Alaska Native in Traditional Times: A Cultural Profile
Project
as of July 2011
Do not quote or copy without permission from Mike
Gaffney or from Ray Barnhardt at
the Alaska Native Knowledge Network, University of Alaska-Fairbanks. For
an overview of the purpose and design of the Cultural Profile Project, see Instructional
Notes for Teachers.
Mike Gaffney
Chapter Four
Alaskan Environments and Native Adaptations
Climate – arctic, sub-arctic, maritime, seasonal changes
Physiography – physical features of the area – tundra, rivers, mountains,
valleys, ocean conditions (e.g., sea ice)
Flora – plant life
Fauna – land animals, sea mammals, water fowl, fish
Demographics – Size & distribution of population, settlement patterns
Land use – Mapping uses of lands & waters – location and boundaries,
community security
As shown above, this chapter gets you started on the Cultural Profile of your selected
Native group or groups. It provides you with an instructional guide for profiling elements of the
environment inhabited by your Native group(s) and their use and occupancy of land. These
elements are exactly the same as listed in the Cultural Profile Project Outline on page three. The
chapters to come on Social Organization, Worldview, and Cultural Products offer similar
instructional guidance for completing your project. You will find, however, that this and the
remaining chapters offer much more than a simple guide. As said before, we want to carefully
explain the concepts we use to organize our thinking about Native societies in traditional times.
What exactly do we mean, for example, when we use concepts like environmental adaptation or
land-use patterns or social stratification or governance or shamanism?
The Big Picture
South vs. North. Here we emphasize
the idea that elements of the environment set the parameters, the outer
limits, of what environmental adaptations were possible for subsistence-
based Native societies occupying a particular region. Again, the amount and
kind of subsistence and material resources available in the environment
largely determined what that Native society
looked like demographically, socially, and technologically. The Aleuts (Unagan),
for example, could do things within their maritime island environment that
Interior Athabaskans could not do
within their landlocked sub-Arctic environment. Of course interior Athabaskans
could do things that Aleuts could not.
Now let’s take a moment to paint the broadest possible picture of the
relationship between Alaska’s different environments and the social
organizations of Native groups
inhabiting these areas. Look at a map of Alaska which shows the Alaska Range.
Denali (Mt. McKinley) is the best known topographic feature of this mountain
range which stretches across
most of Alaska from east to west. Now draw or imagine a line along the top
of the Alaska range. South of that line – south of the Alaska Range – we
find very different environments and traditional Native social organizations
from what we find north of the Range. Note that the
Alaska Range does not extend into Southwest Alaska and the Central Yup’ik
homeland. Shortly we discuss this regional environment as a “transitional
zone.”
The South. Easy year-round access
to abundant marine resources in the oceans and rivers south of the
Alaska range supported larger Native populations. It is true that in important
ways the southern Alaskan
regional environments of the Aleut and the Tlingit are different. The
Aleuts lived mainly on barren, windswept islands and the Tlingit in areas
of high mountains, old growth forests, and sheltered bays and coves.
But the important point is that both of these very
different regional environments yielded a steady supply, even surpluses,
of subsistence marine resources.
Not only were southern Native populations
larger but their settlements were more densely populated and more permanent
than those found in the
north. By “densely populated” we mean a
large concentration of people within an given area. There are, for
example, many more people living within each square mile of New York
City than
people living within each square mile of
Fairbanks, Alaska. The southern settlements, moreover, were much more
permanent because they had easy access to their subsistence resources
throughout the year. Unlike many northern
Native societies, people were not forced to move with the seasons or
spend weeks on a hunting or fishing expedition just to meet the basic
dietary needs of their families. To say that their
primary subsistence resources lay just outside their front door is
not much of an exaggeration.
When added together, these factors — large,
permanent, densely populated settlements with abundant resources — led
to the development of a more elaborate social organization to regulate
tribal affairs. Certainly we will find more and larger government departments
and
neighborhood institutions such as churches and schools in New York
than in Fairbanks. Another prominent feature of the more complex southern
Native societies was their hierarchical social
structure. A hierarchical or ranked society exists when there is an
unequal
distribution of wealth, power, and social status among different classes
of people. When we ask about the structure and
distribution of wealth, power, and social status, we are asking about
a society’s social
stratification – its system of social ranking.
