1996: Court recognizes land rights of Venetie Tribe of Neetsaii’ Gwich’in Indians

The Village of Venetie, which is accessible only by air, levies a tax on users to maintain its rudimentary airstrip. The state of Alaska files suit to prevent the village from imposing the tax but loses in the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals. The court declares that the 1.9 million acres belonging to the Venetie Tribe of Neetsaii’ Gwich’in Indians, an Athabaskan tribe that lives in a vast remote area north of the Arctic Circle, is part of “Indian Country”—the term that the U.S. uses to define American Indian lands.

In 1943, the U.S. Secretary of the Interior set aside a 1.9-million-acre reservation to protect the Venetie Tribe from outsiders encroaching on tribal hunting and trapping grounds. But the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act eliminated some of the federal controls over land development that generally apply on Indian reservations elsewhere.

Theme

Federal-Tribal Relations, Land and Water

Region

Subarctic