Dozens of Native-owned corporations are contending with the same dynamics as their original shareholders, and descendants, grow older. The same dilemma is playing out across the state. But it has not yet issued new shares, with its board citing the complexity of the issue. UIC, which paid original shareholders dividends of $2,000 this year, has been studying the problem for years. The indecision reflects high stakes that are both cultural and financial, as some Native corporations pay out substantial dividends that could diminish if more shares are issued.
And, he said, when he tried to exchange one with UIC for a more accessible lot, the only ones available were next to Utqiagvik’s sewage lagoon.Īlaska Native corporations have the power, if they choose to exercise it, to issue new shares to “descendants” born after ANCSA’s cutoff date.īut only about a dozen of the roughly 200 regional and village corporations statewide have done so, according to corporate experts. While Gatten has inherited two lots from grandparents, both are cut off from roads. But Gatten, who owns just 10 shares inherited from his mother, can’t access that program yet, and neither can his peers. UIC has made its original shareholders eligible to receive homesite lots from the corporation.
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The result, he and others say, has denied them a full voice in the elections that set UIC’s leadership and direction, and a stake in their ancestral lands - until or unless they inherit stock from a relative. Gatten’s generation, and anyone else younger than 50, was left out.
Those people each received 100 shares in UIC. That’s because UIC is owned by more than 3,000 Indigenous Alaskans who trace their heritage to the North Slope.īut for now, the owners with the most influence are those born before the settlement’s cutoff: Dec. In a region long gripped by a housing crisis, where multiple generations often cram into the same home, many younger Utqiagvik residents like Gatten see the corporation’s largely unoccupied land as part of the solution. Homes in the Browerville neighborhood of Utqiagvik. government that turns 50 years old this month, the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.īut after its passage, the act did transfer 340 square miles in Utqiagvik’s vicinity to a newly created, locally owned corporation, Ukpeagvik Iñupiat Corp. The North Slope’s Indigenous people lost most of their ancestral lands long ago, in a landmark settlement with the U.S. The home is cozy but comes with inconveniences familiar to rural residents across Alaska: A delivery truck must replenish Gatten’s water supply as often as twice a day, and he has to warn his kids away from the septic tank, which sometimes overflows. He lives with his wife and four children. Instead, Gatten, 37, rents an aging Quonset hut outside of town. UTQIAGVIK - Justin Mitchak Gatten’s Iñupiat ancestors were the original residents of Alaska’s North Slope thousands of years ago, and they once claimed millions of acres of land.īut today, Gatten can’t even find a lot to build a home in the region’s largest community, Utqiagvik. Funding for the project was provided by the Alaska Center for Excellence in Journalism. This story is part of a reporting collaboration between Alaska Public Media, the Anchorage Daily News and Indian Country Today on the 50th anniversary of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. NARL, which stands for the Naval Arctic Research Laboratory, was a research facility established in the 1940s by the federal government and is now owned by the Ukpeagvik Iñupiat Corp.
Justin Mitchak Gatten steps out of his home in NARL, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Utqiagvik, Alaska, on Nov.
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