The social stratification of southern Native societies
was based on the hereditary ranking of families and clans. This meant that
the social
status of the family and clan into which a person
was born largely determined what social and economic advantages were
available to that person, both as a child and later as an adult. General
speaking,
these ranked societies consisted of an
aristocracy of clans at the top of the social pyramid, with commoners
occupying the middle and lower reaches of society. In all southern
Native
hierarchical
societies, the lowest social rank or
class was occupied by slaves obtained through war and trade.1 Among
the Tlingit, for example, the most basic social unit at the local level
was
the household group. It consisted of men of the
same matrilineal line and their families living together in very large
wooden plank-and-beam
houses Sometimes these “longhouses” were as large as 40 x
60 feet. (A full-size basketball court measures 50 x 84 feet). Figure
4-1 shows exterior and interior views of a Tlingit longhouse.
Figure 4-1
Men in ceremonial regalia in front of Klukwan clan house, c. 1880s
Winter and Pond Collection
Watercolor painting by Theodore Richardson, showing interior of Tlingit clan house
(no date)
Because of very accessible and abundant resources, not everyone had to be involved in
the daily round of subsistence activities. This meant that certain individuals possessing special
talents could devote a major portion of their day to work other than hunting, fishing, and
gathering. Consequently there arose occupational specialization in important areas such as
medicine, arts and crafts, spiritual leadership, political organization, and in the conduct of war
and commerce. If the knowledge and skills of a particularly talented person became highly
valued, he or she could concentrate time and energy on that specialty while their subsistence
needs were provided for by their household group or clan. They may even have received
payment for services from others within the larger community. Among the Tlingit, for example,
the elder head of a household group usually did not physically participate in subsistence activities.
He had instead a full time job as the political and ceremonial leader of the household and as their
chief historian and educator. If their skills were especially prized, individuals could gain wealth and
privilege ordinarily reserved for those of a higher hereditary rank. The possibility of upward social
mobility through demonstrated expertise in a valued specialty was certainly important to slaves. It
was one way they could rise above their wretched social rank and avoid a life of despair and the
possibility of being sacrificed at a potlatch. In a word, there existed a more elaborate division of labor
based on occupational specialization than we find in northern Native societies.
The North. With some exceptions,
the often marginal subsistence resources found north of the Alaska Range – particularly
for interior Athabaskans in Winter – meant small, highly
mobile Native populations spread over large areas. In contrast to the south,
there was far less permanence and density of settlements. The exceptions
were some Central Yup’ik areas around
Bristol Bay and in the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta. In fact, the Central Yup’ik
region has been described as a transitional zone between north and south.
Without a substantial mountain range
to shield the region from southern exposure, it has environmental features
found in both the north and the south.2 Another
exception was the Point Hope region of Northwest Alaska in the early 1800s.
At that time the area’s subsistence resources, mainly marine mammals
and fish, sustained a large settlement area estimated at 1,000 people. 3
For
the most part, the social stratification of northern Native societies
was more egalitarian in structure. Unlike the social hierarchies of the
south, there was no easily identifiable
ranked social order where power and privilege differed significantly
among classes of people. Normally birth into a particular family was not
the
chief factor determining a person’s
opportunities in life and future adult social standing. The northern
societies offered a more level socio-economic playing field to all members
of the
group. Unlike the southern hierarchical
society, individual effort and merit were more likely to determine a
person’s
social status. The institution of slavery, moreover, did not exist north
of the Alaska Range.
Because everyone was always involved in some part
of the harvesting and preparation of subsistence foods and material products,
less time was available
to develop the kind of
occupational specialization that occurred in the south. This does not
mean there was no development of specialized skills and knowledge in
the north.
Every Native group had to
develop the necessary science and technology to successfully meet the
unique demands of their environments. We should not be surprised that
expertise
in weather forecasting and in animal
behavior are well developed areas of traditional Native science throughout
Alaska. Examples of Native technologies included the construction of
sea worthy hunting craft such as the kayak and
umiak, various hunting tools and weaponry, protective battle vests, weather
resistant housing, dog sleds and snowshoes. We will have a fuller discussion
of Native applied science and
technology when we discuss cultural products in Chapter
Eight.
