10.17.25

Sullivan Outlines Senate Work Promoting Alaska Native Interests at Annual AFN Convention

ANCHORAGE, ALASKA—Addressing the Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN) annual convention today, U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) opened his remarks by talking about the devastation wrought by Typhoon Halong across the Yukon–Kuskokwim Delta, and reaffirmed his commitment to securing federal support for recovery efforts. He also spoke about the progress made over the past year to advance the interests of Alaska Native people at the federal level and highlighted ongoing work with Alaska Native communities to address challenges facing rural Alaska, including coastal erosion protection. He also highlighted his work to address the variability in salmon runs across the state, protect Alaska Native artists, stem the epidemic of domestic violence and sexual assault, and advance economic opportunities for Alaska Native people in government contracting.

Sen. Sullivan also spoke about the implementation of key provisions in the recent budget reconciliation bill, what he calls the Alaska Opportunity Act, like the roughly $300 million a year expected to come to Alaska from the $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Fund. He also countered false claims about cuts to Medicaid and Medicare in the legislation, and spoke about resource development provisions in the bill that will bring economic opportunity to Alaska Native communities. Finally, Sen. Sullivan spoke about the many strong Alaska Native people he has highlighted in his “Alaskan of the Week” speeches on the U.S. Senate floor.

Below is a full transcript of Senator Sullivan’s remarks.

Introduction

Well, thank you, Ana, and good morning, AFN! It's wonderful to be home. It is an honor to be with all of you. It's incredible to look out and see all of our leaders, our elders, our delegates, our youth representatives, and community members gathered here today. Thank you for the great work of this organization and for all of you that work to lift up our communities, preserve your cultures, and strengthen our state. All of us together.

By the way, I heard the Elders and Youth Conference went really well. I want to thank First Alaskans Institute—it went really well—and FAI’s President, Roy Agloinga, and their young leaders for the fine job they did, not just this year, but they do every year with regard to the Elders and Youth Conference, which is such an empowering event.

I want to thank AFN leadership and Ben Mallott. I think Ben is having a great first year. Joe, all the leadership here—it’s such a strong group at AFN, and I really want to do a shout-out to my very good friend Lyman Hoffman, who was awarded yesterday for his lifelong service.

I can't think of a more fierce advocate, not just for Alaska Natives, but for Alaska. You don't want to get on Lyman Hoffman's bad side. I've always tried to avoid that in my career. He is an incredible advocate and a good friend.

And, of course, the most important Alaska Native in the world for me is also here: my wife, Julie. We recently celebrated our 31st wedding anniversary, so I'm a very lucky guy. Thank you to my wife, who, by the way, always sits in the front row and likes to cheer me on. So it's great.

Western Alaska Storm Devastation

I want to begin, of course, by talking about Typhoon Halong's devastation across the Y-K Delta. The tragedy of this size and immensity is something we have to all focus on.

So many of you have loved ones who have been very negatively affected. This morning, your congressional delegation sent a letter to President Trump requesting swift approval of the state's disaster declaration to get the federal dollars flowing and I have been, for the last several days, in touch—regular contact—with federal officials, state officials, tribal officials, senior White House officials, the Secretary of Homeland Security, the FEMA Director, the Vice President.

Hopefully some of you saw, the Vice President put a social media post out this morning. He says, “President Trump and I are closely tracking the storm devastation that resulted in over 1,000 of our citizens being airlifted out of Alaska Native villages in Western Alaska. Alaskans,” he says to all of us, “our prayers are with you, and your federal government is going to work to get you the help that you need.”

I think that's good when it comes from the top of the administration. And, of course, I want to thank everybody here for all the hard work you're doing. Tragically, one life has been lost, two others remain missing as this powerful storm raged. But seeing Alaskans coming together—more than 50 people were rescued by our courageous Coast Guard and Alaska National Guard forces—that is really incredible. Now, of course, we have almost 1,400 Alaskans forced from their homes, sheltering in buildings and temporary centers.

So we are grateful for AFN and everybody affiliated here for stepping up to help. We are working longer term. We've been doing this for a number of years on this issue.

What do I mean? As these storms grow more frequent and severe, I've been focused on longer term protections for rural Alaska. Last year, we secured, in the bipartisan infrastructure bill Senator Murkowski and I worked on a couple of years ago, more than $45 million in resilience grants for our rural communities.

And importantly, working directly recently with the EPA administrator, we secured a historic amount of money for the Denali Commission—almost $140 million for the Denali Commission from the EPA to focus on these kinds of infrastructure issues.

