NANA Development Corporation headquartered in Anchorage, Alaska, was owned by NANA Regional Corporation—an Alaska Native Corporation formed under provisions of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANSCA)—and functioned as the latter's business arm. History In 1968, nine years after Alaska attained statehood, oil was discovered at Prudhoe Bay. The discovery put the issue of Native lands into the forefront. Three years later, in 1971 President Richard Nixon signed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, which conveyed nearly of federal land into the hands of 12 newly created Alaska Native regional corporations. One of these corporations was NANA Regional Corporation. In 1974, NANA Development Corporation was founded to function as the business arm of NANA Regional Corporation. In November 2017, the company's subsidiary, Akima LLC, fired one of its employees, Juli Briskman, after a news photographer caught her giving the finger to the presidential motorcade of Donald Trump as it passed by her. She is not identifiable in the photo, but after it went viral she posted it on her social media accounts and voluntarily identified herself to the company's human resources department that she is the person in it. Four months after being fired, she sued the company for wrongful termination and for additional severance pay. In the 2019 Virginia elections, Briskman was elected to the board of supervisors for Loudoun County, Virginia. NANA Regional Corporation NANA Regional Corporation, headquartered in Kotzebue, Alaska, is an Alaska Native Corporation with a land base of approximately 36,000 square miles (roughly the size of Indiana) in Northwest Alaska centered on the Kotzebue Sound and its tributaries. The Arctic Circle travels through NANA territory. NANA Regional Corporation is the owner of NANA Development Corporation. There are approximately 13,000 shareholders of NANA Regional Corporation, most of whom are of Inupiat descent. About 7,300 residents live in this area, more than 85 percent of whom are NANA shareholders. Unlike traditional corporate shares, NANA Regional Corporation shares are not publicly traded, nor can they be bought or sold. Current enterprises NANA Development Corporation employed approximately 15,000 employees in all 50 states and in nine different countries. It worked primarily in the oil and gas, mining, technology, hospitality, healthcare, construction, federal contracting and tribal sectors of the economy. NANA Development Corporation and some of its majority-owned subsidiaries qualify under federal law as "minority and economically disadvantaged business enterprise[s]" and therefore meet the requirements of the Small Business Administration's