Seventeen candidates are running to be Alaska’s next governor. Alaskans are already heading to the polls for early voting in the Aug. 18 nonpartisan, pick-one primary, which will narrow the field to four.
It can be tough to pick a favorite in a crowded field, so as the primary nears, Alaska Public Media is conducting interviews with some of the top candidates in the race. We reached out to every campaign that's raised $50,000 or more as of the mid-July deadline to report fundraising, and nearly all responded.
Today, we’ll hear from independent Meda DeWitt, a Lingít traditional healer, educator and community organizer with a long family history in Southeast Alaska.
This transcript has been lightly edited for clarity..
You began your campaign on Feb. 16, Elizabeth Peratrovich Day. You said in your campaign announcement that she “reminded our state who we are capable of being.” So my question for you is, what do you see as Alaska's potential, and how is that spirit guiding your campaign?
Thank you. I appreciate that lead-in. Just for, also, some context, Elizabeth Peratrovich is this person who we celebrate for their work in civil rights in Alaska and the work to gain citizenship and also nondiscrimination. Alongside Elizabeth Peratrovich, my family also worked. My great-great-uncle is William Paul, and he is the first Alaska Native lawyer, first Alaska Native legislator. His mother is Tillie Paul Tamaree, who helped start the Alaska Native Sisterhood and the Alaska Native Brotherhood.
On my other side of the family, I'm the direct lineal descendant of Chief Shakes VII, on the Chief Shakes line, the seventh was Charlie Jones. And Charlie Jones and Tillie Paul Tamaree went to have Charlie vote, and he was denied voting, and then they went back and forced the vote, and then they were arrested by the territorial marshal, who actually was afraid to even show up to physically arrest them. So he just told them they were under arrest. And then William Paul represented them — specifically Chief Shakes, Charlie Jones — in court to gain the right for Alaska Native peoples to vote in 1924.
And so there's a lot of these really amazing people with larger-than-life characters and actions that I grew up with stories about. One of our elders that we met with, Joe Williams, recently in Ketchikan, he shared with us when he was young, being in the Alaska Native Brotherhood Grand Camp and hearing William Paul and them talk about, one day there's going to be an Alaska Native governor. William hoped one day, a Lingít Alaska Native governor, and that all the work that they were doing to gain citizenship and to create organized actions and engagement in civics was to integrate and then also uplift the culture and the people to be equals.
So we're here. We're running for governor. And so I have all these, like I said, beautiful people that spent their whole lives working towards this dream. So we're a continuation. We live in this idea that we're a continuation from our ancestors who come before us, and we are here present and building for our future ancestors who come after us.
You describe yourself also as an educator, a traditional healer and a community organizer. In prior interviews, you've talked about saying the state's budget needs some tough love, and that Alaska needs a mom. So along with the background that you described, can you just talk about how life and your background in general has prepared you to be the best person to address the numerous challenges facing the state?
Yeah, thank you. So I have been working with communities for over two decades, and I have over 200 credits in academia, and really understanding how people work, how communities work, history and healing, and how to build the best people possible with Western science and traditional science together. So I've used that education not only from academia but from my elders, from my family, from community, different mentors, to then share and teach in communities across the state.
I've been to not every community in the state, but every part of the state, and worked with these concepts, but also applied, so not just philosophical, but actual application into community. And during that time, I do more listening than I do teaching, because I feel that the people have so much wisdom and knowledge and experience, and they're the experts of their own community. So I've also listened to the challenges that people face in urban and rural Alaska, also on the road system and people off the road system, and, like I said, in every region. That has informed me with direct information of things that need to be adjusted or corrected in the state.
I'm also like a mom. I have eight children, four of my biological children, four of my bonus kids. And so we have this process of negotiation and organization at a different level, and also raising children in the state and looking at the disparities in education or opportunities, how hard it is for our young adults who are entering into the workforce and having an income that actually supports them in being able to afford housing and vehicles and food and all the bills. So we have this experience, lived experience, as Alaskans.