Perhaps most importantly, as part of what's called the WRDA Act—that's the Water Resources and Development Act, in 2022 and 2024, I put in a provision in there that’s specific only to Alaska to combat storm damage, erosion, and flooding. The good part about that bill is that 90 percent of that is paid for by the federal government.

Right now, the efforts from that bill are making a difference in places like Utqiagvik, where we were able to get almost $400 million for the seawall there—that's complete erosion protection—and in Juneau and in other areas. So we think that's very important, but we have we have more work to do.

Let me mention, infrastructure for rural Alaska also means the ability to communicate, which is why my team and I work night and day to make sure our rural radios continue to get the funding they need to stay on the air. So that's also infrastructure. We are working hard on that. But, as I mentioned, we believe more needs to be done.

I recently spoke with the CEO of AVCP, Vivian Korthuis, about her idea of establishing a Western Alaska emergency response hub, an inter-agency, inter-tribal, federal and state partnership to strengthen coordination for future disasters. We think this is a really good idea and we're looking into it.

So, again, to our first responders, tribal leaders, Coast Guard: Thank you again. Julie and I continue to pray for everybody. How about another round of applause for all of them?

Addressing the Crisis in Salmon Runs

So this year's theme, “Standing Strong, Standing United” could not come at a better time. These are not just words. They are a way of life. They are focused on resilience. Standing strong means holding fast to your values, your traditions. Standing united means that we work together. When we work together, we can accomplish so much.

One of the things we're working on is salmon. Salmon is a way of life in Alaska, especially rural Alaska. When the salmon are strong, our communities are strong. That's why, over the past several years, I've made the salmon crisis one of my top priorities in the Senate, especially when it comes to subsistence on our great rivers, like the Yukon and Kuskokwim.

A number of years ago, I passed the Alaska Salmon Research Task Force Act, which brought together our best minds—Native, state, federal, tribal, university—to address the big question we all have: What is happening to the different salmon runs in our state, and why is there such great variability, particularly when it comes to, like I said, the Yukon and Kuskokwim? This research that we got done in this bill is now underway to begin getting results—real data that will guide us to what we all want: strong, sustainable salmon runs across all species in all Alaska rivers.

We've been working on the next phase of new legislation to strengthen salmon management and habitat restoration, building on what the task force has found. We are going to do a new bill, which will include components for developing and employing technologies and policies to reduce salmon bycatch in the ocean that are harming our salmon runs.

The ARTIST Act

I also worked hand-in-hand with so many here to promote and protect Alaska Native artists and your culture, and we've got some good news from last week when it comes to that.

For nearly a decade, we have been working to fix a real injustice. Laws in other states intended to stop the trafficking of illegal African elephant ivory ended up hurting Alaska Native artists who are lawfully and sustainably using walrus ivory in your traditional, beautiful artwork.

It made no sense and, by the way, it was devastating when states were saying we can't buy Alaska Native walrus ivory. In terms of the artwork that they do, our Alaska Native artists had done everything right in terms of abiding by the law, and suddenly they couldn't sell their beautiful artwork across state lines. It was an attack on generations of culture and heritage.

We held hearings, actually here at AFN, on this issue and we held specific briefings back in Washington, D.C. with many of our artists. I am pleased to say that last week, after almost ten years of trying, the Senate passed my “Alaska's Right to Ivory Sales and Tradition Act,” what we called the “ARTIST Act,” and we passed that unanimously.

So, I want to thank everybody. There were so many people who worked so hard on this. Melanie Bahnke, Vera Metcalf, Nagruk Harcharek, and our incredible walrus ivory artisans. There's so many. You guys are seeing them here at AFN. They do great work. We’ve got to pass this in the House. We're going to sign this into law. Then, our Alaska Native artists can sell their beautiful work anywhere in America, as it should have been for many, many years.

Defending the 8(a) Program

Let me turn to another issue we're working on, and that is our 8(a) program. By the way, I want to thank all of you—our 8(a) program, but our ANCs, village corporations, regional corporations, tribes. I know Natasha said in her remarks yesterday, [she] made some really important points on how much this matters to our economy, not just for Alaska Natives, but for everybody.

We have undertaken a comprehensive strategy to make sure that people in Washington, D.C. understand the value of this program. Of course, it means a lot to us, but it means a lot when you look at it. For example, to our Department of Defense, to our Pentagon, we have been making the case to everybody. We recently got a nice letter from one of the senior Pentagon officials who said, we understand the 8(a) program. We're going to keep it going, and we're going to expand it.

That is great for Alaska. That’s great for our Alaska Native communities. It's also great for our military. So I want to thank all of you who have done such great work on that.

