The World in 2050_ Four Forces Shaping Civilization's Northern Future - Laurence C. Smith [108]
ANCSA’s grand bargain was this: Aboriginal Alaskans would forever relinquish all of their ancestral claims to land within the state of Alaska, as well as their traditional rights to hunt and fish without regulation. Also, their old reservation treaties would be nullified. In return, they won fee simple property title and mineral rights to forty million acres of land—about one-ninth of the state of Alaska—nearly $1 billion in cash, and a business plan.
The U.S. government had just made Alaska Natives (aboriginals) the largest private landowners in the state of Alaska.454 The land was geographically divided among twelve “Regional Corporations” to manage the new property and cash holdings, and oversee further incorporation of more than two hundred village corporations within their boundaries. All of the new companies were then free to pursue whatever profits they could from their new assets, which were then returned as dividends to their shareholders. To become a shareholder, one had to possess one-quarter Alaska Native blood, be a U.S. citizen, and enroll with a regional or village corporation. A special landless corporation was even set up for eligible shareholders living outside of the state.455
ANCSA differed from all previous aboriginal treaties in at least two important ways. First, an enormous amount of land was granted, more than the area of all historical Indian reservations in the United States combined. Some grumbled that even forty million acres was a pittance compared to what had been stolen in the first place, but there is no questioning it was colossal compared with past treaties. Second, ANCSA did not create permanent sanctuaries for an everlasting traditional subsistence life. Instead, it incentivized use of the granted land not simply for hunting and fishing but for capitalist enterprise, with aboriginal-owned companies and shareholders running the show, to spur development and economic growth. ANCSA had blown up the traditional model of Aboriginal Reservation and replaced it with a new one of Aboriginal Business.
Today, Alaska’s aboriginal-owned regional corporations and their subsidiaries are worth billions. They’ve spawned hundreds of companies in construction, oil and gas field support, transportation, engineering, facilities management, land development, telecommunications, and tourism, to name a few. They publish shareholder reports, elect boards, and write five-year management plans. In common with other corporations some have done well and others not. Some have been mismanaged into bankruptcy. Others have squandered their cash endowments, clear-cut their forests, and sold off land or deeded it to their shareholders. But the successful ones, especially in remote areas, have become a dominating force in Alaskan politics and society. They create jobs and attract other businesses by offering logistics services. They pay thousands of dollars per year to their shareholders.
ANCSA was really just the beginning of aboriginal empowerment in Alaska. It also set the stage for home rule governments like the North Slope Borough, an enormous success story, which has built schools, sewer systems, and water treatment facilities, and brought many other quality-of-life improvements to the North Slope by taxing oil field activities. Much of its success can be traced back to the ANCSA model. Not surprisingly, aboriginal Alaskans today are far more supportive of oil and gas exploration, of land development, and of business in general, than any prior generation.
Out of Alaska
What happened in Alaska inspired aboriginal groups around the world and propelled an era of comprehensive modern land claims agreements across Canada. By 1973 the Inuit, Cree, and others also had legal teams pressing their land claims and, following Alaska’s example, thwarting outside natural resource development