ALASKA - Overview of History and Politics

An Overview Of Its Political History

"How firm we stand and plant our feet upon our land determines the strength of our children's heartbeats."

--Polly Koutchak, Unalakleet

Alaska Native Peoples

The land now known as the state of Alaska has been continuously inhabited by Native peoples for thousands of years: the Tlingit, Haida, and Tsimshian of the southeastern coastal rainforest; the Athabascan tribes of the interior; the Aleut people of the Aleutian Chain and Pribilof Islands; the Yup'ik people of the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta and coastal southwest Alaska; and the Inupiat of the northern coast of the Chukchi and Beaufort Seas. The Aleut word alaxsxag or agunalaksh, meaning the "great land" or "shores where the sea breaks its back" may be the source of the name "Alaska." The Aleut people have lived in the Aleutian Islands for approximately 6,000 years.

The Native peoples of Alaska, comprising distinct languages, cultures, and traditions, share a close connection with the land and sea. As Justice Thomas Berger writes in Village Journey: "The traditional economy is based on subsistence activities that require special skills and a complex understanding of the local environment that enables people to live directly from the land." Subsistence is a word used to describe the hunting, fishing, and gathering traditions of Alaska Native peoples that includes the cultural and spiritual values of respect, sharing, love of the land, and integral relations among humans, animals, and the environment. "If you respect things and look at them as having a spirit or being, then you're in a place where you're at a balance. You look at the world that way and respect it and you see that it's providing you with a way of life, and your kids."- Gabriel George, Angoon

History of Exploitation

Alaska's recent history of the last 250 years is punctuated by a series of boom-and-bust cycles of exploitation of natural resources by European, Asian and European-American colonists in search of fur, whales, gold, copper, salmon, and oil. Promyshlenniki, or Russian fur traders, arrived in Alaska in the 1740's. Traders from Siberia exploited the superior kayaking and hunting skills of the Aleut people by forcing them into slavery to kill sea otters from Alaska to Baja California. In the sixty years following Vitus Bering's claim of Alaska for Russia in 1741, the Aleut population declined from 15,000 to 2,000. People died from European diseases such as smallpox and measles for which they had no immunity. The northern coast of Alaska was invaded by the "original oil men from the South," the Yankee whalers in search of whale oil and baleen, who nearly decimated the bowhead whale population in the Beaufort and Chukchi seas in the mid-1800's.

As Russia wiped out the sea otters, its interest in Alaska waned. In 1867, the Tsar of Russia reached an agreement with then U.S. Secretary of State William H. Seward to sell Alaska to the United States for 7.2 million USD, about 2 cents per acre. Seward was widely criticized for the deal to acquire what some perceived as a frozen wasteland and the agreement became known as "Seward's folly." For Seward, the agreement fulfilled his dream of manifest destiny. The sovereign rights of the Alaska Native peoples were ignored in the transaction.

In the decades that followed, gold strikes began in southeast Alaska and expanded into Interior Alaska and to the Bering Sea around Nome. The gold rush rapidly transformed Alaska. Outsiders with gold fever now numbered in the thousands. Early efforts to establish Alaska as a state failed, although in 1906 Alaska had a non-voting delegate in the U.S. House of Representatives. Railroads and roads were built to facilitate the export of gold, copper, and coal.

World War II and the Cold War highlighted Alaska's strategic importance and ended the Territory's political isolation. In 1942, the 1,400 mile Alaska Canada Military Highway between Dawson Creek, British Columbia and Delta Junction near Fairbanks, was built in 8 months at a cost of $138 million. Alaska's strategic military significance and growing economic importance with the prospect of oil, prompted Congress to approve Alaska's statehood in 1958. Alaska became the 49th state.

Oil!

In 1902, the New York Times reported: "An immense oil gusher was struck at Cotella [sic] on the south Alaskan coast. An important new industry is thus added to Alaska's resources." The Katalla discovery, about 110 miles southeast of Valdez, only resulted in a local boom and dreams were dashed when the small refinery was destroyed by fire in 1933. The search for commercial discoveries of oil had begun. Irene Ryan, a geological engineer and bush pilot stated: "I felt people should be looking for oil instead of gold. Everyone thought I was nuts."

In the early 1950's, nationalization of Iran's oil fields and attempts to close the Suez Canal led oil companies to seriously approach potential oil reserves in Alaska. Oil companies began to purchase vast acreage in oil leases, with over 5 million acres leased by the end of 1955. After about 165 consecutive oil well failures by oil companies in Alaska, Richfield, a small California company that later merged with Atlantic Refining and became ARCO, struck oil in the Swanson River area of the Kenai Peninsula in 1957. The well soon produced 900 barrels of oil per day, the first commercially productive well in Alaska. The Kenai Peninsula and Cook Inlet region became an important producer of oil and natural gas, with 15 offshore oil platforms, on-shore oil and gas production, large processing, refining, and transportation facilities.

