A U.S. Senate committee last week advanced legislation to create Native corporations in Wrangell, Ketchikan, Petersburg, Tenakee and Haines — if it can win Senate and House approval in the next 12 months.
The five “landless Natives” communities were left out of the 1971 Alaska Native Lands Claims Settlement Act, which created regional, urban and village corporations across the state.
Legislation to grant lands to the five communities has been introduced to Congress multiple times over the decades, but this year is the first time any landless bill has made it out of a committee.
The Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee voted to advance the bill on Dec. 14..
Under the Unrecognized Southeast Alaska Native Communities Recognition and Compensation Act, sponsored by Alaska Sens. Lisa Murkowski and Dan Sullivan, each of the five corporations would receive about 23,040 acres of federal land — 36 square miles.
Alaska Rep. Mary Peltola has introduced the same measure in the U.S. House. Her bill received a hearing in the House Committee on Natural Resources on Dec. 5.
“This is something that they’ve been trying to rectify, basically, since ANCSA was passed in 1971,” said Joe Plesha, Murkowski’s communications director.
“The idea is that over the next several months, Sen. Murkowski will be talking to her colleagues and hoping to get this put into a package deal, so that it passes on the Senate floor,” Plesha said. He explained that legislation typically passes the Senate as part of a packaged combination bill, rather than as a single standalone bill.
“The odds are that, for this legislation, it would be part of a package. What that looks like, it’s a little too early to tell,” he said.
“This might not happen for … realistically for another six months for another eight months,” Plesha said. “It’s tough to have a real sense of what the next step is, but hopefully this will be addressed in the upcoming year.”
Legislation that does not pass before Congress adjourns at the end of the 2023-2024 session dies and has to start over the next session.
Murkowski said the bill would “right a historical injustice made when five Alaska Native communities were omitted from the 1971 settlement of Indigenous claims in Alaska.”
A congressional report 30 years ago was unable to find any consistent reason to justify the exclusion of the five Southeast Native communities from the claims settlement act.
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