Opinion: Native setlement helped to shape Alaska's future

Friday, October 21, 2011  

"The Alaska Federation of Natives convention in Anchorage this week provides an opportunity for reflection on the relationship of AFN to the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971, and on the remarkable contribution of that act, and the people responsible for it, to Alaskan life.

The origins of the claims settlement are often misunderstood, conflated in many people's minds with the discovery of the massive oil field at Prudhoe Bay in 1968 and the ensuing sense of urgency for settling Native land claims so the trans-Alaska oil pipeline could be built and money could begin flowing. But the need to construct the pipeline did not "cause" the settlement of Alaska Native claims. That cause was in fact the Alaska statehood act of 1958 and actions taken by the State of Alaska and Native leaders pursuant to it.

The statehood act contained two clauses regarding land which were contradictory, though very few people recognized the contradiction at the time. Section 6 of the act entitled the State of Alaska to select 104 million acres of Alaska's land for state title, about 28 percent. But in Section 4 of the statehood act, the people of Alaska "disclaim" any right or title to land that may be subject to Native title. The failure of recognition concerned just what land might be subject to Native title. Most Alaskans then had little problem with giving Natives title to the land their villages were on, and some adjacent land for a village buffer and for hunting and the like. They considered that fair."

Get the Story:
Steve Haycox: ANCSA helped shape Alaska's future (The Anchorage Daily News 10/21)