Of all of Alaska's many superlative attributes, the Tongass National Forest is one of the finest. Comprising all but 2 million acres of the Alexander Archipelago (Alaska's southeast panhandle), it is the nation's largest national forest and home to the largest and most extensive stands of old-growth timber left in the United States.

In a rather strange way, the Tongass has been a fairly consistent bellwether of Alaska's continuing struggle to produce a viable economy while at the same time respecting the unique and extraordinary environment that defines the state.

The Tongass is a huge rain forest, 17 million acres, a third the size of Washington state. About 5.75 million acres are designated wilderness. About 7 million acres are wetlands, snow, ice and rock; only 10 million acres are forested. About half of the forested lands are old-growth, 70 percent of which is in protected areas and not eligible for harvest.

The forest was created by Theodore Roosevelt, our first "conservation" president. There was little development in the forest until after World War II, when an impending national newsprint shortage led timber and pulp manufacturers to consider the Tongass' economic potential. In this they were vigorously aided and abetted by Territorial Gov. Ernest Gruening and the Tongass' chief forester, later territorial governor himself, Frank Heintzleman. Gruening knew that his role was to pursue aggressively any possible economic development scheme for Alaska, with its narrow, dependent economy. Heintzleman thought five paper pulp mills could be established on the forest, creating 5,000 jobs and supporting 60,000 people.

But there was a very substantial structural hurdle: Native land claims. Authorized by Congress, in 1947 the Tlingit and Haida Indians of Southeast Alaska filed a land claim to all of Southeast Alaska, based on their traditional use and occupancy of the land. This was anathema to Gruening and Heintzleman, neither of whom had any intention ever of surrendering or sharing the economic promise of the forest. They went to work to get through Congress the Tongass Timber Act of 1947, which authorized timber leasing and pulp mill construction in the forest. Should it happen that the court might award prior ownership to the Natives, something virtually no one expected ever would happen, the act put the proceeds of timber lease sales into escrow for the Natives. Gruening and Heintzleman thought they had won.

Imagine their astonishment, then, when, in 1959, the court did in fact find that the Tlingit and Haida Indians had owned all of Southeast Alaska at the time of the American purchase. In 1968 the court awarded the Tlingit and Haida $7.5 million in compensation. It was a paltry amount for the Tongass' timber, and led Tlingit and Haida leaders to join the effort for a comprehensive land settlement, which Congress passed as the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971.

The new Southeast Alaska Native regional corporation, Tlingit and Haida's Sealaska, profited handsomely from ANCSA, receiving $200 million of the nearly $1 billion settlement in lieu of land, most of which is in the forest; they also received 400,000 acres and authorization to select additional land in the future. In 1975, in an advantageous ANCSA amendment, Sealaska agreed to restrictions on where it might select future land, including unique environmental parcels and areas that would affect communities.

Today, in legislation before Congress, Sealaska wants a revision of the 1975 amendment that would convey more old-growth timber for harvest and ownership of a number of sites suitable for ecotourism. But Sealaska has a poor history as a land steward; it has cut 85 percent of its 1971 lands, using highly destructive methods exempt from government regulation. Critics also charge that Sealaska already has received more than its fair share of economic advantage in the archipelago from ANCSA, yet wants still more.

Sen. Lisa Murkowski is trying to fashion a compromise that will satisfy all parties, a tall order, and we might wish her well. Criticism of Alaska Native groups has too often been met with careless charges of racism on one side and favoritism on the other. It will be a positive step forward if this debate over the fate of the Tongass should be free of such rancor.