Campus Center

The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 is without parallel in the history of the United States or the world, either in the record of land distribution or of government-aboriginal relations. As the scene of the 1971 meeting at which Alaska's Natives ratified the Act, the Campus Center, although achieving significance only within the past decade, qualifies as a building associated with events that have made a significant contribution to the broad patterns of our history and as one of exceptional importance.

The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act was the largest settlement ever made to quiet aboriginal claims. The approximately one billion dollars and forty million acres conveyed to Alaskan Natives were without equal records of such settlements, either in the United States or in other countries. The concept embodied in the Act of transferring these entitlements to regional and village corporations is also unusual and represents a significant departure from traditional agreements executed to extinguish aboriginal title.

The Campus Center, in 1971 was the scene of a three-day meeting attended by more than 600 Alaskan Native delegates. The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act was passed by the United States Senate in November on a vote of 76 to 5, and on December 14, a conference committee version of the bill was adopted by the House of Representatives on a vote of 307 to 16. For three days the delegates discussed the newly-passed law. On December 18, President Richard M. Nixon was advised that the delegates, by a vote of 511 to 56, had accepted the agreement. The delegates, clustered on the second floor of the Campus Center in the large dining area, heard the President say (by special telephone arrangements) "I want you to be among the first to know that I have just signed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act."

Historical Background

The complex historical drama that climaxed, almost simultaneously, in the White House in Washington, D. C. and at the Campus Center, AMU, Anchorage, Alaska on December 18, 1971, is substantially addressed in the 348-page book, Alaska Native Land Claims by Robert D. Arnold (et al) published by The Alaska Native Foundation, Anchorage, 1976. The account that follows is substantially synthesized from that work, with support from The State of Alaska by Ernest Gruening (2nd Ed., Random House, N.Y., 1968) and ALASKA: A Bicentennial History by William R. Hunt (W.W. Norton & Co., N. Y. and American Association for State and Local History, 1976). This, and the addended chronology from Alaska Native Claims, it is hoped, will convey the profound impact of ANCSA on the State and people of Alaska; as well as significant National and International overtones covering some two and one-half centuries of recorded history, with actual genesis shadowing from the millennia of aboriginal occupation of North America.

Russia claimed Alaska under discoveries beginning in 1727. The original charter of the Russian American Company contained no provisions covering the status of the natives of Alaska or the land used and inhabited by them. It merely provided that "the principal object of the Company being the catching of sea animals and wild beasts, the Company has no need to spread its rule from the coast where it practices its catchings, into the interior of the country, and it should not make efforts to conquer tribes inhabiting these coasts." That prohibition of conquest was repeated in the 1844 charter: "The colonial government shall not forcibly extend the possession of the Company in regions inhabited by tribes not dependent on the colonial authorities."
A Russian government memorandum (Koslivtszov) reviewing aspects of the Purchase says "... no attempts were ever made and no necessity ever occurred to introduce a system of land ownership" (in Alaska).

In the 1867 treaty of purchase, Russian and American diplomats stipulated that Alaskan residents could choose to become American citizens "with the exception of uncivilized native tribes." The uncivilized natives "will be subject to such laws and regulations as the United States may, from time to time, adopt in regard to aboriginal tribes of that country."

With rare exception non-natives at this time categorized all natives as "uncivilized". Although the attitude slowly altered--it, along with virtually every other aspect of Alaskan public affairs--was swept under a vortex of overwhelming impact: a long period of abject neglect by the people and the government of the United States. Ernest Gruening (for 24 years an Alaska Governor and U.S. Senator) characterizes this as The Era of Total Neglect (1867-84); The Era of Flagrant Neglect (1884-98); and The Era of Mild but Unenlightened Interest (1898-1912).

In 1879 the ranking U.S. official in Alaska, Collector of Customs William Gouverneur Morris, in his official report to Washington stated:

there is no law by which a man can acquire title to any land. . . . Anyone who settles upon the land in Alaska intending to hold the same by occupation until necessary pre-emption laws can be passed... [is] liable any moment to be ejected therefrom neck and heels by armed forces of the United States, and yet we are told the country is still unsettled. . . . A man can not sell a piece of property in Alaska and give a deed for it which will be legal. . . a man can not mortgage a piece of land. . . . Likewise, a man dying in Alaska is unable to dispose of his property by will.... There are no laws regarding the estates of the deceased, no probate judges, and no one has any authority to administer any estate.... A man may be murdered, his will forged, and his estate scattered to the four corners of the earth, and there is no power in a court of chancery to redress it. Alaska is the paradise of the dishonest debtor, for there is no law for the collection of debts...

