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Ketchikan: ANCSA Improvement Act Could Create New Native Corporations in Ketchikan & Southeast By MARY KAUFFMAN - The Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources Subcommittee on Public Lands, Forests, and Mining held a legislative hearing in Washington on 15 bills last week, including the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Improvement Act, S. 1481.

U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) spoke at the hearing to highlight the importance of S. 1481, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) Improvement Act. The bill, sponsored by Murkowski and Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) will help ensure that ANCSA continues to serve and benefit Alaska Natives as they say Congress intended. 

“Back in 1971, Congress passed ANCSA to settle the aboriginal land claims of Alaska Natives, clearing the way for Alaska Natives to receive 44 million acres of land and $962 million of compensation,” Murkowski said. “The law also pioneered a new method for U.S. treatment of Native Americans through the establishment of corporations to provide a continuing stream of income to help improve the lives of Alaska Natives.”

“This legislation is long overdue. It remedies and perfects legislation we passed 47 years ago. I hope my colleagues will join Sen. Sullivan and me in supporting S. 1481, so that we can finally fulfill the promises that Congress made to Alaska Natives all those years ago,” said Murkowski who is chairman of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.

The ANCSA Improvement Act as proposed will re-dress the omission of the Southeast Alaska communities of Ketchikan, Haines, Petersburg, Teneakee and Wrangell from eligibility by authorizing the Native people enrolled in the communities to form Urban Corporations for these communities under the Alaska Native Claimes Settlement Act and to receive certain settlement land.

The Improvement Act would also allow the Southeast Alaska Native villages of Ketchikan, Haines, Petersburn, Tenekee and Wrangell to establish additional native Corporations allowing these Native villages to reorganize as Urban Corporations. pon Upon incorporation entitling each to receive one township of land (23,040 acres) in southeastern Alaska from “local areas of historical, cultural, traditional and economic importance”.

Each Native who was enrolled as a shareholder fo the Regional Corporation for Southeast Alaska on or before March 30, 1973, would receive 100 shares of Settlement Common Stock in their respective Urban Corporation.

Members of the Native Villages of Haines, Ketchikan, Petersburg, Tenakee, and Wrangell who become shareholders in an Urban Corporation will continue to be eligible to receive distributions as at-large shareholders of the Regional Corporation for Southeast Alaska.

Subcommittee members received testimony from the U.S. Forest Service and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management. The Deputy Director of Policy and Programs for the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, Brian Steed, expressed the administration’s support for S. 1481. 

“The Department is proud to support the efforts of the sponsors to bring about resolution of many issues facing Alaska Native communities,” Steed said. “The Department supports this legislation and looks forward to working with the sponsors and the Committee on technical modifications to specific sections [of the bill].”

Steed also supported adding the Secretary of Agriculture for consultation and coordination on land selections resulting from implementation of the bill. In addition, we recommend that the word “township” be replaced with “23,040 acres” because some townships along the coast may be less than 23,040 acres.

Murkowski and Sullivan introduced the ANCSA Improvement Act of 2017 to correct oversights in the original Act and other federal statutes to respond to challenges ranging from erosion to incomplete land selections affecting Alaska Native communities. 

The Improvement Act not only makes technical corrections to the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act but also addresses other purposes around Alaska.

According to an Action Alert posted on the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council's website, their biggest concern with this current version of the bill is the threat it poses to lands previously designated by Congress for permanent protection in the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980, the Tongass Timber Reform Act of 1990, and the Sealaska Land Entitlement Finalization Act of 2014.

Regarding Section 10 which establishes new “urban” Native Corporations in Southeast Alaska for Alaska Native residents from the communities of Haines, Ketchikan, Petersburg, Tenakee, and Wrangell.  The Southeast Alaska Conservation Council wrote that once “recognized,” these for-profit corporations can select 23,040 acres of high value, “local,” public lands from the Tongass. As drafted, Section 10:

• Directs the Secretary of Interior to offer “local areas of historical, cultural, traditional, and economic importance to Alaska Natives” from the five communities and “give preference to land with commercial purposes;”
• Mandates economic development of lands no matter their importance for customary and traditional or historical uses;
• Expressly fails to safeguard Tongass lands previously protected by Congress in perpetuity as Legislated LUD IIs (“roadless wildlands”) in the 1990 Tongass Timber Reform Act and the 2014 Sealaska Land Entitlement Finalization Act.

