A striking view from the bay of the Serguis Williams Native Allotment near Sitka, Alaska. The allotment plat provides hunting, fishing and gathering to Williams’ heirs, who are all members of the Sitka Tribe of Alaska, but they have been unable to take advantage of rock quarrying on the land due to tribal interference. PHOTO COURTESY/LEONTY WILLIAMS
SITKA, Alaska –– A $30-million construction project to improve the safety of one of the world’s most thrilling airstrips has led to a request for a U.S. Bureau of Indian Affairs investigation into the Sitka Tribe of Alaska’s handling of gravel for runway expansion. The Sitka Rocky Gutierrez Airport, named after a former mayor of the southeastern Alaska coastal town of Sitka, ranks high on Airfarewatchdog.com’s list of the “world’s most thrilling airports.” Located on the small island of Japonski, “its lone runway is almost completely surrounded by water,” the Internet source notes. “Unpredictable weather is a constant concern. Pilots must take heed of boulders and other debris that can wash onto the runway during storms as well as gusty winds,” it states. This situation, documented by the Federal Aviation Administration, convinced state and federal authorities to cooperate on an airport upgrade. The Sitka Tribe of Alaska (STA) signed a contract to provide quarried rock for the project, which rankled Indian allotment heirs, who had been scrapping with the tribal government for years over a quarry on the so-called Serguis Williams Native Allotment. Heir Richard Williams said the STA signed the contract after a series of delay tactics to ensure that the quarry on allotment land could not compete. “STA employees have purposefully manipulated and misrepresented the Serguis Williams Native Allotment heirs/landowners, which resulted in a loss of millions of dollars to our family,” he wrote in a letter to BIA Regional Officer Eugene Virden Williams also sent the letter to a dozen other heirs and family members. “Because of bad faith, conflict of interest, and the misappropriation of compact funds, we cannot trust or work with Sitka Tribe of Alaska,” he said in requesting a BIA investigation into the actions of the tribal Realty Office. STA has a compact with the BIA to conduct realty services for Native allotments, Williams noted. “Yet the Sergius Williams heirs are subjected to stonewalling, written disparaging remarks, and a policy of covering up for missed deadlines proving economically and spiritually disastrous to the landowners,” he said in reference to the realty office. The Sitka Tribe of Alaska is the federally recognized government for more than 4,000 primarily Tlingit, Haida, Aleut and Tsimpsian Heritage in the Sheet’-Ká area of southeastern Alaska. The allotment is 160 acres in area. About one-quarter of it is mountain face suitable for excavating rock. The highest contour on the allotment is 200 meters. The volume of rock available for removal is about 5 million cubic yards, or some 11 million tons, which landowners sustain. Williams said the tribe failed to exercise its duty to claim damages for the allotment heirs after the U.S. Forest Service opened the quarry on their land. He claims the tribe purposely delayed the environmental assessment needed to reopen it for the Kizhuchia Creek area landholders, and then went on to contract gravel sales from the tribe’s own site for the local runway expansion. Heirs say the Forest Service didn’t have the right to open the gravel pit or build a road with its materials to facilitate logging of old-growth timber back in the late 1970s. They believe this is a case of “government entities not doing what they are supposed to do” and having “seriously harmed the family heirs of the Native allotment.” So far, the Serguis Williams Native Allotment owners have been unsuccessful in their effort to obtain Forest Service compensation for the allegedly unlawful removal of aggregate rock from their land. The allotment was certified in 2003, only after the original applications of the late Sergius Williams had been rejected twice while he was alive, and after the Forest Service subsequently built its timber harvest access road in the Kizhuchia Creek drainage his ancestors had used before bequeathing it to his care in 1896, according to Richard Williams, who is one of 16 heirs seeking redress. Williams wants the allotment landowners to be released from the STA’s representation immediately and to receive compensation for the tribe’s “intentional interference,” as he calls it, “which resulted in the loss of revenue and economic opportunities that would have substantially benefited” them. The tribe knew it had two years from the time of allotment certification in which to act on the heirs’ request for a court claim against the Forest Service over the gravel and road, but failed to file before the statute of limitations deadline, according to Williams. Landowners of Sergius Williams Native Allotment became aware in early summer of 2011 that the tribe signed a contract to provide quarried rock for the Sitka Airport expansion project, he said. The numerous delays over the years were because the tribe’s own financial interest “trumped the interest of the heirs,” said Williams. Reached at tribal headquarters, tribal Realty Officer Allen Bell said that only the Sitka Tribe’s general manager, Ted Wright, could respond to questions about the issue. Adding insult to injury, Williams says, tribal officials have accused the landowners of trespassing on their own land. He cites a letter from former Realty Officer Nelly Wright to heirs stating that they may not be considered within their rights to use the red alder wood from the allotment to smoke fish or carve figures. “Unauthorized removal of timber may be deemed a trespass,” she said in the 2010 letter. “Trespass can include any damage to forest resources on Indian forest land. Trespassers will be liable for civil penalties and damages to the enforcement agency and the beneficial Indian owners and will be subject to prosecution for acts of treason.” Wright did not respond to telephone messages containing explicit inquiries from Native Sun News. According to the mission statement of the Sitka Tribe’s Resource Protection Department, it is responsible for “continuing advocacy for maintaining tribal citizens’ rights to harvest customary and traditional foods and provision of those foods to those who are unable to harvest themselves.” The mission statement also says that “The protection of subsistence resources is vital to the health and well-being of tribal citizens … in the long battle to maintain our traditional resources.” (Contact Talli Nauman at talli.nauman@gmail.com) Copyright permission by Native Sun News www.nsweekly.com
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