Share and share alike: Alaska Native Corporations pour proceeds into the future.

• Author: Lavrakas, Dimitra
• Position: ALASKA NATIVE CORPORATIONS

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The 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) catapulted Alaska Natives squarely into the twentieth century world of business.

The twelve regional corporations based in the state have made good use of the up to forty four million acres of land and the $963 million paid to them by developing their land, diversifying their corporate interests, and buoying up their people's lives, language, and culture through significant programs their shareholders can access.

Section 7 (i) of ANCSA directs that 70 percent of all revenues received by each regional corporation from the timber resources and subsurface estates are to be divided annually among all twelve regional corporations. The landless 13th Regional Corporation does not receive Section 7 (i) money because it has no resource money to share.

"A great deal of litigation among the twelve regional corporations occurred over this section," writes Paul Ongtooguk in his book The Annotated ANCSA: How the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act Came About. "Legal fees costing millions of dollars were spent to decide what Section 7 (i) intended and how to implement it.

"When the fruitlessness and expense of such legal action became apparent, A Native corporation leaders held a series of meetings on how to carry out the Section 7 (i) requirements."

Oddly enough, the federal government had hit on the one cultural value that all Alaska Native cultures recognize and support: sharing.

"A core Alaska Native value is known in Tlingit as Wooch.Yax, which represents balance and reciprocity," says Nicole Hallingstad, vice president of communications and corporate secretary at Sealaska Corp. "It truly speaks to the basis of the 7(i) provision that we share the benefits of our timber and mineral natural resources with one another because some regions were more abundant than others. This also upholds our value of Haa Latseen, our strength, and definitely shows that we are stronger together than we are individually."

Follow the Money

"Sealaska has made more than $300 million in payments to the 7(i) pool," Hallingstad says. "A portion of the 7(i) monies that Sealaska is allowed to retain, or receives back as its own pro-rata share of payments to regional corporations, goes directly to Sealaska tribal member shareholders as distributions. This is an important cash flow for shareholders in the Southeast region, those in the state of Alaska, and to the almost half of our shareholder base that fives outside of Alaska."

It is true form of trickle-down economics, where the money is redistributed and used by village corporations for vital projects in the communities. ANCSA's 7(j) provision governs how those shared resource revenues are distributed from...