Social stratification: beware of false
dichotomies. We
have said that social stratification refers to the structure of wealth,
power, and social rank in society. We have
discussed two seemingly opposite forms of traditional Native social stratification — the
southern hierarchical societies versus the northern egalitarian societies.
In so doing, however, we must be
careful not to create a false dichotomy by implying that these are two
quite separate and distinct
systems of social stratification. The word “dichotomy” means
the separation of a thing or idea into two opposite parts. A dichotomy
is an either-or proposition — it is either this thing
or that thing. It is either apples or oranges.
So what is the problem? The
problem is that there is no such thing as a purely hierarchical society
or purely egalitarian society, either in modern or traditional times. What
we have are human societies which are more – sometimes much more – hierarchical
than egalitarian and vice versa. And when we talk about the more or less
of things, we are talking about
variables. Variables are not absolute and permanent things. They are
constantly influenced by other factors and therefore always subject to
change. In the real world, social stratification is
very much a variable because any society can have a mix of hierarchical
and egalitarian elements. As much as its members may wish or claim, no
society is completely egalitarian. Some
form of social ranking is always present. Some individuals or families
or groups in society have more power and resources than others.
Figure 4-2
Alaska Reindeer Camp, c. 1913
In their study of reindeer herding and social change among the Iñupiaq of the northern
Seward Peninsula, the late Linda Ellanna and her co-author, George Sherrod, emphasize this
important social fact. Their study even includes a chapter entitled “The Myth of the Egalitarian
Society” in which they detail how wealth and power were never distributed evenly. Nor did these
Inupiat expect to live in a purely egalitarian community. There were always some who were
more clever and more ambitious than others. There were always some families who prospered
more than other families and passed these advantages on to later generations. Ellanna and
Sherrod make this interesting observation on control of vital subsistence technologies and key
hunting and fishing sites:
Technologies employed in collective harvesting endeavors included umiat
{skin boat], caribou surrounds, and fish weirs and nets. These items of technology
were not owned by the society nor owned equally by all segments of a large extended
local family. Instead, this technology was associated ... with the eldest productive
male of the group possessing the skills, knowledge, and wealth necessary to supervise
construction, maintenance, and use of these means of production. Additionally, this
individual and his closest kin controlled key geographic sites from which these
technologies were deployed.4
In the South, the occupational specialization
of the Tlingit and Haida hierarchical societies did allow for the egalitarian
element of upward social mobility. No matter the status of
one’s family or clan, an individual could achieve a higher social rank
based on demonstrated merit – on proven ability and accomplishment
in an occupation or skill valued by the society. Moreover, a society’s
social order can be changed by historic events such as internal revolts and
revolutions or by external forces such as invasion and occupation by a foreign
power. In 1886,
for example, a federal court ruled that the 13th amendment of the United
States Constitution prohibiting slavery also applied to Tlingit and other
Native groups regardless of what inherent
tribal sovereignty they may otherwise possess. Obviously this legal ruling
significantly changed Tlingit society by removing a major social and economic
stratum — slaves —from their
traditional hierarchical structure.5
So we must learn to think in terms of more or less hierarchy
or egalitarianism, not in terms of either – or ,
not in terms of either a completely hierarchical or a completely egalitarian
society. Some argue, for example, that despite its ideal values of equality
and the rule of law, the
social stratification of American society falls somewhere between hierarchical
and egalitarian because it has characteristics of both social structures.
Please understand that we use the
dichotomy of hierarchy versus egalitarian only as a starting point, only
as a framework for thinking about the different kinds of social stratification
that may exist. If you are doing a
cultural profile of a northern Native society, do not hesitate to look
hard
for elements of social ranking. Likewise, if you are researching a southern
Native society, look hard for elements of
egalitarianism such as social mobility – the ways individuals could
rise above or fall below the social rank of their birth.
A South – North summary. We can compose
a brief outline to summarize the contrast between the north and the south.
The symbol↓ means “results in”.
Southern Native societies (south
of the Alaska Range)
Abundant subsistence resources, even
to the point of producing surpluses
↓
Larger, more permanent and more densely settled Native communities
↓
Hierarchical societies with an uneven distribution of power and wealth, with
a more complex division of labor based on occupational specialization
Northern Native societies (north
of the Alaska Range)
With some exceptions, marginal, sometimes
scarce subsistence resources
↓
Smaller, more mobile and sparsely settled Native communities
↓
More egalitarian social organization with much less division of labor based
on occupational specialization.
