Arctic Yearbook 2015 | Page 78

78 Arctic Yearbook 2015 Regional governance without self-government An important caveat remains in thinking about regional development in Arctic Alaska. Though these borough governments were created in Indigenous-majority regions, they are not regional Indigenous governments. Regional Indigenous governments, such as those found in Canada, have citizenship models based on ethnicity (in which voting members belong to a specific Indigenous group, as do all candidates for leadership). In contrast, the borough model is a public government that has a citizenship model based on local residency. That is not to say that public governments cannot operate as de facto Indigenous governments, depending on population makeup. Indeed, that is very much the case in the two northern regions of Alaska, both of which currently have majority Indigenous populations and all-Native councils. Table 6: Alaska’s Northern Boroughs Borou