Alaska U.S. Senator Lisa Murkowski announced last week that her bill allowing five Alaska Native communities in Southeast Alaska to receive land entitlements passed out of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee.
The legislation, called the Alaska Native Landless Equity Act, would allow Haines, Ketchikan, Wrangell, Petersburg, and Tenakee to form Alaska Native corporations and receive 23,040 acres each — or one township — of federal land.
Those communities were excluded from the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, or ANCSA, when it became law over 50 years ago. ANCSA transferred 44 million acres of land to more than 200 regional, village, and urban corporations to resolve land claims throughout Alaska.
The Landless movement is not without controversy. ANCSA mandated the newly recognized Native corporations seek to make profits for their shareholders as a business. Because of this, some who oppose Murkowski’s bill argue that it would privatize 115,000 acres of land in the Tongass National Forest. During remarks on July 16, Murkowski spoke directly to the opposition. She addressed concerns about environmental conservation, but said that “this should not be the controversial measure it has historically been viewed as.”
“There are no better stewards of our Alaska lands than the people who have lived on them for thousands of years,” she said.
Alongside her statement, Murkowski noted letters of support from the Wilderness Society and the Nature Conservancy, both organizations that previously opposed the bill.
The Alaska delegation has been introducing Landless legislation since the early 1990s without success. In 2023, a Landless bill introduced by Murkowski cleared the committee for the first time.
In her committee remarks Thursday, Murkowski also noted that Alaska Congressman Nick Begich’s companion measure passed in the House of Representatives last month — with no recorded opposition. Begich’s bill is the first Landless bill to clear the House.
“I think there’s good reason for that because it comes back to the inequity that we have seen in an effort to do right by the Alaska Native peoples who were excluded so many decades ago,” Murkowski said.
Murkowski’s legislation now heads to the Senate floor for consideration.
