Citing tribal sovereignty, Chickaloon leaders spurn fire marshal's stop-work order

WASILLA — The Chickaloon Village Traditional Council is defying an order from the Alaska State Fire Marshal's Office to halt construction on a tribal office building until a state review is done.

Chickaloon Native Village officials say the tribe's right to self-governance trumps a stop-work order issued by a fire marshal during a tense encounter last week near Sutton that was first reported by the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman newspaper.

The Chickaloon Native Village tribe is one of 229 tribes in Alaska to be federally recognized.

The building in question sits on tribal property along the Glenn Highway near Moose Creek, where a school is also located. It's intended to replace an aging tribal office building in Sutton.

The conflict marks the latest in a decades-long crusade for sovereignty by the tribe, which at one point printed its own tribal driver's licenses and license plates.

Now Chickaloon officials say that tribal building permits address fire safety through the same codes as those enforced by the state.

The tribe already issued a building permit for the office, so the council intends to ignore the Fire Marshal's Office directive issued last week, said Chickaloon Chief Gary Harrison, who is also chairman of the Chickaloon Village Traditional Council.

"Basically, the fire marshal came down and argued with some of our people and left a notice on our building," Harrison said Monday. "And I took it off and we put our own work permit on there."

The situation marks the first time in Alaska State Fire Marshal Dave Tyler's knowledge "that we have had an issue with a group claiming tribal sovereignty for a plan review," Tyler said in an email Monday.

The Fire Marshal's Office requires such a review to ensure fire safety protocols are followed in construction of any fourplex or larger, or any commercial building or those where the public assembles, such as schools or day-care facilities.

The situation arose late last week after a deputy fire marshal, Sven Hall, happened past the construction site en route to a different location, according to Megan Peters, a spokesperson for the Alaska Department of Public Safety, which includes the Fire Marshal's Office.

Hall and a colleague noted the commercial building but didn't recall seeing a plan review application for it, and pulled over to check, Peters said.

State and tribal officials tell different versions of what happened next.

Hall asked a small work crew if the building had been through the fire marshal's plan review process. Hall encountered "people that are very unhelpful," Peters said. "They don't want to talk."

He told the workers they needed a plan review, posted a stop-work order "and they were informed that continuing to work would be in direct violation of state statute," Peters wrote in an email. Violators could face a court summons or citation but not arrest.

Harrison and tribal council member Lisa Wade said they weren't there but were told a few workers on site tried to explain tribal sovereignty in an encounter that took place in front of young people participating in a weeklong fish camp in the area.

"It was a really inappropriate venue for them to come onto the land," Wade said, describing a defensive mode that was triggered by the confrontation. "It really changed the whole feeling we had at our fish camp."

State officials say a plan review application was filed — and approved — last year for a Chickaloon tribal health center.

"We had no issues then," Tyler wrote.

The application for the health center was filed by an outside contractor and not the Chickaloon government, Wade said: "We didn't apply for that permit."

Work on a concrete foundation was paused Monday but the tribe plans to continue construction as soon as rainy weather subsides, Wade and Harrison said.

The Fire Marshal's Office is consulting with attorneys to make sure "no one's rights are being jeopardized," Peters said. "We hope to be able to work with the group to ensure that the end result is a safe building."

The tribe contacted the office of Gov. Bill Walker, as well as Alaska's congressional delegation and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, Harrison said.

The governor's tribal affairs adviser was contacted about the incident last week, according to Walker spokesperson Katie Marquette. She did not intervene but asked the Department of Public Safety to "keep her apprised of any developments," Marquette said.

The state Division of Fire and Life Safety has statewide jurisdiction for fire code enforcement and plan review authority in all but 11 communities that have adopted codes meeting or exceeding the state's adopted codes, according to the agency. The communities are Anchorage, Juneau, Fairbanks, the University of Alaska Fairbanks, Kenai, Ketchikan, Seward, Kodiak, Sitka, Soldotna and the Wasilla Lakes Fire Service Area.

Correction: A caption on the photograph accompanying an earlier version of this story incorrectly stated that Chickaloon tribal members are squaring off with the Mat-Su Borough. The dispute is with the state.