Mining partners in the new millennium: Alaska native regional corporations.

• Author: Freeman, Curtis J.

Alaska Native corporations have become powerful allies of the state's mining industry - sharing the wealth with developers, shareholders and among other Native land-owning regional corporations.

Over the last decade, the world's mining industry has expanded into parts of the world previously unaffected by man's quest for minerals and metals. In the process of this expansion, private industrial concerns have rediscovered indigenous peoples whose traditional goals and values are often in conflict with those of mining companies.

To say these encounters have been fruitful for all parties would be inaccurate in the extreme. Conflicts over aboriginal rights have stymied mineral development in parts of Australia. First Nation conflicts have cropped up around mining projects in nearly every province in Canada. African Native rights are only now beginning to be recognized, while Native rights dating back to the Inca and Aztec empires have created confusion and stalemate in parts of South America. The one bright spot in this otherwise troublesome picture is here in Alaska where regional and local Native corporations have become willing and powerful allies of mining concerns. A quick look back tells us why.

In 1971, the federal government passed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA), which formed 12 regional Native corporations that then selected approximately 43.7 million acres of land to which they received fee-simple title to surface and subsurface rights. (A 13th was formed for Alaska Natives residing outside the state; no land was given to the 13th Regional Corp.)

These corporations were also endowed with $962 million in cash. Lands were selected in distinct geographic areas to form the 12 regional corporations: Arctic Slope, Nana, Bearing Straits, Doyon, Calista, Bristol Bay, Aleut, Koniag, Cook Inlet, Ahtna, Chugach and Sealaska.

Profit-sharing plans called for distribution of 70 percent of a corporation's net profits (from timber and subsurface resource sales) among the other Native regional corporations. Ownership of regional corporation stock is limited to Alaskan Natives, thereby preserving the intent of ANCSA.

During the next quarter century, these Native corporations became increasingly aware of the staggering mineral wealth with which their lands were endowed and began to take steps to see these resources developed. Alaska Native corporations quickly realized that mineral development is a risky venture. Methods were needed to...