The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act

In 1971 the Alaska Native Land Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) was signed into law, promising 44 million acres of land, a little more than 10% of the entire State, and nearly $1 billion, in exchange for extinguishing aboriginal claims.

“What's really important to keep in mind when discussing ANCSA is that it is a document that was developed for a group of human beings who had a very real claim to their ancestral home in Alaska. Their connection to the land is a spiritual one that transcends complex regulatory schemes.” – AJ McClanahan, Historian

The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, known as ANCSA, has been called an extraordinary experiment in relations between the federal government and indigenous peoples.

“When we started out, I don’t think any of us ever envisioned what was going to really emerge at the other end, because as a minority, we don’t really control the levers of power in an overall sense. But I think that our expectations have been far exceeded by the Native peoples’ innate ability to grasp these new institutions, understand them, and make them work. In my opinion, it’s a remarkable achievement. We took something none of us had any experience with and were able to make it work. That’s a great credit to the Native people in Alaska.” – William L. (Willie) Hensley

A Bold Experiment

Many observers consider ANCSA one of the boldest experiments in social and economic public policy ever undertaken. Congress conceived ANCSA in an attempt to avoid the mistakes of the reservation system established for Native Americans in the Lower 48 during the 19th Century, which had the effects of disenfranchising whole cultures, hindering their integration with the rest of the country, and limiting their economic growth. With ANCSA, Congress was attempting to empower Alaska's Native peoples by giving them control over their own corporations and large tracts of land. These corporations were created as private entities, free to make decisions without government oversight and subject only to the same federal and state laws that govern all other private corporations.

It must be noted that Congress was motivated to settle Native land claims so that it could clear title for a trans-Alaska oil pipeline. Regardless of the government's motivation, the result was an unprecedented settlement for Alaska's Native peoples that starkly contrasted the country's treatment of American Indians.

Land Management

ANSCA became a vehicle for far-reaching changes in federal land management in Alaska. The Act set the stage for, and led directly to, the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980 (ANILCA,) under which 80 million acres of federal public domain land was designated as national parks, wildlife refuges, national forests, and wild and scenic rivers. Of this, 55 million acres were classified as "Wilderness," the most protected classification possible under federal law.

The Importance Of ANCSA To Alaska

The 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act is important to Alaska for three primary reasons:

1. The legal dispute over title to federal and state-owned lands in Alaska was resolved.
2. A significant base of private land ownership was created in an underdeveloped state where, previously, the majority of land was owned by the federal government. This private ownership made opportunities, such as natural resource development, suddenly viable and was a significant inducement for new investment in the state. If these lands were still controlled by the government today, there would be far less development. To cite one example, Red Dog Mine, the world's largest zinc mine, was developed by NANA, which was not required to include the mineral prospect, as it would have if the federal government were the landowner. The infrastructure created for Red Dog will eventually lead to development of other mines in Northwest Alaska.
3. A pool of Alaska-owned and -controlled investment capital was created. While prudent management requires some of the capital to be in diversified investments outside Alaska, a large percentage has been invested in business and industrial support enterprises inside the state.

Today, Alaska’s Native corporations are widely diversified through most sectors of the state’s economy. They are involved in mining, oil and gas services and production, real estate, construction, engineering and technical services, finance, and government contracting. Unlike corporations controlled from outside Alaska, Alaska Native corporations have an incentive to invest within the state to create jobs and training opportunities for their shareholders. While these investments have created jobs for shareholders, many more jobs have been created for non-shareholder Alaskans.

How ANCSA Works

The 12 Alaska-based regional corporations and the village corporations each own land in different ways. ANCSA allowed both types of corporations to select federal lands within their traditional boundaries (in NANA’s case, for example, Northwest Alaska).

Village corporations selected lands near their villages, in most cases. Subsurface mineral rights to all lands went to the regional corporation. Village corporations owned surface lands. In the NANA Region, all of the villages, except Kotzebue, merged their assets with the regional corporation to simplify land ownership and reduce administrative burdens.

An important provision of ANCSA requires both regional and village corporations to share 70 percent of their natural resource revenues. This protects those corporations that do not have significant natural resources. For example, all Native corporations benefit when a mine is developed or oil is discovered or timber is logged on one corporation’s land. Alaska's system starkly contrasts the reservation system in the Lower 48 in which tribes who, due to fortunate location, are able to own and operate successful businesses, such as casinos, are not required to share revenues with tribes who cannot.

There are a few exceptions to the structure of Alaska's regional and village corporations. ANCSA allowed communities located on previously established reservations the option to own their reservation lands, both surface and mineral title, and not participate in the cash settlement. All villages on reservations chose this option; for example, Venetie in the northern interior and St. Lawrence Island in the Bering Sea.

NANA Regional Corporation

Today, NANA has approximately 11,400 shareholders and owns about 2.2 million acres of surface land and subsurface mineral rights. Like other Native corporations, NANA maintains an investment portfolio of financial assets and also earns royalties from zinc and lead production at the Red Dog Mine, the majority of which is shared with other Native corporations.

Through NANA Development Corporation, our business subsidiary, NANA is engaged in business enterprises ranging from mining to oil and gas support work, to hotels, catering and facility management, to security and engineering and government contracting.