Kenai, Kenaitze hold joint work session and share updates

The Kenai City Council and Kenaitze Tribal Council met for a joint work session on Thursday, Jan. 16, to share updates on large projects and discuss their working relationship in an annual tradition that has gone on for three years.

Much of the meeting centered on brief updates on the largest projects underway by the City of Kenai and the Kenaitze Indian Tribe.

Kenai opened with the Kenai Bluff Bank Stabilization Project. City Manager Terry Eubank reported that all of the rock for the wall has been tested and manufactured and now sits ready in Sand Point in southwest Alaska. Construction is expected to start locally in May, with a community meeting hosted by the contractor and Army Corps of Engineers tentatively scheduled for April.

The work remains on track to be completed by February 2026, Eubank said.

Tułen Charter School, a proposed charter school in the tribe’s Kahtnuht’ana Duhdeldiht Campus that may join the Kenai Peninsula Borough School District as soon as the next school year was the first project discussed by the tribal council. Chair Bernadine Atchison said the council and some tribal staff will travel to Juneau for the March 10 meeting of the Alaska State Board of Education and Early Development, though they’re optimistic that the board will grant approval like the KPBSD Board of Education did in November.

Atchison said creating a charter school represents a large step in a long-term effort by the tribe to create and expand educational programming rooted in Dena’ina culture and values.

“This is a very big, successful story to us,” she said. “It’s coming full circle here hopefully this fall, and I know I’m very excited.”

Tribal council members also discussed their efforts to establish an urgent care-style clinic in Soldotna to help its members more widely connect with tribal health care that’s concentrated in Kenai; the upcoming construction of elder housing down North Forest Drive; and the ongoing development of its Kahtnu Area Transit fixed route public bus service — for which buses have been ordered and are anticipated to arrive in February before a launch in spring.

Kenai described plans to seek grant funding for both the Old Town Playground Refurbishment Project and the Cemetery Creek Culvert Replacement Project and said they’ll this year for the second time apply for the Small Community Air Service Development Grant — intended to be used to court direct airline service from Kenai Municipal Airport to Seattle, Washington.

As the meeting wound down, the two bodies discussed ways they might strengthen their relationship. Wayne D. Wilson Jr., tribal council treasurer, said the Kenai Municipal Airport currently doesn’t mention the Kenaitze Indian Tribe across its various historical and cultural displays.

“I realize it’s the City of Kenai and not Kenaitze, but we are a part of it — and we’re getting bigger,” he said. “It seems logical to me that we would have some kind of representation at the airport.”

Multiple members of the city council expressed that they were open or supportive of the idea, but no action or proposed action was voiced during the work session. Member Alex Douthit suggested taking the request to Kenai’s Airport Commission.

City council member Phil Daniel championed the creation of a formal memorandum of understanding between the City of Kenai and Kenaitze Indian Tribe to more directly cultivate mutual cooperation between the two governments. He suggested that an agreement acknowledge that both the tribe and the city are working together in the same place to grow and develop Kenai for their constituents.

Atchison said she would be interested to see a proposed document brought before the tribal council for all of its members to weigh in on. She said a part of that partnership could include adding a land acknowledgment to city proceedings — also to the displays at the airport.

She brought proposed language to the work session, saying that acknowledgements create greater awareness of history — of people who have lived on and cared for the land for thousands of years.

“We respectfully acknowledge the Kahtnuht’ana and other Dena’ina peoples on whose traditional lands we reside,” she read. “We honor the Kahtnuht’ana and other Dena’ina people who have and continue to be stewards of Alaska’s air, lands and waters from time immemorial — the elders who lived here before the Dena’ina people of today and future generations to come.”

For more information about the Kenaitze Indian Tribe, visit kenaitze.org. For more information about the Kenai City Council, visit kenai.city.

This story was updated on Tuesday, Jan. 21 to correct Wayne D. Wilson Jr.’s title and to remove an erroneous suffix from Rudy Wilson’s name.

Reach reporter Jake Dye at jacob.dye@peninsulaclarion.com.