Alaska appeals federal court ruling that was a step toward new ‘Indian country’ here

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.”

Most Alaska Native land in Alaska is owned by Native corporations, which fall under state and federal law. Alaska Native tribes, which are sovereign governments and can exert authority over Indian country , have relatively little land under their control.

The case at issue is a 787-square-foot parcel of land in Juneau that is owned by the Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska.

After the Interior Department published a legal memo stating that it believes it has the power to place land into trust, Tlingit and Haida sought to use the federal process — common in the Lower 48 — to put the land under its governmental control, but the state sued, saying the federal government was incorrectly interpreting existing law.

In June, Gleason ruled that the process used in Tlingit and Haida’s case was flawed, but critically, she also ruled that there are legal ways for tribes to place land into trust here.

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