The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, 1971

Abstract

The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 18 December 1971 is the most significant piece of federal legislation dealing with Alaska since the Alaska Statehood Act of 1958. The settlement is the largest single Native claims settlement in the history of the United States, and it has far-reaching consequences for the political and economic future of Alaska. ... the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act is the sequel to the Alaska Statehood Act. Indeed, it can be thought of as a kind of statehood act for the Native people, for like the Statehood Act, the Native Claims Settlement Act is designed to promote political independence and economic well-being through natural resource development. Statehood for Alaska resulted from an internal political drive that spanned almost half a century. ... the heart of the Statehood Act was the provision that granted to the new State the right to select some 104 million acres of land from federal holdings, with the exception of any Native lands, which were undefined. When the Natives claimed that much of the land initially chosen by the State was theirs by virtue of historical use and occupancy, the Secretary of the Interior late in 1966 imposed a moratorium, or freeze, on all further dispositions of federal land in Alaska pending a final resolution of the Native land issue by Congress. A speedy determination of Native land rights became a political and economic imperative for the state government ..., and even more so shortly after when massive oil fields were discovered at Prudhoe Bay and the land freeze became an obstacle to construction of the trans-Alaska oil pipeline. ... Economic development is the idée fixe of the Settlement Act just as it was the idée fixe of the Alaska Statehood Act. Fee title to a large amount of land, mineral and timber rights, profit corporate structures, ownership stocks, revenue sharing, and all the rest make it clear that the and claims settlement was intended primarily as a vehicle for natural resource development in Alaska. ... The effects of the Settlement Act on the political balance of the State will be enormous. The Natives and their organizations now have control of two resources that guarantee them a permanent, prominent place in Alaska politics, namely, money and land. ... Because of its economic development orientation, the Settlement Act may very well lead to an intensification of the long-standing development versus conservation conflict in Alaska .... However, on many issues, even development issues, there may not be anything that resembles a unified Native position. For its part, the state government does not regard the Natives as its prime political antagonist. That role is still reserved for its traditional enemy, the federal government. ... Indeed, the acceptance of the land claims settlement by all of the established economic interests in Alaska - the state government the corporate mineral developers, the chambers of commerce, the independent miners, and the labour interests - stems from the fact that it does not substantially redistribute existing wealth among those groups in the State. Rather, it promises to increase the total amount of wealth available to all; the Natives, for the first time, included. ... The Natives carefully made their economic development interests known to the public and to government officials. ... the land claims movement in Alaska had a very conservative style, marked by repeated references to the welfare of "all Alaskans" and frequent displays of the symbols of American political life. To be sure, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971, with its overriding commitment to economic development, is very much in the American, and Alaskan, political tradition.