50 Years of ANSCA: 'An experiment whose results are not fully realized'.

• Author: Simonelli, Isaac Stone
• Position: ALASKA NATIVE SPECIAL SECTION

Fifty years ago, as the Watergate scandal swirled around then-President Richard Nixon, he signed into law the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA). It was the largest land claims settlement in the nation's history and a stark departure from agreements forced on Tribes in the Lower 48.

"While each region is different, each region can point to their own localized successes. In a general sense, ANCSA stitched together the Alaska Native communities and created a shared identity that has afforded our peoples a mechanism to come together to utilize and protect our collective land and other assets for the benefit of future generations," says Arctic Slope Regional Corporation (ASRC) President and CEO Rex A. Rock Sr.

The discovery of significant oil resources in Prudhoe Bay and the desire to bring the newly found wealth to market via what would eventually be the Trans Alaska Pipeline System created an urgency at the federal level to resolve unsettled Native claims and secure land for the project. The origins of these claims dated back to the United States' purchase of Alaska from Russia in 1867 for $7.2 million, despite Alaska Natives' protests that it wasn't Russia's land to sell.

"It would never happen if we had the ability to build that pipeline without their [Alaska Natives'] okay. That was a driving force," says Congressman Don Young, who was sworn in two years after the passage of the legislation.

I think it's one of the better pieces of legislation that ever came out of Congress. I call it breakthrough legislation: instead of a reservation, it was an onset of a profit corporation. And. I think, it's one of the greatest success stories.

Senator Lisa Murkowski also praised ANCSA.

"Looking back, it is incredible to realize the effort that it took to pass such a massive piece of legislation. In a time before internet, cell phones, accessible mass transportation, and communication--and in the partisan framework we are working within today--such an accomplishment might not have happened," Murkowski says.

ANCSA did not follow the reservation system generally applied in the Lower 48, in which Native American nations were given limited Tribal sovereignty while the land they were often forced to relocate to was held in trust by the Department of Interior.

Instead, ANCSA created twelve geographical regions in Alaska and mandated the creation of twelve corresponding for-profit Alaska Native corporations (ANCs). Additionally, the legislation created more than 200 for-profit Alaska Native village corporations. All corporations were privately owned and have remained separate from publicly traded companies.

The shareholders of these corporations were required to be Alaska Natives who met a one-quarter blood quorum or fall under an exception. They were added to a corporation's roll, which was then submitted to the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

"The historical intent of ANCSA was to move away from unsuccessful Lower 48 federal Indian policies and structures. ANCSA diverged from the Lower 48 governance triangle model that afforded Tribes economic, social, and sovereign accountability and authority over their financial strength, lands, and members under a federal trustee model," Rock says.

From a corporate perspective, ANCSA did not mire down the institutions it created with the shackles of federal trusteeship; yet it did not convey sovereignty to Alaska Native corporations or their land holdings.

The purpose of the Act was the conveyance of land for social and economic well-being, explains Young. ANCs selected more than 44 million acres of land and received about $1 billion in compensation for lost lands.

"Maybe the biggest thing that the land claims in Alaska represents is the deviation from the United States norm in how they treat indigenous ownerships," says internationally renowned Alaska Native artist Perry Eaton, who was the founding president and CEO of the Alaska Native Heritage Center, served on the Koniag board for more than fifteen years, and spent seventeen years as the CEO of Alaska Village Initiatives, among other endeavors.

It makes ANCSA one of the largest social experiments in the 20th century, Eaton says. The Act ended up forwarding the concept of economic integration instead of the social integration placed on Tribes in the Lower 48.

"The different model was not only built on a westernized corporate front, but it was also built on the ownership of ancestral and indigenous lands," Bristol Bay Native Corporation President and CEO Jason Metrokin says.

Ahtna, Incorporated Chairman Ken Johns, who was a senior in high school at the time ANCSA was passed, says the...