I also work in governance. I have been mentored by Victoria Hykes Steere on Alaska law and policy, national and international law and policy as well. I've worked in conservation and public lands and Indigenizing conservation, helping them to be better partners with tribes. And I'm also the president of Yak-Tat Kwaan, (the Yakutat) village corporation. The last three years, I've actively been working to redirect the corporation with the board and the CEO and our partners, rebuilding the foundation of the corporation.
Under ANCSA, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, they created the regional corporations and village corporations and entered into this commerce, and corporations are, by law, required to create value for their shareholders. So what we've done is we've transitioned that value from specifically only being monetary to our traditional values. So, creating value for our shareholders that's inclusive of wealth, but also inclusive of a healthy environment, you know, clean water, air, accessible housing, accessible food systems. We've been rebuilding that corporation, like I said, from the foundation up, and there's going to be some exciting information coming out from it. Maybe not before the primary, but soon enough. I can't quite talk about what it is yet.
I have a lot of experience in organizing community. I've done political organizing and community advocacy. I've worked at helping change laws and policies, helping to bring bills to fruition, advocating for them. And I have history at running the largest grassroots campaign and organization in the state. We had the Recall Dunleavy movement in 2018 and '19, and I was the statewide organizer and chair, along with Vic Fischer, and it was a coalition of bipartisan — and not even bipartisan, actually, because in our state we have Republicans and Democrats, but our largest party is nonpartisan at 65%. So we had this coalition of people from every party working together to protect our state.
So I have an interesting background. And when we look at the budget, we've seen not only eight years of cuts in austerity, but Bill Walker was doing his best to balance the budget as well. So we have 12 years of cuts, continuously. And part of the challenge, especially in this more recent last four years, is that when they cut the budget, they're cutting rote numbers and trying to make it add up to a certain number at the bottom, but they're not taking into account what do those numbers attach to in matter of people and their lives and the downstream outcomes.
So, for instance, we saw huge cuts to different social service nets that catch people before they hit rock bottom. And when we saw those cuts, it didn't come out right away, but it wasn't a surprise that then our judicial system became the largest thing in the budget besides the Permanent Fund, and then now it's the largest thing even over the budget. That's due to people being incarcerated, and we have a huge recidivism rate. Sixty percent of our peoples who go into jail go back into jail. They do not transition well out into being functioning people in society, and there's a lot of reasons for that, and that's because, like I said, that austerity cut, that does not have any common sense associated with it.
I talk about being a mom, right? So there's planning. And if you are doing a budget, planning, prevention and care is always more affordable than crisis management. Right now our budget has poor planning, shortsighted year-to-year negotiations, and care is not part of it. It doesn't even provide adequate services that are guaranteed in the Constitution, let alone doing a good job.
I have some questions on public safety, criminal justice. I want to get back to that, but I do want to talk first about — you were talking about the economy. On your website you talk about economic diversification, fiscal stability and a just transition. And in that vein, you list some things that I've heard before, like modernizing oil taxes, expanding corporate taxes to pass-through entities or S corporations.
You also have some ideas that I haven't heard as much about: things like a nonresident worker surcharge, a seasonal tourism assessment and an Alaska-first oil refining mandate. So I was hoping you could walk me through your plan to boost state revenue, and you say, without broad-based taxes on Alaskans.
Yeah, I don't want to lean in on taxing Alaskans right now. The cost of living and affordability is so hard. People are barely hanging on. We're paying the highest prices for food and fuel and energy. We're looking at communities potentially paying upwards of $20 a gallon for heating fuel or diesel to run their generators. So just coming in and taxing Alaskans to balance the budget is actually a poor plan. It's a bad idea, and it's going to cripple us even further. We'll have even more outward migration and disintegration of our net services.
So looking at where is the flux of money right now? We have, in our industrial activities and development, 70% of the workers, like in our oil fields and mines, they actually live outside of the state, and they come in and they work, and then take all of that money outside of the state. And I've heard from multiple people it's even kind of a joke. They laugh about it and laugh at Alaskans at how dumb we are for that. So really looking at where's the money, how can we apply a tax that's fair, that's not overburdensome for local people, and so that then looks at tourism and seasonal workers or out-of-state workers.
