ANCSA was a key turning point in Alaska’s history

Fifty years ago, when President Richard Nixon signed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act on Dec. 18, 1971, he revolutionized longstanding relations with Alaska Native people and launched Alaska’s new oil-based economy. His signature also laid the basis for major additions to National Parks and other federal conservation units in Alaska.

Seen in the broad context of Alaska’s early history, the Settlement Act was the central turning point of three major federal acts that molded the future for Alaskans: the Alaska Statehood Act in 1958, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) in 1971, and the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) in 1980.

Statehood for the territory of Alaska was hotly debated in the 1950s. At the time many doubted that Alaska had sufficient population and resources to support itself. Proponents saw land sales and personal income taxes as key sources of state revenue. Starting in 1949, while Alaska was still a territory, Alaska’s population paid a hefty 10% to 16% of their federal income tax liability. Regardless, Alaskans greeted statehood with joyful celebration. Old photographs of Anchorage show happy people circling around a huge bonfire hand-in-hand, and the front of the federal building draped with a gigantic U.S. flag, including a stand-out 49th star.

By including general provisions protecting the rights of Native Alaskans to land, the Statehood Act laid the basis for the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. Now, as we celebrate the 50th anniversary of ANCSA, we can commemorate some of the leaders who made it possible.

Though many contributed, the initiator behind this act was Willie Hensley, an Alaska Native from Kotzebue. He was the essential person who had the fierce conviction and persistence to rally supporters from all quarters and generate the mutual support — in his Inupiat word, the atautchikuaq — necessary to make it happen. He has written a memoir about this part of our early history.

Big things often turn on small coincidences. In 1966, when he was a graduate student at University of Alaska Fairbanks, Hensley took a course in constitutional law with “the young and brilliant” Jay Rabinowitz, chief justice of the Alaska Supreme Court. Rabinowitz required his students to write a research paper on a topic of personal interest. With this assignment, Hensley produced “What Rights to Land Have the Alaska Natives?” Rabinowitz gave his paper an A.

Hensley went on to mobilize diverse allies in Native and political communities. Key to their achievement was recognition of the latent power in the conflicting requirements of the Statehood Act. On the one hand, infringement of the rights of Alaska Natives was prohibited, but, on the other hand, the state was given the right to select up to 104 million acres of land. With this recognition, the Alaska Federation of Natives, with Emil Notti as president, proposed a solution combining land and money. The discovery of oil in Prudhoe Bay heightened the pressure, because the state needed to select and own the corridor where the pipeline would be built.

Hensley, Notti and others traveled frequently to Washington explaining their cause and building allies, including then-Secretary of Interior Stewart Udall, who ruled that no state land could be selected without resolution of the Native land claims. As Hensley has written, “Without his decision on the land freeze, our effort would have been hopeless.”

The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act provided a combination of land (44 million acres) and money ($962.5 million) for Alaska Natives. In the eyes of many, it has been a huge success. Native corporations are now among the most prosperous in Alaska — a bulwark to Alaska’s economy — and, through their nonprofit arms, Alaska Regional Corporations provide a range of much-needed services to their shareholders.

I will never forget hearing news of President Nixon’s momentous signature and the Alaska Federation of Natives celebration at Grant Hall. In other places, oil companies were celebrating. Elsewhere, some were celebrating the inclusion of a then little-known provision for conservation of national interest lands, Section 17 d-2, which provided for the withdrawal of up to 80 million acres for national conservation units. This section also created the Joint Federal-State Land Use Planning Commission “to provide a public forum for the debate,” and to make recommendations to the president and the Congress.

I had the good fortune to serve as staff planner to that commission, reporting to the federal and state co-chairs, people like Esther Wunnicke and Joe Josephson. Being with the Commission was a wonderful place from which to view the process of participatory democracy that resulted in the third major federal bill — ANILCA, enacted Dec. 2, 1980.

There was a heady sense that history in the making. Some people even went so far as to characterize the “d-2 debate” as a civil war, a battle of a young state against an overbearing parent nation. When I think of the public sentiment of those days, the image that comes first to mind is a popular booth at the Fur Rendezvous, which featured a dart board with then-Secretary of the Interior Cecil Andrus as the centerpiece.

In listening to the numerous diverse and powerful groups that advocated their interests before the Commission, it was clear that the intensity of the debate was because development was an unquestioned good to many Alaskans. In the early territorial days, life in Alaska had been a struggle of man against nature. Communities were “carved from the wilderness.” When the Anchorage townsite was sold, no one questioned the wisdom of cutting down all the trees.

Many Alaskans feared a de facto land freeze that would halt the state’s economy. Subsistence rights were challenged by national organizations who were unfamiliar with their importance for Native people. I remember Nelson Angapak from Bethel saying at a hearing, “How can you tell me that I can’t subsist? Do you know what that means?”

Alaskans threw darts at Secretary Andrus’s image, but much of the fear that inspired this vehemence has abated over the ensuing years. Even the fiercest of opponents of ANILCA seem to be realizing that act does not stand alone, that it was the final step in the three-act process whereby Congress created a mosaic of land allocation in Alaska. This allocation is comparable to a giant zoning map establishing areas for the many goals and needs of society. Boundaries were debated and set so that lands were at least roughly allocated to the categories for which they are best suited. Incompatible uses were separated, and some areas were protected for single purposes.

ANILCA, the Settlement Act and the Statehood Act were the products of an extended exercise in participatory democracy, a process that considered and reflected many interests. Seen in terms of the results, it was a process that worked.

Janet McCabe is a member of Alaska Common Ground and a former Anchorage city planner. Statehood was what attracted her and her husband, David, to move Alaska in the 1960s. She says David thought the opportunities for a woman to be involved in interesting projects would be better in Alaska than in Massachusetts; he was right.

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