The following summary overview of the history of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act was presented at the Alaska Miners Association Convention held in Anchorage earlier this month as part of the celebration of the association’s 75th anniversary.
The history of ANCSA is rooted in the occupancy of Alaska by Russia in the early 18th century. The Russian authority in Alaska was first decreed in 1766 when the Russian government declared the natives of Alaska to be Russian subjects and gave them protection against maltreatment by private trading groups.
In 1799 the Russian American Company was granted a monopoly of trade and administration in Russian possessions in America for 20 years at a time. A charter, granted in 1844, remained in force until the sale of Alaska to the United States.
The Russian Charter of 1844 distinguished three different categories of natives: (a) “dependent” or “settled” tribes; (b) “not wholly dependent” tribes; and (c) “independent” tribes.
The “dependent” tribes, mostly of Aleut and Eskimo stock, were defined by the charter as including “the inhabitants of the Kuril Islands, the Aleutian Islands, Kodiak and the adjacent islands, and the Alaska peninsula, as also the natives living on the shores of America, such as the Kenais, the Chugach and others.”
The “settled” tribes were primarily those most directly involved with the Russian enterprises. They were recognized as Russian subjects, and as such, were guaranteed the protection of the “common laws of the government.”
The “not wholly dependent” tribes were described by the 1844 charter as “dwelling within the boundaries of the Russian colonies, but not wholly dependent.” They apparently had some contact with the Russian colonies but were not wholly integrated into the Russian trading economy. It appears they were nomadic tribes wandering in and out of the Russian colonial area.
“Independent” tribes, on the other hand, were those inhabiting the mainland outside the area of Russian activity.
The 1844 charter refrained from stating whether or not the “not wholly dependent” or “independent” natives were Russian subjects. The “not wholly dependent” tribes, moreover, were eligible for “the protection of the colonial administration only on making request therefore, and (only) when such request (was) . . . deemed worthy of consideration.”
Relations of the colonial administration with the “independent” tribes were “limited to the exchange, by mutual consent, of European wares for furs and native products.” The 1844 charter refrained from stating whether or not the “not wholly dependent” or “independent” natives were Russian subjects.
Those laws and these social conditions continued to exist at the date of the treaty of cession in 1867. “It was these people (Russian colonists, creoles, and settled tribes members of her national church) whom Russia engaged the United States to admit as citizens, and to maintain and protect ‘in the free enjoyment of their liberty, property, and religion.’ ”
In 1904 and again in 1905 federal district court in Alaska court held that the treaty had regarded as “citizens” – with the right to “property” –those natives whom the Russian Charter of 1844 had regarded as “dependent” tribes, and thus, as Russian subjects. According to the court, the treaty withheld citizenship from those natives whom the Russian Charter of 1844 had characterized as “not wholly dependent” and “independent” were classed as uncivilized native tribes by the Russian laws.
The Indian Reorganization Act in 1934 (48 Stat. 984) authorized the Secretary of the Interior to designate as “Indian reservations” such areas of the state as had been reserved for the use and occupancy of Indians or Eskimos by executive order; or which were at the time (1936) “actually occupied by Indians or Eskimos.” Such action was to be effective upon vote of the adult native residents within the proposed reservations.
Section 4 of the Alaska Statehood Act of 1958 required the new State to disclaim all right and title to:
“any lands …, the right or title to which may be held by any Indians, Eskimos, or Aleuts … or is held by the United States in trust for said natives; that all such lands … belonging to the United States or which may belong to said natives, shall be and remain under the absolute jurisdiction and control of the United States until disposed of under its authority … nothing contained in this Act shall recognize, deny, enlarge, impair, or otherwise affect any claim against the United States …; and nothing in this Act is intended or shall be construed as a finding … by Congress that any law applicable thereto … establishes… the validity or invalidity or any such claim, … And no taxes shall be imposed by [the] State upon any lands or other property now owned or hereafter acquired by the United States or which … may belong to said natives, except to such extent as the Congress has prescribed …, and except when held by individual natives in fee without restrictions on alienation. The effect of this section was to hold the situation regarding aboriginal land claims in status quo.
Except where titles had already been bestowed upon Indians, Eskimos, and Aleuts, or where lands are held in trust for them, no definition of native entitlement was set forth.
The Statehood Act granted the State of Alaska the right to select 103 million acres from the public domain.
Although the act stipulated that Native lands were exempt from selection, nonetheless the State swiftly moved to expropriate lands clearly used and occupied by Native villages and to claim royalties from federal oil and gas leases on Native lands. The Department of Interior’s Bureau of Land Management, without informing the villages affected and ignoring the blanket claims the Natives already had on file, began to process the state selections.
The first important step toward congressional settlement was taken in July 1970 by the U.S. Senate. The Senate passed legislation that would grant Alaska’s more than 200 Native villages title to 10 million acres of land. In return for extinguishing their claims to the rest of Alaska’s 375 million acres, the Senate bill offered the Natives cash compensation amounting to $1 billion in payments deferred over many years.
Emil Notti, then president of the Alaska Federation of Natives, condemned the 10 million-acre Senate land provision, stating: “To deny the Alaska Natives an adequate land base of at least 40 million acres will contribute to their dependency, to the disintegration of the communities, and to the erosion of their culture. To strip the Alaska Natives of their land will destroy their traditional self-sufficiency, and it is certain to create among them bitterness towards other Alaskans and a deep distrust of our institutions and our laws.”
The House and Senate Interior committees labored through the spring and summer of 1971 to produce one of the most complex pieces of legislation ever considered by them. In September both committees reported out bills for 40 million acres of land. The House bill was adopted by a vote of 334-63 on Oct. 20 and the Senate bill passed by a vote of 76-5 on Nov. 1.
On Dec. 13, the joint House-Senate conference bill was adopted by both chambers and was signed by President Nixon on Dec. 18, 1971. Under provisions of the settlement, the Natives received title to a total of 40 million acres, to be divided among some 220 Native villages and 12 regional corporations established by the act.
The 12 Alaska Native regional corporations (together with a 13th regional corporation comprised of Natives who are non-permanent residents of Alaska) were to share in a payment of $462.5 million (to be made over an 11-year period from funds in the U.S. Treasury), and an additional $500 million in mineral revenues deriving from specified Alaska lands.
Finally, the Secretary of the Interior was authorized to withdraw from selection by the state and regional corporations (but not the village corporations) and from the operation of the public land laws up to, but not to exceed, 80 million acres of unreserved lands which, in his view, may be suitable for inclusion in the National Park, Forest, Wildlife Refuge, and Wild and Scenic River Systems. The authority granted in Section 17(d)(2) had a hard deadline of Dec. 18, 1978.
It was this last piece of the ANCSA puzzle that engendered the Alaska National Interest Lands Act, and the ensuing bad feelings toward the Carter Administration that lingers in Alaska to this day.
