A Landed Culture in Crisis

We often think of Native peoples as curiosities, we consider their reservations squalid, we call the life that many of them lead on urban skid rows deplorable. We regard them as the sad remnants of a culture that is well and truly past. Only their art, handicrafts, carvings, and totem poles survive the wreckage.

Ever since the first Europeans set foot in the New World, Native cultures have been under attack. The Indians, then the Eskimos, were systematically taught to believe that their religions, their languages, their ways of raising children, their whole way of life should be discarded. Although the Natives' enforced retreat has resulted in shocking casualties, they have refused to assimilate. They will not give up their idea of who they are. In the Arctic and sub-Arctic regions of North America, Native identity is essentially linked to subsistence, to the Native economy.

White men who dream of vanquishing the wilderness in the name of industry and progress have led a sustained assault against the Native subsistence economy. Great rivers have been dammed, mines developed, and pipelines built across ancient hunting grounds that once belonged to Eskimos and Indians alone. Industrial man has condemned Native subsistence hunting societies. The only surprising thing about this long history is that we have not succeeded. Remarkably, many of these societies, in defiance of history, still survive; some of them thrive.

But Native people know that they cannot continue to survive unless they have Native governments that exercise political authority and that can defend subsistence. This is the goal that Native people in the villages of Alaska are seeking.

They are aware of the obstacles. They have been told that bureaucrats in the Department of the Interior are opposed to this idea. The State of Alaska is said to be opposed to it. Alaska's congressional delegation is said to be opposed to it. Villagers are told that, remote as they are from lawmakers in Washington, D.C., their goals are impossible to achieve.

Sometimes imagination is stronger than perceived reality. Subjective feelings play a great part in any community's sense of identity. These Native villages, although they have no visible means of influencing the powerful, are nevertheless insisting on their sovereign rights. They believe their future lies in the assertion of their own common identity and the defense of their own common interests. They believe they must be secure in the possession of their land and they must enjoy institutions of self-government that will enable them to defend their land. Religion can be changed; language can be lost; schools and television can arrive-but, as long as they have their land, and as long as they can live off their land, they will be what they are and have always been.

Governments build castles in the air. They want to believe that building schools in the bush and establishing corporations on the tundra will modernize rural Alaska. But there is no real prospect of wages or salaried employment except for a few persons in each village. The only possibilities for any measure of selfsufficiency lie in access to fish and wildlife. At present, state and federal policies seem designed to limit access to these resources. Is it any wonder the Native peoples are bitter because the promises held out, under the rubrics of education and development, have not been fulfilled? And that now, as they see their land and subsistence rights in jeopardy, they should be insisting on facing truths that others will not face? Who are the realists? Who are the sentimentalists?

Are these Alaska Natives foolish to want what so many say they cannot have? I don't think so. In fact, they may be wiser than the men of affairs who insist their hopes will be dashed. Simply to prop up Alaska Native Claim Settlement Act (ANCSA) corporations will do no more than maintain an unacceptable status quo. Given the likelihood of bankruptcies, takeovers, and taxation, given the possibility of greatly reduced federal and state funding in rural Alaska, who can justify the continuation of present arrangements? Only those who are immersed in its minutiae would try to keep going a system that cannot be made to work in village Alaska. All our history and all our experience tell us now what will happen if the land remains a corporate asset. Alaska Natives, like American Indians in the Lower 48 after passage of the General Allotment Act, are going to lose their land. I do not mean that, even at the worst, they will lose their land on the morning of January 1, 1992, but the attrition of land that will begin on that date will continue. Unless changes are made now, there will be no means to check the loss of land later.

Among some Alaska Natives, there is a feeling of deep, bitter resignation, a sense of irretrievable loss that has weakened the hold of some on their very lives. This sense of loss, of intolerable grievance, has a bearing on the rates of alcoholism, violence, and suicide in rural Alaska. Notwithstanding an undoubted rise in living standards during the past decade, these rates have increased. No one can be certain of the causes of social pathology or of its cures, but it seems reasonable to suppose that if the Native peoples can regain a sense of self-worth, a measure of control over their communities, and an opportunity to make a living off the land, they will have a firm basis for a renewed collective and personal sense of well-being.

Congress must fully acknowledge for Alaska, as it has done for the Lower 48, the legitimacy of the foundations of Native life. Indian Country must remain Indian Country, Eskimo Country must remain Eskimo Country, Aleut Country must remain Aleut Country.

In these villages the encounter that began in 1492 continues. The encounter will not end in Alaska, but the choices that Americans confront there may, in the long sweep of history, provide a unique opportunity to do justice to the Native peoples.

Thomas Berger headed the Alaska Native Review Commission of the Inuit Circumpolar Conference. He wrote Village Journey, from which this article is excerpted.