Atlantic Richfield struck an 'elephant' field at Prudhoe Bay along the Beaufort Sea coast in 1968. With a capacity of 10 billion barrels, it became the country's largest oilfield. Oil companies honed in like sharks. In 1969, Alaska received over $900 million in one oil lease sale alone. Five years after the Prudhoe Bay discovery, Congress approved construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline System (TAPS), with then Vice-President Spiro Agnew casting the deciding vote in the United States Senate. The pipeline, operated by a consortium of seven oil companies forming Alyeska Pipeline Service Company, traverses 800 miles from Prudhoe Bay to tidewater in Valdez on Prince William Sound. On June 20, 1977 the first oil from Prudhoe Bay flowed southward. At peak capacity, TAPS carried 2 million barrels of oil per day. Nearly one-tenth of the crude oil consumed in the United States flows from Prudhoe Bay through TAPS.

Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act

Oil companies lobbied hard for the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) because they feared that Native claims along the proposed TAPS route might prohibit the granting of right of way. ANCSA, passed in 1971, gave Alaska Natives title to 44 million acres and $962 million to settle aboriginal land claims. ANCSA was the largest land claim settlement in U.S. history. Each Alaska Native became a stockholder and received 100 shares in one of twelve regional corporations. ANCSA was set up for failure. ANCSA was negotiated by few who did not represent most Alaska Native people. As Lillian Liliabas questioned: "Who voted for ANCSA? You won't find ten people on the Kuskokwim who voted for ANCSA." "The imposition of a settlement of land claims that is based on corporate structures was an inappropriate choice. The village has lost its political and social autonomy."-Justice Thomas Berger

Alaska Native tribes are asserting their rights to protect their lands and subsistence way of life through legal and political avenues. A lower court ruling known as the Venetie decision established that ANCSA did not extinguish many tribal rights of self-governance. The State of Alaska spent hundreds of thousands of dollars and successfully battled to overturn this decision. The schism between rural and urban Alaskans continues to widen amid growing accusations that the state legislature is racist.

Politicians Bought and Sold

Fully 85% of Alaska's government revenue comes from the oil and gas industry. Industry contributions also fill a hefty portion of the politicians' campaign chests. Many Alaskans are lulled into complacency with the average of about $1,000 per year return on the Permanent Fund Dividend, a state-managed trust fund created from oil royalties. In turn, the oil industry receives little scrutiny from state and federal regulators.

The lack of government oversight of the oil industry in Alaska has created serious problems that threaten the environment, human health and safety. The tragic Exxon Valdez oil spill that poisoned over 1,000 miles of Alaska's coastline was a culmination of government complacency. A recent report commissioned by the Alaska Forum for Environmental Responsibility concludes that "Alyeska's efforts are not sufficient to protect the environment TAPS crosses, and the health and safety of its workers, from the risks of an aging pipeline." Oil companies in Cook Inlet committed thousands of violations of their Clean Water Act permit from 1987-1995. With a special exemption for Cook Inlet, EPA allows the oil industry to dump millions of pounds of toxic waste each year.

Despite its failure to act responsibly, the industry is granted access to virtually the entire coastline of the Beaufort Sea and Cook Inlet through special area-wide state and vast federal lease sales. The state has spent millions of dollars to lobby Congress to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge to oil development, a move supported by Alaska's Congressional delegation. Meanwhile, the industry encroaches on the borders of the Refuge through its Warthog, Sourdough, and other prospects. The Minerals Management Service is offering lease sales in the Chukchi, Beaufort, Gulf of Alaska, and Cook Inlet. Plans to open the National Petroleum Reserve are also proceeding.

Sources:

Berger, Justice T. R., 1985, Village Journey The Report of the Alaska Native Review Commission, New York, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.

Fineberg, R.A. 1996. "Pipeline in Peril: A Status Report on the Trans-Alaska Pipeline", Prepared for the Alaska Forum for Environmental Responsibility.

Kohlhoff, D. 1995. When the Wind Was a River. Seattle, University of Washington Press.

O'Neill, D. 1994. The Firecracker Boys. New York: Saint Martin's Press.

Ritter, H. 1993. Alaska's History: The People, Land, and Events of the North Country. Anchorage: Alaska Northwest Books.

Strohmeyer, J. 1993. Extreme Conditions: Big Oil and the Transformation of Alaska. New York: Simon and Schuster.