But that's only part of the answer. Our state right now is solely dependent on oil and gas for our economy and for energy and heat, and we can see how it is wildly volatile and fluctuates with things like the war that's happening over in Iran, and we pay hefty prices. And it doesn't make any sense when we have oil and gas that's produced here in the state. In our Constitution, it mandates that if we have any development of our natural resources, that has to be for the maximum benefit of Alaskans. So if Alaskans are not accessing it for a good price, if they're not receiving their full (Permanent Fund dividends), if they're not seeing that maximum benefit, and also if it's detrimental to our environment, then it's actually not aligned with the Constitution.
So we have to look at, what is our economy and how do we stabilize it? We do that through diversification, and we have huge gains to be made. Ninety-five percent of our food and goods are shipped into the state. We are paying to ship those things in, so we have the highest food costs of anywhere. So if we're producing our own food here, if we bring in manufacturing here, if we're not only producing food but then producing it into products, we can then export, and also have access to, mandating refining of oil and gas here in the state for Alaskans, and making sure that it is at a metered or moderated rate, so that it's more affordable than anything that we're bringing in. And also bringing in renewable energy.
Renewable energy is going to be a big one. It's going to create good jobs. It's going to help stabilize our cost of energy. It's going to also diversify income that's coming in. Alaska is a land of extremes. We have twice as much coastline, where we can have tidal energy. We have lots of places, like Unalaska, can access geothermal. We also have tons of water and hydro, and with climate change, Alaska is projected to actually increase the amount of precipitation that we receive. So hydro is something that's going to be sustainable now and into the future. We also have the ability for wind and solar. I mean, Interior and up, it's 24 hours of daylight in the summer. Does it make sense not to have solar panels? So looking at these different diversifications, that will create stability. It will create jobs. It will lower the cost of energy. It will spur on industry and bring more dollars into the state, and it will keep dollars in our state.
With respect to climate change, you were talking about renewable energy, and you've also talked about helping communities adapt. Of course, Alaska and the rest of the Arctic are warming a lot faster than the rest of the planet.
I'm curious, in that context, how you think about oil and gas development, including the Alaska LNG project. How does this approach to climate change influence your thinking on whether the state should try to spur companies to get more oil and gas out of the ground?
Yeah, well, let's talk about climate change first. Alaska is experiencing climate change four times faster than the Lower 48, and we have 144 communities that are going to have to either have a managed retreat or a full move or migration of the community.
When we're looking at this, we could either work as a state along with the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium, along with the tribes, the corporations and the feds to collaborate and cost share. If we do that, the total cost will be about $4 billion over 10 years. And if we're cost sharing, then our state cost will be much lower. But we can get these communities moved and do the planning, and then they can have very intentional, you know, what does their village look like in the 21st century? And have them plan it, and of course tailor the renewable energy to the environment and what's best for that community.
If we don't act, then what's going to happen is we're going to be spending upwards of almost $30 billion in crisis management, and that's just the front-end ticket of disaster and going out and extracting people from these areas. But then there's also the cost of bringing them into urban centers, where we already have issues with enough housing. We don't have enough housing. When we're bringing people in, it's a disadvantage for them, because we remove them from their traditional foods, we remove them from their social networks, which are protective factors against stress, and there's a disruption to family continuity, culture, and it's highly stressful. And there's also then the loss of their community and their environment, with solastalgia, which has its own behavioral health issues associated with it.
Then bringing people into town — Anchorage and the Valley and Fairbanks are notorious for not hiring Alaska Native people who have heavy accents, or who are from rural communities, and so it's harder for them to get jobs, and then they're living in housing that they're not used to, and it's very stressful. So then it increases the cost on the communities and urban areas as well. So, for everybody, it is the best option for everybody to assist our communities in the managed retreat or the managed migration, and having rural Alaska exist.
And there's this dichotomy that urban Alaska thinks that they make all the money and they're subsidizing rural Alaska, which isn't actually true. Rural Alaska, they're the ones that pretty much have all the industry, or the majority of the industry that's happening, tourism, there's a lot of money that's made out in rural Alaska, whether it's fisheries or up north with the oil fields or anywhere in the state. So the cost that comes with that is not only monetary, but then we lose our identity as a state. We lose our soul. Part of Alaska is that we have so many diverse cultures and communities, and that's part of our wealth, not only for ourselves, but also for tourism and history. So the traditional ecological knowledge and the way to work with ecosystems — all of that is enriching to us collectively as Alaskans.
