Evening briefs in Indian Country

The modern treaty

The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, in its simplest terms, provided Alaska Natives with $962.5 million and title to 44 million acres of land in exchange for the extinguishment of aboriginal land claims.

ICT's Meghan Sullivan explains in her report.

When Alaska joined the union in 1959, many Alaska Natives still lived, worked, owned, and subsisted off their ancestral lands. This dynamic was becoming increasingly rare in North America. In the Lower 48 states, tribal law and treaty designations had evolved over two centuries — but this wasn’t the case in Alaska, where federal policy did not designate who owned what.

https://indiancountrytoday.com/news/evening-briefs-in-indian-country-june-7