Established in Alaska since 1992
Everyone was very friendly and made you feel welcome. Excellent Hospitality!
-Kim and Jared Gaty - Cabin: #24
Naturalists were full of informative and interesting info. Food was delicious, well prepared and served. Managers were very helpful. We loved it!
-John and Ruth- Cabin: # 26
My handicapped child wanted to go to visit the Alaska wilderness, and they had everything in place to make the lodging and tours accessible for us... They even picked us up from the airport. I can't wait to do all of the tours! Thank you so much for the beautiful memories.
Karen S. from Montgomery, AL - August 2009
Secretary of State William H. Seward arranged the purchase of Alaska from Russia on June 20, 1867 for 7.2 million dollars. The treaty stipulated that Russians living in the territory could obtain automatic American Citizenship if they continued to live in the territory for at least two years. Native peoples were denied citizenship.
Alaska had no civil government from 1867 to 1884, but instead came under the jurisdiction of the army and navy. The remoteness of the region and lack of organization and laws made life in Alaska difficult in the extreme. It was nearly impossible to obtain title to land and conduct business legally. In 1884 the Organic Act introduced the first set of Alaska statutes, but enforcement was still difficult. The Homestead Act of 1861 was applied to Alaska in 1898, but very few settlers could fulfill the residency requirements for keeping their 160 acres of agricultural or 40 acres of non-agricultural land.
Alaska was organized as a Territory in 1912 and was granted statehood in 1959. One hundred and four million acres of land was to be transferred from the federal government to the state upon statehood. Land transfers were halted in 1968 due to Native land claims, and not continued until the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971, which granted 44 million acres of land and 962.5 million dollars to Alaskan Natives (see below). ANCSA also authorized the Secretary of the Interior to remove up to 80 million acres of land for national parks and preserves, and this provision eventually became the Alaska National Interest Land Claims Act passed in 1980 (see below). ANILCA created 106 million acres of new national parks and preserves in Alaska.
In 1986 all federal homesteading laws were repealed in Alaska, but it is still possible for Alaska residents to obtain State Homesite (5 acres), State Homestead (40 non-agricultural or 160 agricultural acres), Remote Parcel, and Lottery Land.
The legal status and treatment of Native Peoples in Alaska was quite different from those in the lower 48 due to the unique circumstances in the far north. There was little land pressure in Alaska, for the settlers came in search of removable natural resources, not home sites. Therefore, the Natives were not removed from their ancestral lands as they were in the continental United States.
Alaska was purchased from Russia in 1867. Russians living in the area were given the option to return to their motherland, or to remain in Alaska and receive automatic American citizenship after 2 years if they desired it. Natives, however, were denied citizenship and it was left to a later act of Congress to decide their legal status. From 1867 -1884 there was no civil government at all in Alaska. In 1884 the Homestead Act was passed, which promised Natives protection from trespass on the lands they occupied, but the act was not enforced.
Canneries were introduced in the late 1870’s, and American businessmen took ancestral fishing sites. Natives were often forced to work in the canneries and process the fish for wages that were not enough to buy even a fraction of the salmon they used to catch in the rivers themselves. Successive gold rushes brought white prospectors to Alaska who seized any land that might contain gold, and the Native occupants were powerless to stop them, as they had no legal status or way to file for title to the land.
The first Natives to organize to fight for their rights were the Tlingit and Haida of Southeast. In 1912, they formed the Alaska Native Brotherhood in Sitka in response to the taking of over 12 million acres of land in 1902 to form the Tongass National Forest. Their first battle was for citizenship for all Alaskan Natives, which they won in 1924 with the passage of the Citizenship Act. They then fought for and received a special bill that allowed them to sue for the lost land in the United States court of claims. The case went to trial in 1935 and was not settled until 1959, but it was a landmark victory for Alaskan Natives. The court ruled that the land had been occupied by the Tlingit and Haida and seized by the U.S. government without compensation and that the Native groups were now entitled to compensation. The amount of compensation was not determined until 1968, when the court ruled the Tlingit and Haida were entitled to the full economic value of the land at the time of taking.
Alaska became a state in 1959 and the federal government promised to transfer 104 million acres of land to the state. These land transfers were halted in 1966 by an unofficial land freeze imposed by the Secretary of the Interior until Native land claims were settled. Various Alaskan groups united to fight for land ownership. Different groups claimed approximately 375 million acres, slightly over the total land area in the state. In 1968, ARCO discovered 9.8 billion barrels of oil on the North Slope, and the land freeze became official. In 1969 the state of Alaska sold oil leases on the North Slope for $900 million amid native protest.
This unique combination of events gave the Native groups considerable political clout as both the state and the powerful oil companies had to wait for a Congressional settlement of land claims before they could proceed with oil development. The resulting bill, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA), passed in December 1971, was both an extinguishment of all aboriginal claims to the land and a social experiment. The bill attempted to address several different goals of the Native lobbying group, the Alaska Federation of Natives. These goals included retaining their ancestral lands, obtaining a base for continued political influence, easing the transition into the Western economic system, and creating a mechanism to address the severe socio-economic problems in rural Alaska.
