Alaska Subsistence A National Park Service Management History

Notes — Chapter 1

¹ Joan M. Antonson and William S. Hanable, Alaska's Heritage, Alaska Historical Commission Studies in History No. 133 (Anchorage, Alaska Historical Society, 1985), 45; Michael E. Krauss, "Native Peoples and Languages of Alaska" (map), (Fairbanks, Alaska Native Language Center), 1982.

² David S. Case, Alaska Natives and American Laws, revised edition (Fairbanks, Univ. of Alaska Press, 1984), 6.

³ Case, Alaska Natives and American Laws, 6, 57-58.

⁴ Ted C. Hinckley, "Alaska Pioneer and West Coast Town Builder, William Sumner Dodge," Alaska History 1 (Fall, 1984), 7-19; Frank Norris, North to Alaska; An Overview of Immigrants to Alaska, 1867-1945, Alaska Historical Commission Studies in History No. 121 (Anchorage, AHC, June 1984), 2-8.

⁵ Robert H. Keller and Michael F. Turek, American Indians and National Parks (Tucson, University of Arizona Press, 1998), pp. 18-19; James A. Henretta, et al., America's History, third edition (New York, Worth Publishers, 1997), 127, 176, 182.

⁶ Thomas A. Morehouse and Marybeth Holleman, When Values Conflict: Accommodating Alaska Native Subsistence, Institute of Social and Economic Research, Occasional Paper No. 22 (June 1994), 11; Steve Langdon, "From Communal Property to Common Property to Limited Entry: Historical Ironies in the Management of Southeast Alaska Salmon," in John Cordell, ed., A Sea of Small Boats (Cambridge, Mass., Cultural Survival, Inc., 1989), 308-09, 320-21. The long history of the Pribilof Islands fur seal harvest has been detailed in Dorothy Jones's Century of Servitude: Pribilof Aleuts Under U.S. Rule (Lanham, Md., University Press of America), c. 1980.

⁷ Norris, North to Alaska, 5.

⁸ Donald Craig Mitchell, Sold American; the Story of Alaska Natives and Their Land, 1867-1959 (Hanover, N.H., University Press of New England, 1997), 90-92. Annual reports by the Governor of Alaska to the Secretary of the Interior between 1910 and 1930 typically decried the deplorable conditions and funding shortfalls in the Bureau of Education schools, but little was done to remedy the situation.

⁹ Mitchell, Sold American, 94-96.

¹⁰ Theodore Catton, Inhabited Wilderness; Indians, Eskimos, and National Parks in Alaska (Albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press, 1997), 173; Taylor Brelsford to author, January 18, 2002.

¹¹ Henretta, America's History, 530-33.

¹² Mitchell, Sold American, 177-78, 261-62; Case, Alaska Natives and American Laws, 87, 116. Congress also designated a small Native reserve at Klukwan (near Haines) in 1957 on land that had been withdrawn by executive order in 1913. In 1915, Alaska's delegate to Congress, James Wickersham, met with seven village chiefs in Interior Alaska, and because the recently-passed Alaska Railroad Act promised a major non-Native population influx, he urged them to petition for reservations around their communities. But the chiefs' spokesman replied that "We don't want to go on a reservation we want to be left alone." As it turned out, Wickersham's concerns were overstated; outside of the immediate rail corridor, the railroad brought only modest demographic and economic changes to Interior Alaska.

¹³ Case, Alaska Natives and American Laws, 87-107.

¹⁴ Mitchell, Sold American, 263-65; Case, Alaska Natives and American Laws, 90, 94-95, 104-05.

¹⁵ Case, Alaska Natives and American Law, 133-39.

¹⁶ Morehouse and Holleman, When Values Conflict, 11. This exemption, promulgated for either humanitarian reasons or perhaps because enforcement would have been a practical impossibility, remained because Natives, generally speaking, had but a slight impact on the resource base. Even so, some non-Natives resented the exemption. Agnes Herbert and A Shikári, in Two Dianas in Alaska (London, Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1909, pp. 81-82, 101-02) ruefully noted that "the natives are practically unrestricted as to time, numbers, or anything else in their wanton destruction of game, both great and small, throughout the country such policy is an error of judgment," and they sarcastically added that the Alaska Game Law was a "beautiful and beneficent arrangement which permits natives to kill game in and out of season."

