There were more than a dozen tents scattered across patches of grass and log cabins. The National Science Foundation had funded the event. In order to have a deeper conversation on the impacts of climate change and its solutions, the Association for Interior Native Educators, PoLAR Partnership, and International Arctic Research Center collaborated on the project. Combining Alaska Native science and perspectives with Western ones. Collaborating on Climate: The Signs of the Land Camp as a Model for Meaningful Learning Between Indigenous Communities and Western Climate Scientists by Malinda Chase (Deg Hit’an Dene’) among others.

ince right now we’re really celebrating and looking at the 50th anniversary of ANCSA. I have to say that William Paul [Sr, Lingít] should be regarded as the father of Native land claims,” said Sealaska Heritage Institute President Rosita Worl, PhD (Lingít) after a recent talk on William’s early life by his grandson Ben Paul.

“We’ve had many, many great leaders who have come after him, but he was the one that began it,” she said.

Decades before Congress adopted the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA), the Lingít and Haida Indians of southeast Alaska waged claims battles launched by Paul (1885-1977).

s a young boy, Saityen was displaced from the Nendaaghe River (Noatak River) sometime after 1820. He came from a community who called themselves the Nendaaghe Hut’aane Koyukon people. They were exclusively caribou hunters.

Unbeknownst to Saityen’s people, geologic events took place across the world that caused a period of sudden unexpected cooling. The initial cooling was so severe that it caused some family groups, fearing starvation, to abandon their land to join relatives far to the east, around 270 miles as the crow flies. Unfortunately, this left a weakened community of Nendaaghe Hut’aane on the upper Nendaaghe. This was not good.

The ANCSA Regional Association

laska Native corporations (ANCs) are as diverse as the Alaska Native shareholders and communities they represent, all with varying interests. An organization works behind the scenes to support ANCs in areas where those interests intersect; it started to come together after the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) was half as old as it is now.

In 1997, a group of Alaska Native regional corporation leaders came together to discuss the unique advantages of creating a forum where they could collaborate on issues they had in common. They agreed that, given the differences in purpose, structure, and mandates among ANCs and other organizations representing Alaska Native people, they must discuss and respond to the common challenges faced by Alaska Native regional corporations.

This group included Carl Marrs, Cook Inlet Region, Incorporated; Michael Brown, Bristol Bay Native Corporation; Oliver Leavitt, Arctic Slope Regional Corporation; Dennis Metrokin, Koniag; and Morris Thompson, Doyon, Limited. These Alaska Native leaders understood that while the twelve regional corporations operated different businesses, they also had similarities and there were many common issues that affected ANCs and Alaska as a whole.

by Blossom Teal Olsen (Iñupiaq)

We Are Still Here

I am no longer my Ancestors

The voices of this world tell us that our world has past

The people who live on the land that we have taken care of for millennia say that we need to move on

by Blossom Teal Olsen (Iñupiaq)

There is No Such Thing as Time

Before the government told us that we were a government

Our Elders listened to one another, as their Elders listened to one another

by Blossom Teal Olsen (Iñupiaq)

Laws Affect Us

The rest of Americans live in their houses and drive their cars and fly in planes

Meanwhile, the Indigenous are fractions of people who belong to nations older than the government we call America