ASRC Close Ties in the Far North.

• Position: Arctic Slope Regional Corporation

As we celebrate the anniversary of the signing of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA), Arctic Slope Regional Corporation (ASRC) reflects on the strength, resilience, and determination of our early leaders. Those who fought to ensure the Inupiat of the Arctic Slope would rightly benefit from the oil and gas development that was about to take place on our ancestral homelands. Not only did the passage of ANCSA create ASRC but it was also the reason for the incorporation of the North Slope Borough (NSB). ASRC and the NSB, two entities that represent the people in the northernmost region of the United States. Two entities whose origins are closely tied--without one, the other may not have come to be. Two entities who owe their existence to the coordinated efforts of the Ihupiat people of the Arctic Slope region.

In 1959, the Alaska Statehood Act put into motion a land selection process for the federal government and the newly minted State of Alaska that ignored the Indigenous people who had occupied these lands for thousands of years. Early leaders from our region sprang into action and began working together to stop the federal and state governments from continuing the land selection until aboriginal land claims were addressed in 1965, Charles Etok Edwardsen led the formation of the Arctic Slope Native Association (ASNA) to claim legal ownership of the Arctic Slope area. It was ASNA that represented the Arctic Slope people, led by James Nageak, Abel Akpik, Samuel Simmonds, Walton Ahmaogak, Sam Taalak, Lee Suvlu, Alice Woods, Art Oomituk, and more. Other Alaska Native associations across the state began to file their own land claims, and in 1966 the Alaska Federation of Natives was formed to coordinate the statewide Alaska Native land claims efforts. It was through the coordinated efforts that later that year, Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall imposed a "land freeze" on further land conveyances between the federal and state governments until the Alaska Native land claims were settled. The timing of the land claims could not have been better since it coincided with the 1968 discovery of oil located in our region at Prudhoe Bay.

Congress began drafting legislation to address aboriginal land claims that would allow for the development of oil at Prudhoe Bay and the construction of the trans-Alaska pipeline to move forward. As early drafts of what would become ANCSA were being debated, ASNA's leadership expressed serious concerns...