Maude Blair, Kiana, RAHI 1990 & 1992
Maude Blair grew up in Kiana, along the Kobuk River. Her parents, Dick and Harriet Blair, raised her with strong connections to both sides of her family—her mother’s roots stretch to the Upper Kobuk area, with grandparents from Ambler and Shungnak, and her father’s family hails from Ohio. She attended high school in Kotzebue, and from a young age, Maude knew she would attend college; in her family, higher education was an expectation.
It was also a given that she would apply for the Rural Alaska Honors Institute (RAHI). In the NANA region, she says, RAHI had become a tradition, something older students always talked about and encouraged others to experience. “You just knew you were going to apply,” she remembers. When she was accepted, she joined a cohort of students from her region, which meant she never felt homesick. She loved her classes, but the outdoor adventures are what she remembers most fondly: canoeing, riding bikes, camping, and fishing. “Gosh, the camping was so much fun! And just being able to go to the movies on the weekend when you’re from a small village, it all felt exciting.”
She also remembers smaller moments that made the experience special, like swim class, late-night conversations, and watching TV together in the lounge. RAHI taught her early on that Alaska is a small place, people-wise. “Programs like RAHI are where you first start to learn this,” she said. “You meet people from all over, and you’re learning about different parts of the state.” During her two summers, students from Greenland and Canada also attended RAHI. They compared Inupiaq and Inuit words and discovered that several were the same in both languages, a meaningful connection that highlighted shared culture.
Maude’s biggest challenge at RAHI came when she was placed in calculus at just sixteen. She took the class alongside college students outside the program and had to work hard to earn her grade. Though she briefly considered a minor in math, she ultimately followed a different path. “Now that I’m a lawyer,” she laughs, “I do words, not numbers.”
After high school, Maude attended the TV(TV), earning undergraduate degrees in English with an emphasis in writing and in broadcast journalism. She loved her studies and even became a TV news reporter and anchor for KTVF in Fairbanks after graduation. Her work later took her to NANA Regional Corporation, where she entered the communications field as a shareholder employee. She wrote articles for the company newsletter and worked closely with the corporation’s General Counsel to ensure accuracy. Through that collaboration, she began to learn about business law. “I didn’t know the difference between a partnership, a joint venture, an S-corp, or an LLC,” she said. “But by bringing my drafts to the attorney and asking questions, I started to learn.”
Encouraged by NANA’s General Counsel, Maude decided to pursue law school at Arizona State University, where she earned her law degree and Indian law certificate. She began her legal career at the Native American Rights Fund (NARF), working on voting rights and tribal issues. From there, she returned to NANA to focus on shareholder and land matters. Her next step took her to the Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN), where she worked on statewide policy issues, and later to Southcentral Foundation, where she specialized in healthcare law. There, she got to work with tribal health advocates from around the state on the all-Alaska tribal health compact, an effort she describes as “a very Alaskan thing to do” with tribes and tribal health organizations joining forces to collaborate rather than compete for limited resources.
After a short time at the Alaska Native Justice Center, where she provided tribal justice training and worked in tribal criminal jurisdiction, Maude joined Chugach Alaska Corporation, where she serves as an attorney today. She’s particularly proud of Chugach shareholders’ recent vote to open enrollment to those born after 1971, calling it a full-circle moment for her. Years earlier, she wrote a law review article about Alaska Native corporations expanding enrollment, and now she’s helping put those ideas into practice. “It’s really exciting,” she said. “I guess I’m a bit of a law nerd.”
When asked what advice she would give students considering RAHI, Maude doesn’t hesitate. “Give it a try,” she said. “You’re not going to know what you’re missing out on unless you give it a try. College isn’t for everybody, but you should try a semester. Explore different careers. Talk to different people.”
For donors, policymakers, and lawmakers, her message is equally direct. “This is such an important investment in students’ futures,” she said. “This is why I donate, and I absolutely believe RAHI should receive state and federal funding. We need to get more students into the program and expose them to new experiences, to classes, to different life paths. It’s such an important program to me personally. I’m happy to see it’s still going, and happy to keep supporting it.”