A decade later, and four years after Congressional passage of the Organic Act of 1884--intended to correct some of these abuses--Presidentially appointed Governor A. P. Swinford reported:
Aside from the partial administration of justice by the United States district court and the four United States commissioners acting principally as justices of the peace, the government of Alaska is little, if any, better than a burlesque, both in form and substance. There is no legislature, no local laws applicable to the wants and urgent necessities of a territory so isolated. . . no duty enjoined upon the governor the performance of which is possible, no power he can exercise, no authority he can assert. . .

Even from the vantage perspective of the 1920s, a distinguished Alaskan public official, Alfred Hulse Brooks, would reflect the all-encompassing dimensions of this impasse. Until mitigated no attention could be given to any but the most elemental inequities concerning Natives.

"Alaska was the first of the non-contiguous lands acquired by the United States. The history of its government--or perhaps better, lack of government--clearly illustrated how unfitted the American people were to cope with the problems of colonial administration... a succession of errors, of omissions and commissions, which must ever be painful for Americans to recall. It is a fact, though hardly to be credited, that, during the first 17 years that followed the raising of the American flag at Sitka, Alaska literally had no government. During this first epoch, the few who took any interest in Alaska's welfare bent their energies to securing some form of civil administration. This was finally attained, and there followed another 11 years when the growing population of this northern territory fought for the principle of representative government. A delegate to Congress was finally granted in 1906, an act that so strengthened the hands of those carrying on the struggle that six years later a local territorial government was granted. It was, therefore, nearly half a century before the American principle of self-government was applied to this, our oldest colony.

With only one exception, no one (Native or otherwise) until the 20th Century would raise the question of a full-scale compensatory native settlement. That lone voice, literally crying in the wilderness, was Major-General A.W. Greely. In his Handbook Of Alaska, published in 1909, he stated:

What, if anything, does the General Government owe the natives of Alaska, and in what form shall the payment be made? It is a problem great in its moral as well as in its practical aspects. Having largely destroyed their food supplies, altered their environment, and changed their standards and methods of life, what does a nation that has drawn products valued at $500,000,000 owe to the natives of Alaska? Will this nation pay its debts on this account?

When General Greely, in 1924, revised and reissued his Handbook, he upped the value of products to a billion dollars and added several pages enumerating the aggregating problems of Natives in health, education, and welfare. By this time with the eras of "neglect" diminishing, the Natives finally began to organize and to initiate basic steps--both inside and outside of the government--which would lead toward a native claims settlement.

Greely was aware of much that had happened both nationally and in Alaska. Some of this should be reviewed before summarizing the actions and events (some unforeseen) that finally shaped the settlement.

The foundations of the American policy toward native land claims were laid in the Northwest Ordinance of 1788: "The utmost good faith shall always be observed towards the Indians, their lands and property shall never be taken from them without consent: and in their property rights and liberty they never shall be invaded or disturbed, unless in just and lawful wars authorized by Congress." Congress continued to ignore Alaska generally--"Indians" and whites alike--with the inept Organic Act of 1884; yet repeated again the spirit of the 1867 Purchase Treaty:

That the Indians or other persons... shall not be disturbed in the possession of any lands actually in their use or occupation or now claimed by them but the terms under which such persons may acquire title to such lands is reserved from future legislation by Congress.

The phrase "or now claimed by them" was added deliberately by the legislators. They realized that they knew little about Alaska, yet desired "that the Indian shall at least have as many rights after the passage of this bill as he had before."

Generally, U.S. Indian reservations came into being as a result of treaties between natives and whites. However, the government had never made a treaty with any Alaska natives. Congress in 1891 finally created one reservation, of 86,000 acres, on Annette Island "for the use of Metlakahtla Indians. . . who recently immigrated from British Columbia to Alaska." There were no more until a concentrated effort (by the government) was made in the 1940's.

The great influx of gold rushers in 1898 first jolted the government's long indifference to native problems. The initial impact of stampeders first impacted the Tlingits of southeastern Alaska. The Indians there appealed to Territorial Governor John Brady for help. Their complaints could not be easily reconciled. They admitted to an admiration for the whites' culture, yet demanded protection for traditional hunting and fishing subsistence patterns seriously unsurped by monopolistic fisheries and mining developments.

"We have places where we used to trap furs; now the white man get... these grounds," said a chief from Wrangell to Brady. Whites were getting gold money. "Here at this place as well as other places they take our property, take away ground, and when we complain to them about it, they employ a lawyer and go to court and win the case." The Indians asked Brady to write to Washington where the Big Chief resided. "Ask him to return our creeks and the hunting grounds that white people have taken away from us."

