Ever since the days that European people colonized and settled the vast lands of North America, Native Americans, also known as First Nations, have been trying to make claims to their ancient homelands in order to gain more control of those areas. The same holds true for those native groups that were part of the vast boreal forest region in the northern part of the continent, that stretches from Alaska in the west to Labrador in the east. Let’s give a quick history overview of these claims, as well as future impacts of these claims, both legitimate and non-legitimate claims.
The Boreal Forest Region is scarcely populated by Native American groups, known as First Nations in Canada, including Athabaskan tribes in the western portions, and Algonquian tribes in the eastern portions. As European peoples came and settled the North American continent and made it their own, creating the nations of Canada and the United States in the process, it took away much of the rights to the land that the First Nations groups originally had. From this vantage point, it was only a matter of time before the First Nations would demand reconciliation for the injustices that were done to them. This is where the process of native land claims and government action to settle these land claims comes in. Not only that, but since most of the population of this area of North America is inhabited by First Nations, it only seems fair that they should be given more determination over their future.
Since the 1970’s, numerous settlements have been made with native tribes, in the Boreal Forest Region, throughout Canada and Alaska, with the native tribes that live in different areas. These claim settlements have become increasingly complex, becoming more comprehensive rather than covering a specific piece of land, and trying to change the nature of the relationships between natives and non-natives.
One of the first of these land claims to be settled is ANSCA, representing the natives of Alaska, including the Native Americans, Inuit, and Aleuts, in 1971. The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act was part of a deal to settle a lawsuit by the Alaskan native populations, which wanted the government to give them ownership over 3/4th’s of the land. The government stepped in to settle this lawsuit based on the fact that it was preventing the construction of the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, by remanding the Alaskan native population with a cash settlement of almost $1 billion, and ownership of 44 million acres, which was less than they wanted, but similar in land size to the state of Washington.
Now there was an estimated 50,000 native peoples who benefitted from this ANSCA settlement, and since then the state of Alaska has been divided up into twelve different native corporation regions, each of which hold title to the native-owned land in each region, and receive the financial benefits to the money made for them in each region. Besides this, a corporation was formed for native Alaskans that have moved away. Also, on top of these regional native corporations, there are village corporations, of which there are 250, who help the natives in their communities reap from any financial benefits. If you are a native villager, you automatically become a stockholder in your village corporation and your regional native corporation. Among the benefits of these corporations: the regional corporations own all mineral rights under the surface to any village land, the villages get to chose selected acreage as part of their native corporations, regional corporations can use their part of the cash settlement to try to better the economic and social conditions of the people within that corporation (this has caused some regional native corporations to go into debt in attempts to better their economic conditions).
Across Canada, native land claims have been settled, not just in the Boreal Forest Region, but also in the Arctic Region.
The first of these agreements was the James Bay and Northern Quebec Agreement, made in 1975. This agreement was made, in part, due to the fact that the Cree and Inuit were getting in the way and hindering the construction of some hydroelectric projects on rivers that let out into the James Bay off of Hudson Bay. The benefits that the First Nations people got from this included $225 million cash, exclusive rights to 5,000 square miles of land, as well as hunting, fishing, and trapping rights in another 60,000 square miles of land. The Cree have tried to invalidate the agreement since 1990, because they claim that the Canadian and Quebec governments have not kept their legal obligations.
An addendum to the James Bay agreement was the Northeastern Quebec Agreement in 1978, and is made with the Naskapi tribe of Schefferville, in the part of Quebec near the border of Labrador.
The Gwich’in Agreement in 1992, the Sahtu/Metis Agreement in 1993, and the Yukon Agreement also in 1993, were all modeled after the Inuvialuit Agreement, or Western Arctic Claims Settlement Act, of 1984. In the Inuvialuit Agreement, the people in the area represented by this agreement, which is the Arctic coast and islands of Northwest Territories, west of Nunavut, got land rights, a cash settlement, money as part of an economic enhancement fund, as well as wildlife management and utilization rights, and participation in boards dealing with land-use planning and environmental management. The agreements with certain tribes in 1992-3, although similar to the Inuvialuit Agreement, encompassed different pieces of land – the Gwich’in Agreement covered land in the westernmost part of Northwest Territories, next to Yukon Territory; the Sahtu/Metis Agreement covered land around Great Bear Lake all the way to where the Gwich’in Agreement starts; the Yukon Agreement covers land within the Yukon Territory.
So, what are some possible future impacts of these land claims? There are several possibilities. First off, the land claims made by Native Americans, First Nations, and Inuit may motivate them to push for more rights and controls over the land that previously belonged to them, making things harder for urban areas and people from European or other backgrounds to run their area in a way that is both economically, agriculturally, and industrially acceptable – before getting anything changed, in terms of policy, there needs to be support from the group that holds a land claim for that specific area. There is also the possibility of conflict when it comes to oil rights, as new oil deposits are found in areas that have native land claims. In fact, recently, there was a story in Alaska where two men who ran a subsidiary of an Alaska Native Corporation, working in conjunction with two men from the U.S. Army Corp of Engineers were running a bribery, kickback, and money laundering scheme, to the tune of $20 million, making it one of the largest federal contracting scams in America’s history (read story here). Will we continue to have corruption problems, problems with developing natural resources, and problems with usage of land because of native land claims and their legal benefits? Will we, at the same time, show the dignity and respect to the original inhabitants, while we continue to improve our civilization? Only with time will we be able to tell.
