Chair Sen. Lisa Murkowski began the May 6 hearing of the United States Senate Committee on Indian Affairs in Bethel with an acknowledgment that life still isn’t easy for 1,200 people still displaced after ex-typhoon Halong.
"We can understand that in the chaos immediately after a disaster, that communication can be challenged. But six months after a disaster, we should be doing a better job," Murkowski said.
Tribal leaders and agency heads agreed. In testimony, Thaddeus Tikiun Jr., chair of the Association of Village Council Presidents, called for tribes to take a greater role.
"We cannot keep responding to Arctic typhoons and other disasters with a patchwork system and expect it to work. We need a tribally led region wide emergency response structure built for Western Alaska," Tikiun Jr. said.
Tikiun Jr. said that the ideal system would make Bethel a hub for five regional response centers, and would require permanent funding from the federal government. He summed up the lengthy title of the hearing with a popular Yup’ik expression.
"[Upingasqelluuta], which means, 'let’s be ready,'" Tikiun Jr. said.
For numerous communities, the October 2025 storms sped up the clock on existing threats of erosion and decaying infrastructure. In the hardest hit villages of Kwigillingok and Kipnuk, it amplified and clarified calls for relocation. But as Murkowski said, rural communities face a maze of agencies, programs, and funding streams to get help.
Jocelyn Fenton, director of the independent federal agency the Denali Commission, said that a competitive grant system that requires technical expertise to obtain funding is not a fit for rural Alaska.
"That ends up focusing on the best grant writers and not the communities that have the most risk," Fenton said.
Fenton said that the Denali Commission could alleviate this situation as the lead coordinator between tribes, the state, and the federal government. She said that the agency lacks the legal authority, but that its broad abilities to look at all of the systems that keep rural communities viable could make it a “silver bullet for Alaska.”
Natasha Singh, who heads the Alaska Native Tribal Health Consortium (ANTHC), said she agrees that the Denali Commission is well-positioned.
"I also think there is likely a role for the Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA), given its trust responsibility to Alaska Native people," Singh said.
The BIA’s Assistant Secretary for Indian Affairs, Billy Kirkland, sat alongside Murkowski through hours of testimony in Bethel and in a corresponding hearing in Anchorage the day before.
Kirkland said that the BIA is set to announce new tribal resiliency grants that would be a continuation of a program that distributed millions of dollars to Alaska tribes in the final days of the Biden administration.
Kirkland told the crowd gathered at the Yukon-Kuskokwim Health Corporation (YKHC) hospital on May 6 that his agency was there to help.
"We want to partner in that relocation. We know that there are some roadblocks in that in terms of getting the land [...] We're here to help with that," Kirkland said.
The hearing also brought up immediate funding needs. The state’s head of emergency operations, Bryan Fisher, said that working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) has never been easy.
"I'll just say it, FEMA money is hard to use, it's hard to get, it's hard to spend, it's hard to report on," Fisher said.
Fisher said that the recent U.S. Department of Homeland Security shutdown and delays to funding for FEMA have made the state’s job harder.
"We have a huge cleanup and public health concern that we still have to deal with on top of displaced folks and their mental health needs. So that delay is something that's very troubling," Fisher said.
"Neither efficient nor humane"
In a listening session that followed the hearing, more than 20 tribal leaders from across the Yukon-Kuskokwim (Y-K) Delta described immediate infrastructure needs, severe erosion, and environmental contamination in their communities. Chefornak tribal president Janet Erik said the struggle to capture funding can harm local cooperation.
"Community leadership tries over and over for support and help, and we end up piecemealing and putting together what little money that we get after fighting over it with our neighbors and our other families," Erik said.
In response to the October 2025 storms, FEMA said that it has awarded more than $60 million in public and individual assistance. But Calista Corporation CEO Andrew Guy said that emergency funds to shore up flood-impacted communities have been misspent.
"It is neither efficient nor humane to repeatedly spend federal dollars rebuilding in locations that are becoming uninhabitable," Guy said.
The massive public safety impacts of Typhoon Halong were compounded by forecasting difficulties. By the time a change in the storm’s track and intensity was confirmed, it was too late for communities in the crosshairs to adequately prepare.
Fenton with the Denali Commission applauded recent federal moves to upgrade and add weather stations in rural Alaska. But she said monitoring alone is not enough.
"A forecast does not save lives unless communities can act upon it. That requires communications, redundancy, hardened power systems, backup generators, regional fuel security, and requires transportation systems capable of operating when conditions deteriorate," Fenton said.
Four hours of testimony at the hearing offered no easy answers, but Murkowski said that it’s important to put all of it on the congressional record.
"The comments that have been shared today was not just designed to make a committee record longer. They are truly designed to help inform us as we move forward," Murkowski said.
The immediate next steps for the people of Western Alaska are uncertain. A looming fuel crisis driven by the war in Iran could set back a process of recovery and preparedness that residents say is already long overdue. But as Tikiun Jr. explained, people can get ready.