Another chief affirmed his willingness to give the country to the whites, although insisting that "we know this is our country." But he pointed out that Alaskan Indians had not given any trouble, as had Indians elsewhere, and they thought they should be given back "the places that brought us food."

A third articulate petitioner had visited Seattle and Tacoma and thought those were nice towns. He was sure that Indians would not be allowed to destroy the gardens observed there. By the same token, whites should give back the places where Indians from time immemorial had fished, trapped, and hunted. "And if white men should like to take possession of any of those places, we should like to ask you to tell them to not take them for nothing, but to pay for them." This was one of the first recorded mentions of compensation for lands.

Most Indians, however, also wanted the government to keep better order among their people. All knew that liquor was a great source of trouble. "Some of my people do not behave themselves, especially on Christmas, and will get to fighting," one said. "They get clubs and sticks and strike each other with clubs, and some strike with knives. I want that to be stopped."

Brady responded to the chiefs at some length. He argued that the Russians had treated them as savages who could not be trusted, but that the United States "has treated them kindly and proposes to treat them well." Tlingits had not always been good, he reminded them, and the Russians had reasons for fearing them. However, the governor refused to accept the Indians' self-image as downtrodden victims of white encroachment. Things had improved for the Tlingits, Brady argued. Earlier they owned few shoes or blankets and had fought among themselves constantly. "I know that the Tlingit are better off today than they ever were before in their lives," he stated, pointing out that in Sitka there was "one hundred dollars for every fifty cents Indians had had earlier."

Brady emphasized that the Organic Act of 1884 guaranteed that natives would not be disturbed in their possession of land, and he assured them that the law would be adhered to. He was vague on details of the Organic Act, but certain that the Indians could not claim everything. "The question is, do you wish to be put on an island and not abandon your old customs? Do you wish to be citizens of the United States and have (their) protection? It is for you to say." Brady suggested that they might want to move to Admiralty Island to live by themselves "and not be disturbed and have agents over them to keep them straight." The alternative was to obey the white man's laws and have all his privileges. "Which do you want?" Brady closed his address on a stern note: "Don't tell me you are poor and can't earn a living in this country; show some pride; see that your people do not sell their young daughters to miners as happened so often." Indians could work in canneries, Brady scolded, but they "persist in getting drunk" so the salmon packers had to ship in Chinese to do the work.

Other government officials were now declaring that Natives were the equal of whites "if they chose to be educated." "You must think of yourselves," they said, "and decide whether you want to be American citizens or want to live in your old customs." With the pressures growing, Congress enacted the Alaska Native Allotment Act in 1906; the federal government's first effort to deal with land status. Earlier legislation, such as the 1898 act allegedly extending homestead laws to Alaska, officials stated, was also designed to preserve native rights. In the Homestead Act, tracts of land along the waterfront of any stream or bay had been reserved for "landing places for canoes and other craft used by natives."

Actually, the Alaska Native Allotment Act was retrogressive--if not actually oppressive. In theory, but not in practice, it gave legal use but not clear title to some lands occupied by natives; as well as allotment of 160-acre homesteads for native "heads of households." Natives, however, did not understand the law, and they did not trust it. Few homesteads were taken up. Only eighty such allotments were ever issued under the act in a half-century after its passage. Since the act contained no reference to the general rights of natives to the land, they could only hold possession against others through civil action. Yet, effectively, the courts were inaccessible to them because of distance, expense, and lack of knowledge.

A conference between government officials in 1915 shows how confused the land question remained. Alaska congressional delegate James Wickersham and other officials met with the Tanana chiefs at Fairbanks. The Athabascans, like the Tlingits earlier, now wanted help. They reminded Wickersham also that Alaska had belonged to them long before the whites came. Wickersham offered two solutions: either the Indians could select a reservation, or they could each claim 160 acres of land under the Homestead Act. "If you don't do something," (soon) he warned, "the white man will take all the best land for theirs."

One chief replied: "We don't want to go on a reservation, but wish to stay perfectly free just as we are now, and go about just the same as now... (we) believe that a reservation will not be a benefit to us." The Indians strongly urged that their villages and surrounding land be protected from the escalating white encroachment.

