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One of the most misunderstood aspects of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 is its requirement that Native regional corporations share a large portion of their resource revenues with each other. This requirement is in Section 7(i) of the Act, which states simply in one sentence that 70 percent of all subsurface resource and timber revenues received by each region from their ANCSA lands are to be shared among the 12 regional corporations within Alaska. The Thirteenth Region was not included because it was not granted land.
The following is a brief description of the issues based on an extended interview with Byron Mallott, who chaired 7(i) negotiating sessions that drew Alaska Native corporation leaders together, as well as comments from Roy Huhndorf, who served as president of CIRI during the year that CIRI hosted the negotiating sessions.
The sharing provision of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act could have become the undoing of the Act. But thanks to efforts by former CIRI President Roy Huhndorf, former Sealaska CEO Byron Mallott and representatives of the other 10 regional corporations, Native leaders themselves found a way to hammer out an agreement to make the provision work.
"We saw opportunities to make money from harvesting and selling timber to the Asian markets, but really couldn't proceed without some definition of what 7(i) meant. Several other corporations were in the same circumstance, and I can recall getting together with Roy Huhndorf. We were in all kinds of strife over it among the corporations. The litigation wasn't so friendly any more," Mallott said.
"CIRI and Sealaska had a strong self-interest in resolving it as we were first out of the box with resource development," Mallott said. But he added that there were other corporations with as
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much concern, but less urgency. Most notably were Doyon and NANA. "So I talked with Roy and said, 'What if one of us invited all the other corporations to a place away from our offices? Let's see if we can stop the litigation and come to an agreement over how to deal with this 7(i) issue.' "
Mallott noted that at the time CIRI did not have the resources to host such a meeting, but Sealaska did, and so corporation leaders were taken to the Kah-Nee-Ta Lodge on the Warm Springs Indian Reservation in Oregon.
"And then we spent an entire year immediately following in a long series of negotiating sessions, hosted largely by CIRI in the CIRI boardroom, which ultimately resulted in the 7(i) settlement agreement."
The agreement, which was signed at CIRI offices on June 29, 1982, was necessary because 7(i) contained no specifics on how it would be implemented. And it wasn't just unusual for corporations it was unheard of. "Section 7(i) was a simple and elegant concept in establishing natural resource sharing equity among all corporations, but its implementation was an absolute nightmare. It was unique to ANCSA . . . It would never have been foisted on anyone else," Mallott said.
Huhndorf said the sharing language in ANCSA "shed precious little light on what the paragraph meant." Even the most basic of its terms revenue was not defined, which opened the requirement up to a myriad of legal questions.
"If you were a receiver, you had one interpretation. If you were a giver you had another," Huhndorf said.
Mallott said the provision came about because leaders lobbying for land claims legislation hoped
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to develop a settlement that would be fair and equitable to all Native people, rather than creating a system of competition with people fighting over "shares of the pie." And he said it was easy to put in ANCSA because none of those involved in crafting the Act were business people.
"There was an academic, theoretical starry-eyed view of what business corporations were and what they could do," he said. But to put the provision in perspective, Mallott asked what would happen to the airline industry if airlines had to share 70 percent of their revenues because the government believed there should be equity among them?
"Pose that question and it just boggles the mind. Even if you accepted the notion, how would you do it?" Despite the difficulties, however, Mallott believes the provision had the effect eventually of uniting Alaska Native corporations.
"Section 7(i) helped to bring Alaska Natives together on a statewide basis. And to me, that is more powerful than any other single thing accomplished by ANCSA . . . . The incredible values inherent in ANCSA are what focused us the notion of the land, this notion that we're discussing here, 7(i), all of those things are powerful . . . . They were powerful values within the Alaska Native peoples themselves at the time, and they're still there."
Huhndorf believes that while ANCSA's early days were times of "nervous hope and frequent desperation," over time the Act has afforded Alaska Natives the opportunity to take charge of their own destiny. He discussed its strengths in his speech at the CIRI annual meeting in 1991, two decades after the Act was passed.
"We learned that
we could take the essence of the settlement experience and mold it to
address more accurately the unique needs of our shareholders," he said.
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It's
a Boy for Gregory & Trena Schelin
On December 16, 1999 Zacharia Gregory William Schelin was born in Bartlesville, Okla. at Jane Phillips Hospital to CIRI shareholder Gregory Schelin and his wife Trena. Zacharia was 8 pounds, 13 ounces at birth, and has one older brother, Rajvinder, and two older sisters, Jaslean and Pauline.
Student Honored by Johns Hopkins University CIRI descendant Patricia Ann Wilcoxson was recognized in an awards ceremony by Johns Hopkins University. She participated in the Johns Hopkins talent search, which identifies, assesses
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and recognizes
students with exceptional mathematical and/or verbal reasoning abilities.
Annie, as she is called by friends and family, placed with distinction
in verbal as an eighth grader by scoring higher than the average college-bound
12th grade student on the SATI: Reasoning Test. She is now eligible
to participate in Johns Hopkins University's Talented Youth Academic
Programs. Annie, who is of Athabascan and Aleut descent, is the daughter
of CIRI shareholder Virginia and James Wilcoxson. This coming school
year, she will be writing for the Anchorage
Daily News "Perfect World"
column as an entering freshman at Service High School.
Patricia Ann Wilcoxson |
Alex Woodhead Awarded by Johns Hopkins University
Alexander Woodhead,
son of CIRI shareholder Terry Woodhead, was presented with a Johns Hopkins
University of Youth Talent Search award for seventh and eighth grades
for verbal skills. Alex, who scored 560 points, was the only student
at Wendler Middle School to receive the award.
Alexander Woodhead Academic
Isaak Sisters
continued on page 8
Shiela Isaak, daughter of CIRI shareholder Sharon and Dave Isaak, graduated May 17 from Skyview High School in Soldotna, Alaska. Shiela, who was
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