July - Page 6

CIRI donates 40 books to Anchorage School District

CIRI historian AJ McClanahan attended a board meeting of the Anchorage School District last month to receive recognition for CIRI's contribution of 40 copies of Growing Up Native in Alaska.

"We are grateful to CIRI for the book Growing Up Native in Alaska. Each Anchorage high school will receive two copies, while the middle schools and alternative secondary schools will receive one copy. This book is an important addition to our school library collections. The stories shared are too often forgotten in our educational system. Our children need to see themselves in our curriculum. Almost more important though, is that non-Native children need to see Native people as an important part of Alaska's development, in Alaska's history and today," said Edna Lamebull, supervisor of the Anchorage School District's Indian Education Program.

Lamebull plans to develop a packet of suggested teaching activities to go with the book, which she hopes to have available in the fall when teachers return to the classroom.

"The material in this book will be excellent supplements to middle and high school language arts and social studies classes," adds Lamebull.
AJ & Edna Lamebull

AJ McClanahan and Edna Lamebull

Kenaitze Indian Tribe hosts Potlatch
salmon

Winner of the fish cleaning contest, April Sandall, at the

Kenaitze Indian Tribe Potlach.

In late June, the Kenaitze Indian Tribe hosted Potlatch 2000 at the Soldotna Sports Center attended by some 1,000 people. The Potlatch brought together families and friends to honor elders, remember those that have passed away, and share traditions with the youth. Food, games, gifts, speeches, dancing and drumming were part of the three-day event.

A variety of foods were shared during the Potlatch including fry bread, fresh roasted pig and fish and salads. Games for all ages included contests for fish cleaning, net mending, tug-of-war, relay races and a treasure hunt. Gifts ranging from tea towels to beaded pouches were given. Elders Clare Swan and Larry Merculief gave keynote speeches and elder June Gagnon gave the invocation. Guest drummers, singers and dancers were invited from throughout the CIRI region to share performances. A memorial to all that have passed on concluded the three-

day potlatch.

Our other real estate operations include office buildings, industrial warehouse properties, and real estate development on CIRI land. Revenues from real estate activities are smaller than last year, due to the sale of our apartment portfolio, but are still an important income factor for the company.

Other areas of business continue to expand, including our investment in resort hotel developments, such as the Hyatt Regency at Lake Las Vegas. As announced in the last Shareholder Update, we are in negotiations to invest in a second resort development at Lake Las Vegas, which will be a Ritz-Carlton. We are also working on a 750-room Westin golf resort in Scottsdale, Arizona, and are continuing to evaluate other potential resort developments across the U.S. with the same caliber of partners that we have in our existing partnerships. These investments are considered longer-term growth opportunities for the company. We also hold limited partnership interests in funds with KKR and Hellman & Friedman, both of whom have performed very well over time; we expect to receive better than average returns over the lives of these investments.

The CIRI family of non-profits continues to expand and provide essential services to those Alaska Natives who need it most. Alaska's People has placed Alaska Natives in more jobs than ever. Southcentral Foundation is starting the second phase of the Anchorage Native Primary Care Center, enabling it to double the services it is providing today. Cook Inlet Housing Authority continues to play an essential role in providing housing for Elders and getting younger families into homes for the first time. Cook Inlet Tribal Council continues to provide many of the social programs that assist all Alaska Natives, such as welfare to work, job assistance, education assistance, and youth programs such as the reforestation program on the Kenai Peninsula. And last but not least, The CIRI Foundation continues to fund more scholarships each year while increasing the average size of the scholarships.

As you can tell by the gist of what we are doing in the major areas, there is a dedicated staff of people that make all this come together. You can also see that we try to balance our current cash flow investments and our longer-term growth investments. We plan to continue investing in areas that give us the greatest potential for growth with varied levels of risk, and we will continue to sell assets that we believe have reached their maturity or full potential.

In closing, though most of what I have to report is positive, there is some bad news I must pass along as well. As you will read in the article on page 2, a few shareholders who inherited stock, along with a few younger shareholders, have decided that our Elders' Trust program was not fair to them, and have filed a lawsuit challenging the program. CIRI believes its Elders' Program is lawful. However, our counsel has advised that CIRI suspend payments under the program until the challenge is resolved. I feel particularly badly about this, because we have been working on an Elders' Program for quite awhile and finally were able to deliver it to you. And we have heard from so many of you how important it is to you. The shareholders who filed this lawsuit, and some of those they have been involved with, are generally the people that have disagreed with most of what CIRI has been doing over the years. We plan to place the payments in a special account that will earn interest. If the case is resolved in CIRI's favor, as we believe it will be, we will pay the amounts in the account to those of you who are eligible for the program along with the interest that has been earned. My hope is that this case will be disposed of in a short period of time, because we do know how important those benefits are to you.

This report has been longer than usual, but I thought it important to bring you up to speed on your company and its business activities. In short, we are in very

sound financial shape and the future looks bright. Thank you.