During these years, Territorial Governor Thomas Riggs, Jr., had also assured natives that their villages would be protected. Wickersham, for several more years, while insisting that the reservation scheme would not be pressed upon Natives, actually pushed hard for their acceptance of it. He realized that when Natives asked for protection of their lands from whites, they were not thinking of just village sites, but of all the vast regions that they hunted and fished. "I don't agree with these people," Wickersham said. "They think that a reservation is a bad thing. I think a reservation is excellent and the best thing that can be done..." The vast majority of white settlers agreed with Wickersham. Another issue that continued to grow after the 1880's was the need for schools and literacy. The Indians also wished to learn trades. Wickersham promised to convey their requests to the U.S. Secretary of the Interior. "He will read about (you) wanting schools and work, and that (you) want to make homes and become like white people and want to learn to talk the white man's language and to work like a white man. As soon as you establish homes and live like white men," Wickersham assured them, "you can have the right to vote."

Wickersham also did try to convince the Department of the Interior and Congress that some form of land settlement should be entertained. But the issue was complex and the pressure was not that great so Congress continued to dodge it.

Toward the end of the "Era of Mild but Unenlightened Interest." one self-inspired act was to prove supreme importance. This was the founding of the Alaska Native Brotherhood (ANB) in 1912 followed, in three years, by the Alaska Native Sisterhood (ANS). Organization of the tribes of southeastern Alaska established credentials by convincing the 1915 Territorial Legislature to strengthen native- citizenship rights, which in turn stimulated Congress to give all American "Indians" voting rights, in 1924. As a result, a Southeastern Indian, William L. Paul, became the first Alaska native elected to the Legislature. By the time ANB initiated the action, in 1929, which saw Congress grant the first permission to Alaska for natives to sue for land claims (1935) Eskimo, Aleuts, and interior Indians began forming similar organizations. Their combined efforts brought the passage of anti-discrimination legislation in 1945. When all of these proliferating groups and organizations consolidated into the Alaska Federation of Natives, 21 years later the unified force necessary to bring to fruition an Alaska Native Claims Settlement was finally forged.

As noted, earlier legislation had authorized the President to withdraw land for native reservations, but only a few withdrawals were made. In the 1924 Citizenship Act, Congress had declared "that all noncitizen Indians born within the territorial limits of the United States be, and they are hereby, declared to be citizens of the United States: (But)... the granting of such citizenship shall not in any manner impair or otherwise affect the right of any Indian to tribal or other property."

The disinclination of Alaskan Natives to accept reservations probably improved their chances for settlement of aboriginal rights. During the 1940s several reservations were established by virtue of the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934 and its 1935 extension to Alaska. Other than Metlakatla the only reservations ever created were essentially minor--at Unalakleet, Akutan, Venetie, Karluk, Wales, and Little Diomede. A much more critical recognition of native claims began to develop when Congress in 1935 passed the ANB-ANS-inspired legislation that gave Indians of the Panhandle the first right to bring suit in the U.S. Court of Claims. This law specified that Natives could ask for compensation for all land taken from them from 1867 to the present. The court must determine an equitable and just value for the loss to Indians "of their rights, title, or interest, arising from occupancy and use, in lands or other tribal or community property."
Opening the doors to the U.S. Court of Claims finally gave natives an effective wedge. This was particularly significant since virtually all of southeastern Alaska had already been withdrawn, for national forests and public use, on a much larger scale than any other part of Alaska.
Judicial consideration of these Tlingit-Haida claims dragged on for years. Finally, in 1968, the court entered judgment in favor of the Indians for $7,546,053. The court also decreed that, except for eight small parcels for which patents had been granted, Indian title to an area of 2,634,744 acres had not been extinguished.

But once granted the federal government refused to allow any other natives or regions to bring suit in the U.S. Court of Claims. A further blow came when the Supreme Court declared (in 1955) that land rights were not protected by the Fifth Amendment. With the coming of statehood, natives' land settlement hopes appeared to be blunted rather than aided. The state's right to select 103 million. acres threatened to bar the natives from the most valuable tracts. In the ten years after statehood, 1959-1969, however, the state selected only 19 million acres. At the same time, Alaska's natives owned less than five hundred acres in fee simple and held restricted title to only fifteen thousand acres. Nine hundred native families held only a use permit on reserves which comprised 4 million acres. Eskimo, Aleut and Indians all protested the state's land selection process. Secretary of the Interior Steward Udall responded to this clamorous dispute by ordering a freeze on all land transfers in 1966. To offset the States and bolster their claims the villages and natives filed claims on some 296.6 million acres during this hectic period.

In a 1962 meeting of the Tanana chiefs--also stimulated because of the state's land selection--complaints voiced were much stronger than the familiar ones recorded earlier at the conferences with Wickersham and Governor Brady "We are no longer secure on the land which had been ours for centuries," the chiefs stated.

