[Congressional Record Volume 161, Number 129 (Wednesday, September 9, 2015)]
[Senate]
[Page S6536]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]

      By Ms. MURKOWSKI:
  S. 2017. A bill to amend the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act to 
recognize Alexander Creek, Alaska, as a Native village, and for other 
purposes; to the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources.
  Ms. MURKOWSKI. Mr. President, today I introduce legislation, already 
pending in the House of Representatives, where it was first introduced 
in 2009, 2011, and 2013 by Alaska Congressman Don Young to finally 
settle a long-standing injustice to the Native residents of Alexander 
Creek, a Native village built along the creek that runs into the 
Susitna River near its entrance to Cook Inlet, north of Anchorage and 
southwest of Wasilla, AK.
  The story of Alexander Creek's Alaska Natives is a sad story, in that 
it is a story of Natives whose village happened to be located at the 
site of one of the State's prime salmon fishing locations, a site that 
may have prompted efforts by some to deliberately prevent the village 
from rightfully gaining the lands it was entitled to receive under the 
Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, ANCSA, passed by this Congress in 
1971.
  It is especially sad since the villagers succeeded in the Federal 
courts in winning confirmation of their status as a village under ANCSA 
nearly four decades ago but because of decades of mistakes and 
misunderstandings, still have received only about 10 percent of the 
land village residents are entitled to receive.
  The legislation I am introducing today would give the Secretary of 
the Interior the authority to enter into negotiations to settle 
aboriginal land claims with Alexander Creek, after conferring village 
instead of group status on the community. It gives the Secretary wide 
latitude to find a just, environmentally acceptable, and economically 
reasonable means to bring Alexander Creek to ``approximate parity'' to 
the other more than 210 villages that were established by the 1971 law 
that settled all aboriginal lands claims in Alaska.
  Alexander Creek, whose Native name is Tuqentnu, traditionally was a 
healthy Native village with abundant resources, whose residents lived 
off fish traps located near the mouth of the Susitna River year round. 
While its population suffered as a result of whooping cough, measles, 
and influenza epidemics in the early 1900s caused by the influx of the 
non-Native population into upper Cook Inlet--the village being 
literally decimated by the 1918 epidemic--by 1939 the village had been 
reoccupied by Native families. When the Alaska Native Claims Settlement 
Act passed in December 1971, there were 37 residents of the village, 12 
more than the 25 needed to be entitled to form a village corporation 
under the act and to be entitled to receive 69,120 acres around the 
core townships of the village.
  The Bureau of Indian Affairs in 1971 made that determination. But the 
village had the misfortunate of being located in a prime salmon fishing 
area that was sought by the State of Alaska at the time of statehood in 
1959 and that was later conveyed by the State to the then new 
Matanuska-Susitna Borough at the time of its creation in the early 
1960s. Thus there was opposition to Alexander Creek being allowed to 
claim its lands. The State, in fact, protested its eligibility for land 
under ANCSA. A hearing was held before an administrative law judge on 
July 11, 1974, but oddly the hearing was not widely noticed and a 
number of village residents were specifically not told of the hearing, 
so they were not in attendance. When the appeals board released its 
decision on November 1, 1974, the board ruled that the village only 
contained 22 residents--3 short of the required number for creation--
simply because 5 other families and their children had not appeared at 
or testified at the hearing.
  The board's decision was appealed to U.S. district court that 
reversed the appeals board's decision on November 14, 1975, ordering 
the reinstatement of Alexander Creek's ANCSA eligibility. While that 
decision was appealed by the State of Alaska, the lower court decision 
was upheld by the DC Circuit Court of Appeals on August 29, 1976, which 
ordered that the case be remanded back to the Secretary of the Interior 
for further proceedings. But since all of the land around Alexander 
Creek had already been conveyed to the State and to the Mat-Su Borough, 
the village was required to join other Cook Inlet region villages in 
selecting ``deficiency lands'' near Lake Clark to the southwest of the 
region. But the creation of the Lake Clark National Monument in 1978, 
prior to passage of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act 
in 1980, further complicated the land selection issue for the village.
  Alexander Creek villagers, who could not afford independent legal 
counsel following the 1976 district court and court of appeals rulings, 
did not immediately pursue their claims to full village status and 
apparently did not understand the complexities of the Lake Clark land 
conveyance decisions. Somehow, they instead were convinced to sign an 
agreement with Cook Inlet Region, Inc., the regional corporation for 
the area, and the Interior Department in December 1979, where the 
village dropped its claim to be a village in exchange for receiving 
``group'' status under the ANCSA, and also in return for being 
guaranteed 7,680 acres of land, some of which was to come from the 
State of Alaska and or the borough. While the State did provide the 
village with 1,686 acres, no borough or Federal land was conveyed to 
complete the 7,680-acre ``group'' agreement reached in 1979 until just 
recently.
  It wasn't until the next generation of Native leaders arrived in the 
village that they realized that Alexander Creek never received the 
lands it should have received.
  Over the past decade residents of the village have been seeking to 
have the original court of appeals decision affirmed and implemented. 
Over the years they have been gaining support for their efforts. First, 
BIA Alaska Region Field Representative Charles F. Bunch concluded after 
``a thorough assessment'' that the BIA's original determination was 
correct and that Alexander Creek ``met the requirement'' for village 
eligibility and that the land conveyances should have been implemented. 
Recently the Alexander Creek village leaders have received support from 
the Alaska Federation of Natives, Cook Inlet Region, Inc., CIRI, the 
State of Alaska and the Matanuska-Susitna Borough, all agreeing that 
the village should receive its full lands promised under ANCSA--plus 
from a host of other groups.
  So this legislation will reinstate Alexander Creek's eligibility, 
overriding the 1979 ``group'' agreement, reached under section 1432(d) 
of ANCSA, and giving the village the right to negotiate a fair 
settlement with the Interior Department. Under the act the Secretary is 
free, at his sole discretion, to propose what assets are to be provided 
Alexander Creek to capitalize the corporation, not setting any 
predetermined amount of land, cash, surplus Federal property or other 
assistance. The bill does hold the regional corporation for the area, 
Cook Inlet Region, Inc. harmless from any impacts of the village 
corporation's creation.
  The Alexander Creek case represents a sad chapter in the story of the 
settlement of Native aboriginal land claims in Alaska. It is a story of 
Native land owners being actively discouraged from selecting their 
traditional lands, of being deliberatively misinformed about land 
selection processes so they would not qualify for their lands, of being 
pressured to accept inferior compromises so they would gain less land, 
and of then being ignored for far too long when it came time to 
consummate the inferior deal they were encouraged to accept. It clearly 
is time this Congress rewrites that chapter and allows it to have a 
happier ending.
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