Alaska Senator Lisa Murkowski introduced a bill to resolve the claims of the Bering Straits Native Corporation and the State of Alaska to land adjacent to Salmon Lake and to provide for the conveyance to the Bering Straits Native Corporation of certain other public land in partial satisfaction of the land entitlement of the Corporation under the ANCSA.

Senator Murkowski spoke on the floor on S. 522:

Mr. President, I rise to speak to a bill that I am introducing today to resolve a land conveyance dispute in Northwest Alaska, the Salmon Lake Land Selection Resolution Act.

Shortly after Alaska became a State in 1959, Alaska selected lands near Salmon Lake, a major fishery resource in the Bering Straits Region of Northwest Alaska. In 1971, Congress passed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act to resolve aboriginal land claims throughout the 49th State. In that act Congress created 12 regional Native corporations in state, providing the corporations with $966 million and the right to select 44 million acres of land in return for giving up claims to their traditional lands in Alaska. The land and money was to go to make the corporations profitable to provide benefits to their shareholders, the native inhabitants of Alaska. The Bering Straits Native Corporation, one of those 12 regional corporations, promptly selected lands in the Salmon Lake region

For the past 38 years there have been conflicts over the conveyances, delaying land from going to the corporation, harming the economic and cultural benefits of the corporation to Native shareholders, and complicating land and wildlife management issues between federal agencies and the State of Alaska. Starting in 1994, but accelerating in 1997, talks began among the State, Federal agencies and native corporations and towns in the region, located north of Nome–Salmon Lake itself is located 38 miles north of Nome–to reach a consensus on land uses in the region. Those talks reached agreement on June 1, 2007 with a resolution that satisfied all parties. This seemingly non-controversial legislation will implement the new land management regime

By this bill the Corporation will gain conveyance to 1,009 acres in the Salmon Lake area, 6,132 acres at Windy Cove, northwest of Salmon Lake, and 7,504 acres at Imuruk Basin, on the north shore of Imuruk Basin, a water body north of Windy Cove. In return the Corporation relinquishes rights to another 3,084 acres at Salmon Lake to the federal government, the government then giving part of the land to the State of Alaska for it to maintain a key airstrip in the area. The Federal Bureau of Land Management also retains ownership and administration of a 9-acre campground at the outlet of Salmon Lake, which provides road accessible public camping opportunities from the Nome-Teller Highway. The agreement also retains public access to BLM managed lands in the Kigluaik Mountain Range.

The bill fully protects recreation and subsistence uses in the area, while providing the Corporation with access to recreational-tourism sites of importance to its shareholders and which might some day produce revenues for the Corporation. The agreement has prompted no known environmental group concerns and seems to be the classic “win-win-win” solution that all sides should be congratulated for crafting. The key, however, is for Congress to ratify the land conveyance changes by 2011, when the agreement ratification window closes.

Passage of this act is certainly in keeping with the spirit of the Alaska Lands Conveyance Acceleration Act that this body passed 5 years ago that was intended to help settle all outstanding land conveyance issues by 2009–the 50th anniversary of Alaska statehood. In Alaska where controversy abounds over land use, this is a hard-fought compromise agreement that seemingly satisfies all parties and makes good sense for all concerned. I hope this body can ratify this bill swiftly and move it to the House of Representatives for its concurrence and eventual signing by the President. The bill is important for residents of Nome who utilize the area and for all Alaska Natives who live in the Bering Straits Region.

According to a adn.com’s “Our View” report… “Good news on the renewable energy front: Anchorage’s first commercial wind energy project is going to get significantly bigger. The wind farm planned for Fire Island will go back to its original size: 36 towers with a total capacity of 54 megawatts. That’s enough to power about 19,500 homes.”

Project developers previously had to scale back the wind farm by a third, to avoid electronic interference with Fire Island navigation equipment serving Ted Stevens Anchorage International Airport.Now the airport and the wind farm developers, local Native corporation CIRI and its partner enXco, are working on a plan to upgrade and move the navigation system to a site on the mainland.”

