The Creation of Alaska Native Corporations

This is the topic I have chosen, I just did not complete parts 3 & 4. Please see attachments for 3 & 4. The second case study in Theme: Thinking About History examines the creation of Alaska Native corporations and their impact on the economic development of Alaska’s Native population.

In 1968, oil was discovered at Prudhoe Bay on Alaska’s Arctic coast. To move this oil down to markets in the Lower 48* states, a consortium of oil companies proposed building the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System, which would carry the oil from Prudhoe Bay to the port of Valdez.

The pipeline would need to traverse land whose ownership was in dispute: Native land claims, many of them dating back to Alaska’s purchase in 1867, had to be settled before any pipe could be laid. That urgent economic necessity triggered one of the most innovative economic development efforts in American history.

To ensure that the pipeline would be built, Congress in 1971 passed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA), which granted Natives $963 million and up to 44 million acres of federal land, in return for ending their claims on the land where the pipeline was to be built. To administer these grants, the law set up 12 regional corporations (a 13th was added later) and more than 200 local corporations, which would develop their land and run their own businesses for the benefit of their Native shareholders.

The express goal of the corporations was to improve the economic well-being of Alaska Natives, whose living conditions were arguably the worst of any Native group in the country. To date, the corporations’ record has been mixed: some of the corporations have been highly successful, while others have performed poorly. But the use of corporations to foster Native economic development remains one of the nation’s most innovative attempts to improve the lot of Native peoples.

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