Interior Athabaskans and Southern Athabaskans. In traditional times the only social
facts the Interior Athabaskan groups north of the Alaska Range had in common with the Tanaina
and Copper River Ahtna Athabaskans of the south was language and ethnicity. On the broad
cultural profile factors of regional environment, land use and occupancy, and social organization,
Tanaina and Copper River Ahtna life more closely resembled the other southern Native societies.
In the North, the life of the Interior Athabaskans more closely resembled other northern Native
societies.
Special features of the regional environment. Some features of the regional
environment may require special attention. These are features which “set up” the significance of
certain elements of Social Organization and Cultural products later in your Cultural Profile. The
fauna [animal life] of any Native group’s region is probably the most obvious set-up element
because people’s lives were almost totally organized around hunting and fishing. A clear
description of the area’s fish and game resources therefore sets up what you later say about how
the group organized its seasonal rounds of hunting, fishing and gathering, and what weapons and
other materials were necessary for success.
But there may be other set up features also requiring
special attention. If you choose to profile the coastal Iñupiaq, for example, you will describe the usual physiographic features of
mountains, valleys, and rivers. Of course you will do this for whatever Native group you are
profiling. But for the coastal Iñupiaq, an equally significant but often overlooked feature of their
environment is sea ice. Think about the relationship between sea
ice and Iñupiaq life. Does not
much of the coastal Iñupiaq subsistence activities – from seal hunting to whaling – depend on sea
ice conditions? If so, then the social and technological adaptations made by the Iñupiaq to
different sea ice conditions were absolutely crucial for establishing a way of life that went
beyond mere survival. Therefore a more detailed picture of sea ice and its seasonal changes is
necessary to set up your later descriptions of coastal Iñupiaq social organization and cultural
products.
Environmental adaptation. Obviously a Native group had to have the right hunting and
fishing technologies to effectively adapt to a particular environment. What may not be so
obvious is that Native groups first had to socially organize themselves in ways that a) maintained
the most effective member participation in harvesting of subsistence resources, and b) most
effectively distributed these resources among its members according to the values and traditions
of the group. Note that already we are discussing different ways Native societies were organized.
Even with the social organization part of the Cultural Profile still several chapters away, we are
already using terms like social stratification, hierarchical societies, egalitarian societies. Why?
Because significant features of social life in traditional times were shaped by the nature of the
environment. It was imperative that Native groups socially organized themselves in ways that
took best advantage of the opportunities of their environment while avoiding the dangers.
Environmental Adaptation is the concept which ties all these elements together. In a moment we
will add a final piece to this organizing concept.
Use and Occupancy of Land
Note: “Occupancy” as used in federal Indian law means the same thing as
the more familiar term “settlement patterns”.
Here we want to know the demographics of our selected
Native group in traditional times. We need some idea of the number of people
living in their tribal homeland at the time of
the invasions. But do not stop with just researching population size – with
just the estimated number of people living within the group’s territory.
Equally important for getting a good picture of what life was like back
in those days is understanding the distribution of people across
your Native group’s territory. This information gives us a picture
of their settlement pattern. Did people occupy more densely populated settlements
like the Tlingits? Or like the Iñupiaq, was
their traditional territory dotted with smaller settlements of various sizes?
Or like Interior Athabaskans with their still smaller and widely distributed
population, did family and local band
units regularly move from one hunting area to another, particularly during
winter months? Right away we see that maps are crucial if we are to construct
a complete picture of Native settlements
and land use in traditional times.
