About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline

19 NARF Legal Rev. 1 (1994)

handle is hein.journals/narf19 and id is 1 raw text is: 








Native American Rights Fund


L.JL-W
RE IVIEW


Volume 19, No. 1                                                             Winter/Spring 1994


A MOVE TOWARD SOVEREIGNTY:
INTERIOR DEPARTMENT PUBLISHES ALASKA TRIBAL LIST


This is :    '41V
what we've
been working for
for many years
...The acknowledgment by the
Department of Interior of the
government-to-government
relationship that Alaska Native
tribes have with the federal
government is a significant step
towards greater exercise of the
right to self-determination.
     Willie Kasayulie, Chairman,
     Alaska Inter-tribal Council/
     Board Member, Native Ameri-
     can Rights Fund


   In working to resolve the
      issue of tribal sovereignty,
      the Native American
          Rights Fund has taken
          the lead for the past
            nine year's in
            assisting Alaska
            Native tribes to
            establish that they
            have the same
          sovereign status as
        tribes elsewhere. In an
     historic move toward
  sovereignty for 226 Alaska
Native groups, Interior Assistant
Secretary for Indian Affairs Ada
Deer announced the publication
of a list of federally-recognized
tribes in Alaska on October 15,
1993. Before a crowd of three
thousand at the Alaska Federa-
tion of Natives Convention in
Anchorage, Assistant Secretary
Deer effectively called a halt to
three decades of federal waffling
on the issue of the recognized
status of Alaska tribes, Her
action was also a critical step
toward eliminating thirty years


of overt discrimination against
Alaska tribal governments by the
State of Alaska.
       The State and other
 opponents of tribal self-determi-
 nation have consistently main-
 tained that there were no feder-
 ally recognized tribes in Alaska.
 The new list is designed to
 clarify that the anti-Native
 interest groups are wrong.
 Publication of the list grew out
 of years of concerted efforts by
 Alaska Native villages to assert
 the same rights and powers held
 by Indian tribes in the lower
 forty-eight states. Most often,
 these claims arose in the context
 of domestic relations matters,
 tribal taxation and control over
 liquor trafficking. These efforts
 included numerous requests to
 the Interior Department for a
definitive clarification, but all
prior administrations avoided
confronting the issue. Thus,
federal court litigation over the
issue ensued.
             continued on paqe 2


NAR-VIEW


Digitized from Best Copy Available

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

profiles profiles most