In order to address these goals ANCSA provided for the transfer of 44 million acres of land and 962.5 million dollars to approximately 70,000 people of 25% or more Native blood. The land and money was transferred by the creation of 13 regional Native Corporations and 200 odd village corporations. Each eligible person was enrolled as a shareholder in both a regional and village corporation according to residence and ethnic heritage. Provision was made for Alaskan Natives residing outside the state.
Many special provisions were included in the act to help accomplish its goals. All executive leadership of the corporations had to be Native, stock was inalienable until 1991, and special subsistence hunting rights were granted to Natives. Many of the provisions are volatile political issues to this day.
Success of the corporations has been mixed. Those that received patent to lands with oil or timber resources have been quite successful. Most corporations did not, however, and the challenges they faced were intense. Few Natives had college degrees at the time of the settlement, and fewer still had experience in corporate management. In many cases people were quite literally taken off the street and told to become managers of mufti-million dollar corporations. Huge losses were incurred in the commercial fishing and construction industries, and hundreds of millions of dollars were spent on lawyers’ fees in disputes over vague provisions of the act itself.
Conditions for many Native Alaskans today are still harsh. Traditional village life has given way to ATCO trailers, television, and western consumer goods, but there is virtually no opportunity for employment in the remote villages to earn the cash to pay for those things. The mismatch between the reality of life in rural Alaska and the goals of western development fosters some of the worst poverty conditions in the world as evidenced by per capita income, life expectancy, suicide and alcoholism rates, educational attainment, and other indicators.
The Alaska National Interest Land Conservation Act came from section 17(d)(2) of ANCSA, which directed the Secretary of the Interior to withdraw up to 80 million acres of land in Alaska for the public good. After going through many revisions and compromises, a bill was passed on December 2, 1980 that set aside 106 million acres of Alaskan land for National Parks, Preserves, and other uses. ANILCA changed the Kenai Moose Range to the Kenai National Wildlife Refuge and enlarged Denali National Park from 2 to 6 million acres, among other things. Because ANILCA was a direct result of section 17(d)(2) of ANCSA, the lands parks and preserves it created are sometimes called “d2” lands.
Much has changed in Alaska since President Carter signed ANILCA into law. Alaska’s population has increased more than 50 percent, with most of that growth in urban areas. More residents are looking to parks for their outdoor adventures and, in some cases, demanding improved access and more “people friendly” parks. Tourism has moved ahead of timber and commercial fishing to become Alaska’s second-largest industry, behind only oil and gas. Annual visitation nearly tripled between 1980 and 1997, from 500,000 people to 1.35 million, and tourists now spend more than $1 billion in the state yearly. The National Park Service tallied 2 million recreational visits to Alaska’s 15 units in 1998, nearly double the number 10 years earlier. The majority of people are drawn by wildlife, scenic beauty, Native culture, and opportunities for wilderness adventure - just the things that Alaska’s parks are intended to protect.
More and more local businesses are tapping into the profitable opportunities that the parks provide, as indicated by increased business permits issued at some units. For example, between 1995 and 1999, business permits at Lake Clark National Park more than tripled, rising from 22 to 77. In 1999, the Park Service staff that manages three remote units in Southwest Alaska (Katmai, Lake Clark, and Aniakchak) issued 250 business permits, second highest in the entire National Park System, behind only Yosemite.
The growth in tourism and Alaska’s population is inextricably linked to another shift ever improving technology and changes in its use. Cruise ships are bigger than ever. A boom has occurred in the use of personal watercraft. A new generation of more powerful snowmachines goes faster and farther into more remote terrain than anyone could have imagined two decades ago. In one Native village near Katmai National Park, where residents did not own a single all-terrain-vehicle (ATV) in 1974, ATV’s now outnumber people.
State voters approved a constitutional amendment in 1976 to establish the Alaska Permanent Fund. A percentage of all mineral lease rentals, royalties, royalty sales proceeds, federal mineral revenue sharing payments, and bonuses are placed in the Permanent Fund. Money from the fund can be used in income producing investments, but may not be used for state operating expenses (however, interest from the Permanent Fund can go into the State’s General Fund).
In 1980, the legislature established a Permanent Fund dividend payment program that provides for the distribution of the fund’s earnings (interest income and capital gains on any liquidations of assets) among the people of Alaska. Eligible residents were to receive a $50 dividend for each year of residency since 1959. The U.S. Supreme Court declared the 1980 program unconstitutional on the grounds that it discriminated against short-term residents, and in 1982, a new state program was passed. Under the plan, an initial $1,000 dividend was paid to applicants who had lived in the state for at least six months prior to applying. Dividends are distributed each year to every resident who applies and qualifies, and the amount is decided by adding together the Fund’s net income for the last five years, multiplying that number 21 percent, and dividing that number in half. Did you get all that? In 1990, the dividend was $952 per resident; in 2000 it was $1,963. The Permanent Fund is the largest pool of money in the country, and the only fund that pays dividends to residents.
