Michael Baines: Senate candidate battles Alaska Native rights

Alaska Natives need know about U.S. Senate candidate Dan Sullivan’s deeply troubling record of waging a war against Alaska Natives when he was supposed to be protecting us as Alaska’s attorney general.

When Sullivan was AG, he wasted an opportunity to make a real difference for Alaska Natives. Instead, he added to Alaska’s long history of prosecuting Alaska Natives every time we tried to assert our rights — from our right to hunt and fish on our own land to our right to enforce our own laws — most notably in the cases of Katie John and Kaltag.

Sullivan could have led by example and stood with Alaska Natives in both of those cases, but he didn’t. He chose to take Alaska Natives rights to court, following in the footsteps of so many state officials before him who didn’t take the time to understand these issues, instead waging a war on tribal rights and subsistence.

As attorney general, Sullivan took Katie John to court again for wanting the right to hunt and fish on her tribal lands along the Copper River. Sullivan appealed the case to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals even though the state had lost several times before. She was an Athabascan elder and had already spent over 20 years in litigation. Sullivan made certain that Katie never saw the case settled. Instead she spent the rest of her life fighting the state for the right to live off her land the way her tribe had for thousands of years.