Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) FAQ
+ What is ANCSA?
On December 18,1971, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) was signed into law by President Richard Nixon, extinguishing aboriginal land claims and granting, in settlement of those claims, 44 million acres of land and $963 million to 12 newly organized Alaska Native regional corporations and more than 200 village and urban corporations. (A 13th regional corporation was created for Alaska Natives who no longer resided in Alaska; this corporation received money, but no land.) ANCSA challenged the model for Native land tenure common in the Lower 48—embodied in the well-known Indian Reservation system—by mandating that Alaska Native-owned regional, urban and village corporations own and manage the land for the Indigenous peoples of Alaska.
+ Didn’t the Tlingit & Haida settlement of 1968 settle land claims for all Alaska Natives in Southeast? Why was ANCSA even necessary?
No! It was actually determined by Congress that the 1968 Tlingit & Haida settlement didn’t fully settle land claims for Southeast Alaska’s Native communities. Southeast communities were included in ANCSA; however, as a result of the 1968 partial settlement, Congress limited each community in Southeast Alaska to just one township (23,040 acres) of land. Native communities in other regions of Alaska received up to seven townships of land each. By including Southeast Alaska communities in ANCSA, Congress ensured that these individual communities received land and resources to build and empower their own people on their own terms. Each community was able to receive one township of land for the benefit of their communities (in addition to benefiting all Alaskans through economic development and environmental stewardship). And still, while ANCSA returned roughly 12 percent of the lands in Alaska back to the Indigenous inhabitants of the state, the Native people of Southeast Alaska received less than 3 percent of their original homelands from the Act.
+ What was the history of Alaska Native land claims prior to ANCSA that contributed to the formation of the legislation and it eventually becoming law?
To understand ANCSA, it is important to understand that for more than 100 years prior to the 1971 enactment of that Act, aboriginal land claims were not definitively addressed by the federal government. Although the United States recognized Alaska Native land rights as “aboriginal use and occupancy,” land claims had not been addressed in Alaska. This caused mounting land conflicts all over Alaska, resulting in a state of unrest and dispute between Alaska Natives and the federal government. Learn more about some of the defining events that led up to ANCSA, here.
+ The five landless communities are asking that ANCSA be amended to include them. Has ANCSA been amended before?
es, ANCSA has been amended more than 100 times since its inception, but the most significant thus far has been the so-called 1991 Amendments , which included, among other things, provisions designed to protect long-term Alaska Native ownership of the Native Corporations and provisions authorizing the expansion of eligibility of shareholders under ANCSA.
+ What was the purpose and expected outcome of ANCSA?
ANCSA was intended to resolve long-standing issues surrounding aboriginal land claims in Alaska, as well as to stimulate economic development for Alaska Native communities throughout Alaska. It remains the largest land claims bill in American Indian and Alaska Native policy history and has proven to be a pivotal legal framework for Alaska Natives and the state of Alaska as a whole.
+ What were the positive outcomes that came out of ANCSA?
ANCSA has allowed Alaska Native corporations to benefit their shareholders through job opportunities, dividends, internship and professional development programs, support for cultural institutions and programs, environmental stewardship, and more. While some non-Native Alaskans believe that ANCSA and Alaska Native corporations do not benefit them directly, they in fact do! Alaska Native regional corporations bring diversity to the Alaska economic landscape, support tens of thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of revenue in Alaska, and create opportunities that extend far beyond their shareholders and descendants.
+ How many Alaska Natives were enrolled in ANCSA originally?
Approximately 64,000 original shareholders were enrolled in the 12 Alaska Native regional corporations.
+ Won't the recognition of these five communities open the door to other communities or groups to seek recognition under the act?
No. In order to establish a Native “village” corporation under ANCSA, a community generally was required to have a majority-Native population. But unlike most regions of Alaska, a large population of non-Native settlers had moved into the Southeast region by the early twentieth century to exploit the rich natural resources of what is now the Tongass National Forest—gold, timber, and salmon. It is our hope that our historical reality—the arrival of non-Native settlers in our region and their settlement in our communities—will not be held against us. Congress has recognized and addressed this issue of non-Native settlement for other similarly-situated Native communities in Alaska. In ANCSA itself, the “requirement” that a community must have a majority-Native population did not stop Congress from extending recognition to other Alaska Native villages that technically did not meet that requirement of ANCSA, including at least two villages in Southeast Alaska (Saxman and Kasaan) in which village corporations were established and four urbanized villages (Juneau, Sitka, Kenai, and Kodiak) in which urban corporations were established. The five Landless communities have long, rich Indigenous histories and our communities should have an opportunity to be recognized and to receive a sliver of our original homelands. Recognizing our five Landless communities would not open the door to similar efforts elsewhere in Alaska. We are not aware of even a single community in the State of Alaska that finds itself in the same position.
+ Why were these five communities excluded from the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act in the first place?
Congress did not explain why it chose to exclude these five communities. There is nothing in the legislative history. The historical record shows that the Forest Service and the timber industry actively fought Native land claims in the Tongass over fears that Native peoples would not develop timber. These five communities also all had large populations of non-Native residents. However, urban corporations were established in similarly-situated communities like Juneau and Sitka. Unfortunately, the real reason the five landless communities were excluded is not in the public record. A thorough report conducted by the Institute of Social and Economic Research (ISER) in 1993 showed that there was no distinguishable difference between the five landless communities and those that were recognized.
+ Senator Lisa Murkowski claimed at the conclusion of the Sealaska final entitlement lands bill that there would be no further ANCSA settlements, so why is this ANCSA amendment being pursued by the senator?
This is patently false, and obviously so, given the fact that Alaska’s congressional delegation continued to introduce landless legislation throughout much of the period in which it sought to resolve separate, outstanding issues for Sealaska. While Sealaska’s final entitlement land bill did fully conclude Sealaska’s land entitlement under ANCSA, it did not resolve other issues related to ANCSA like the landless inequity and Native veterans allotments.