The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
The mining newspaper for Alaska and Canada's North
Sorted by date Results 1 - 17 of 17
The Red Dog Mine has been a gamechanger for the more than 15,000 Iñupiat shareholders of NANA Corp., the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) regional corporation that owns the world-class Red Dog deposits in Northwest Alaska that are the source of nearly 5% of the world's new zinc supply each year. The revenues from shipping out more than 1 billion pounds of zinc annually, along with healthy portions of lead, silver, and minor amounts of germanium, have served as a...
Alaska boasts what many consider the most successful aboriginal land claims settlement on Earth – a solution that has not only turned out to be a cultural success but a brilliant business move for the more than 140,000 Alaska Natives and an economic boon for the state that covers the resource-rich lands these industrious and innovative peoples have called home for millennia. Signed into law by U.S. President Richard Nixon on Dec. 18, 1971, the Alaska Native Claims S...
Covering a roughly 450-mile stretch of postcard-worthy Gulf of Alaska coastline where glacier-carved fjords and bays teeming with fish, birds, and marine mammals are framed by dense forests of hemlock and spruce and majestic mountain vistas, the Chugach Alaska Corp. region epitomizes Alaska beauty. In addition to the immediately apparent abundance of subsistence, fishing, tourism, and timber resources, this 10-million-acre picturesque area along Alaska's southern coast is...
With more than half of Alaska's entire population living within its region, Cook Inlet Region Inc., more commonly known as CIRI, is the most metropolitan of the 12 landholding Alaska Native regional corporations. While CIRI has leveraged its urban position with retail developments such as Tikahtnu Commons, an enormous retail and entertainment center on the outskirts of Anchorage, the Southcentral Alaska regional corporation also has oil and gas, renewable energy, and mining...
It is hard to quantify which is more impressive, the sheer size of the estate owned by Doyon Ltd. or the rich and underexplored mineral potential on the lands owned by the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act regional corporation for Alaska's Eastern Interior. Running the breadth of Alaska between the Brooks Range to the north and Alaska Range to the south, the Doyon region blankets a mineral-rich swath of Alaska's Interior that is nearly the size of Texas. Doyon owns 12.5...
The Koniag Inc. region covers the Kodiak Archipelago, a group of islands off the southern coast of mainland Alaska better known for their enormous brown bears than vast mineral potential. The Alutiiq people that arrived on Kodiak, Afognak, and surrounding islands more than 7,500 years ago were skilled mariners who were deeply connected to the ocean for food and supplies. Over the millennia, these roaming seafarers settled into whaling and fishing villages that sheltered...
Seeking economic and cultural prosperity for its more than 23,000 Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian shareholders while also looking to provide even greater benefits for future generations, Sealaska takes a balanced approach to developing the resources growing above and stored beneath its lands in Southeast Alaska. This does not mean the Southeast Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) corporation shuns mining or other resource development in its region, a nearly 600-mile...
Aleut Corp. is committed to promoting economic opportunities for its more than 4,000 shareholders while preserving the traditional culture and values developed from living in a ruggedly beautiful stretch of Alaska. From the community of Sand Point on the Alaska Peninsula to Attu near the western end of 167 named Aleutian Islands extending more than 1,000 miles off Southwest Alaska, the Aleut Corp. region forms a boundary between the Pacific Ocean and Bering Sea. This...
Pioneer Alaskans swore that Alaska's economy would be destroyed if "the Natives" secured control of any lands in Alaska. However, they did not realize how practical and pragmatic Alaska Natives have had to be to survive and thrive in their Arctic homeland. Whatever tool was needed to survive, Alaska Natives created it with the minimal materials at hand-skin, wood, stone, jade, copper, seashells, mud, plants, flint, obsidian, snow, and ice. With the settlement of Alaska Native...
As an Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act regional corporation that is balancing traditional values with economic opportunities across a 26-million-acre picturesque and resource-rich traditional region at the epicenter of Alaska's highway system, Ahtna Inc. lies at a literal and figurative crossroads. Bordered by the majestic Alaska Range to the north, the equally beautiful Chugach Mountains to the south, the Canadian border to the east, and the Denali National Park to the...
Vast petroleum reserves underlying what is now the Arctic Slope Regional Corp. (ASRC) region, and the need to build a pipeline to deliver this oil to an ice-free port 800 miles to the south and then to global markets that lie beyond, raised the urgency to settle aboriginal land claims in Alaska. This need for a resolution before a pipeline corridor that would bisect the state prompted lawmakers in Washington, D.C. to enact the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, a...
Home of the famed golden beaches of Nome that has captured the imagination of millions over the past 120 years, the Bering Straits Native Corporation (BSNC) region covers the Seward Peninsula and coastal lands arcing around the eastern and southern coast of the Norton Sound in the far western reaches of Alaska. While this region may be 300 miles beyond North America's highway system, it has served as a crossroads for human activity for at least 15 millennia and will continue...
The Bristol Bay region is home to two resources that beyond a doubt earn the moniker "world-class" – an annual run of sockeye salmon that is second to none and Pebble, the largest undeveloped copper and gold deposits known to exist on Earth. These world-renowned resources, however, have stirred up controversy in this Oklahoma-sized region of Southwest Alaska, as many of the roughly 7,400 Bristol Bay residents are concerned that mining the copper, gold, molybdenum, rhenium, and...
Calista Corp. and its more than 33,000 Yup'ik, Cup'ik, and Athabascan shareholders are on the cusp of realizing the benefits that will come with the sustainable development of a mine at the 45-million-ounce Donlin Gold project on their land in the Yukon-Kuskokwim region of Southwest Alaska. With 39 million oz of gold in measured and indicated resources that average 2.24 grams per metric ton, and another 6 million oz in the inferred category averaging 2.02 g/t gold, Donlin...
From the wide distribution of the massive resources provided by a bowhead whale harvested in the icy waters of the Beaufort Sea to sharing the catch from successful fishing in the Gulf of Alaska, sharing the bounty nature has to offer is among the most important core values of Alaska Natives across the state. This millennia-long tradition of sharing the hunt has been enshrined in the sections 7(i) and 7(j) provisions of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. From the early...
It is my good fortune to be asked to write a short piece on the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. My mother, Naungagiaq, would have been proud. She set me free to seek an education in a Tennessee boarding school when I was 14 – just at the time of my life that I could have been of help to her and the family in our hunting, fishing, and trapping world of the 1940s and 1950s. We had lived in three sod homes along the Little Noatak about a dozen miles from Kotzebue. She, in a...
President Richard M. Nixon signed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) in 1971, exactly 230 years after Captain Vitus Bering's Second Kamchatka Expedition finally sighted land in Alaska offshore from what is now Mount Saint Elias in 1741. In the years between, the 70,000 or so Unagan (Aleut), Sugpiaq, Yupik, Inupiat, Athapascan, Tlingit, and their descendants began to experience extreme changes brought on by Russian and American firepower, disease, religion,...
