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OPINION:
After serving in the Revolutionary War, Samuel Wilson went into business for himself as a butcher and meatpacker. Through a federal contract, he fed our troops during the War of 1812, and his role gave rise to the term “Uncle Sam.”
Although Uncle Sam is most famous as a symbol of wartime recruitment, he has also been used as shorthand for the government, e.g., “Uncle Sam is hurtling toward a fiscal cliff.”
Which, of course, he is, so the administration is making spending cuts, including by overhauling the Small Business Administration’s 8(a) Business Development Program, which is designed to help economically disadvantaged businesses grow through federal contracts.
Indeed, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called 8(a) the oldest diversity, equity and inclusion program, zeroing in on Alaska Native corporations. This is an area where a scalpel would be better than a butcher knife. Slashing the program would kill the state’s economy, cut off vital natural resources and cripple our northern line of defense.
We can’t discuss the Alaskan economy without talking about Alaska Native corporations any more than we could discuss South Korea without talking about Samsung. These corporations aren’t just the backbone of Alaska’s economy; they are the entire skeleton. Alaska Native corporations continuously occupy the top 10 spots in Alaska’s corporate rankings, and their cumulative revenue exceeds $10.5 billion annually, or about 10% of the state’s total gross domestic product. Alaska Native corporations employ more than 15,000 Alaskans. With that federal investment, they make regional infrastructure investments in rural hub communities, provide programs for shareholders, support nonprofits and fund scholarships.
Pulling out Alaska Native corporations would be the first domino for the Alaskan economy. Without Uncle Sam’s money, infrastructure would collapse. Alaskans would flee to the Lower 48, leaving the state without a workforce.
As the world undergoes reglobalization, Alaska will play an increasingly vital role in America’s quest for resource independence. The state probably doesn’t have more oil than Saudi Arabia, but it has a lot, and oil is just the tip of the Alaskan iceberg. Of the 50 minerals Uncle Sam has identified as critical, Alaska has significant amounts of 49 of them.
The largest zinc mine in the world is the Red Dog Mine, owned and operated by NANA Regional Corp., an Alaska Native corporation. Corrosion-resistant zinc is essential for defense and other manufacturing. Without zinc from Alaska Native corporations, our military capabilities would rust away. Greens Creek, near Juneau, is one of the largest and lowest-cost silver mines in the world. This seems like an important asset as silver becomes increasingly valuable. Greens Creek sits on lands with Alaska Native corporations’ connections and employs their contractors.
Moreover, if we need Greenland to strengthen our northeastern waters, then we need Alaska even more for our northwestern waters. Sarah Palin never actually said she could see Russia from her house, but the sentiment is kind of true.
Fort Greely, Alaska, serves as the primary location for our Ground-Based Midcourse Defense system, which is the only U.S. defense against intercontinental ballistic missile attacks on the homeland. Fort Greely heavily relies on Alaska Native corporations’ contractors for almost all essential maintenance and operational readiness. This is why a January analysis on irregular warfare doctrine specifically recommends to “Use multi-year contracts with Alaska Native Corporations and regional providers for caches, fuel staging, winterized sensors, and remote camps.”
Weakening Alaska seems like a bad idea with Russian aggression at its highest level since the Cold War, while Canadian trustworthiness is at its lowest since the War of 1812. If we keep a strong enough defense in Alaska, then we won’t need Uncle Sam to recruit children for wars because our enemies will be too scared to start them.
Moreover, regarding the criticism of racial preference, the Supreme Court’s Morton v. Mancari precedent indicates that Alaskan tribes constitute political classifications, not racial ones. Alaska Native corporations were created in 1971 to settle claims by Alaskan Natives for rights to resources on their ancestral lands, making the corporations the result of a treaty, not a Biden-era handout. This principle was reaffirmed in the Indian Child Welfare Act and again in a memo last year by the Small Business Administration general counsel, Wendell Davis.
In a letter to Alaskan lawmakers last year, SBA Administrator Kelly Loeffler acknowledged that Alaskan Natives’ participation in the 8(a) program is unique. “It would be unreasonable to read Executive Order 14151 as applying to American Indians and Alaskan Natives, given that Tribes are separate sovereigns,” she said. With the SBA’s current attack on Alaska Native corporations’ operations, it is unclear what changed her mind. These corporations provide jobs to Indigenous Americans and massive benefits to national security, not welfare checks. This seems like a fair setup to me.
There are elements of the federal budget that demand a butcher knife (or frankly a chain saw), but Alaska Native corporations aren’t one of them. They are not the Boeing CEO collecting a $32 million salary. They are critical investments by Uncle Sam in a part of the country so remote, so distant, that it couldn’t survive without that investment. Increasingly, it seems we couldn’t survive without Alaska.
• Jared Whitley has worked in the U.S. Senate, the White House and the defense industry. He has an MBA from Hult International Business School in Dubai.
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