Alaska Native Vietnam Veterans Land Allotment Program

Another issue that we've been working on, and one of the most important bills that I've worked on in my time in the U.S. Senate, is our bill to extend the Alaska Native Vietnam Veterans Land Allotment program for another five years. Now, this is an issue that I get kind of emotional on because I see our Native veterans: George Bennett, Benno Cleveland and Bill Thomas. These are American heroes who, generation after generation, our Alaska Native community have served our country with what I call “special patriotism.”

Alaska Natives serve in the military at higher rates than any other ethnic group in the country. Yet, when our Vietnam veterans came home, they couldn't apply for their allotment. They weren't treated well. So, in 2019, I was able to get my Alaska Native Vietnam Veterans bill passed and I said, “Hey, if you were serving in the military, especially in Vietnam, when a lot of people, let's face it, American men were avoiding service, and you missed a chance to apply for your allotment, you get to do it now.”

That bill passed. Unfortunately, the implementation of that bill by the last administration was very, very, very slow. They approved, in four years, 40 allotments out of 2,000. Not good.

Guess what? The program is going to expire in two months. So, two weeks ago on the Senate floor, I went to the floor. I said, pass my legislation to extend this for five more years. Unfortunately, we had some senators who blocked it. I talked to them after. I'm like, come on, guys, what are you doing? This is outrageous. Don't block this.

So here's my ask of AFN: Let's work together. Let's go to some of these senators who are blocking it. We’ve got two more months before this program expires. This is a just cause and if we work together, we can get five more years of this program. We can expand the lands available for our Alaska Native Vietnam Vets. We really want to work together with all of you on this important legislation.

The Alaska Opportunity Act

I've talked about some of the issues that we literally work on in the Senate day after day after day. Our focus on Alaska Native issues is a daily thing we focus on and we're honored to do that, because all of you are so important to us, to our state. But I want to talk about one of the real big wins we had recently. This is the Senate bill that was passed in the budget reconciliation bill in July—what I like to call the Alaska Opportunity Act.

There's so many things in this bill that we have been trying to get done as a state for our Native communities and I would say, due to the work of Senator Murkowski, Congressman Begich and myself, we're very confident no state in the country did as well as we did in this big bill.

What I want to do is talk a little bit about what we tried to do, because the Alaska Native issues, for all of us, we weaved into almost every component of this bill in a way that we think is going to have huge impacts for our Alaska Native community.

First, I want to talk about that one bill…When this bill was written, it had Alaska in mind, particularly our Alaska Native community with regard to health care. Let me be clear on a whole host of things that's in this bill. It doesn't touch Social Security. It doesn't touch Medicare. For Alaska, it doesn't touch Medicaid in terms of funding. That's a fact.

Let me get some more specifics. For example, Alaska Native health organizations have always had 100 percent federal funding for Medicaid. Some people talked about reducing that. I said, no way. This bill has 100 percent funding for Alaska Native health organizations for Medicaid, period. That's in the bill.

Second, this bill creates, and the delegation from Alaska were the ones who led on this, a $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program that was built with Alaska specifically in mind. This will deliver hundreds of millions of additional federal dollars for Alaska over the next five years to modernize clinics, hospitals, telemedicine, and workforce training across our state.

Let me give you some more examples as it relates to Alaska Native organizations.

There's a commonsense work and volunteer requirement for Medicaid and SNAP, but it does not apply to Alaska Natives. That is something else we worked to make sure didn't happen. We secured a redetermination extension for Alaska to have more time and flexibility on updating its Medicaid eligibility. That was very focused on Alaska Natives.

We made sure that the telehealth system that our state has innovated on, that our Alaska Native health organizations have done such a good job on, is made permanent and is expanded so that telehealth can be even more important in rural Alaska.

Correcting the Record on Medicaid Funding

There are a whole host of provisions in this bill that we think are going to be outstanding for our state, particularly health care. So, imagine my surprise that we've seen a lot of ads on TV, on social media, in my view, trying to scare people, trying to scare elders, trying to scare seniors, saying that this bill is actually going to hurt them or cut funding for Alaska. It's simply not true. It's not true.

Here's the reality. The one thing as we were debating this bill on the floor, amending it—the one group that tried to actually cut Medicaid for Alaskans during the negotiations was the Democratic leader of the U.S. Senate, Senator Schumer. So we stopped them. We stopped them from doing that. We put in this health care rural transformation fund.

