Overview of the Chapters

My research goal was to deepen understanding of the relationship between land rights, governance and wellbeing to better inform public policies that conform to human rights principles and facilitate human development processes for local governments. Chapter two of this dissertation describes the four major objectives I identified as necessary to meet my research goal, and the mix of research methodologies I employed. Four linked objectives provided a pathway for conducting this research: (1) assess the current legal capacity of status of Alaska Native communities to self-govern; (2) identify the broad range of effort tribes are undertaking to

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strengthen their legal control over lands and resources upon which communities depend for their wellbeing; (3) focus that assessment on one case study that documents the efforts of the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council to increase indigenous governance within the watershed;

and (4) develop a policy approach capable of addressing the obstacles facing communities seeking to enhance their self-determination in times of transformative economic and environmental changes. This last objective reflects participatory action research wherein the research produces “knowledge and action directly useful to a group of people” for the purpose of

“building power with/by those people” (Gatenby and Humphries 2000, 89).

My research methodology used a mix of qualitative methods to generate better understanding of the relationship between land, governance and community wellbeing (Thornberg and Charmaz 2012). These methods allowed me to generate theories about the types of losses communities experienced because of the lack of territoriality and propose a framework to develop public policy that promotes both human rights and human development for indigenous communities in Alaska (Allen Hart 2011; Yanow 2000; Corbin and Strauss 2008;

Yanow 2007).

Chapter three introduces the concepts that are fundamental to a deeper understanding of the relationship between land, governance and wellbeing. Specifically, I look at the literature on

“territoriality” and how that concept generally applies in indigenous communities throughout the United States in order to contextualize a legal analysis of how this notion applies to Alaska tribal communities. I examine the evolution of property rights regimes in the U.S. and how private property rights emerge as a favored regime only to be challenged by common property systems.

This chapter describes how the term “wellbeing” as a component of human development has been recently applied in an Arctic environment, setting up for a subsequent in-depth analysis of

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how the proposed indicators for wellbeing fail to account for the unique lack of territoriality in indigenous Alaska. Finally, this chapter introduces the idea of self-determination as a collective human right in order to understand how the lack of territoriality inhibits the ability of Alaska tribes to fully exercise that right.

Chapters four and five describe the changes in land rights and self-governance experienced by Alaska Native tribes to provide a context and background to support my analysis.

Chapter four provides a history of Alaska Native land rights, building on the notion of property rights introduced in the literature review. This chapter describes the history of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) as a unique approach to settling indigenous land claims. It describes ANCSA as a policy derived in a time where civil rights and economic development were seen as integrally related to each other, and the subsequent reliance on replacing common property rights with private, individual ownership in order to achieve public policy goals. That displacement, however, had fatal consequences for tribal territoriality and the capacity of Alaskan Native tribal governments to govern community wellbeing.

Chapter five deepens the case study by examining the complex systems of governance and territoriality in Alaska. The chapter begins by describing the evolution of local governance as a defining principle in Alaska to more specifically contextualize subsequent descriptions of fate control and self-determination as international policy goals. This chapter integrates archival research and policy analysis to assess the status of tribal governance in Alaska and provide a history of the federal legislation and litigation that resulted in the loss of territoriality for Alaska Native tribes. The chapter likewise describes examples of ways in which tribes have overcome the impacts of this loss through adaptive governance regimes established in a smattering of

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federal legislation such as the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act (16 U.S.C. 31 1972) and the 1980 Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (16 U.S.C. 51 et seq. 1980).

Chapter five then introduces the primary findings of this research. The loss of territoriality resulted in four specific consequences for the capacity of Alaskan tribal governments to govern wellbeing. Throughout my research, different themes of loss emerged during my interviews and participant observation. Although they are distinct, all are tied together because all result from the loss of territorial authority over traditional lands and resources in the wake of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act.

The remaining chapters adopt an analytical approach suggested by Kyle Wark, Indigenous Researcher and Policy Analyst with the First Alaskans Institute. Mr. Wark described the need to build “systems that hold our people up instead of holding them back” in responding to the persistent impacts of colonialism in rural Alaska. Mr. Wark identified two approaches to bring about that vision: first, identify what local people can do within the current legal and political structures that exist (and what might be necessary to target for change), and second, identify how other governments can support local tribal governments (Wark, presentation to Alaska Municipal League, November 20, 2014, Anchorage, Alaska).

Chapter six presents my case study. This chapter examines the natural and cultural history of the Alaska Yukon River watershed. It describes the Yukon River Inter-Tribal Watershed Council, an intertribal organization representing 55 Alaska Native tribes living along the Yukon River, and explains the organization’s efforts to protect the water quality of the Yukon River.

Chapter seven re-focuses the analysis to examine how the federal and state governments are responding to the loss of tribal territoriality. It reviews proposed federal legislation designed

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to overcome some of the impacts of the loss of tribal territoriality. It examines on-going litigation that is testing the limits of tribal governance in Alaska. Finally, this chapter describes some possible policy approaches to cooperation between sovereigns in Alaska.

Chapter eight concludes this research with an analysis of the loss of territoriality and governance through the lenses of human rights and human development. The loss of sovereign authority over lands is increasingly recognized as an impediment to the ability of local, indigenous communities to assert the right of self-determination. This right is an international, collective human right of indigenous tribes, and one that has corresponding obligations of state and federal governments to recognize. Similarly, the lack of territoriality obstructs the capacity of tribal governments to promulgate policies that promote human development for their communities and members. This chapter concludes that in the future, tribal governance will likely depend on a combination of both non-territorial and land based authority that fits within co-governance frameworks. These frameworks create institutional opportunities for integrating local communities into resource decisions, but those communities must be integrated into governance frameworks as rights holders, not stakeholders. Such an approach is consistent with international human rights law and human development principles. Finally, this chapter identifies how this research may be relevant to similar circumstances and contexts beyond Alaska, where land rights remain insecure due to threats of relocation or simply because land claims are an unfinished business in many parts of the world.