Five Left Out: A Generational Fight for Southeast Land Claims

Jaeleen Kookesh, vice president of public policy for Sealaska regional corporation, has spent the past twenty-six years of her professional career working on a legislative solution for landless claims. “With the support of the Alaska delegation, we have made it a top priority and made a concerted effort to advocate for this bill’s introduction in the most recent congresses,” she says. “This was a longstanding priority of Representative Don Young, and when Representative Peltola was elected, she continued to advocate for this legacy issue.”

Of Alaska’s newest member of Congress, Erickson says, “She is glad to carry on the legacy of Don Young and others who have striven to fix this injustice.”

The Path to Recognition

After the bill’s introduction in June, it was moved to the US House Committee on Natural Resources and the US Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee for review. If hearings take place in September after the legislative recess, the bill could undergo potential markup before winter break, before going to the floors of the House and Senate for a vote.

“We are hopeful that it will be heard at the beginning of next year or become part of the land bills at the end of this current congress,” says Kookesh.

“Alaska Native leaders in these communities are asking for no more than the opportunity granted to other Native communities fifty years ago,” Senator Lisa Murkowski said at the bill’s introduction. “I urge colleagues on both sides of the aisle to look at the facts and help us get this done, so we can finally put an end to more than half a century of injustice in Southeast Alaska.”

During the decades-long struggle, the bill has gained the support of Native corporations, including Goldbelt.

“We are helping to advocate for every Southeast Native community to be a part of what we have; there has been an effort to promote unity and collaboration around this effort with Sealaska leading the way,” says Goldbelt President and CEO McHugh Pierre. “While I can’t speak for the other ANCs, I believe that most people support the concept of allowing these Alaska Natives to have representation.”

Pierre notes that the Cedar Group, a Juneau marketing firm run by Goldbelt board member Todd Antioquia, provides communications services for the Southeast Alaska Landless Corporation (SALC), a nonprofit coalition formed in 2006 as an umbrella organization for the five communities.

“I hope with Senator Murkowski’s seniority and influence that this is a good time to get it done,” Pierre adds. “She’s been a big champion of this effort, and we’re hoping that the promises that were offered by ANCSA more than fifty years ago can be delivered today.”

Pieces of Forest

Murkowski is more senior now—ranked sixth among Senate Republicans—than her father was when the 1997 bill was first drafted. Generations are turning over while the landless communities wait for redress.

“The original battle started over 100 years ago, with the arrival of missionaries in the late 1800s,” says Harriet Brouillette, tribal administrator for Chilkoot Indian Association and a SALC board member representing Haines. “My personal involvement began in my early 20s when my mother told me that she just couldn’t do it anymore, and it was up to me.”

That was in the ‘90s. “Being a young, impressionable 20-something, it was something that I’d heard about my entire life, so I started by meeting with Frank Murkowski when he was a senator for Alaska to discuss the Tongass National Forest and issues in our community regarding federal lands,” she says. “Now I’m in my late 50s, and I have five grandchildren, and I hope that they are not fighting the same battle I spent my entire life fighting.”

As part of the bill, the five landless groups have made their land selections on US Forest Service maps, though these lands may not always match where they live now.

“For Alaska Natives in general, it’s much harder to select lands immediately within their communities because of the passage of time,” says Kookesh. “For example, Haines has mostly private property and state lands, and no federal or Forest Service land, so they had to select land farther from the community. The longer time passes, the more difficult it is to select immediately within their communities or in close proximity.”

One of the sticking points with earlier bills was the fact that land in the Tongass National Forest would be deeded to the landless groups.

“All of our homeland is within the Tongass, and there are interests who want to preserve public land and public ownership instead of returning it to the Native people,” says Kookesh. “Others assume that putting the land into the hands of Native corporations would mean that it would be developed or extracted in some way. That’s a pretty huge assumption, though at the same time, it is up to Native shareholders to decide what to do with the land as a matter of Native self-determination.”

Kookesh has seen a shift in sentiment favoring the landless communities, so she feels more confident that the legislation will pass this time.

“I think that people realize that this is likely not a land grab for the timber economy, which is pretty much nonexistent in Southeast Alaska at this point,” Kookesh says. “The land provides other opportunities that are not extractive; it is a different economic, political, and environmental climate.”

Human to Human

Meeting and working alongside some of the opposition groups has helped sway public opinion, according to Brouillette. “Quite frankly, in years past, we were concerned about sharing our information and our maps with the opposition because we thought the public might react negatively,” she explains. “Over time, we began looking at this not so much as a war with people in the opposition, who are mostly in the conservation community, but as a way to educate them as to why this is such an important settlement.”

During COVID-19, the landless groups began meeting via Zoom with the Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, one of the legislation’s biggest opponents, to talk about how they could support and help one another.

“We got to know them as people; we spoke human to human about our hopes, dreams, who we were, how we were raised, and more,” says Brouillette. “When you talk on a personal level and don’t approach it as a political issue, it makes a big difference. We shared how important this land is for our culture and our indigenous identity, which let them get to know us in a broader yet more personal way.”

Brouillette says the talks reassured the conservation group that the land settlement has nothing to do with logging. “The reality is that when Europeans originally arrived in our area, the land was so pristine that they didn’t know it was inhabited,” she adds. “Thousands of people lived in the Chilkat Valley, and they couldn’t tell because it was managed so well.”

While logging was once a way to make a living in Southeast Alaska, landowners are now looking at other ways to both preserve and profit off the land.

“There is actually more financing available for keeping trees where they are and selling carbon credits,” says Brouillette. “The areas that we’ve chosen would also make wonderful ecotourism stops.”

Justice Issue

Another point of agreement, she notes, is the importance of local control of resources at a time when outside investors have been buying up Alaska. “If someone has no vested interest in what the land looks like in 20 or 100 years, they don’t care about planning or managing for the future. I want my grandchildren, great-grandchildren, and future generations to enjoy these forests,” Brouillette says.

She adds that the Alaska Native culture is so entwined with the environment that it is hard to exist culturally without access to their own lands.

“Having our lands back would allow us the opportunity to hunt, fish freely, hike, and spend time in the forest looking for trees that are large enough to carve a totem or build a canoe,” she says. “We don’t have access now to large stands of timber for those purposes.”

Ultimately, Brouillette says a settlement would return land to its rightful owners. “I consider this to be a human justice issue; these lands were taken from us without our permission—we never released ownership of the lands—yet we are kept off the land,” she says.

“We hope that people will reach out to us and let us address their concerns as opposed to simply jumping to objections or opposition,” says Kookesh. “We’ve happy to answer questions so that everyone understands the issue.”