The 27th Annual Meeting of CIRI Shareholders is scheduled for Saturday, June 3, 2000, in Soldotna, Alaska, at the Central Peninsula Sports Center. The annual meeting provides CIRI shareholders an opportunity to hear a business report on the company's 1999 operations, to elect five directors to the CIRI Board, and to transact any other business properly brought before the annual meeting.   The location of the annual meeting is rotated each year between Anchorage, Alaska's Kenai Peninsula, and the Pacific Northwest. "These three regions have the highest concentrations of CIRI shareholders, and rotating the meetings allows for more shareholders to participate in person each year," said CIRI President and CEO Carl Marrs.   Registration for the meeting begins at 9 a.m., and all voting shareholders must register by 1 p.m. to vote in person at the meeting. While only shareholders of voting stock of record are entitled to vote at the

meeting, immediate family members and holders of nonvoting stock are invited to attend.   In addition to formal business, a lunch will be served, informational booths will be on display, and door prizes will be drawn.   For more information about CIRI's election procedures, turn to page 4. Shareholders register for the Annual Meeting.

What it means to be a modern Alaska Native and the struggle with identity is what young, promising Alaska Natives share with readers in a new book titled Growing Up Native in Alaska. Published by The CIRI Foundation, Growing Up Native in Alaska features oral history interviews with 27 Alaska Natives born between 1957 and 1976.   Spanning the 13 Alaska Native regions, featured participants were selected to be interviewed for the book based on their potential as leaders and because of their varying and personal struggles with their own Alaska Native heritage.

Some have grown up in urban environments or Native villages, while others have ties to both, but all are influenced by their Alaska Native cultural heritage.   The book was written by CIRI historian Alexandra J. McClanahan, who authored Our Stories, Our Lives, a previous oral history profiling 23 Alaska Native elders from each of the state's major geographical regions who enrolled as shareholders of CIRI. A journalist for many years, McClanahan was publisher and president of The Tundra Times from 1986 to 1991 and is a former reporter with The Anchorage Times.   "Years from now when we look back to determine how well Native corporations have done, we can perhaps judge best by the hopes of the next generation and their vision for the future. If that vision is of a society where our differences are celebrated and where our cultures are continued on page 8