Women behind the act: Alaska Native women key to ANCSA.

• Author: Orr, Vanessa
• Position: SPECIAL SECTION: ANCSA 40TH ANNIVERSARY

While Alaska Natives today enjoy the benefits that come from belonging to village, urban and regional corporations created through the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, this was not always the case. It took years of efforts on behalf of Alaska Natives to ensure that their ancestral lands were protected, and that they would be able to support themselves, and their families, into the future.

A number of Alaska Native women, including Brenda Itta Lee, Marlene Johnson, Nettie Elizabeth Peratrovich and Irene Rowan, were integral to the ANCSA fight. "Traditionally, Alaska Natives are a peace-loving people who have been taught to resolve conflicts internally and externally," explained Itta Lee. "But while peace-loving is our nature, before ANCSA was settled, many of us became rather militant in a positive way. It's almost like we became warriors in order to fight for the land-claim settlement, which was a good way to be in light of the opposition at that time. We drew on our inner strength and on the strength of our people to keep going. It's a feeling that I'll never forget."

Itta Lee was living in Washington, D.C., and working for Sen. Ernest Gruening when the first piece of legislation related to ANCSA was introduced. After Gruening lost the election, she moved back to Alaska to work for RurAL CAP (Rural Alaska Community Action Program), where she worked closely with other Native leaders, particularly those in the Arctic region, to lobby for Native land.

"In my region, the Arctic Slope, there were many discussions about protecting our traditional lands because the government planned to build a pipeline that would cross our camping grounds and affect the caribou and fish; everything we relied on to live. Our lifestyle was at stake," she explained.

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

"The government had already taken prime lands in the Arctic and across the state, so we became passionate about protecting our civil rights," she added.

Despite being a woman in a time period when women were considered less than equal, Itta Lee said that she was not treated differently from the men. "We really didn't think of male/ female at the time," she said. "Only a handful of Alaska Natives knew both the Alaska Native tongue and the English language, and only a handful had traveled outside of the villages and had gained exposure to the western America way of life. Anyone at that time who knew both languages and had ties to the land was utilized. The cause surpassed being...