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Timeline / Citizenship, Services, and Sovereignty / 1961: Alaska Native organizations unify; call for federal recognition of rights

1961: Alaska Native organizations unify; call for federal recognition of rights

Three regional Alaska Native organizations—the Alaska Native Brotherhood, the Dena Nena Henash, and the Iñupiat Paitot—agree to affiliate. The new group expresses strong disagreement with the U.S. Secretary of Interior’s Alaska Task Force report on land claims and needs.

“Citing the land recommendations as ‘inadequate,’ the Indian organization made a series of concise but far-reaching proposals of its own including changes in the current Native Allotment Act to allow securing several tracts of non-contiguous land, the need for leasing for native benefit reserved tribal lands and future withdrawals, and the need for Congress to define aboriginal land rights of the natives and to establish a forum in which their claims may be heard.” —Tundra Times, 1961

Theme
Land and Water, Native Rights
Region
Arctic, Northwest Coast, Subarctic

Don Wright, president, Alaska Federation of Natives. As president of the Alaska Federation of Natives, Wright was a key advocate for Alaska Native claims legislation.

Courtesy Alaska State Library, Alaska Native Organizations Photograph Collection