Robert Dewey, vice president of government relations and external affairs, Defenders of Wildlife, issued this statement: "The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Improvement Act is a massive public lands giveaway. The bill would sell off hundreds of thousands of acres of public lands within the Tongass National Forest and the National Wildlife Refuge System to private profit. Lands that belong to the American people within the biologically sensitive coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would be privatized and opened to oil and gas development. These actions would have significant impacts on the wildlife that rely on old-growth forest and the Arctic Refuge to survive." - More...
Wednesday PM - February 14, 2018

Alaska Science: Where are the Yukon chinooks headed? By NED ROZELL - In a packed university conference room, biologist Randy Brown spoke of chinook, the fatty king of far-north salmon.

“It’s more than just a fish, it’s a culture,” Brown said to the Fairbanks crowd, many of them Alaska Natives.

Brown is the lead author on a paper in which he documented all the known Yukon River chinook salmon spawning beds in the U.S. and Canada. The fish biologist at the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and his colleagues spent years reading papers and speaking with people. They created a map of where Alaska’s largest and rarest salmon return to spawn.

Chinooks, also known as kings, begin life as fertilized eggs in the gravel of 183 waterways of the Yukon River basin: 79 in the U.S. and 104 in Canada. Some of the fish tuck into tributaries less than 100 miles from the Bering Sea; others travel 2,000 miles farther, swimming across the border and deep into Canada’s Yukon. The Journal of Fish and Wildlife Management published Brown’s study.

Salmon arrive at many crossroads during their migrations back to birth streams. One third of all the water in Alaska proper drains into the Yukon. The basin receives water from 330,000 square miles of mountain and muskeg that take up as much space as Turkey.

The Yukon is not the longest river in America; it is third, behind the Mississippi and the Missouri. But king salmon nose their way up neither of those. More than 100 million people live in the Mississippi drainage; 15 million more within the Missouri’s watershed boundary. Fewer than 200,000 people reside in the catchment of Alaska’s largest river, most of them in Fairbanks and Whitehorse - More...
Wednesday PM - February 14, 2018

TOM PURCELL: For Valentine's Day - We Need to Relearn the Art of Romance - I still have no idea why Laura Lindsey liked me, but she did.

It happened during my sixth-grade year in the spring of 1974, when she transferred to our school.

Laura had grace and style and was instantly embraced by the popular girls.

She was out of my league, but I pursued her nonetheless.

Trying to impress her one day while playing "keep-away" during recess, I grabbed the ball and ran near her.

I didn't know it then, but thousands of years of DNA were at work - the same primitive energies that caused cavemen to club each other as cavewomen looked on.

Laura looked at me. For a moment, our eyes locked - I felt a spark in the middle of my heart.

Laura Lindsey liked me! I wanted to buy her something romantic - which was a problem.

First, everything I knew about romance, I'd learned from the fathers in my neighborhood, one of whom bought his wife snow tires for Valentine's Day.
- More...
Wednesday PM - February 14, 2018

JASE GRAVES: A Valentine's Day Victim of Victoria's Secret - As Valentine's Day approached this year, I was at a loss regarding how to surprise my wife with a gift that would truly show my love and appreciation to her for not smothering me in my sleep. My daughters had presented their Valentine's wish lists (yes, wish lists) shortly after Christmas, so I'd already financed their gifts. But my wife (who never asks for anything other than that I avoid playing with that app on my phone that makes 500 different bodily noises - in church) was a harder nut to crack.

Then the clouds parted when I checked the mail recently to find, addressed to me, a special offer from Victoria's Secret. My internal rejoicing over my coupon was suddenly interrupted, however, when I read the horrifying phrase in fine print, "In-store only." I didn't even think men were allowed in that place. In fact, whenever I go the mall, I risk contact with the mall kiosk salespeople hawking bespangled phone cases, Dead Sea beauty cream, and Dippin' Dots as I veer away and avert my eyes from the Victoria's Secret entrance, festooned with mannequins who forgot to put on their pants. This time, though, I was determined I wouldn't let my self-respect keep me from making a romantic gesture at a discount.

Apparently, underwear at Victoria's Secret is categorized according to how much of it is missing. As I snuck through the store, I expected at any moment to see a table display featuring nothing but spools of thread. When I finally found something I could identify as human garments, I then had to find the correct size, which involved rifling through storage bins below the display table and constantly looking over my shoulder like a maniac to see if anyone was watching. 

Sure enough, it didn't take long for a sales associate (wearing all black - presumably for my funeral) to show up and ask, "May I help you, sir?" just loudly enough for mall security to hear. I had no choice but to be completely honest, so I told her I was looking for socks, to which she replied at full volume, "You're in the wrong drawer. Those are the cheekies." - More...
Wednesday PM - February 14, 2018