By Suzanne Downing 
A left-wing activist group, operating largely in the shadows and without identifying its organizers, is planning a protest targeting one of Alaska’s most prominent Native corporations – NANA Regional Corporation – over the company’s federal contract with US Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The demonstration is scheduled for 5 pm on Tuesday, Nov. 18, outside the Westmark Hotel in Fairbanks, where NANA will be holding its shareholder meeting.
According to the online call-to-action shared by the unidentified group, the intention is to “peacefully protest” NANA’s detention-services contract with ICE. The flyer asserts that “NANA Regional Corp. is supposed to uphold Iñupiat values. Some shareholders say its role in the president’s deportation machinery makes a mockery of that.”
The message is framed as a grassroots shareholder revolt, but it is not clear who is behind the campaign, how many shareholders are actually involved, or whether the organizers have any meaningful ties to the corporation or the region. The lack of transparency has raised eyebrows among some observers who see this as another example of Outside activists targeting Native corporations to advance national political goals.
The campaign appears focused on forcing NANA to abandon its longstanding federal contract supporting detention facility operations, a partnership that has provided hundreds of jobs and steady revenue to the corporation and its shareholders.
Alaska Native corporations frequently partner with federal agencies as part of the 8(a) small business and Alaska Native contracting programs. NANA, like many regional corporations, uses these revenues to fund dividends, scholarships, cultural programs, and village investments across northwest Alaska.
But in a familiar pattern increasingly seen in progressive politics, activists on the left are pressuring institutions they once championed, including Native corporations, to sever ties with federal law-enforcement agencies under the broad banner of “abolishing ICE” and reshaping immigration policy.
This dust-up highlights a growing split within the political left: Native corporations are often praised for creating economic mobility and cultural reinvestment, yet they are also being criticized for engaging in the same federal contracting work that sustains dozens of rural communities. It’s a circular firing squad.
Rather than directing their outrage at the federal government or Congress, where immigration policy is actually made, activists have instead chosen to target a Native corporation headquartered thousands of miles from the southern border.
The Left is now eating its own.
NANA has not yet issued public comment on the protest, but its leadership has in the past defended its federal contracting work as mission-consistent and essential to the well-being of the 15,000 Iñupiat shareholders it serves.
Whether the protest gathers a crowd or fizzles will be clearer on Tuesday evening. The organizers appear to also be involved in a Friday boycott of specific businesses that they say support the Make America Great Again agenda of the conservative movement. Those businesses include Amazon, Walmart, McDonald’s, and Home Depot. “Stop buying from MAGA supporters,” the flyer commands.:
Too many people with too much time on their hands.
I am curious as to precisely which “Iñupiat values are mocked” by protecting our nation from illegal alien criminals who are breaking our borders and invading our country?
Lmao Doyon security ran it during Obama why all of a sudden are they mad about it now?
I doubt NANA will listen to them unless the board of directors get pressure from Shareholders to divest
But then their dividends will be reduced until it finds a replacement for the loss
Former Presiding Officer Savannah Fletcher is Nana Corp’s attorney. She used her payout from them to open her book store in Fairbanks. Will David Leslie protest her?