Sovereigns, not Stakeholders: An Alaskan Study in Fate Control
This study examines how Alaskan tribes are responding to the loss of territorial governance over lands conveyed under the 1971 Alaska Native Land Claims Settlement Act. Typically, governments have control over a place and a people, but this is not the case in Alaska where tribal governance is genera...
| Published in: | The Yearbook of Polar Law Online |
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| Main Author: | |
| Format: | Article in Journal/Newspaper |
| Language: | unknown |
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Brill
2014
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| Online Access: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1876-8814_011 https://brill.com/view/journals/yplo/6/1/article-p318_11.xml https://data.brill.com/files/journals/22116427_006_01_s011_text.pdf |
| Summary: | This study examines how Alaskan tribes are responding to the loss of territorial governance over lands conveyed under the 1971 Alaska Native Land Claims Settlement Act. Typically, governments have control over a place and a people, but this is not the case in Alaska where tribal governance is generally limited to authority over membership and not place. This paper explores the varied and creative efforts of Alaskan communities to reassert governance – to exercise fate control – over natural resources even in the absence of territorial sovereignty. Part I describes the historical context necessary to understand current land and resource governance issues in Alaska. Part II examines the range of options for strengthening local governance and overcome the obstacles that frustrate local control. Part III offers a case study focused on the efforts of Alaskan tribes within the Yukon River Intertribal Watershed Council (YRITWC), an international consortium of Yukon River communities, as it asserts rights to govern within the watershed. Part IV analyzes the Alaskan tribal experience, in particular the YRITWC’S governance efforts, through the lens of a “rights based approach” that treats tribes as sovereigns rather than stakeholders. In this study, land and property rights are discussed interchangeably to examine how non-Indigenous legal systems apportion rights and responsibilities associated with particular land. The term governance describes the ability to control, in this context to tax and to regulate. The notion of well-being is drawn from the Arctic Human Development framework that identifies fate control as a cornerstone measure of wellbeing and human development approach. 1 |
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