Press Releases
Rep. Young Introduces Legislation Recognizing SE Native Communities
Washington D.C.,
April 1, 2011
Alaskan Congressman Don Young has introduced H.R. 1306 which allows Native residents of five unrecognized Southeast Alaska communities to organize five urban corporations, one for each unrecognized community. The Southeast Alaska Villages of Haines, Ketchikan, Petersburg, Tenakee and Wrangell have been denied fundamental rights and compensation afforded other Alaska Native villages under the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA).
“A significant number of Alaska Natives reside in these communities but have been denied the opportunity to establish village or urban corporations,” said Rep. Young. “There is no reason given as to why this injustice occurred, and the time has come to right the wrong. As Chairman of the Subcommittee on Indian and Alaska Native Affairs, I am proud to introduce this bill and provide a compromise and solution to those who have unjustly been denied rights to land and local resources that other village and urban corporations in Southeast Alaska received under ANCSA.”
In 1993, Congress directed the Secretary of Interior to examine why these five communities were unrecognized in ANCSA. The Institute of Social and Economic Research (University of Alaska Anchorage) report found no distinction between the five communities and other Southeast Alaska communities, and thus no justification for omission of these five Southeast Native communities from ANCSA.
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