CIRI president and CEO Margie Brown announced in a newsletter last week:  ”We learned in February that the FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) does not object to replacing the existing VOR (navigation system) with an upgraded ‘dopplerized’ VOR located off island, provided a public comment period demonstrates that the airport does not object, that no user groups will be adversely affected, and that appropriate studies demonstrate that public safety will not be compromised.”CIRI spokesman Jim Jager said Tuesday the company sees no problem meeting those conditions. Putting the new system on the mainland, probably on airport property, will make it more reliable, easier to maintain, and easier for pilots to use, he said. The current equipment actually guides aircraft to Fire Island, not to the airport itself. “

As reported earlier in this blog, Heather Kendall-Miller was on the short list for a new, high level position in the Obama Administration.  Now, Indian Country writes that she has been offered the job and is currently being vetted.  Kenall-Miller is Athabascan and a Bristol Bay Native Corporation (BBNC) shareholder.

Heather Kendall-Miller’s life story is very interesting.  She dropped out of high school, married and started a family, lived in a remote cabin, went to Harvard and was friends with Barack Obama and argued in front of the US Supreme Court.  Some of that story is captured here.  This was taken from a Harvard Law Bulletin.

Heather Kendall-Miller ’91 took a winding road to Harvard Law School—and there were grizzlies and caribou along the way.

Kendall-Miller’s mother, a full-blooded Athabascan, met her father when he returned to Alaska after being stationed in the Aleutian Islands during World War II. But she died when her daughter was 2, cutting her off from her native roots.

Raised in Fairbanks, Kendall-Miller dropped out of high school and went to work on the Alaska Pipeline, homesteading in a remote valley in the mountains north of the Yukon River. At 17, she married, and she and her husband built a cabin on the land, heated it with water they piped in from a hot spring a quarter mile away.

“I look back fondly on those years,” Kendall-Miller recalls. “We were dropped off in the middle of nowhere and built our cabin in a beautiful valley in the Ray Mountains. It was a wonderful, magical place surrounded by grizzlies and caribou and moose. We had to fly in by float plane, air-drop our supplies over the cabin, and then land on a lake seven miles away and hike back to the cabin.”

Kendall-Miller became pregnant when she was 21 and lived in the cabin for another two years until her marriage collapsed. A single mother working construction on the Alaska Pipeline, she realized that her daughter needed a more stable life.

So at age 25, she enrolled at the University of Alaska in Fairbanks, where she developed an interest in Native American rights. She graduated magna cum laude and, based on the recommendation of a professor, applied to Harvard Law School.

“I knew all along that I wanted to come back to practice in Alaska,” she says. “It was exciting to be around all these incredibly smart people who were so purposeful. I knew Harvard would give me the credentials I needed to focus my career the way I wanted to and help Native Alaskans when I got back.”

According to the Congressman’s news release “The Senate version of H.R. 1 (the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.) included a provision that appeared to prohibit the use of programs administered by the SBA that are designed for procurement through minority-owned business enterprises, women-owned businesses, Veteran and Service Disabled Veteran programs, HUBZone and Small Business Administration 8(a) programs.  Rep. Young worked with Members on the other side of the aisle to make the case for these programs, and was able to get the provision pulled from the bill.

“I was approached by members of the Alaskan Federation of Native with concerns about this provision,” said Rep. Young.  “I told them that no matter if I supported this bill or not, I would make sure they were not hurt by it.  These programs are a success and are working just as Congress intended.

“These programs” include the successful ANC SBA 8(a) program.  Here is the actual provision removed.

PROHIBITION ON NO-BID CONTRACTS AND EARMARKS

Sec. 1608. (a) Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act, none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be used to make any payment in connection with a contract unless the contract is awarded using competitive procedures in accordance with the requirements of section 303 of the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act of 1949 (41 U.S.C. 253), section 2304 of title 10, United States Code, and the Federal Acquisition Regulation.

(b) Notwithstanding any other provision of this Act, none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available by this Act may be awarded by grant or cooperative agreement unless the process used to award such grant or cooperative agreement uses competitive procedures to select the grantee or award recipient.

The online newspaper “Alaska Dispatch” has a most interesting article about Ted Stevens written by Donald Craig Mitchell.  Anyone reading this blog probably already knows that Mitchell wrote the two most informative books about Alaska Natives and their land.

Sold American: The Story of Alaska Natives and Their Land 1867-1959

Take My Land, Take My Life: The Story of Congress’s Historic Settlement of Alaska Native Land Claims, 1960-1971 I would like to see a third installment in this series.

Mitchell talked about the enormous power Ted Stevens had as a senior US senator.  His first example was the “NOL Legislation”.  I couldn’t agree more.  As a student of ANC history, I am amazed at the windfall ANCs received as a result of the NOLs.

Many shareholders forced their boards to disperse of this new found money as dividends.  My corporations were no exception.

Click here for the full article.