So there's that, climate change. We have such a small population that our own personal use of fossil fuels doesn't actually have a huge impact on carbon in the atmosphere, but the amount of fossil fuels that we export does, because we have a high exportation. There's also different wells that are going to have very heavy, dirty oil, and those are considered carbon bombs. We also actually have something that's even worse. We have yedoma, which, yedoma in itself is wonderful. It's a type of permafrost that's very saturated with water, and it can be very deep — 150 plus feet deep. So when you see, like over in Siberia, those giant sinkholes that open up out of nowhere in a couple of days, that's because it has yedoma under it. So Alaska does have yedoma, and when it collapses and melts, it actually releases significant amounts of methane, and methane is actually worse than carbon in heating up the atmosphere.
So we have to look at what does our industry do, not only in our use, but also how does it affect the land, where is it affecting the land, and what does it do when it's exported and contributes to these issues outward?
In my plans that I share with people, I'm actually not anti-development. Some people think I am. I'm not. But I am pro-ethical development, and again, looking at what is the long-term cost or long-term effects? In our Constitution, we're supposed to be managing the environment and the fish and wildlife and all the elements here in our state so that Alaskans can live the Alaskan way of life in perpetuity. So if we're disrupting, let's say with Pebble Mine, putting an open-pit tailing pond above this largest wild salmon fishery, that is not — well, first of all, it's not smart. Second of all, economically, it's like shooting yourself in the foot, because we're in a state that is seismically active. It's not if it's going to fail, it's when it will fail. And then on top of that, our Constitution says we have to manage for sustained yield, and again, the way of life in the future. So we are not actually managing to the Constitution if we do those kinds of activities.
So any proposals that will be brought will have to show how it benefits Alaskans, how the environment is not affected or improved upon, has to have bonds on the front end for remediation. You know, there's things that people don't realize.
I think Red Dog Mine doesn't have a bond for remediation after it leaves, and in the contract the corporation may be held liable for that work, and that's not acceptable for Alaska. If industry is going to happen here, it's going to happen on our own terms, that fits our metrics of living well in the future.
And when you say the corporation, you're referring to NANA, the regional corporation that —
I wasn't going to name them out loud.
So I also wanted to ask about the Alaska LNG project in particular. That's been a big source of debate in the Legislature. It's quite possible that the same issue facing Mike Dunleavy right now will fall to you, and that is that the developers are seeking a large property tax break, basically in order to make it pencil out. There has been some skepticism, especially from the Alaska Senate, and they want to tie it to this tax on pass-through entities, which you've said you support.
I'm curious how you would break the stalemate here, and whether it's worth breaking the stalemate — like, whether this is a project that should move forward, and to what degree the state should provide tax relief for it. How would you approach this issue?
Yeah, good question. So just to unpack it a little bit: Alaska, especially on the Railbelt, we have expensive energy, and it's based on liquid natural gas. And we have Interior, and we also have in Anchorage, Southcentral, access to liquid natural gas. The liquid natural gas in the wells that are in the Cook Inlet are running out, and we have about five-ish years left.
There's also some competition, because in British Columbia they're building a port for liquid natural gas to export. They're light-years ahead of us. They're so far ahead of us. There's no way that we could actually start building and beat them to the export model.
So when we're looking at the liquid natural gas up on the North Slope right now, they have the oil wells. That's where the LNG is coming from, and right now they're flaring it. And that flaring a lot of times happens at night, when people can't see it, and it's releasing black carbon — especially in the winter — onto the seasonal ice, landfast ice and year-round ice, and that actually changes the albedo of the snow, which increases melting. And then in the summer, when they do the flaring, it releases that black carbon onto the traditional subsistence foods like the berries and greens and tea. Also, the animals who are considered traditional foods, like the caribou, are eating lichen and plants and uptaking that black carbon. So it's an issue.
