The new Grand Presidents of the Alaska Native Brotherhood and Alaska Native Sisterhood are both from Juneau.

Bill Martin and Freda Westman represent the Juneau ANB Camp 70.

The results of polling were announced Friday (10-5-12) near the conclusion of the 100th Anniversary Grand Camp meeting in Sitka.

Martin says the honor of being Grand President also comes with serious responsibility.

“We really need to be able to unify all the camps. Some of them are really faltering, and we need to bring them back into the fold. We also need to engage with younger people. It’s not like it was in the old days, when it was a natural move when you were getting older to move into the ANB. Now, the world’s changed, there are so many different things.”

Martin says people have grown less patient with some of the formal proceedings of the ANB/ANS. But he says there’s much more to the ANB than Robert’s Rules of Order.

“Well, it was important to me, to my parents and grandparents, in the things that they accomplished when I was younger, that made it possible for me to get a better education. And it was all through the efforts of the ANB/ANS. They pursued education, and they provided the means that we could do that. And so it’s my way of trying to pay them back for all they’ve done in molding my life the way it is today.”

In addition to Bill Martin and Freda Westman as Grand Presidents, the Grand Camp Convention elected Sasha Soboleff and Victoria Canul-Dunne as Grand Vice Presidents of the ANB/ANS respectively; Frank Alby and Beverly Russell as 2nd Grand Vice Presidents; Peter Naoroz and Carol Duis as Grand Secretaries; and James Williams and Brenda Louise as Sergeants-at-Arms. Treasurers are Marietta Hopkins for ANS (Juneau) and James Llanos, Sr. for ANB (Ketchikan).

All terms are for one year. The outgoing Grand Presidents, Dennis Demmert and Mary Brown, will join the executive committee. The next Grand Camp Convention is scheduled for the first week of October next year in Yakutat.