Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act

ALASKA NATIVE CLAIMS SETTLEMENT ACT

ALASKA NATIVE CLAIMS SETTLEMENT ACT (1971). President Richard Nixon signed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) into law on 18 December 1971, granting title to 44 million of Alaska's 375 million acres to various groups of Alaska Native people. At the time, most of Alaska's land was undistributed.

In 1958 Congress passed the Alaska Statehood Act, authorizing the new state to select 104 million acres of unappropriated and unoccupied land in the state. But the statehood act also included a disclaimer of title or right by Alaska to lands that might be held by Alaska Natives. As the state began to make selections of the lands it desired, Natives began to protest the selections on the grounds of prior use, and therefore, potential Native title. By 1966 the federal Bureau of Land Management had approved state title to 12 million acres, but by that time, Native protests blanketed the entire state. Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall sought to resolve the confusion by issuing an injunction halting further conveyances to the state until Native claims could be dealt with fairly and comprehensively. Given the history of Native land claims in Congress and the courts, people in Alaska wondered how long it would take to resolve the conflict.

The discovery of America's largest single petroleum deposit, 15 billion barrels, at Prudhoe Bay on state-selected land on Alaska's North Slope in December 1967 immensely complicated the process. The only practical way to take the oil to market was via a trans-Alaska pipeline to the port of Valdez on the Gulf of Alaska, which meant building the pipeline across much Native-claimed land.

The statewide Alaska Federation of Natives, representing all Native groups, produced a bill, which, with modification, settled the Native claims (ANCSA). In exchange for clear title to 44 million acres in traditionally utilized areas, the U.S. extinguished Native title to the remaining land in Alaska, paying Native people $962.5 million in compensation. To make the money work in perpetuity for Alaska Natives, it was used to capitalize 12 (later 13) regional Native economic development corporations and as many as 211 village corporations, in one or another of which all Alaska Natives became preferred stockholders. The corporations were chartered under the laws of the State of Alaska and were free from paternalistic oversight. This settlement was monumental and unprecedented. Many Native leaders of talent and insight helped write the plan, lobby the bill through Congress, and explain its operation to Alaskan villagers. Among these leaders were Willie Hensley from Unalakleet, John Borbridge and Byron Mallot from the Alaskan Southeast, and Emil Notti from Koyukuk.

Though some analysts criticized the act as a vehicle for cultural genocide, forcing the alien concepts and structures of capitalism and modern for-profit corporations on Alaska Natives, Native leaders largely welcomed the measure. Some Native corporations experienced early financial stresses, but most weathered the start-up period and by the mid-1980s were stable. Amendments to the act in 1989 protected the land from foreclosure in bankruptcy and authorized new stock issues for persons born after 1971. In the early 2000s most corporations were financially successful, due in part to an opportunity to sell tax losses in the 1990s. Several corporations began to pay substantial dividends to their stockholders, and many had real estate and operating company holdings across America. Native leaders credit the act with protecting the Native land base in Alaska and establishing Native equality and legitimacy in the state.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Berger, Thomas R. Village Journey: The Report of the Alaska Native Review Commission. New York: Hill and Wang, 1985.

Berry, Mary Clay. The Alaska Pipeline: The Politics of Oil and Native Land Claims. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1975.

Coates, Peter A. The Trans-Alaska Pipeline Controversy: Technology, Conservation, and the Frontier. Bethlehem, Pa.: Lehigh University Press, 1991.

Colt, Steve. Two Views of the 'New Harpoon': Economic Performance of the ANCSA Regional Corporations. Anchorage, Alaska: Institute of Social and Economic Research, 2001.

Mitchell, Donald Craig. Sold American: The Story of Alaska Natives and Their Land, 1867–1959. Hanover, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1997.

———. Take My Land, Take My Life: The Story of Congress's Historic Settlement of Alaska's Native Land Claims, 1960–1971. Fairbanks: University of Alaska Press, 2001.

Oswalt, Wendell. Bashful No Longer: An Alaska Eskimo Ethno-history, 1778–1988. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1990.

Stephen Haycox

See also Alaskan Pipeline ; Tribes: Alaskan .