Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian people gather in Juneau for the opening of Celebration on June 5, 2024. (Photo by James Brooks/Alaska Beacon)
The state of Alaska is continuing its effort to oppose Alaska Native tribes’ effort to protect traditional lands via federal trust.
On Friday, the Alaska Department of Law filed a notice stating that it intends to ask the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to review an Alaska U.S. District Court decision that upended decades of precedent by stating that under certain circumstances, the federal government has the power to take land into trust on behalf of tribes.
The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 extinguished most “Indian country” in Alaska, but Judge Sharon Gleason, ruling in favor of tribes and the federal government, determined that the law didn’t preclude the federal government from creating new trust land.
The state of Alaska disagrees with that ruling, Attorney General Treg Taylor said on Friday.
“ANCSA eliminated the reservation system in Alaska and left no authority for the federal agency to recreate that system on its own more than 50 years later,” he said in a written statement shortly after the appeal was filed. “The State is not going to wait for the federal agency to think of new ways to change how Alaska works. We filed this litigation so the courts can resolve this issue for good. To get such finality, we need the appellate courts to weigh in.”