As we should expect, Native communities in traditional
times had to establish their settlements close by fresh water and with the
best possible access
to fish and game. Often these
settlements were in places sheltered from violent weather. Yet many of
these communities still had another factor to consider before settling down – what
location offered the best physical security against potential enemies? For
an example, let’s go to the Aleutians and the research of
Waldemar Jochelson, a Russian anthropologist who did fieldwork among the
Aleuts in the early 1900s. Reporting on the factors determining the location
of Aleut villages, he says:
All the ancient Aleut villages were situated on the sea-shore, not on the high land
above the sea, and usually on land between two bays, so that their skin boats could easily be
carried from one body of water to another at the approach of foes. Thus the usual location of
villages was on narrow isthmuses, on necks of land between two ridges, on promontories, or
narrow sandbanks. An indispensable adjunct to a village was a supply of easily accessible
fresh water – a brook, fall, or lake. River-mouths were never used as permanent dwelling
places, because the topographical conditions were conducive to unexpected attacks. The
underground dwellings of the old Aleut [Aleuts of traditional times]were much like traps; if
an attack were made when the inhabitants were within, they could leave it alive only
through a single opening in the roof. For this reason villages were built on open places,
whence observations could be made far out to sea. Nearly every village had an observatory
on a hill where constant watch was kept... 6
Be sure to look for similar kinds of information on problems of community
security and how it was a factor in determining settlement patterns for your selected
Native group.
Environmental adaptation: a final definition. Now we can complete our definition of
environmental adaptation. The Aleut example of defensive positioning as a factor in village
location makes it clear that we need to include the social world as well as the natural world in
any definition of Alaska Native environmental adaptation. Unless truly isolated over long
periods of time, any social group will have some relationship with other groups. As with
individuals, all human groups must adapt to the larger social environment in which they live. At
any given time this environment can include both friendly and hostile forces. Every Native group
conducted some form of foreign relations and provided for its own defense. Warfare, commerce,
and alliance-building falls within the general meaning of foreign relations. So we need a
definition of environmental adaptation which includes the social as well as the natural
environment. Accordingly, our final and complete definition is:
Environmental adaptation occurred when a Native society socially organized
itself and developed technologies to a) effectively live in and harvest the material
and subsistence resources of its regional environment, and b) to effectively
established secure and beneficial relations with other Native groups within their
larger social environment.
Land use and aboriginal title
“ Its not down on any map; true places never
are.
” – Herman Melville, Moby Dick
Tlingit and Haida Indians of Alaska v. the United States. This historic Indian law case
began way back in 1929 when the Alaska Native Brotherhood (ANB) petitioned Congress to
waive the sovereign immunity of the United States so that ANB could sue the federal
government for not protecting their aboriginal title to lands in Southeast Alaska. In 1935,
Congress agreed with ANB’s aboriginal title argument and said these tribes should have their
day in court. Congress then passed what is known as a “jurisdictional act” authorizing the federal
Court of Claims to begin investigating the Tlingit and Haida complaint according to certain
congressional guidelines. When passing a jurisdictional act, the United States government
consents to being sued, thus waiving its sovereign immunity for that purpose only. Sovereign immunity is a legal principle passed down from old English law proclaiming that “a king can do
no wrong.” The principle has since been restated to say that one cannot sue the sovereign without
the sovereign’s consent. The reasoning is that “sovereignty” would have little meaning if the
sovereign does not have complete legal protection – that is, “immunity” – against all claims that
might be made against it, whether by its own citizens or by foreign powers. If everyone having a
disagreement with governing authorities can sue the state, then the state is without the necessary
power to effectively rule. In the case of the Tlingit and Haida, what followed were years of delay
and much investigation by the Indian Claims Commission, the only judicial body ever
established for the sole purpose of hearing Native American complaints against the federal
government and recommending compensation or other forms of restitution.
We know that in 1959 – also the year of Alaska statehood – the Court of Claims ruled in
the Tlingit and Haida case that the federal government had indeed violated the aboriginal title of
these Southeast Alaska tribes. Therefore these tribes had a right to financial compensation for
lands illegally taken from them. Clearly it set the stage for ANCSA by establishing aboriginal
title in Alaska as valid legal doctrine. Now all Alaska Natives had a persuasive legal argument to
support their land claims petition in Congress. But unlike Native regions and villages under
ANCSA, the Tlingit and Haida retained no land in 1959. It was a landless settlement. They
received instead financial compensation for lands illegally taken from them over the years. Later,
however, Tlingit and Haida villages would recover parcels of land through ANCSA.
Expanding the definition of Aboriginal
Title. To
prove use and occupancy usually means drawing maps based on the tribe’s
oral history of the area, on the written accounts of early visitors to the
tribe’s territory, and on other available social and scientific information.
