Alaska Natives and American Laws, by David S. Case and David A. Voluck

• Publication year: 2013

§ 30 Alaska L. Rev. 223. ALASKA NATIVES AND AMERICAN LAWS, BY DAVID S. CASE AND DAVID A. VOLUCK

Alaska Law Review
Volume 30, No. 2, December 2013
Cited: 30 Alaska L. Rev. 223

ALASKA NATIVES AND AMERICAN LAWS, BY DAVID S. CASE AND DAVID A. VOLUCK (3D ED. 2012).

Troy A. Eid ^[*]

Alaska Natives and American Laws-"Case-Voluck," for short-has been called the Alaskan equivalent of the late Felix Cohen's Handbook of Federal Indian Law ("Cohen's Handbook"), the Bible of the profession. ^[1] Cohen's Handbook, a massive work first published in 1941 and revised in recent years by more than three dozen Indian law scholars, itself describes Case-Voluck as a "comprehensive treatise on Alaska Native legal issues." ^[2] It is much more than that.

Far from being a mere legal reference guide or hornbook, Alaska Natives and American Laws is essential reading for anyone in business, government, or civic life who is interested in contemporary Alaska. The latest version of the book continues a remarkable journey that began in 1978 with the Alaska Native Foundation's publication of an initial study entitled "The Special Relationship of Alaska Natives to the Federal Government." With their third edition, David Case and David Voluck go well beyond summarizing and updating the latest statutes, regulations, and court decisions affecting Alaska Natives and their relationship with the federal government and the State of Alaska. The authors bring order and coherence to that uniquely Alaskan legal landscape that can be dauntingly complex, if not obscure, even to the most seasoned practitioners and policymakers.

The result is an encyclopedia of detailed legal analysis about the black-letter law concerning Alaska Natives, and appropriately so. It is also, however, a highly readable primer on the political relationship among the three sovereigns: federal, state, and tribal. The opening chapter is a shining example of the authors' ability to smoothly blend law and application. It provides a chronological overview of federal Indian law in the Lower 48 and Alaska, identifies and explains its core legal concepts, and applies those concepts to current issues and hot topics. It is a model of cogent and persuasive writing and analysis.

Beginning with that first chapter but continuing throughout the book, Case and Voluck take care to examine current trends that are likely to continue influencing the development of the law and public policy in years ahead. In the third edition, this includes the crucial but underappreciated role that Alaska Natives are playing in the United Nations and elsewhere to build legal foundations for the recognition of indigenous human rights under international law. It also includes high-profile litigation by various nongovernmental organizations related to global warming and other environmental issues. ^[3]

Though each of the book's ten chapters is comprehensive, the fifth chapter of Case-Voluck is nothing less than required reading for anyone seeking to decipher the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act ("ANCSA"). ^[4] The authors are in a class by themselves in explaining this complicated law in understandable terms. Enacted in 1971, ANCSA was amended by nearly every Congress for the next thirty-five years and was preceded, as the authors wryly note,

by more than one hundred years of at least theoretical uncertainty about the legal status of the Indigenous Peoples of what is now the state of Alaska. The uncertainty was the product of vacillating judicial decisions, ineffective implementation of federal policies, and entrenched political opposition among Alaska's territorial and state leaders to the ideas of aboriginal title and tribal status. ^[5]

In exchange for extinguishing Alaska Natives' claims to more than three hundred and fifty million acres of land, ANCSA established an experimental corporate governance model of sometimes dizzying complexity. The basic idea was to forgo the Lower 48 approach, symbolized by the Indian reservation system, whereby existing Native American tribal governments were vested with assets reserved after the extinguishment of aboriginal land claims. Instead, many, but not all, Alaska Natives were permitted to become individual shareholders in regional and village corporations. Case and Voluck patiently trace ANCSA's sometimes convoluted history and shifting goals, concentrating on the underlying battle for control of Alaska's lands and natural resources.

Readers might be forgiven for concluding that if ever there was a federal statute that could be used to justify almost anything that has happened in modern Alaska, depending on the given timeframe and the political agenda of the person or interest group involved, ANCSA is it. Over the years, ANCSA has been alternatively cited for preserving or abrogating tribal sovereignty, for economically empowering or subjugating Alaska Native communities and people, and for postponing or accelerating the subsistence food crisis in rural Alaska. When it comes to separating ANCSA fact from myth or misconception, Case and Voluck really shine. Other well written but less detailed expositions of ANCSA, such as that found in Cohen's Handbook, merely attest to the value of what Case and Voluck have accomplished here in demystifying the statute.

Like the other chapters, Chapter Five proceeds methodically. After carefully deconstructing the framework of the corporate structure established by the Act, the authors make some general observations about what ANCSA does and does not do. They then catalogue many of the costs and benefits that have come from converting communal tribal land claims to individual private property. ANCSA's history, purpose, and goals are addressed, but...