Einar Haaseth served in Vietnam from September 1964 to December 1965, and never received his entitlement of up to 160 acres of land under the 1906 Alaska Native Allotment Act. The program has reopened, but for Haaseth, and other Native veterans living in Southeast, there’s a problem: Nearly no Southeast Alaska land is available under the program.
Last fall, the U.S. Bureau of Land Management announced an order and made available more than 27 million acres of public land to Alaska Native veterans who were unable to apply for their acres while serving during the Vietnam War between 1964 and 1971.
Of the more than 1,800 veterans across the state who are eligible to receive land, around 500 are from Southeast, according to Darrell Brown, veterans land specialist for Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska.
“The land that’s open to (veterans) is clear up there near Barrow (Utqiagvik) and Kotzebue,” Haaseth added. “There’s no way I’m going up there.
The parcels are mostly in the Kobuk-Seward Peninsula, Ring of Fire, Bering Sea, Western Interior and East Alaska planning areas, with a very small number of lots in Southeast north of Skagway and Haines.
Parcels in Southeast are extremely limited because so much of the land is connected to the National Park system or National Forest system and, as a result, is not available for selection. Southeast Native veterans don’t have the option to receive a cash payout instead of land, though they may be able to apply for a parcel up north and sell it with the permission of the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
On Jan. 18, veterans living in Southeast were invited to an event that offered them more information on how to apply for and receive land. The event in Juneau was co-hosted by the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska.
Candy Grimes, the bureau’s Native allotment coordinator, said she and other representatives came down from Anchorage intending to help as many Native veterans as possible get the resources they need to apply for the lands.
“Our goal is to have 100% applications,” she said.
However, among the 45 or so veterans who showed up for the event, there was general unhappiness about the lack of Southeast land.
“They would rather have landed in their homelands,” Grimes said.
Wm. Ozzie Sheakley, commander of the Southeast Alaska Native Veterans organization, agreed. “It’s too far away, there’s nothing in Southeast Alaska — we want Southeast Alaska,” he said.
Sheakley said he’s been waiting for this land ever since returning from Vietnam. For the past 20 years, he was a part of the efforts to push for reopening the application period. But to add Southeast land to the available parcels would require federal action.
Sheakley and Haaseth said they don’t know if they’ll be around by then. “There were quite a few (veterans), now there’s just a handful,” said Haaseth. “The longer they take, the less amount they have to mess with because there won’t be any left.”
“I’m going to do it because it’s all there is,” said Arsenio “Pastor” Credo, a Vietnam veteran from Juneau. “I can’t wait — an amendment could take 20, 30 years, and by then most of us will be dead.”
Jessie Archibald, a senior staff attorney for Alaska Legal Services, said legal representatives can apply for the land on behalf of deceased veterans who were eligible for the lands.
Eligible legal representatives and veterans have until Dec. 29, 2025, to apply for the allotments. According to Grimes, once the application is accepted it takes around two years for the allotment to take place. So far, 253 applications have been received, and eight have been certified.
“It’s hard,” Sheakley said. He explained that despite his disappointment in the land offered, he’s still going to apply.
Sheakley said the situation reminded him of what happened to the Cherokee Nation after the Indian Removal Act, which was signed into law in 1830, forced the tribe away from their ancestral homeland and into a land unlike their own.
“It’s a bunch of land in the middle of nowhere, we don’t know anything about up north,” he said. “We want our homeland, where we come from.”
Wrangell Native veterans “feel like they’re being left out, not only from land but from the discussions,” said Haaseth. “We don’t see anything, we just take the leavings that they give us. I don’t think that’s right. We all served under the same flag.”
Reader Comments(0)