With $500,000 in support from Sealaska, landless Alaska Native communities continue push for their own village corporations

NASA satellite imagery shows Southeast Alaska in true color on Nov. 24, 2001.
NASA satellite imagery shows Southeast Alaska in true color on Nov. 24, 2001. (Public domain image
by Jacques Descloitres/MODIS Land Rapid Response Team, NASA/GSFC)

Southeast’s landless Alaska Native communities want to form five new village corporations out of 115,000 acres of Tongass National Forest. The effort has new cash and — it says — the right political climate in Washington to finally get it done.

The 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act allotted millions of acres of land to 13 regional Alaska Native corporations. But some Alaska Natives in Southeast were left out of the process.

That’s created a coalition of five landless communities in Southeast, advocating for land and their own corporations. It’s an issue that has simmered for decades. But a recent infusion of $500,000 from the regional corporation Sealaska has energized its efforts.

At a meeting in August in Wrangell, Sealaska board member Richard Rinehart recalls the early 1970s when 200 village corporations were created across Alaska.

“We all thought we were getting land just like everybody else and it was just a big surprise that we didn’t,” Rinehart said.

There’s no apparent reason certain communities were left out. Those include the five southeast communities of Ketchikan, Wrangell, Petersburg, Haines and Tenakee Springs. Together they are home to 4,400 Sealaska shareholders.

Over the years, four bills were introduced in Congress to cede federal land to the affected communities. The most recent was the ANSCA Improvement Act introduced by U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski in 2017. It didn’t get very far. Her office says there was a lot of opposition in Washington over parceling out a national forest.

Now, the Southeast Alaska Landless Corporation is crafting a fifth bill they hope Alaska’s delegation will support.  It will be different than previous efforts in that it contains specifics — and maps that are now being released as the landless corporation takes it message from community to community. The bill envisions 115,000 acres to be divided between the five landless Alaska Native communities.

Rinehart says the climate in Washington is right for reshaping public lands.

“Today, we have under the Trump administration new heads of the Forest Service and they are in support,” he said. “They will not fight us they will sit down and talk with us.”

USDA Forest Service Chief and Alaska’s Regional Forester met with some of the shareholders and Sealaska’s legal team last year. The Forest Service wrote in a statement that it had given advice over existing land designations in the Tongass, but hasn’t signaled whether it would support giving up management of any forest land.

Some conservation groups are wary about carving up the Tongass. But they say they’re aware it’s a complex issue that involves trying to right historic wrongs.

“It’s our hope that we can support them by working with them in partnership,” said Meredith Trainor, the executive director for the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council in Juneau.

She says she supports tribal sovereignty but not necessarily if it means public land is lost at the expense of subsistence users.

SEACC opposed past efforts. But she says there are ways a new village corporation could get its land and be good stewards of the forest.

“Such as being included in the carbon market and through carbon sequestration where communities would be paid not to log the lands,” she said.

Rinehart said that with the decline of the timber industry, carbon credits make sense. Sealaska is already in the carbon credit market.

But the landless group says nothing — including logging — would be off the table.

The campaign is traveling to all Southeast communities releasing specific maps as it goes. The five maps should be available once its tour is completed next week.

KSTK - Wrangell

KSTK is our partner station in Wrangell. KTOO collaborates with partners across the state to cover important news and to share stories with our audiences.

Sign up for The Signal

Top Alaska stories delivered to your inbox every week

Site notifications
Update notification options
Subscribe to notifications