Statement About an Alaska Natives' Claims Bill

RESOLVING the issues concerning the Alaska Natives' claims will be the last major original Indian claims settlement in American history.

In a message to the Congress on January 26, 1971, I promised that an Alaska Native Claims bill would be submitted, to resolve equitably the Native claims in that State.

I have today approved Secretary Morton's sending to the Congress a new Administration bill which proposes what I consider a fair and equitable settlement-and one more generous to the Alaska Natives than any heretofore put forward by a President or Congressional committee. It goes beyond the bill proposed by the Administration in 1969, and it goes beyond the bill passed by the Senate in 1970.

The economic development of all of Alaska, Native and non-Native communities alike, depends on the just resolution of this long-deferred issue.

Natives have asserted claims to 340 million acres of the State of Alaska. A settlement which the Department of the Interior proposed in 1967 would have extinguished those claims in exchange for giving the Natives the right to sue in the Court of Claims and to be compensated in money at the 1867 value of the lands, while granting trust title to some 10 million acres for village use.

The new bill being submitted by Secretary Morton, developed in close consultation with representatives of the Alaska Federation of Natives themselves, provides for a cash payment of $500 million and also provides that the Natives shall have a 2 percent share, up to a maximum of $500 million, in the oil revenues generated in Alaska, that they shall have full title to 40 million acres of land, and that the corporation which manages these assets shall be entirely Native controlled. The Federation of course retains its freedom to advocate still further positions before the Congress.

I congratulate Secretary Morton on this new bill, and I am particularly pleased at the success of the consultative process which also involved Mr. Don Wright, the president of the Alaska Federation of Natives, the Vice President, and Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska.