village corporation.
As I mentioned, it is true in most of the village and regional corporations, we're outperforming other Alaskan-based companies, other Outside companies that are imported, in training and developing our shareholders; and we're proving that it can be done; and we' re proving that we can get the job done efficiently, on time, many times under budget; and that our work force is just as competitive.
And it's always nice to see that being implemented around the state, because, obviously, for us it makes good economic and shareholder sense, and gets the job performed so. . .
MR. BROWER: Uh-huh (affirmative).
COMMISSIONER THOMPSON: Any questions of Ron by any of the other Commissioners? John?
MR. SHIVELY: Yeah. Ron, one of issues
-- I know it’s come up at Red Dog and some of the other economic ventures that we're involved in is that in the Native community, a death in the community is much different than the non-Native community, because death isn’t
-- doesn't always just -- or it doesn't affect just the immediate
family, it affects a broader sort of extended family, and
even people that aren't necessarily related by blood, because
of formal and informal adoptions. How do you deal with funeral
leave and things like that in your operations?
MR. BROWER: When we're -- even in our
own community, we have experienced a lot of death. We experience
that as part of life; and what we do is that when such an
event cakes place, if we're in a community -- small community,
we would allow our employees to be participating in funeral
services, etcetera. If the business within the community
does come to a stop, then we will stop for a day to accommodate
the community in their practice in dealing with funerals.
Each community is different. We have a number of religious
groups through the state of Alaska, and our experience has
been different in each region, because of the faith that
is practiced within those communities. We look at the type
of religion that is practiced in the community, whether it's
Catholic, Lutheran, Presbyterian, etcetera, and expect our
company to fall within their practices, 'cause we must deal
in -- we have - - we’re dealing in a very diversified community
of Alaska, and so we have to make adjustment accordingly.
But we do provide leave time for our employees. In some instances, we have stopped the work we're doing completely, because the entire village would be participating in a funeral. So, at that point, we must comply to the community's tradition.
MR. SHIVELY: Thank you, Ron.
COMMISSIONER THOMPSON: Any other questions of Ron? If not, Ron, we again compliment you for your work and appreciate you appearing before us this morning.
MR. BROWER: Thank you for your time.
COMMISSIONER THOMPSON: Thank you, Ron.
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