¹⁷ Pacific Reporter, 2d Series, Vol. 785 (1989), p. 6; Bob King to author, email, October 6, 1999.

¹⁸ U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Alaska Game Commission, Regulations Relating to Game and Fur Animals, Birds, and Game Fishes in Alaska, Regulatory Announcement 43 (Washington, June 1954), 3, 20. Natives were defined as those "of one-half or more" Indian or Eskimo blood.

¹⁹ US F&WS, Regulations Relating to Game and Fur Animals (June 1954), 6-7, 18-19. The regulations defined game fishes as grayling and various trout species.

²⁰ Alaska Department of Fisheries, Annual Report No. 2 (Juneau, 1950), 12; ADF, Annual Report No. 3 (Juneau, 1951), 12.

²¹ Case, Alaska Natives and American Laws, 391.

²² Claus-M. Naske and Herman E. Slotnick, Alaska; a History of the 49th State (Grand Rapids, MI, Eerdmans, 1979), 198-99; Case, Alaska Natives and American Laws, 406-09.

²³ Naske and Slotnick, Alaska, 306.

²⁴ Ibid., 136, 146, 148, 154.

²⁵ As excerpted from L. J. Campbell, "Subsistence: Alaska's Dilemma," Alaska Geographic 17:4 (1990), 82.

²⁶ G. Frank Williss, "Do Things Right the First Time": The National Park Service and the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act of 1980 (Denver, NPS, September 1985), 61.

²⁷ Case, Alaska Natives and American Laws, 61, 64.

²⁸ Williss, "Do Things Right the First Time," 63.

²⁹ Case, Alaska Natives and American Laws, 65, 69; Catton, Inhabited Wilderness, 184.

³⁰ "Fish and Game/Boards and Commissions, Reading Files" [various], 1950-1981, Series 556, RG 11, ASA. The following advisory committees met during 1958: Gastineau Channel, Homer-Seldovia, Ketchikan, Metlakatla, Nelchina, and Petersburg.

³¹ Alaska House of Representatives, Special Committee on Subsistence, Draft Report of the Special Committee on Subsistence; History and Implementation of Ch. 151 SLA 1978, the State's Subsistence Law (May 15, 1981), 7-8.

³² Evangeline Atwood and Robert N. DeArmond, comp., Who's Who in Alaskan Politics; A Biographical Dictionary of Alaskan Political Personalities, 1884-1974 (Portland, Binford and Mort, 1977), 102.

³³ Alaska House, Draft Report of the Special Committee, 8. In a December 20, 2001 note to the author, Ted Catton notes that the stipulations contained in Section 6(e) predated 1958 by eight years. The bill in the 81st Congress was S. 50; the provision was Section 5(g).

³⁴ The one-year delay for the transfer of fish and game jurisdiction was due to the efforts of Rep. Alfred J. ("Jack") Westland (R-Wash.), who introduced the so-called Westland Amendment in 1957. Ted Catton to author, December 20, 2001.

³⁵ The Session Laws of Alaska for 1960, Chapter 131, Section 4 defined subsistence fishing as "the taking, fishing for or possession of fish, shellfish, or other fishery resources for personal use and not for sale or barter, with gill net, seine, fish wheel, long line, or other means as defined by the Board."

³⁶ For example, see ADF&G, Regulations of the Alaska Board of Fish and Game for Commercial Fishing in Alaska, 1960, 67. The state also considered subsistence uses as distinctive based on income levels. As noted in the March 22, 1963 Daily Alaska Empire (p. 1), the subsistence fishing license (which cost 25 cents per year) "could be purchased by a person who has obtained or is obtaining welfare assistance or has a gross family income of less than $3,600 per year." This income ceiling remained until 1980, when it was raised to $5,600.

³⁷ Alaska House of Representatives, Draft Report of the Special Committee on Subsistence (1981), 12; Campbell, "Subsistence: Alaska's Dilemma," 82. The new regulations, which also provided for the system of fish and game advisory committees that had been established two years earlier, had the potential to allow a broad spectrum of fish and game decision making. But most of the early committees were formed in urban, non-Native areas, and urban sportsmen's groups—backed by the urban advisory committees that represented them—played a far more active role in fish and game decision making than did the individual or collective voices of rural residents. State of Alaska, Session Laws, Resolutions, and Memorials (Juneau, 1959), 91; ADF&G, 1959 Annual Report, Report #11 (Juneau, 1959), 7; "Fish and Game/Boards and Commissions, Reading Files" [various], 1950-1981, Series 556, RG 11, ASA.