We have a lot of LNG. It can be used. This pipeline, however, we don't even know the entire proposal. They've been keeping it locked up behind closed doors, and Dunleavy has been trying to force our legislators to approve, and they don't even know the full extent of what they're approving. So I applaud them for standing their ground, even though what the governor's been doing and calling them back into session repeatedly is, I consider, abusive towards them and manipulative. So he's trying to punish them into approving it.
This pipeline does not fit our standard of the Constitution. It has to be developed for maximum benefit of Alaskans. If you're giving away the taxes, then that doesn't count. And not only that, they found that they were prioritizing exportation over access from Alaskans. That, again, strike two. That doesn't count. If they cannot build the pipeline and afford the project without the tax giveaway, then that's not the right project. We have to do it smarter.
And there's opportunities to use this natural gas. I've heard lots of different ideas from local people, and I think that's where we need to go. They've been trying to put this through for decades. That's one of the things that Bill Walker is trying to do. His whole thing, he wants to get the LNG pipeline through and end the PFD. And I think that Alaskans deserve to be governed not only to the Constitution but from it.
So we need to bring in the taxes. We need to bring in the royalties. We need to prioritize Alaskans first, and then when there's abundance, we can export from there. We have to spur on our own economy and bring in, like I said, manufacturing. So maybe we need a smaller diameter of LNG pipeline. Maybe it needs to be refined up there on the North Slope, and then the energy is transported in a different way. I don't have the perfect answer, but I know that what we are looking at now is not ethical and it's not viable.
Yeah, that's interesting. I've heard some other ideas for alternatives, I guess, to the Alaska LNG project — things like a large gas-fired power plant on the North Slope, and then you transfer the power south with high-voltage direct current lines. I don't know precisely how viable that might be.
But you're talking about wanting to get manufacturing up here, and you're talking about the exports, the project primarily being focused on exports, and that maybe a smaller diameter line might make sense. The state has considered — I believe it was the Alaska Stand Alone Pipeline. There have been various proposals for a bullet line. None have moved forward.
And I guess project defenders would probably say something to the effect of, this proposal has gotten closer than any before, and that not moving forward with tax relief for it basically means that you're leading to a future with higher energy prices for Alaskans for quite a long time, and that exports would actually be what brought down the price of gas. The advocates in favor of the project say it would be below $10, in the $5 range is the range that they quote. Of course, that's not adjusted for inflation. It's going to be some time before that actually happens, if it happens at all — all those caveats.
Anyway, I just wanted to press you on that a little bit, because it sounds like if we do nothing with respect to getting natural gas, Southcentral will probably be forced to import natural gas at a much higher price. And I'm curious for your perspective on that.
Yeah, thank you. And considering that we don't have access to the proposal, all of that is hypothetical, right? The people who are advocating for it can kind of say whatever they want, because we don't know what's in the proposal. So we have an issue right from the beginning that is a logic fallacy when we're having this debate.
We are running low on natural gas. We do need access to energy. And if this pipeline does go through, it's not like you're going to have energy next year or even in five years. This is going to take a very long time to actually create and to build and to start the process of delivering to community and exportation. So as governor, that's something that we'd have to actually dig into and have a real conversation, a transparent conversation, and listen to Alaskans overall in what they want, and create a plan that fits our defined metrics, that is logical. And if it doesn't make sense and it doesn't bring dollars to Alaskans, we're not doing it.
I want to move on to another issue. You were the chair — you mentioned this — of the campaign to recall Gov. Mike Dunleavy in the earlier years of his administration. That recall campaign ended in 2021 without actually placing the question on the ballot, as Dunleavy announced that he would run for reelection. I guess I'm curious what you learned from that campaign, and if any of the things that drove that campaign are still driving you now.
Yeah. The reason why we actually ended it was because we were in COVID, and we had gathered almost all the signatures that we needed for round two. But with COVID and the fear around this worldwide mass pandemic, that we may lose a lot of people, there was a desire to not upset the power structure in the state. And we also didn't know, if we put it to a vote, if people would actually come out to vote because of that, being locked down in our houses, hunkered down. So it was a choice that people were not happy with, but I had to make that choice to end the recall at that time, because, again, it's being responsive to the people.
