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Photo: Former U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola at her primary night victory party. (Courtesy C-SPAN)
The 2026 Midterms shifted into top gear this week with showdowns set across the country. Nine Native candidates running for Congress made it to the general election, including three women trying to make history in the U.S. Senate.
In Alaska, former U.S. Rep. Mary Peltola (Yup’ik), D-Alaska, is charging against President Donald Trump on health care and affordability, in a race that has the President’s attention squared right back at Peltola.
“We have tens of thousands of Alaskans who can no longer afford health insurance, and we are being crushed by corporate greed. Dan Sullivan, every single vote was for corporate greed. From health care comments or groceries, to transportation, to heat, we are getting crushed.”
The Alaska race includes incumbent U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, and a Democratic challenger named Dan J. Sullivan, a distinction President Trump is highlighting as the race goes forward.
“Well, it’s close for one reason, that they have a phony Dan Sullivan. This guy’s a phony. And he was put up by the Democrats, and they don’t admit it, but it’s been so proven. So I will go to Alaska to make sure that a great senator gets reelected. I will be going to Alaska. I’m going to be going the last 30 days before the election. I’ll be making a lot of stops.”
The remaining Native candidates for Congress include incumbents like representatives Sharice Davids from Kansas – and Tom Cole and Josh Breechan from Oklahoma. Seeking new seats in the House are Jonathan Nez in Arizona, Bill Hill in Alaska and Sean McCann in Michigan. N’kiyla “Jasmine” Thomas is running as a Democratic socialist for Oklahoma’s senate seat.
A crowd gathers at Paneok hangar at Merrill Field in Anchorage for the nonprofit launch on Aug. 25, 2026. (Photo: Alena Naiden)
A new aviation nonprofit in Alaska hopes to train the next generation of pilots connecting Alaska Native villages with supplies and the rest of the world.
In part one of her two-part series, the Alaska Desk’s Alena Naiden from our flagship station KNBA reports on the organization’s launch this summer.
Anchorage’s Merrill Field was buzzing with planes taking off and landing, as about a hundred people gathered to celebrate the launch of a new aviation nonprofit.
Jordan Lewis from Chefornak was one of several young students in the crowd. At 22, he has already earned a private pilot’s license and has over 250 hours of flight time. And he dreams even bigger.
“I want to fly for the big airlines one day, but my small goal is to fly for, like, the rural villages first.”
Lewis said he became interested in aviation because his grandfather was a village airline agent, and he would follow him to meet the planes.
“There’s like hundreds and hundreds of villages that aren’t on the road system. I believe if it wasn’t for aviation, most of those villages wouldn’t continue to exist.”
Lewis took aviation classes through a career training organization called Alaska EXCEL.
Those classes have been offered for about eight years through different local organizations, but instructors say the new nonprofit, the Paneok Project, will help them get funding more reliably and make classes more sustainable.
Through Paneok, students from rural Alaska can enroll in piloting, maintenance, and ground-handling courses, as well as get mentorship and career opportunities.
The program might offer a dispatcher course soon, too.
Jamie Klaes is the founder and chair of Paneok.
“It is very important for us to put rural kids in these positions because they do understand the terrain and the weather. And they have an invested interest in the community and the people they’re flying.”
Tomorrow, in part two, we’ll learn more about the new nonprofit and its namesake, Ellen Paneok, the first Alaska Native woman to become a licensed pilot.
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Check out today’s Native America Calling episode
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