Viewing page 11 of 168

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

[[image]]
Alaska claims
Richest roll call in history

(Second of a series)

By STANTON H. PATTY
Times Staff Reporter

ANCHORAGE - Alaska's native peoples are taking roll.

And it is a formidable job, with what looks to be an impossible deadline.

Less than a year from now all natives hoping to share in the Alaska native land-claims settlement enacted by Congress last winter must be registered.

March 30, 1973, is the cut-off date established by the Interior Department.

Enrollment of natives in Alaska's more than 200 villages will be relatively easy. But reaching those outside Alaska already is proving difficult. 

They are scattered all over the world.

What  they will share is history's largest land-claims settlement- totaling 40 million acres of land and a potential of $965 million in cash.

[[image]]
Gary T. Longley

[[image]]
Frances Degnan

[[image]]
Roy Peratrovich

"It's really a very short time to complete the enrollment," said Gary T. Longley, the enrollment coordinator. "We're going to have to hustle."

THROUGHOUT the land-claims campaign, the estimate was that perhaps 55,000 to 60,000 native Alaskans would be eligible to participate in the settlement. 

Now some officials are saying the number could reach 100,000!

Who is eligible?

Those natives who are citizens of the United States and were born on or before December 18, 1971, the date President Nixon signed the settlement act.

They must be at least one-fourth Eskimo, Alaskan Indian or Aleut, or a combination of those bloodlines.

How do they register?

The first step is to apply for enrollment and be certified as an Alaska native. Then the applicant must be registered formally with one of the regional native associations of Alaska. The final roll will assign each native to a village or region for land-claims benefits.

Enrollment headquarters for the entire project is in the Kaloa Building here. The address:

Bureau of Indian Affairs, Enrollment Coordinating Office, Pouch 7-1971, Anchorage, Alaska 99503.

The settlement act divided Alaska into 12 native regions, based on areas covered by existing native associations. There may be a 13th region - for nonresident natives - if the outside-Alaska natives choose to form this grouping.

Meanwhile, the B. I. A. is contracting with each of the 12 regional associations in Alaska to conduct the actual enrollment. Training of village enumerators, most of whom will be bilingual, is under way.

Generally, natives will be enrolled in the regions where they were residing April 1 of this year. But there are exceptions. 

Persons missed by the enumerators may apply to the Anchorage headquarters in person or by mail.

Applications should include the native's name, address, sex, date and place of birth, social-security number and place of residence on April 1.

TO ASSIST the possible 30,000 or more nonresident natives, a B. I. A. enrollment team is "on the road" this month in the lower 48 states. The itinerary includes Seattle, Portland, Sacramento, San Francisco, Los Angeles and San Diego. 

It is believed that several thousand of the transplanted Alaskans are living in the Puget Sound area.

 The Anchorage office has been snowed with hundreds of letters and long-distance telephone calls from natives asking how they can be enrolled. Some of the inquiries are from foreign countries.

"The people are really scattered," Longley said. "In many cases, we will have to rely on their families in the villages to tell us where their relatives are now."

Miss Frances Degnan, the enrollment officer, said persons are asking if they are required to return home to enroll.

"This is not necessary," she said. "But to get the land that they are entitled to they would have to return and become residents of a village.

"Now, many are going back--to stay."

That, by the way, includes officials such as Longley and Miss Degnan.

Longley, 39, an Eskimo born in Nome, still lists Nome as his permanent address. Miss Degnan, an Eskimo from Unalakleet who serves also as secretary of the Alaska Federation of Natives, considers the assignment here as temporary.

"I'm counting the days until I can get back to Nome," Longley said.

"Me, too," Miss Degnan said.

LONGLEY was chief of native affairs for the Public Health Service in Anchorage when the B. I. A. selected him from [[?]] 30 applicants to be the enrollment coordinator. He took the job with no raise in pay.

"It was the challenge," he explained. "Being native, I wanted to help.

"But just now I am beginning to realize how much we're biting off. I think we can make the deadline. We have to!" 

Ther is some concern about fraudulent enrollment. However, precautions are built into the registration procedure.

"We will be checking out everything," Miss Degnan said.

Those whose applications are rejected have 45 days to appeal. If the applicant is rejected again after the appeal, the final ruling will be made by the Bureau of Indian Affairs solicitor.

ANCHORAGE itself, Alaska's largest city, has the largest native population in the state. There may be 16,000 or so just in the Anchorage district.

Roy Peratrovich, superintendent of the B. I. A.'s Anchorage Agency, can explain why.

"Anchorage offers a lot of opportunities for the natives," he said. "There is nothing in the villages for them, in most cases.

"I know. I had to leave my village, in 1941, to get ahead."

Peratrovich, 60, is a Tlingit Indian from Klawock in Southeastern Alaska. He also served five terms as grand president of the Alaska Native Brotherhood and helped fight discrimination years ago when it was a lonely battle.

He does not talk about it, but Peratrovich remembers vividly how it was in Alaska when stores displayed signs in their windows like:

"No dogs or Indians." Or, "We cater to white trade only."

But that is in the past. As one native put it here the other day:

"Now it's popular to be native."

(Tomorrow: Doubts and questions at the village level.)