The recall wasn't something that I just did on my own and was super successful. It was a coalition of people that came together from broad, diverse backgrounds and across the state, with the desire to protect the things that we love and value. That first budget went after children, went after elders, went after working-age, went after everybody, and Alaskans came out and were forced to stand up and protect their state.
So what I learned about that is that I actually have a great deal of faith in the Alaskan people, and that when it really comes down to the wire, they will show up, they will come out, and they will stand for what they believe in. And in the organizing statewide, I did have to call on my network of people that I knew, and of course all the work that I'd done traveling through communities. Not everybody realizes, or maybe people don't remember, but it's the largest grassroots action that's happened in the state of Alaska. It also was the first and only one to all be gathered, or majority be gathered, by Alaskans volunteering to gather signatures. Most of the signature gathering that you see in the state is actually paid signature gatherers, and so we did this, like I said, through Alaskans volunteering their time to get it done.
So I look to that grit and that can-do attitude, and we can get things done together, as part of what I'll be relying on as governor to get some of these things forward, like climate adaptation, like addressing our social fabric and helping to change what we need to increase the baseline health and wellness, increase our children's academia and test scores, to help create safer, healthier communities, to help bring in industry. Alaskans are clever, and I think that the work ethic is there. It's just that we haven't had the availability of capital. We haven't had the available raw materials to be able to create these ideas and businesses that we want to. And so if we create a fertile environment for people to have access, like I said, to capital and materials, I believe that we're going to have a renaissance in our economy in the state.
So, lessons learned from the recall: Alaskans will show up, and they will protect what they love, and they will do the work to make sure that it's safeguarded.
I want to talk briefly about education. Alaska's students have lagged for many years near the bottom of the nation in terms of test scores. There have been some promising signs for early literacy in the wake of the Alaska Reads Act, although I think the sense is that around the state, schools are underresourced. They're closing programs, closing facilities.
So my question to you is, what's your approach to improving the performance of Alaska's schools, and then also ensuring that Alaska's public schools remain a great place to get an education, or become a great place to get an education, if you see it the other way?
Yeah. That's one of the top issues for Alaskans, is education. I've been working with Paul McDonogh, and that was part of me building my policy brief. Also, Heather Gordon, their work helped to inform my policy on education. And it's kind of interesting, because on my website I have white pages, 750 words per item or policy platform, but behind each one of those, I actually have policy briefs that are anywhere from 10 to 30 pages of how we're going to do it, what's the plan, what are the dollars behind it.
So when we're looking at our statewide education, again, it is guaranteed in our Constitution that our education is available to every Alaskan child, and not only education, but good education. There's no caveats that says only if there's 11 kids in the community, only if they're in an affluent neighborhood, only this, only that. None of those. Every Alaskan child.
So when we're looking at providing education, the (base student allocation) had a moderate increase, but it didn't even match the levels for inflation. So we have to actually adjust for inflation and properly fund the BSA. We also need multiyear agreements, so that teachers and administrations and parents can plan two, three, four years in advance, and have consistency instead of each year that weird fluctuation. We also need to allow carryover dollars, so that if they do save money, it can be used and not taken away.
When we're looking at education, we have to bring back sports, music, art. Kids love those things. In our state, we have over 40,000 kids that are chronically absent from school. So if we want our children to do better, we have to be providing things that they want to be engaged in, and to actually listen to them in the ways that they want to be educated. So bringing in, like I said, all of those activities, they're not peripheral. They're part of being human and human experience and growing good human beings.
We also need to make sure that the teacher-to-student ratio is brought back into a reasonable limit, and we have to also have a defined pension for our teachers. Our public servants right now, they don't have an availability of a pension, and historically — I just learned this recently — they haven't been able to buy into Social Security. So that means any of the public service personnel that we have in the state, they're looking at destitution when it's time for retirement, and of course they're leaving. Who would stay in that environment? So bringing in a way for them to plan for their retirement and adequately taking care of our police officers, our firefighters, our public health nurses, our teachers, all of these people that we depend on to make sure that our society runs well, we have to take care of them.