On a whole host of other comprehensive, positive things for our state, especially for Alaska Natives, this senator kept trying to come in and get rid of them. But, here's the thing. Your delegation knows how to fight for the people we represent. That means you. Almost every single one of these times they tried to come into this bill and strip out things that were good for Alaska Natives—there was a lot of them, and they tried to do it a lot—we fought and we beat them. That's what we're trying to do, in terms of your delegation, to represent all of you strongly.

Those are the facts, and you need to know them when you see these ads on TV that are not true.

Alaska Whaling and CDQ Group Tax Provisions

Let me go through a couple of the other provisions that we think are going to be really positive. First, for our North Slope communities, we were able to get, for our whaling captains and our hunters, extension of tax benefits for the communities as it relates to whaling and hunting expenses. This is something that was really important for the communities on the North Slope, for our whaling captains. A lot of people didn't like it. Your delegation made sure that was in there.

We did something similar for the Community Development Quota program that supports jobs and training and economic development in Western Alaska. The CDQ programs are really important programs for jobs in our Native villages for economic development. Again, we were able, in this bill, despite some opposition, to strengthen those and make sure those are going to be even more important for rural development in Alaska Native villages.

Other Provisions in the Alaska Opportunity Act

If you go to the next slide, more broadly, we are able to get provisions dealing with securing the border, which we think is really important.

People ask me, “Senator, why do you care about securing the border 4,000 miles away?” Because we have the highest fentanyl overdose rates in the country, and a lot of those are in Alaska Native villages. Last year, two years in a row, we've had the highest fentanyl overdose rates. Last year, we had almost 400 young people die of this poisoning. One way to stop it is to secure the border and make sure that drug traffickers don't come into our Alaska Native villages, don't come into our states.

We think this is another huge priority of ours for our state. If you look at this slide, it has a whole host of things for small businesses, for resource development in our state, responsible resource development, that, again, so many communities here were focused on. For housing—this expands the Low Income Housing Tax Credit, makes it permanent, which is really important.

So all of these things are in this bill. We think it's a really strong bill. Our delegation worked hard together to put Alaska's interests, and particularly Alaska Native interests, in this bill. We want to work with you on the implementation of this bill, because it's so important.

Bringing Federal Officials to Alaska

Let me conclude with a few other items here. One of the things that we're trying to do—and we're trying to do it right now with Homeland Security and other folks—is bring federal officials to Alaska. Hopefully you've seen that. You guys have been such great hosts. Over the course of the last several years—it doesn't matter, Democrat or Republican administration, whenever someone goes through their cabinet advice and consent confirmation in the U.S. Senate, I always say to them, “You’ve got to come up to Alaska. You’ve got to get out to rural Alaska. You’ve got to meet with my wonderful constituents.” When they do that, they come away much more inclined to support us.

I want to thank all of you. We've done this year after year—Obama administration, Biden administration, Trump administration; it doesn't matter. It's having huge impacts. Let me just give you one example.

Some of you might remember the broadband summit we put on recently, or a couple of years ago, as it relates to getting broadband Internet connectivity to our rural communities. When we wrote the bipartisan infrastructure bill, Senator Murkowski and I fought really hard for a formula on broadband, federal dollars, to make sure that it favored rural communities.

There was a big debate. You had a lot of senators saying, “Hey, I represent urban areas. I want to go from 4G to 5G. We were kind of like, “Yo, what about ‘No G?’” Right? Rural Alaska has “No G.” we need to prioritize rural Alaska communities first. We brought all the telecom officials up to our state, held a big summit. And, what are we seeing now? We are seeing hundreds of millions, if not billions, in federal dollars [coming] to our communities to connect via the Internet and broadband. That is part of what we've been doing.

We've had other visits just since June. You saw Secretary Burgum. This is a slide that shows several of the Cabinet secretaries: Secretary Burgum, the Secretary of Energy, Secretary Wright, Secretary of Health and Human Services. I want to thank Tanana Chiefs and ANTHC for hosting Secretary Kennedy. It was so important in his visit to Alaska a couple of weeks ago. These visits are absolutely essential. I want to thank all of you, because you guys have been such great hosts.

U.S. Military Apologies to Kake, Angoon and Wrangell

I want to mention one other visit. There was something that I pressed the Pentagon on for a number of years. Some of you might remember the important visits just last year with senior military officers who offered their apologies to the villages of Kake, Angoon and Wrangell for attacks on Alaska Natives during the late 1800s. Like I said, I strongly encouraged our military to do this.

Now, you know, last year I retired from the Marine Corps after 30 years. I deeply respect our military, its traditions, its service, its sacrifice—like I know so many of you do, but no organization is perfect. When our country makes mistakes, acknowledging them should be viewed as an act of strength, not weakness.

