SELECTED THESES ON THE CIRCUMPOLAR ARCTIC

The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 (ANCSA) was initially regarded as the most generous and enlightened settlement between a modern state and indigenous people in history. instead of pre-existing tribal structures, ANCSA carved Alaska into twelver regions and created state-chartered native regional and village corporations to receive nearly $1 billion and 44 million acres of land. Corporate shareholders were Alaska natives born on or before December 18, 1971.
Through qualitative methods, and drawing from political science, economics, sociology, legal history and indigenous and area studies, two indigenous communities' pre- and post-ANCSA experiences are investigated, along with their broader statewide implications. Consequences of, and resources to ANCSA are viewed through changes in subsistence and other traditional land uses, community governing structures, and considerations of institutional, cultural, and physical geographies.
This dissertation argues that ANCSA exemplifies the concept of internal colonialism and refines rather than rejects previous federal Indian termination policies that serve to undermine local self-government, exploit natural resources, and appropriate indigenous lands. The peculiar institution of race-based native corporations, supported by the state and federal governments, drains revenues, resources, and people out of the villages; attracts natives and non-natives to the urban centers; fractures the traditional land base; confounds local governance; subjects subsistence pursuits and formerly tribal areas to state control; and gears much of the economic system toward resource extraction.
By locating ANCSA within a context of economic, political, and cultural globalization that seeks to substitute traditional collective rights in land with individual tenure in a 'free market' corporate economy, these findings apply beyond Alaska to other indigenous-state struggles over land and resources. As a post-modern and replicable policy, ANCSA attempts to atomize individuals and groups, then pit them against each other under the guise of economic efficiency and perfect competition. Yet native traditions, especially subsistence harvesting, are rooted in tribal structures, cooperative and reciprocal interactions, and communal land tenure. The cultural values and institutions that embody these traditions persist in spite of ANCSA, and hold the key to ongoing survival of Alaska natives as distinct cultural, political, and economic entities occupying their traditional homelands.'