And also working with the university, having more accessible education pathways for certification, and investing in our university so we can put out teachers that love their job and want to stay. It's also shown that if students stay in the state and go to school here, that they're more likely to stay here. If our students go to university outside of the state, they're more likely to stay outside of the state. So that investment in the university system is an investment in Alaska's future and our economy.
Along with that, not only just bringing it up to standards — having bare minimum necessary to have a decent education — we also want to expand. How do we support youth in their education and learning? We can provide free breakfasts and lunch, and not just any breakfast and lunch, but healthy, nutritious breakfast and lunch. Also integrating growing food into all of our schools, and having youth learn, as part of their base education, how to grow, harvest, process and preserve, and then also make food for consumption. If you've ever been around kids who've grown a garden, it's like magic. It's a miracle to have that vegetable that they grew, and it creates pride in them. And I think that it should be a base part of our education across the state.
And then not only provide the food in their schools, but then help it be part of our food security plan, where youth are then able to take that food to their families. If there's any excess, it could be in a food pantry that anybody could have, if they have food insecurity. And then on top of that, have part of the education across Alaska how to hunt, fish, gather and process the subsistence foods here in the state.
(The Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, ANILCA) is what gives the definition of subsistence in our state, and it's rural preference. So when we're talking about these things, we're not just talking about Alaska Native children. We're talking about all Alaskan children equally learning how to take care of themselves, and that's a core value of Alaskans, is that self-sufficiency. So building on our shared values to help advance our education and build a place where youth want to be.
Beyond that, there's also the expansion into the summer. A lot of our rural communities, and even in Anchorage, there may not be accessible child care, let alone affordability. So a lot of families can't afford child care. So if we normalize summer programming, where youth can go to their schools and they can have these, like I said, on-the-land, place-based educational offerings, as well as maybe they need to catch up in English, maybe they need to catch up in math or science or language, whatever, but having it available. And if you have a lot of kids that are going, they're having fun, you destigmatize that needing extra education across the summer. So it's not a punishment of summer school. It's actually something where people are enjoying going to, and it's a benefit to families, and it's a benefit to teachers. A lot of our teachers in rural Alaska, they don't have the ability to make money in the summer. That might be the only jobs available. So it increases the amount of money that's in the community, and the safety and supports and care for our youth.
My last question for you is basically how you distinguish yourself from the other candidates in the race. It's a crowded field, and when I hear your platform, I hear echoes of some things that I've heard from, say, the top Democratic candidates. You're running as an independent, and I'm curious how you distinguish yourself in this crowded field. Why are you the person that Alaskans should pick to move forward to the general election?
Because we are Alaskans running for Alaska. So being nonpartisan, independent, actually, that's the largest party in the state. There's 65% of Alaskans are registered as nonpartisan persons, and we do not have to deal with that national rhetoric. The two-party battles that are happening outside of the state, we don't have to comply to those talking points. We get to be Alaskans for Alaska.
And we have the values, because for myself, I'm Lingít from Southeast. My family's been here a long time. My running mate, Chris Steere — he's Iñupiaq, his family is from Unalakleet. So we have long-term family lineages that care about the state, and we have this intent that our families will be able to be here, thrive and live in perpetuity. So we live in this continuum of ancestors who've come before us, who are here now, and who come after us.
And so that long-term thinking — there's a lot of people who love Alaska. Maybe they've been here however many decades. Maybe they've been here a couple of generations. I think that there's a different sense of responsibility when you have people and families who've been here for thousands of years. And really, from my culture, we actually are very diverse. We have a history of bringing in other cultural groups and adopting them into our social structures. If you look at the Lingít people, there's the bringing in of the Haida and the Tahltan and Ahtna and other groups throughout history. And we have this ideal of communal organization and equitable supports of, a good leader makes sure that there's food, water, medicine, housing, the best possible life foundations that are needed for a functioning community.
So we have an experience in education. We have an experience in community organizing. And we also understand the effects of climate change. We have traditional stories of when climate has changed before, and the lessons on how to adapt and support communities through this transition.
