First, as tribes, we are proud of the Alaska Federation of Natives, the instrument through which we united and were able to secure 44.5 million acres of our ancestral lands through the historic Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971.
We are also proud of our ANCSA corporations, which have been central to the revitalization of our cultures and to the recovery of Alaska Native self-esteem after centuries of abject poverty and servitude.
Nonetheless, ANCSA is a flawed law that, according to a respected Native leader, is an "experiment" that contains in it "the seeds of our destruction." Hence, Alaska Natives must remain united and work to amend this law that threatens the very survival of our ancient cultures.
Specifically, Sec. 4(b) of the act summarily "extinguished" the aboriginal land title held by Alaska's tribes along with their aboriginal hunting/fishing rights.
Our tribes cannot exist without land, no more than a fish can exist without water; without land the tribes are crippled and cannot fulfill their governmental responsibilities (law enforcement, education) due to a lack of jurisdiction (the Venetie decision).
Our tribes cannot exist physically apart from the fish and game that have fed our people for thousands of years and are integral parts of our cultures -- we even name our clans and tribes after them.
The act also excluded children born after Dec. 18, 1971, from ANCSA, orphaning them, leaving them landless and separated from us, their parents, and from their ancestors.
As Alaska Natives, we have, of necessity, been developing our ANCSA corporations for the last 40 years. Now we must turn our eyes to our tribes and their governments as we are undergoing hardships unseen in the long history of our people.
We have an ongoing epidemic of alcohol and drug abuse in our villages that, along with the violence that it unleashes on our families, compelled the Anchorage Daily News to call us a "People in Peril." Our children are taking their lives at six to nine times the national average. Sixty-two percent of children in state custody are Alaska Natives.
We also have to address the dependency that our people have developed on poverty programs because of the lack of jobs in our villages. Poverty, which along with discrimination deforms the human soul, is being experienced by 25 percent of our children.
ANCSA was a historic land settlement in that it returned 44.5 million acres of land to the Alaska's indigenous people. It also created economic engines to assist them out of the poverty that they are still experiencing today.
Now the corporations that we created through this act must unite with the tribes that created them to complete the work that began with passage of ANCSA, for we are still not done.
We will not be done till we have regained title to our ancestral lands, our hunting and fishing rights and the rights of our children born after Dec. 18, 1971.
We will not be done until we have ended poverty, alcohol and drug abuse, domestic violence and suicide among our young people while at the same time emptying Alaska's prisons of our young men who now comprise up to 40 percent of the population of those sad, but necessary, institutions.
We also cannot forget, or forsake, our children in state custody due to the inability of their parents to care for them at home. They are our sorrow and we must never let them out of our sight.
Yes, Alaska Natives must remain as united as we were during the historic fight for our lands, for a house divided cannot stand. We must overcome the artificial barriers that ANCSA and other laws have created among us and forge a new and better world for our children and grandchildren.
It is also in the state's interest to assist us. We are its first citizens, biggest supporters, and we are proud of it as well, for it sprang out of our ancestral lands. It is our state; we are the First Alaskans.
Quyana Cakneq (Thank you very much)!
Mike Williams of Akiak is chief of the Yupiit Nation, veteran Iditarod musher, school board member and tribal leader for almost 40 years.
By MIKE WILLIAMS