Conditions indeed had worsened. The white population increased substantially after World War II, with heavier pressure on the land. "Everywhere you turn you are bumping into a white man," cried a Minto chief. Statehood had benefited whites but made things worse for Indians. "Now a man (Indian) can only own land where his house is. The state is taking land right at Minto. If they take the land, our whole villages will have to move. We do not want to move. "The state
is now taking advantage of the native people in Alaska." He issued a call for stronger collective action. It was the same call that was now echoing among almost all Indians, Eskimos, and Aleuts: "We must get together and do something. There must be a way. We should have our land and build up our resources." Athabaskans fought and defeated a great federal project: "Rampart Dam will flood our land, destroy our hunting, destroy our economy. We have lived for centuries in this Yukon Flat... we will not be driven away."

Three major recommendations were made by the Tanana chiefs; a far cry from expressions at earlier grievance meetings. Clearly, the natives of Alaska had gained in education and political maturity. Their major requests:

1. We the Indians of the Athabascan villages join the Inupiat (Eskimo) in their request that the Interior Department immediately withdraw from the public domain. Alaska tracts of land around all Native villages, pending the establishment of reservations for those who want them or other settlement of Alaska Native claims which also will give the Natives full land, hunting, and mineral rights.


2. All villages should be truthfully informed how aboriginal land and hunting rights can be protected by the Department (of Interior) without restricting the
   Natives' freedom as citizens; and all villages which wish to do so should be allowed to apply for a reservation with full mineral and hunting rights.


3. In the absence of any determination or litigation of the Congress of the United States, relative to the lands in question, and in the absence of definitive instruction of the Congress of the United States; we submit that the rentals and royalties, primarily to oil and gas, should be held in escrow pending the determination by Congress, or the courts.

In the post-war period, the Federal Agencies had widely divergent opinions: The Bureau of Indian Affairs argued that all the lands and waters that natives had hunted or fished should be reserved for them. The powerful Bureau of Land Management--which managed most of Alaska--considered that natives now lived in the same manner as whites and that huge grants of land were unacceptable.

Other new forces were also emerging, some on a collision course and forcing Congressional attention. Thus the Senate Interior Committee worked through several 1960 sessions on various Alaska claims bills. A powerful new interest in the oil industry favored a native claims settlement in order to expedite the Prudhoe Bay-Valdez pipeline. Natives of Stevens Village had threatened to enjoin construction in their region, and other delays could be foreseen if the claims were not settled.

Congressional hearings now indicated a more urgent intent to deal with the issue. The Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs strongly stressed the "contrast" between Alaska whites and natives in standards of living: "Eskimos, Indians, and Aleuts spring from cultures very different from other Alaskans," it was noted. "The bulk of them live in dire poverty--the poorest of America's poor."

Congress was now painfully aware that seven out of ten adult natives had less than an elementary school education; that only one of ten natives graduated from high school; that children in most villages had to leave their homes for nine months a year to attend boarding schools. Natives suffered abominable health. "Largely because they lack cash income and because the costs of purchased goods and services are high, most natives live in small, dilapidated or substandard houses under unsanitary conditions." They were often the victims of many diseases. The average life span of natives was only thirty-five years--about half that of other Americans.

Natives "are not only under-educated for the modern world, but they are living where adequate education or training cannot be obtained, where there are few jobs, where little or no economic growth is taking place, and where little growth is forecast under present conditions." The Senate now intended a settlement to provide "a real opportunity to break the chain of poverty which circumscribes their lives from birth, to bring needed services and public works to their home communities, and to develop their human and natural resources, by granting money and control over their own financial institutions. "The basic purpose of (claims) legislation," it was stated, "is to give Alaska natives the tools for making their own decisions, and the funds and expertise for carrying out their own programs." It could not be expected that the settlement would solve all the natives' problems at once, but it would go "a long way toward enabling the natives to construct the community facilities, develop the job opportunities, and obtain the training absolutely essential to the maintenance of a viable society and economy in their villages."

After four years of studying all aspects of the land problem, the Senate committee reported a "general consensus on the structural elements which constitute the settlement." It admitted that parties to the settlement--natives, the state, the federal government, and nonnative Alaskans--did not agree on all issues and that all parties compromised to some extent. The law could be considered the last chapter in the history of the United States' relations with Alaska's natives and one manifestly "just, generous, and honorable." Signed into law by President Richard M. Nixon in December 1971, the measure extinguished aboriginal title in return for some forty million acres and almost one billion dollars. The act finally removed the storm cloud that had cast dark shadows over Alaska since 1867.

The assembled delegates in the Campus Center at Alaska Methodist University, who heard and cheered as the President made his announcement, had witnessed a singular event in the humanistic history of mankind.