Lands
Until 1971, the issue of land ownership in Alaska was divisive. Oil was discovered on Alaska's North Slope and Alaska Native peoples, including the Iñupiat of northwest Alaska, worried about maintaining rights to traditional lands and the ability to protect their valuable subsistence resources. The passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (or ANCSA) helped resolve many of the issues surrounding land rights.
ANCSA created 12 regional corporations in Alaska (a 13th was added later), and the state and Alaska Native groups worked together to select lands for each region. Each of these regions formed a for-profit corporation to manage these land rights.
Today, NANA owns 2,280,000 acres (9,200 km2), or approximately 9.4 percent of the 24,300,000 acres (98,000 km2) that comprise the NANA region. NANA lands encompass an area that is roughly the size of Indiana.
In 1972, a merger of the area’s regional corporation and ten of the eleven village corporations resulted in NANA’s ownership of both the surface and subsurface acreage, with the exception of the surface acreage Kikiktagruk Iñupiat Corporation (KIC) retained.
The land selection and conveyance process is now largely completed, but the work of our Lands Department continues to ensure that our rights are never again in question.
NANA-owned lands are managed by the NANA Lands and Regional Affairs Department.
Read more about this topic: NANA Regional Corporation
Famous quotes containing the word lands:
“This is my home, the country where my heart is;
Here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine;
But other hearts in other lands are beating
With hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.”
—Lloyd Stone (b. 1912)
“The sea
Severs not only lands but also selves.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“This ferry was as busy as a beaver dam, and all the world seemed anxious to get across the Merrimack River at this particular point, waiting to get set over,—children with their two cents done up in paper, jail-birds broke lose and constable with warrant, travelers from distant lands to distant lands, men and women to whom the Merrimack River was a bar.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)