Significance of the Study

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.

govern lands and have authority to tax and regulate activities on those lands. Landowners have particular rights to benefits that flow from their ownership of land, but they lack the ability to tax and regulate uses on those lands. Alaska illustrates what happens when a sovereign government loses governance authority over lands, and how that loss is not compensated by the creation of a land-owning mechanism. This lesson is instructive for communities who are facing transformations in their relationship with the lands they occupy, either through displacement or relocation or reconfiguration of property rights regimes.

The distinction between land sovereignty and land ownership is pivotal to the capacity of tribes to govern the fates and futures of their communities. The ability of a community to govern the lands they occupy and the resources upon which they depend is a foundational concept of sovereignty. The relationship between a sovereign and the lands they occupy can be transformed by a variety of factors. In the Arctic, as in other areas of the developing world, colonialism has fundamentally transformed the nature of this relationship (See, for example, Berger 1988; Berger 1985; Case and Voluck 2012; Banner 2007; Banner 2005; Kohn and McBride 2011). Recently, changing environmental and economic conditions are likewise impacting on the abilities of communities to continue to govern lands they occupy (Einarsson et al. 2004; Brunner and Lynch 2010; Poelzer and Wilson 2014). For example, climate change is forcing communities to consider physical relocation (Bronen and Chapin 2013; Bronen 2011). Globalization is likewise necessitating a change in the ways that local communities are able to protect their own interests against international market pressures, especially if they live on or near oil or mineral resources.

Recognizing the impacts of climate change and globalization, many scholars are calling for transforming the way we conceive of governance into ways that layer authority amongst local, regional, national and international actors (see for example, Adger, Brown, and Tompkins

CEUeTDCollection

2006, 9; Adger 2001, 921-931; Paavola and Adger 2005, 353-368). Although much of the literature and reports describe the need to integrate local people into larger decision-making processes, there is a lack of scholarship on the right of local governments to participate in these processes as governments. In addition, the literature overlooks the critical role that property rights play in self-governance. This dissertation fills those voids.

This study is rooted in the experiences of Alaska Native tribal governments. While the style of settling aboriginal land claims is somewhat unique to Alaska, the lessons learned are more broadly applicable. Around the globe, local communities are struggling to secure and codify their rights to customary and traditional lands (United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues 2014; Susskind and Anguelovski 2008). Similarly, communities are facing the threat of relocation due to climate change (Bronen 2011; Peninsula Principles 2013). This research is relevant to those experiences in that it highlights the importance of considering the legal status of governance during land claims and relocation processes (Peninsula Principles 2013, 10(f)). Consideration of land governance authority should be among the issues contemplated by policy makers and community leaders when developing policies, practices and procedures that can better ensure community self-determination and human development and wellbeing.

This research likewise identifies a distinction between “rights holders” and “stake holders” that also has consequences for governance. This difference is not well understood in the context of local decision-making processes and is often glossed over. Alaska again provides a great example of this distinction. Because tribal governments lost their land based authority, they are often integrated into public processes as stakeholders with as much say as any other stakeholder. However, tribes are sovereign governments and under U.S. and international law

CEUeTDCollection

are entitled to a greater role in decision-making processes, a role that reflects their status as governments with a right to participate in decision-making – as rights holders. Indigenous governments have a right, protected by international human rights law, to engage in self-governance. This right typically extends to recognizing tribal capacity to govern for community wellbeing, except this capacity is curtailed for tribes in Alaska where tribes are limited to being stakeholders in processes that impact upon their members. This is evident in the numerous policy reports written about the Arctic and about environmental governance that continually utter the phrases like “local involvement” or the like and argue that future decision makers must take local needs into account in order to craft better public policy. However, none of these reports describe what that means and how we will get there. Likewise, rarely if ever do these reports understand the different legal status that tribal governments have by virtue of international law.

This dissertation identifies this distinction, and characterizes tribes as rights holders in order to distinguish them from stakeholders. The latter term used to define people with an interest in the process and outcome, but not necessarily with a right to participate in that process.

This research aims to help policy makers to understand the difference between a community who is committed by virtue of aboriginal and future legal rights to self-governance, and to land and place, and groups that are involved in decisions based on their interest in a given issue. The two are not the same, and the distinction between peoples with a right to engage in processes versus people with an interest in engaging is relevant for how decision making should be structured to accommodate the two moving forward.

CEUeTDCollection