It’s hard to envision an Alaska without ANCSA

The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act turns 50 this month. Few could have foreseen, back in 1971, how it would help shape Alaska and its economy today.

Tens of thousands of Alaskans are now employed by the private development corporations formed by the act, known as ANCSA, which also transferred 45 million acres of federal land into private ownership.

Today Alaska Native corporations, ANCs for shorthand, do business worldwide, mainly in work for federal agencies. Profits from that come back to Alaska, with much of it reinvested here.

Native enterprises are now important sources of capital for business growth in the state, and what is important is that this is patient capital invested for the long term, not money from out-of-state sharks looking for quick profit.

Legacy Alaska firms, many family-owned, turn to Native corporations to form partnerships for expansion or to sell on retirement and Native corporations prefer to invest at home when they can.

Ever notice all those office towers in midtown Anchorage with names of their Native corporation owners proudly displayed? Much of that office space is occupied by operating businesses owned by ANCs.

Also, the dividends paid out to Native shareholders are an important source of new money brought into the state. While many shareholders live out of state most are in Alaska, many in rural villages.

Data released in past years shows that the dividends can be very substantial depending on the corporation. Much of this is spent in Alaska’s economy.

What’s remarkable to me is how ordinary all this seems today to most Alaskans. The ANCs are accepted as a given, as if it was always to be.

That’s not all true, of course.

Emil Notti, first president of the Alaska Federation of Natives, who is largely credited with steering the land claims movement to a successful conclusion in 1971, often pointed out that without the unique circumstances and timing of the 1960s — including sympathetic federal administrations under Lyndon B. Johnson and later Richard Nixon — and the discovery of oil on Alaska’s North Slope, ANCSA might never have happened, at least not when and how it did.

Things might have gone sideways in a number of ways. Willie Hensley, another architect of the settlement, says that had regional Native associations not overcome historic rivalries and suspicions, Congress would have used it for an excuse to do nothing.

Notti’s patient negotiating as head of AFN kept unity, and that was essential for the settlement, Hensley said.

Another way things might have gone sideways is if Alaskan politicians had not dropped their initial opposition to the settlement, at one involving significant acreage. Hensley remembers a tense meeting with then-U.S. Sen. Ernest Gruening in which the senator scolded him for pushing for a large amount of land.

Alaska’s then-governor, Bill Egan, was unenthused, too. The state voiced support for a 10 million acre settlement, but not the 40 million AFN wanted. Mike Gravel, who followed Gruening in the U.S. Senate, was the first statewide Alaska elected official who supported 40 million acres.

When he became governor Walter Hickel, like Egan, supported only a small settlement. Hickel was turned around. At U.S. Senate confirmation hearings for his appointment at Interior Secretary, he endorsed the larger land package.

How that happened is a tale. Hensley and other AFN leaders cornered the governor in his Washington, D.C., hotel room and threatened to oppose his nomination. Hickel earlier supported 40 million acres but then backtracked at the urging Alaskans who opposed the settlement.

U.S. Sen. Henry “Scoop” Jackson, who chaired the Senate Interior Committee holding hearings on Hickel’s nomination, placed great weight on AFN’s opinions. Having the state support the larger land deal was also crucial.

Interestingly, the first Alaska business group to support a substantial settlement was the Fairbanks Chamber of Commerce after its board was persuaded by Don Wright, who by then had succeeded Notti as head of AFN. Wright argued that having 40 million acres of Alaska in private rather than federal government ownership would be good for economic development.

Many Alaskans still opposed ANSCA, however, among them Bob Atwood, influential publisher of the Anchorage Times, who wasn’t shy about using what was then the state’s largest newspaper to push his views, and who influenced Anchorage business and political leaders.

What finally turned Atwood and other opponents around was the oil. Companies then planning the trans-Alaska oil pipeline to move newly discovered oil off the North Slope needed a right-of-way across federal lands, and that was blocked until the Native claims on lands were settled.

Historian Jack Roderick, now deceased, recalled Ed Patton, the first president of Alyeska Pipeline Service Co., showing up at an Anchorage Chamber of Commerce meeting and, in his typical blunt style, saying “No claims act, no pipeline.”

Alaskans badly wanted the pipeline, so that was the end of most opposition to ANSCA.

The oil industry helped lobby Congress for the settlement. It was an alliance of convenience, of course, but it worked. What is less well known is that two years later, in 1973, Native groups helped lobby Congress to pass the Trans-Alaska Pipeline Authorization Act, so the pipeline could be built.

That was an alliance of convenience, too. Half of the $962 million cash part of the ANCSA settlement was paid by an overriding federal royalty on Prudhoe Bay oil production. The pipeline needed to be built for much of the cash settlement to be paid.

ANCSA today is considered a huge success, but there were problems. Most of the corporations have done well, but there were stumbles for a few.

Some Alaska Native people also felt ANSCA’s benefits weren’t shared equitably, and that led to a robust renewal of a tribal movement in Alaska.

Today that is viewed as a positive, however, because tribes can do things on the local level that private ANCSA corporations can’t. Tribes can also tap sources of federal money for local services and development.

Despite its warts, the 1971 settlement is viewed as model of how a society can settle aboriginal land claims peacefully and constructively. Other Western nations have tried to replicate ANCSA. Only Canada has come close, and it was done differently.

In most places the stars, politically and economically did not align as they did in Alaska. Had this not happened, would there have been a settlement?

Probably, but it would have been smaller.

Would there have been a pipeline? Probably, but it would have been substantially delayed. And that would have created a lot of problems and hard feelings.

Tim Bradner covered the early land claims movement in the 1960s for the Fairbanks Daily News-Miner and the Tundra Times.

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