Mapping the proof of actual occupancy (the location of Native settlements)
has not presented much of a
problem. On the other hand, mapping proof of all the territory used by
a Native group for subsistence hunting and fishing has resulted in major
land claims controversies, not only in
Alaska but also in the Lower-48 and in Canada.
Now let’s suppose that during a court hearing
on a Native land claim, lawyers for the federal government make the following
argument: Okay,
we acknowledge these specific areas of
the map accurately show where Native people actually resided in traditional
times. And we agree that the tribe should be compensated for the loss
of this and the immediately surrounding land.
But we do not acknowledge the much larger territory they claim to have
used for their yearly round of subsistence activities. We understand
that aboriginal title means both use and
occupancy, but we see no good evidence that the tribe regularly did
subsistence on all of the lands claimed by them. In fact, we don’t
see how they can make such an extensive claim since the area includes steep,
rocky, and barren lands on which no subsistence hunting and fishing
could have taken place.
In fact, the federal government actually put forth
such a “barren
lands” argument in the
Tlingit and Haida case. They asserted that some of the claimed lands,
particularly along the mountainous boundaries to the east, were inaccessible
or useless and should not be included in
any claim based on aboriginal title. The Tlingit and Haida had claimed
aboriginal title to virtually all lands of southeast Alaska, from Klukwan
in the north to Annette Island in the south.
To the west they claimed all islands of the Southeast Archipelago as
well as all of the mainland including the western slopes of the great
mountain ranges to the east. The Court of Claims
responded to the federal government’s argument by asking two questions:
a) did Alaska tribes in fact use and occupy the lands they claimed?
And b) if some of the claimed lands were “barren,
inaccessible, and useless,” did the tribes still exercise dominion
over these lands? Let’s have the
Court speak for itself on this question:
We do not mean to depart in any sense from the rule of long standing that Native
title to lands must be shown by proof of actual use and occupancy from time
immemorial. But it is obvious from a study of the many cases involving proof of Native
title to lands both in this court and at the Native Claims Commission where the Indians
have proved that they used and occupied a definable area of land, the barren,
inaccessible or useless areas encompassed within such overall tract and
controlled and dominated by the owners of that surrounding land, as well as the barren mountain peaks
recognized by all as the borders of the area of land, have not been
eliminated from the areas of total ownership but rather have been assigned
no value in the making of an
award, if any, to the Indians. [Emphases ours]
We have emphasized those parts of the opinion where the Court of Claims expanded the
definition of aboriginal title beyond use and occupancy. It now included lands over which tribes
were traditionally recognized as having dominion, even if not regularly use and occupied by
tribal members. Once this part of the case was concluded and full aboriginal land title had been
established, a second hearing took place. At this hearing the court calculated the compensation
the federal government owed the tribe by determining the value of the land at the time it was
illegally taken. It was during the second hearing that the “barren and inaccessible” lands already
ruled as part of the tribe’s aboriginal title were subtracted from the total compensation amount.
Why? Because they are judged not to have had material value. In 1965, after all the maps were
studied and all the financial calculations were done, the Tlingit and Haida received $7.2 million
compensation for lands taken from them. (Here is an interesting historical note: The United
States purchased Russia’s colonial interests in all of Native Alaska for the same amount, $7.2
million.)
So far we have learned that:
- Aboriginal title is a fundamental principle of federal Indian
law.
- Proving a tribe’s historic occupancy (settlement pattern) of
land has been much easier than proving their use of lands and waters
which could stretch far
beyond the actual settled areas.
- Although not compensated for,
the barren, unusable lands traditionally under a tribe’s dominion
are considered part of their aboriginal title.
- Whether in the Tlingit
and Haida case or in ANCSA, Native land claims based on aboriginal
title should closely match their actual
land use patterns in
traditional times.
ANCSA and mapping land use. You
are required to describe how your selected Native group traditionally used
and occupied their lands and waters. Certainly a complete description
requires mapping their territorial boundaries and settlement pattern. This
mapping exercise raises three interesting questions you should consider
researching.
