Bristol Bay Native Association

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President’s Message On behalf of the Bristol Bay Native Association, I am pleased to present this report to the people of Bristol Bay, our Annual Report for 2004. Inside you will find a description of BBNA’s continuing economic and social initiatives, our efforts to protect our shared traditions, and to guarantee the subsistence rights of our ancestors to ourselves and generations of our children and grandchildren yet unborn. In the belief that it is important to know where we have been in order to know how to chart a course for tomorrow, we have also provided a history of how the Association came to be within the context of the struggle for an Alaska Native Land Claims Settlement, and the history of BBNA’s evolution as a tribal association. That history is of course abundant with the contributions and sacrifices of many individuals who have given much to promote the unity that is our strength. At its fall meeting, BBNA’s Board of Directors chose to recognize in particular one such warrior whose life was dedicated to championing the cause of Alaska’s Native people. With all our thanks and utmost respect, Fred T. Angasan President H. Harvey Samuelsen BBNA’s Mission “The Bristol Bay Native Association is a service agency dedicated to the betterment of the Native People of the Bristol Bay region.” 2 2
History BBNA Begins As A Land Claims Association Alaska has been continuously inhabited by Native peoples for tens of thousands of years. In the southwestern part of the state, Bristol Bay is the ancestral home of Aleut, Athabascan and Yup’ik cultures. Colonization of Alaska and the first European contact with Alaska Natives began in the 1700s with the arrival of Russians in search of fur. They were followed by other Europeans hunting whales and gold, and more recently, fish and oil. Historical conflict between Native cultures were soon supplanted with incidents of brutal domination of local peoples by Russian promyshleniki, who were barely held in check by elements of the Russian Church. During these early years, the concept of land ownership recognized today did not exist among Alaska Natives, as tribes and villages followed seasonal migrations in pursuit of fish, game and subsistence resources. Two hundred fifty years later, however, collective grievances against the U.S. government, then in control of the territory of Alaska, compelled Native peoples — Aleuts, Yup’iks, Athabascans, Tlingits, Haidas and others – to demand change that would forever alter their relationship to the land. 3 The concept of an Alaska “Native claims settlement” was sparked a century ago when Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian tribes in Southeast Alaska realized they had no legal authority to prevent President Theodore Roosevelt from dedicating their ancestral lands as the nation’s largest national forest. On the Alaska Peninsula, residents who fled the 1912 eruption of Mount Katmai saw their homeland declared a national monument by President Proceeds from bake sales bought fuel for Walter Noden’s Supercub to rally support in Southwest communities for a Native land claims settlement. Noden became BBNA’s first president in 1966 . Woodrow Wilson in 1918. Decades later, Alaska statehood would galvanize Alaska Natives around the land claims issue, as the newly-formed State of Alaska claimed ownership of traditional hunting and fishing areas such as the Walrus Islands and Tikchik Lakes region. Adding fuel to the growing fervor were occasional outrages such as Project Chariot, a U.S. Atomic Energy Commission plan to use a nuclear bomb to blast a port near the Inupiat village of Point Hope and intentionally contaminate tribal lands for radiation tests. Initially progress was slow, due to difficulties getting information about the land claims concept to Natives scattered in remote villages across Alaska. The Tundra Times, the only Alaska Native newspaper, emerged in 1962 as the pipeline for information and debate about the land claims issue and momentum built to unite Native people from across Alaska behind the movement. The discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay in 1968 would prove the tipping point. Getting 10 billion barrels of oil to market was tremendous motivation for the state, nation and oil companies to settle the lands claims issue, and Alaska Natives seized on that wave of public opinion. Eager to gain clear title for rights-of-way to build the trans-Alaska oil pipeline, the oil industry focused its influence on Congress in an unprecedented way, lobbying for passage of an Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA). Almost in unison, Natives throughout Alaska organized regional associations to lead and negotiate their land claims settlements, unifying their voices through the Alaska Federation of Natives. This grassroots effort, multiplied by pressure from the oil industry to begin operations at Prudhoe Bay, a state administration eager for new revenue, and public displeasure nationally over gasoline rationing, led Congress to pass one of the largest peacetime transfers of land and cash in U.S. history. President Richard Nixon signed ANCSA into law in 1972, transferring 44 million acres of land and $962 million to 13 Alaska Native-owned for-profit corporations. Natives living in Bristol Bay became shareholders of the Bristol Bay Native Corporation (BBNC). The Bristol Bay Native Association, the regional land claims group, was contracted by the U.S. government to administer the enrollment of shareholders.
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Bristol Bay Native Association

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