CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

• Jurisdiction: United States

Alaska Mineral Development
(Sep 1978)
CHAPTER 1
INTRODUCTION
Joseph Rudd
Ely, Guess & Rudd
Anchorage, Alaska

Many share the view that between Alaska and the Rocky Mountain states there exist important areas of common concern — great dependence upon the land in both cultural and economic activities, major involvement in finding and producing much of the mineral wealth of the country, large areas of public land managed by the federal government and sparse population with a relatively small voice in Washington.

Each of these areas of common concern is exaggerated in Alaska and I believe the papers to be presented here, focusing on Alaska, will also be relevant when you consider the problems and development in the other Rocky Mountain states. At least in part because of Alaska's geographic isolation, its recent entry both into the Union and into the big leagues of mineral activity, and its reliance upon a handful of economic bases, some of the problems common to other states are found in a relatively pure form in Alaska.

The handling of the Native settlement is an example. Although by no means simple, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act was constructed without significant complication arising from treaties, reservations, special legislation and the like.

The d-2 situation is another example. The land directly involved is almost entirely federally owned with few private inholdings or private rights attached to it — and of course, the lack of defined private interests in that land is precisely what makes the Udall plan feasible. D-2 is a variation on a theme which has recurred frequently in this nation's history — conflict between the heavily populated manufacturing and consuming states and the areas producing raw materials. Resentment over federal decisions seemingly made at the expense of the politically weaker producing states is not a new emotion.

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So we can look at the Native land and d-2 decisions and others concerning public lands in Alaska, and the implementation of them, in a sort of isolation from the greater variety of economic, historic and political factors which influence similar decisions in the lower 48, and perhaps by viewing these things in their isolated form we can better determine how they may be dealt with elsewhere.

It works both ways, of course. We looked at the ways of dealing with the Indians in the older states and found that we should not and did not need to impose old mistakes upon the Alaska...