Authors:
Historic Era:
Historic Theme:
Subject:
April 1970 | Volume 21, Issue 3
Authors:
Historic Era:
Historic Theme:
Subject:
April 1970 | Volume 21, Issue 3
Sir: In Alaska today sixty thousand Indians, Eskimos, and Aleuts are fighting peacefully to protect their lands from expropriation by the state of Alaska. Their struggle ranks in historical importance with the great Indian wars of the West a century ago. Some time in 1970 Congress is expected to enact legislation to settle Alaskan native land claims, and the reasonable demands of these claims offer the United States a priceless opportunity to do justice to its first inhabitants, whose treatment in the past reflects little glory on our nation. As far as justice is concerned, it is all on the side of the natives. They have conclusive legal and moral claims to most of Alaska’s 375,000,000 acres. They have not sold their land, nor ceded it by treaty, nor lost it in war, and were generally secure in the possession of their land until the Statehood Act of 1958. At that time Congress granted Alaska the right to select 103,000,000 acres of land from the public domain. To protect native land rights against the new state, Congress stipulated that “the state and its people do agree and declare that they forever disclaim all right and title … to any lands or other property (including fishing rights) the right or title to which may be held by any Indians, Eskimos, or Aleuts.” Despite this clear statement, the state has moved to lakelands claimed by the natives, lands that are essential to their survival. Today’s oil boom in Alaska threatens to accelerate greatly the dispossessing of the natives. The Atlantic Richfield oil strike at Prudhoe Bay and the $900,000,000 sale of oil exploration rights on a portion of the North Slope in September, 1969, are on lands taken by the state from the Eskimos. The Indians, Eskimos, and Aleuts are among the few hunting and fishing societies remaining in the world today. They live in delicate balance with the land. At this moment in our history, when thinking Americans are growing increasingly alarmed at the destruction by man of man’s environment, we can learn a lesson from the natives of Alaska that can help us preserve the land we live on for ourselves and future generations. Concern for the property rights of America’s aboriginal peoples has been a central feature of our public land policy from the earliest days of our government. A proclamation of the congress of the Confederation in 1783 and the ordinance for the Northwest Territory of 1787 establish the rule that aboriginal occupancy creates a property right that the United States alone has the power to extinguish. In 1823 Chief Justice John Marshall, in the case of Johnson v. M’Intosh , first announced what has endured to the present day as the cornerstone of judicial recognition of the land rights of American Indians. America’s original inhabitants are, he stated, “the rightful occupants of the soil with legal as well as just claims to