**4. Alaska Land Ownership and Management**

As explained in the section above, Indigenous Peoples had their lands taken through colonization. Colonial settlers looking at the land believed it to be untouched and in a natural state [4]. However, Indigenous Peoples did not just hunt and gather on their land, they stewarded it for thousands of years before it was taken from them [42]. Colonial settlers considered Indigenous Peoples incapable of managing land as they were not using it for profit generation and resources extraction [4,5]. Indigenous stewardship approaches to the land are relationship-based through seeing all life as sacred and seeking sustainability through connection with the natural world [14]. This stewardship has been found to be a more successful than Western management with less species and ecosystem decline [43]. Regardless, colonizers took over land management, using Western scientific models and ignoring Indigenous Peoples' Knowledge and sovereignty, leading to a lack of sustainability of the fish, wildlife, and plants and concern for the survival of future generations resulting in issues of food insecurity for Indigenous people relying on the land and water for food.

In Alaska, the federal government had been claiming land without compensating the Alaska Natives who lived on the land since the U.S. purchase from the Russians [28], and with statehood in 1959 [44], the State of Alaska started claiming land as well [45]. Both state and federal land claims overlapped Native traditional lands which became problematic when oil was found in Alaska. At the urging of Alaska Natives, U.S. Secretary of the Interior Udall, instituted a land freeze so that the land claims could be settled [18]. Alaska Native leaders, the state, and the federal government worked to craft ANCSA in 1971 [15]. Due to the pressure to quickly pass the legislation, to develop oil and additional disagreements about subsistence, there were no subsistence protections in ANCSA, and it removed all subsistence rights. Alaska Natives ended up with only 10 percent of Alaskan land, a loss of 90 percent that they had held since time immemorial. The land Alaska Natives received was held in fee simple private ownership through the formation of twelve regional for-profit corporations and additional village corporations with no land given to the Tribal Nations.

While some Alaska Natives saw the corporate model as a way to transition Natives into "modern economic society," other Natives found the corporate structure to be another form of assimilation and colonization [46]. ANCSA extinguished all prior reservations in Alaska except for Metlakatla [15]. In addition to receiving 10 percent of Alaska land in checkerboard fashion, the regional corporations were paid a settlement of \$962.5 million USD which Congress said was to meet the "economic and social needs" of the Natives in Alaska; not basing the money on the value of the land the government was taking [47]. Unlike land in the contiguous U.S. being held by Tribes, Tribes were not included in ANCSA, and there was no mention of Tribal sovereignty [46].

Due to ANCSA removing subsistence rights, Alaska Natives lobbied to regain these rights, and in 1980 Congress passed the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) [15,17]. Multiple non-Native lobbies in Alaska pushed for a lack of ethnic or racial preference, resulting in ANILCA Title VIII which did not give Alaska Natives

specifically subsistence rights but gave subsistence rights to all rural residents in Alaska [17]. Urban residents could still practice subsistence on federal lands unless there were shortages in species populations. ANILCA was challenged by the state of Alaska in 1989 [18]. The Alaska Supreme Court ruled in *McDowell v. State of Alaska* that giving a rural preference was unconstitutional under the Alaska constitution [48]. With this decision, Alaska was not complying with a federal act, so the federal government took over the management of fish and wildlife on federal land in Alaska in 1990 which over the years expanded to include fisheries on federal lands and waters as well under use by federally qualified subsistence users [18]. Federal public lands are approximately 60 percent of Alaska. The state regulates residents and nonresidents on state land (30 percent of the state). The remaining 10 percent is privately owned which includes 40 million acres of land owned by Native regional corporations and villages which is oddly not under the federal rural subsistence priority.

With federal and state jurisdiction covering approximately 90 percent of the land in Alaska, Alaska Natives organized a variety of subsistence organizations around whales, seals, walruses, polar bears, birds, and other subsistence animals so that Alaska Natives could sit at the table in discussions over harvest and protection since their survival depends so heavily on subsistence [18]. However, co-management is problematic and often pits Indigenous cultural interests and food security against economic land use interests of the federal or state government [4]. There is also often a lack of meaningful engagement and inclusion of Indigenous Knowledge and stewardship perspectives [49].

Adopting an Indigenous-led stewardship approach moves away from any exploitation and truly puts the land, water, plants, fish, and animals first, as we/they view them as nonhuman relations [50]. Approaching geese, for example, as nonhuman persons instead of manageable wildlife changes the approach to one of respect, co-existence, and personhood instead of one where humans are dominant and managing other populations. This is Indigenous Knowledge, and it takes a very different approach from Western science. For example, the approach to hunting is not one of taking the animal by force, glorifying the hunter as they hold up the animal's head to display its large antlers, demonstrating the mastery of the animal by the hunter. No, the Indigenous approach to hunting is again relational and is a reciprocal exchange between the human and the animal who has personhood, with the animal choosing to give themselves to the hunter and the hunter then honoring that sacrifice and taking the animal [51]. If non-Indigenous people would accept this approach as factual and acknowledge Indigenous Knowledge, this would greatly change how land is "managed."

The Alaska specific, Federal Subsistence Board (Board) is a space in which Alaska Natives are supposed to have an opportunity to participate in managing their subsistence rights. Prior to 2012, Alaskan rural subsistence users were not on the Board and there was not a Tribal consultation policy. Now rural subsistence users, not necessarily Alaska Native, sit on the Board, and the Board also holds Tribal consultations [21]. In addition to two public members, Alaska directors of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Indian Affairs, U.S. Forest Service, and a chair make up the Board. While Alaska Natives are often on the Board, they are the minority and easily outvoted by those without Alaska Native community ties.

The Board regulates species not already regulated through co-management and determines which communities qualify as rural with rights to harvest on federal lands. The definition of rural the Board has determined as of 2015 leaves out some communities with Alaska Native residents that depend heavily on subsistence as both their cultural practices and heritage as well as for food security, such as those in Juneau and Ketchikan [52]. Additionally, if a rural preference is in effect, then the many Alaska Natives who have moved from their rural communities to urban cities and travel to their rural home areas to do fish camp in the summer or hunt or gather are actually not always allowed to legally. In addition to the Board, ANILCA created ten Regional Advisory Councils which are composed of subsistence, commercial, and sport users who can make recommendations and proposals to the Board to help serve their populations' needs [17].

The State of Alaska has just recently taken an additional racist approach to land management as they sued the Board in 2020 based on special action decisions made during the COVID-19 pandemic that privileged rural subsistence communities with food insecurity, in this case, Alaska Native communities [53]. The lawsuit sets out to remove the rights of the Board to work with rural communities to make sure they have the food they need. A statement made with the support of multiple Alaska Natives said, "Though we carry thousands of years of highly evolved, data-driven and intact Indigenous Knowledge ... we have faced tremendous obstacles. These obstacles sanctioned through structural racism and perpetuated by the institutions have prevented us from managing the land in a way we know best supports holistic and systemic health as demonstrated by the abundance present in Alaska prior to colonization" [54]. The Organized Village of Kake, one of the communities the Board gave emergency subsistence rights outside of normal seasons also joined the suit on behalf of the Board. They interpret the State's actions as directly attacking the rights of a sovereign Tribe to provide food for their community.