First, does your map of traditional land-use correspond to the lands your
Native group or groups actually claimed by right of aboriginal title? One
place to begin your investigation is with
a 1968 study conducted by the Federal Field Committee on Development Planning
in Alaska. In order to have reliable information for judging various Native
land claims, the Senate Committee
on Interior and Insular Affairs asked the Field Committee to undertake a
comprehensive research project. Among other things, the Field Committee
researched Native patterns of settlement and
land use in traditional times. The Committee’s findings were compiled
in a major document entitled Alaska Natives and the Land published
early in 1969. Their research clearly indicates that the Native claims to
most Alaska lands based on aboriginal use and occupancy were valid.7
The second interesting question is: To what extent
does your map or the maps in Alaska
Natives and the Land correspond to a map of ANCSA lands your Native
group actually retained in 1971? Do the boundaries lines match? Did your
Native group retain more land or less land or
about the same amount of land they originally claimed? The Native corporations
in your region should have this information. They may even have the maps
you need. In fact, the Field
Committee suggested that a fair settlement would be for Alaska Natives
to retain 60 million acres. But as we know, the final settlement had Natives
retaining only 44 million acres.
And thirdly, there is the ongoing issue of whether
Natives have some sort of aboriginal title to hunting and fishing rights
on the Outer Continental
Shelf (OCS) beyond Alaska’s three
mile jurisdiction. These are federal waters and the courts could decide
that ANCSA extinguishment of aboriginal title only applied to Alaska state
lands and waters.8 If you are
profiling a coastal Native group, two further research questions arise:
Did they hunt and fish beyond the three mile limit? If so, can a map be
drawn showing the area of the OCS where this
subsistence activity took place in traditional times?
Review Questions.
Can you define environmental adaptation and explain how this process
works?
Can you explain the major differences between Northern Native
societies and Southern Native societies and the way different
environments shaped the nature of these societies?
Why do we say beware of false dichotomies when studying Alaska
Native societies?
Why have we been forced to look at aspects of traditional Native social
life even before we get to the chapter on Social Organization?
Why is it important to add a social dimension to our definition of
environmental adaptation?
Why is it easier to prove traditional settlement patterns than
traditional land use?
How did the Court of Claims expand the definition of aboriginal
title in the Tlingit and Haida case?
Some Alaska Native tribes may still have a claim of aboriginal
title on the Outer Continental Self. Explain.
ENDNOTES
-
The basic framework for illustrating differences between
northern and southern Alaska Native societies is found in Joan Townsend’s “Ranked
Societies of the Alaskan Pacific Rim,” Senri Ethnological Studies,4,
1979, pp 123–156.
-
Alaska Natives and the Land, Robert Arnold et
al., Federal Field Committee for Development Planning in Alaska (Anchorage,
1968).
Online at: http://www.eric.ed.gov/PDFS/ED055719.pdf
-
Burch Jr., Ernest, The Traditional Eskimo
Hunters of Point Hope, Alaska, 1800–1875. Barrow, Alaska:
The North Slope Borough, 1981
-
Ellanna, Linda J. and Sherrod,
George K., From Hunters to Herders:The Transformation
of Earth, Society, and Heaven Among the
Iñupiaq of Beringia, Department of Anthropology, University
of Alaska – Fairbanks, August, 2004, p. 135.
-
In re Sah
Quah, 1 Alaska. Fed. Rpts. 136 (1886).
-
Margaret Lantis,
(Ed.), Ethnohistory in Southwestern and the Southern
Yukon: Method and Content. The University Press of Kentucky,
1970, pp. 179-180.
-
Alaska Natives and the Land, Chapter 3, “Land
and Ethnic Relationships.” (See the bibliographic reference
for a full citation and the document’s online location.)
-
See: David Case and David Voluck, Alaska Natives and
American Laws (Fairbanks, AK: University of Alaska Press, 2002) pp.
306-307 .
Table of Contents | Chapter
5
 The
University of Alaska Fairbanks is an Affirmative
Action/Equal Opportunity employer, educational
institution, and provider is a part of the University of Alaska
system. Learn more about UA's notice of nondiscrimination.
Alaska Native Knowledge
Network
University of Alaska Fairbanks
PO Box 756730
Fairbanks AK 99775-6730
Phone (907) 474.1902
Fax (907) 474.1957 |
Questions or comments?
Contact ANKN |
|
Last
modified
July 6, 2011
|
|