³⁸ Williss, "Do Things Right the First Time," 64-65; Naske and Slotnick, Alaska, 209-10. To defend their rights, the Minto people hired attorney Ted Stevens, who had just stepped down from a long tenure with the Interior Department Solicitor's Office. Stevens, then in private practice, offered his services on a pro bono basis. Six years later, Governor Walter Hickel would appoint Stevens to the U.S. Senate, a position he still holds.

³⁹ During this period, nuclear explosions were by no means unheard of. Detonations had been taking place at Bikini Atoll, in the U.S. Marshall Islands, from 1946 to 1954; and on Amchitka Island in the Aleutian chain of Alaska, nuclear tests would take place in 1965, 1969, and 1971. In addition, many underground explosions took place.

⁴⁰ Williss, "Do Things Right the First Time," 65-66; Naske and Slotnick, Alaska, 205-08.

⁴¹ Williss, "Do Things Right the First Time," 65-66; NPS, The Alaska Journey; One Hundred and Fifty Years of the Department of the Interior in Alaska, 30-31; Naske and Slotnick, Alaska, 211.

⁴² This incident is covered in greater detail in Chapter 8, Section M(4).

⁴³ Naske and Slotnick, Alaska, 207-08. As David Case notes (pp. 396-97), the Inupiat Paitot lasted only a short time. In 1963, Inupiats formed a new organization, the Northwest Alaska Native Association, which lasted until the passage of ANCSA; then, to avoid confusion with the newly-formed NANA Regional Corporation, it changed its name to Mauneluk Association. In 1981, the spelling was changed to the more traditional Maniilaq Association.

⁴⁴ Case, Alaska Natives and American Laws, 389, 391, 401; Williss, "Do Things Right the First Time," 66; Naske and Slotnick, Alaska, 214.

⁴⁵ Naske and Slotnick, Alaska, 212; Williss, "Do Things Right the First Time," 66-67.

⁴⁶ Donald Craig Mitchell, Take My Land, Take My Life; the Story of Congress's Historic Settlement of Alaska Native Land Claims, 1960-1971 (Fairbanks, University of Alaska Press, 2001), 132.

⁴⁷ Naske and Slotnick, Alaska, 214-15; Williss, "Do Things Right the First Time," 67; Thomas R. Berger, Village Journey; the Report of the Alaska Native Review Commission (New York, Hill and Wang, 1985), 23; Federal Field Committee for Development Planning in Alaska, Alaska Natives and the Land (Washington, GPO, October 1968), 440. Udall formalized the land freeze in Public Land Order 4582, which was issued on February 17, 1969.

⁴⁸ In late 1968, given Richard Nixon's victory in the U.S. presidential race, Alaskans were hopeful that the land freeze might be lifted because Alaska Governor Walter Hickel, a freeze opponent, was nominated as the new Interior Secretary. Hickel initially stated that "what Udall can do by executive order I can undo." In order to gain Senatorial support for his nomination, however, he promised to retain the freeze until Congress could pass a land claims bill. Naske and Slotnick, Alaska, 216; Williss, "Do Things Right the First Time," 67.

⁴⁹ Naske and Slotnick, Alaska, 202-03; Case, Alaska Natives and American Law, 380-81; Tlingit and Haida Indians of Alaska v. United States, 177 F. Supp. 452, 468 (Ct. Cl., 1959); Mitchell, Take My Land, Take My Life, 198, 213.

⁵⁰ Anchorage Daily News, January 20, 1968, 1-2; Anchorage Daily News, January 20, 2002, F4; Rosita Worl, "History of Southeastern Alaska Since 1867," in Wayne Suttles, ed., Handbook of North American Indians: Vol. 7, Northwest Coast (Washington, Smithsonian Institution, 1990), 153-56.

⁵¹ NPS, The Alaska Journey, 95-96; Naske and Slotnick, Alaska, 218-19, 237-38.

⁵² Naske and Slotnick, Alaska, 219-20; Williss, "Do Things Right the First Time," 69.

⁵³ Naske and Slotnick, Alaska, 214-22.