Last year, Ahtna showed a profit of $2 million, and promises to show a profit of more than $1 million when the books are tallied for 2004, but the company is still $18 million in debt, Johns said.

"We have had some hard times," said Johns, in an address to the Anchorage Chamber of Commerce Nov. 22. He likened the experience to coming upon an airline crash, with wreckage and bodies everywhere. "You don't know where to start," he said. "Our portfolio was gone."

Now times have changed for the Athabascan Indian firm, which has some 1,200 shareholders, mostly residing in the Copper River region of Alaska. Ahtna has about $80 million in contracts, many of them under the Small Business Administration's 8(a) program. The 8(a) federal program, created in 1974, helps minority and other small disadvantaged firms grow through federal contracting preferences and set-asides.

Among the 8(a) contracts held by Ahtna are two for maintaining files for the Social Security administration, in Baltimore and Kansas City, Mo. "We are scattered all over the Lower 48," he said. Most of Ahtna's companies are going to be graduating out of 8(a) status soon, he said. "We are feeling more confident that we can go out into the world and compete," he said.

"We have had some hurdles, but the books are very strong," said Johns, who was recruited by his regional corporation from the nonprofit Copper River Native Association.

Ahtna had had the Social Security contract in Kansas City for two and a half years before federal officials, pleased with their work, awarded the Baltimore contract, he said. Revenues from the two Social Security service contracts total $11 million annually, he said.

While profits from these and other subsidiaries flow back to the regional Alaska Native corporation in Glennallen, there will be no dividends to shareholders until the debts are paid, he said.

Ahtna has six operating subsidiaries and two joint ventures. The subsidiaries are involved in construction, pipeline maintenance, facilities maintenance, administrative and janitorial services, electrical contracting, fiberoptic telecommunications, forestry and gravel sales.

Ahtna's was a relatively small contributor to the overall 2003 economic effort of Alaska Native corporations founded under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971, said Barbara Donatelli, executive vice president of Cook Inlet Region Inc.

Donatelli told chamber members that the regional and village corporations had faced many challenges, successes and failures over the past 33 years because of their combined focus on economic, social and cultural needs of their shareholders. "ANSCA was by no means the end; it was the beginning," she said.