The Land

I am from the village of Shungnak, Shungnak is on the Kobuk River. Kids my age don't know much about ANCSA. My grandma would talk about how it was back than. She lives in the village of Shungnak. She told me how they got food, they would go to camp and move during the winter. She didn't worry about who owned the land, there wasn't a piece of paper that said anybody owned the land. In the reading it says, " Land was generally held by the group as a whole, with perhaps the exception of individual hunting or fishing camps. These boundries of control were not based on written documents or maps, but on actual traditions and practice." My grandma knew how to get food and knew how to live in the weather conditions because her parents taught her.
Today life is so different. Life is easier today. It was different for my grandma. Back then it wasn't so easy for my grandma to get to places, for me it is because now there is transportation. It also wasn't easy to get a good education, my grandma didn't graduate. Things are easier now. Back than it wasn't.
Today I think kids my age should know about ANCSA because it is important to know about what made Alaska how it is today.

Interview

I interviewed my grandma the other day and it was quite interesting. They first had meetings in colleges dorms and living rooms and then the leader ship started to form called the AFN. She did went to the first few meetings. She told me that they started the meetings because when the oil was discovered they knew that the white people would take it away. She knew William Hensley, Sara Fema Shane, and Ruby Tensy (I'm not sure how to spell their names so you can correct me if I spelled it wrong). When she went to a restaurant called Country Kitchen which was also called Sugar Shack the manager/cook told her and her friends to sign up for Anchorage because since they were going to stay in Anchorage and not go back to the villages they might as well sign up. So my grandma sign herself, my mom Iva, and her nephew and now they are shareholders of CIRI. My grandma also told me that in the papers it said that having fedral owned lands is illegal. So now I'm curious about that topic and I hope you guys will too. Anyways when ANCSA passed she wasn't happy when they got 44 million acres after all the fighting they did. That was it for the interview.

Minority Business Benifits

I do not agree with minority business benifits. I think laws should uphold equal oppertunity regargless if you are a minority or majority. I also don't agree with laws that extract revenge or payback for past wrongs. The law should uphold things as they presently are, not try to fix things as they were. Sure, it shouldn't of happened, but it happened. it is not happening. It would not be just to give one business a bigger advantage over another.

Hensly was Right (Cont.)

Some people nowadays call Hensly a sellout and that all he wanted was money from the white man. i personally and strongly disagree. i think that we are far better off than the Natives in the lower 48 who actually were and still are in reservations. i honestly cant imagine my people on a reservation. Can you?

As Hensly says in his speach that he gave in '69 "When Alaska was first sighted in 1741, the Native population was about 74,700. thirteen years after Alaska was sold by the Russians, the population was decimated to 33,000. and the Eskimo population went from about 54,000 to 18,000 in just 150 years." i was just aastounded at how much we lost as a people and im honestly surprised we still survived. to me William Hensly is a hero.

Gave Ak. Natives a Voice

I was reading about the Tundra Times paper and it says the paper gave Alaska natives a voice. This is interesting to me because it gave attention to the land right of Eskimos, Indians, and so on. I was thinking, if that got attention they should do the same thing over and over until it got the attention of the government. I think this is great, if they didn't make a newsletter there would still be issues that affected a lot of people.

Did the Russians or the Americans have any claim to any part of Alaska at all? Did they have a legitiment claim when they had lived in their settlements for a few generations? Is there a claim on Alaska for Americans, or should they leave? At which point are grievences of the past, and at which point are grievences an issue that has to be resolved? At which point should we fight for our rights,and at which point should we forget and end the fight?
What is our duty now?
Another point I would like to make: I do not think the Russians or Americans ruled in the best way. Their governments supported, actively and by silence, some of the evil actions of their people here, on purpose or by accident. I do not think that Americans or Russians in Alaska are bad by definition, but that they did not always rule well. Of course, this is a broad statement. There were many good things done by good leaders, but that I do think there were a lot of mistakes made about what to do with the Native people. I think that there were many good people in Alaska, both Russian, American, and Native, but that justice did not happen until recently, for the most part, concerning Alaska Native Claim Settlement.

I like This

The thing that i thought was really interesting, I didn't even know Willie Hensley was in the NANA region like me and was from Kotzebue. I am wanting to meet this guy because I know for a fact that he taught my dad in the past.