I was honored to attend the ceremony in Angoon. Julie attended the ceremony and Wrangell. Members of my team also attended the ceremony and Kake. These were important ceremonies to continue the healing process after generations of pain. It was good to have our military finally do that in the communities.

Visits to Communities Across Alaska

I'll just end with a couple more visits we had. Julie and I were recently in Wrangell for the Alaska Native Brotherhood and Alaska Native Sisterhood Grand Camp meetings. The ANB and ANS are some of the oldest indigenous organizations in America. We had a great, great visit. I am very proud to be an honorary member of ANB Camp 76 of Tenakee Springs. This is my ANB Camp 76 Tenakee Springs hat. Thank you, Sasha Soboleff and others. This is a huge honor for me. During that visit, I spoke about one of the most extraordinary members of ANS, Elizabeth Peratrovich. My Senate resolution to establish Elizabeth Peratrovich Day—which, by the way, passes the U.S. Senate every year—is meant to honor this great American civil rights leader.

By the way, I love that mural in Juneau. That's a selfie picture right there. My hope is, someday, she'll be recognized in the same category as Martin Luther King, Jr. by all Americans, not just Alaskans, as one of our nation's great civil rights leaders. And I know ANS and ANB are fully supportive in that important endeavor as well.

Ending Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault

Let me conclude with just two final topics. One is one that I talk about pretty much every year, and it goes to the heart of who we are as a state and a people. That's the fight to end sexual assault and domestic violence in our state.

We are a great state in so many ways, but on this statistic, we are not so great. I think we all need to just say it again: Violence against women, especially Alaska Native women, is a scourge on our state, on our country, that we should not tolerate.

Earlier this month, I went to the Senate floor to pass my Choose Respect Day resolution—Senate resolution—which reaffirms our commitment to ending domestic violence in our state and country. I think, working with so many in AFN when I was Alaska's attorney general, we launched our state's Choose Respect campaign. We passed laws. We ran public service announcements.

We held rallies from the smallest villages to our largest cities on this topic, and a clear message: Domestic violence has no place in our homes or communities. As your Senator, I've continued to focus on this difficult issue. But it's an issue we all need to look at and face. It's why I've authored the Choose Respect Act, which passed in 2022, and, very importantly, what's called the POWER Act.

This bill, which passed, is making a profound difference, because the bill has tens of thousands of lawyers now helping survivors escape abuse, navigate the courts, and rebuild their lives, free of charge. That's what this bill was all about. It has a particular emphasis on providing legal services for Native American women. This is so important, because when a survivor gets an attorney, they can often break out of the cycle of violence in which they found themselves. I know this is a hugely important issue for AFN and so many of you. We're going to continue to focus on it. These are the kinds of things that we're starting to make an impact on.

Alaskans of the Week

So let me conclude with this. One of the great joys of my job and the honor of your of being your U.S. senator is, I often go to the Senate floor to highlight somebody I call the “Alaskan of the Week” in a speech. These Alaskans have one thing in common: They help others and they serve their communities. And guess what? I didn't intend to do it this way, but we were looking at all the people we've honored—so many of them are Alaska Natives, which I think reflects the essential contribution of Alaska Natives to the betterment of our state and to the betterment of our country. So many.

A couple examples you see on this slide—of course, Julie Kitka, for her decades of leadership, wisdom and relentless advocacy, leading AFN for 34 years. Cynthia Erickson, who through her non-profit, Setsoo Yeh, has devoted countless of hours to creating safe spaces for children in trauma.

And, of course, some of these great Alaskans are unfortunately no longer with us. But their legacies live on in all of our lives, because they touched so many of our lives. John Active, of Bethel, one of the first Yupik language broadcasters whose voice carried the news and spirit of his people across western Alaska. Saul Atkinson—look at that handsome guy in his Navy uniform right there—one of the original Navy Seals, what they call a “plank holder” in the Navy Seals; a hero of three combat tours in Vietnam who went on to train not just Navy Seals, but astronauts, including Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. From Metlakatla.

And after all this, he came home, ran for mayor, and continued to fight for the rights of veterans and serve his community until the end of his days. Then, of course, Jake Adams, a brilliant leader, a pillar of the North Slope, whose mentorship and friendship to me, and countless others, is a blessing that I will always cherish.

Alaska has the best people who are standing strong, standing, united in. So many of them are from our Alaska Native community. So many of them are from all of you here. It is an honor to be united, serving and working together. I want to thank AFN again. I want to thank all of you. Thank you very much.

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