Meda DeWitt Envisions a Stewardship Economy for Alaska
Gubernatorial candidate Meda DeWitt told SDMN that Alaska’s future depends on stewardship, fiscal stability, and community-centered leadership.For Meda DeWitt, Alaska is at a crossroads between continuing cycles of instability or building a future grounded in long-term stewardship and durable local economies. The Anchorage resident, educator, traditional healer, and community organizer has is running for governor as a nonpartisan candidate ahead of Alaska’s 2026 election to bring this economic vision to reality. DeWitt, who is Lingít (Tlingit) and has family roots in Wrangell and Yakutat, has spent more than a decade working across nonprofit, Tribal, academic, and policy spaces throughout the state leading
In an interview with SDMN, DeWitt presented a vision for the future of Alaska where built around affordability. However, she said that vision requires investments in renewable energy, stronger public services, and long-term fiscal planning. “Ten years from now, an Alaskan family in both Rural and Urban communities can afford to pay their power bill without it crowding out groceries, because we built renewable infrastructure to provide affordable and abundant energy,” DeWitt said. “Teachers stay in Alaska because a defined benefit pension is restored and their future is secure. Families can enroll their newborn in healthcare without a paperwork battle, because Denali KidCare auto-enrollment is the norm.” She also pointed to climate adaptation and fisheries management as central parts of Alaska’s future. “Coastal communities that were facing erosion ten years ago are moved to stable ground, because Alaska led on managed adaptation rather than waiting on federal disaster declarations,” she said. “Fisheries are recovering because we put Tribal co-management and ecosystem-based decision making at the center of how we manage the resource.” DeWitt said many of her priorities were shaped by conversations with Alaskans across the state after meetings and formal events had already ended. “What these conversations have in common is that people are not asking to be rescued,” she added. “They are asking for partnership and respect. They are asking the state to do its job competently and to stop treating their communities as afterthoughts in someone else’s plan.” Her campaign also focuses heavily on restructuring Alaska’s economy around what she describes as stewardship rather than boom-and-bust extraction cycles. DeWitt said that includes expanding in-state seafood processing, investing in local infrastructure, and lowering household energy costs through renewable energy projects. “A stewardship economy is not less of an economy. It is a more durable one,” she said. “The transition I am describing is from boom and bust to steady, dignified, Alaska-grown livelihoods.” On public safety, DeWitt argued Alaska has focused too heavily on responding to harm after crises occur rather than investing in prevention and long-term stability. Her proposals include expanding behavioral health services, strengthening reentry support for people leaving incarceration, and increasing support for Village Public Safety Officers and domestic violence response programs. “Public safety in Alaska is in crisis, and the response has been to spend heavily on the back end: on incarceration, on emergency response, and on rebuilding lives after harm has already happened,” DeWitt said. “We are paying for the consequences and underfunding the conditions.” |