Central Council - Tlingit & Haida Tribes of Alaska

The Executive Council held their meeting in San Francisco the day before they attended the National Congress of American Indians Convention that was held in Sacramento, California.. It was good to see more than a dozen of our tribal citizens in California who traveled many miles to attend our meeting. Public testimony covered a variety of issues from tribal enrollment, bad mailing addresses for tribal citizens, the need for services to our tribal citizens residing in California, and even an employee issue.

A highlight of meeting in San Francisco was the ability of our Executive Council to attend the San Francisco Tlingit Haida Community Council’s Culture Celebration Day. This event was well attended; it is commendable that our people are able to pass on many of our cultural practices and traditions even when living far away from our homeland. This year’s cultural fair was dedicated to the memory of Ray Combs who was a delegate to the tribe at the time of his death earlier this year. We will all miss Ray very much!

The Executive Council conducted a lot of business during this meeting. They took care of routine business such as adopting resolutions that empower our tribe to go after much needed new funding. They also adopted a “Tribal Code of Ethics”. This code clearly lays out issues of proper conduct of elected officials and staff and it demonstrates to the public that our tribe intends to do business in a professional, fair and impartial manner.

The Council acted on two invitations for the 2007 General Assembly; Ketchikan and Wrangell submitted the invitations, and Wrangell was selected as the site for the convention next year. The Executive Council very much appreciates these invitations. It was expressed that while we very much enjoyed the convention held in Ketchikan last year, it would be good for us to meet in Wrangell since we haven’t done that for awhile.

The next Executive Council meeting will be in Juneau on November 11th in conjunction with the memorial party for former Executive Council member, Judy George. The first part of the agenda of that meeting will be open for public comments.

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Media Contact:
Jodi Wolf,CCTHITA Publications
9097 Glacier Highway
Juneau, AK 99801
Ph: (907) 463-7123
E-mail: jwolf@ccthita.org