The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) was adopted 40 years ago on Dec. 17. It is still too soon to say with any finality what the ultimate consequences of this act of Congress may be, since the institutions created by it continue to evolve and the financial provisions in it created cash flows still weaving their way through Alaska's economy. What can be said is that it continues to have a profound effect on Alaska.
During the deliberations that produced ANCSA, the Alaska Native leadership insisted that the act was just a land deal: so much land and so much money for land taken. But, of course, land, money and distribution have endless social consequences. Alaska Natives, notwithstanding their diversity of language and culture, were, before ANCSA, of one economic class -- that is, blue- or white-collar working class with varying degrees of dependence on subsistence. On that account, they were united in many ways. That unity has eroded.
The act distributed wealth and power unevenly. A gap now exists between the executives who preside over regional corporate empires and persons born after Dec. 17, 1971, who, for the most part, even lack shares. In between stand those who are lucky enough to have jobs created by these empires and shareholders with widely varying benefits. There are also gaps between those for whom geography produced great wealth and those less advantaged. Alaska Natives are moving toward the same stratified capitalist demographic as the rest of Americans.
When ANCSA was being shepherded through the Congress, the non-Native government players were especially concerned about the socioeconomic consequences of ANCSA. Sen. Ted Kennedy, among others, had come to Alaska and gave national publicity to the deplorable conditions of village infrastructure. This publicity resulted in improved terms for ANCSA and appropriations for sewer and water. After the election of 1970, in which Bill Egan beat incumbent Keith Miller, seen as an anti-settlement governor, state officials usually stood aside, adopting a "flexible position," knowing that ANCSA's terms must be an Alaska Native choice.
The Federal Field Committee for Alaska, chaired by Joe Fitzgerald and staffed by a cadre of socioeconomic "whiz kids," developed an oversized, statistics-stuffed atlas of Alaska land and resources, inferentially recommending a much larger land mass for settlement to be held in a trust. But the Alaska Native leadership was appropriately suspicious of federal trusteeship, considering the record with the reservation system of the south 48, and Congress was hostile to the creation of "racial enclaves." This atlas became the principal tool for considering land issues and lines of distribution. But the Native leadership itself chose business corporations as the holding company form.
The choice of the Alaska business corporation as the holding company for both cash and land was one of the critical decisions of ANCSA but escaped significant controversy. As the act came closer to passage, Don Wright replaced Emil Notti as president of the Alaska Federation of Natives. With family members, Don owned a successful construction company in Fairbanks and was familiar with the form and its virtues. Most Alaska Natives were not. The failure to make funds available for business and corporate education for shareholders was one of the signal failings of the act, given the business corporation choice.
The business corporation is designed solely as a profit-making entity. Profit was not the sole business of Alaska Native peoples. Some, including Sen. Ted Stevens, saw the business focus of the act as desirable, a method of assimilation. But the maximization of control and choice, not assimilation, was the goal of the Alaska Native peoples.
Monday: Measuring the consequences, for good and ill, of the corporate model for the settlement act.
John Havelock is a former Alaska attorney general. He lives in Anchorage.
Important warning about e-mails purporting to be from the adn.com staff.