90 



SEACCi Hcjnog Sui««»«i ^i H.R. 24U 

 TW>nK Bar. AUib Jal; i. 1946 



report looking at the question of why the communities of Haines, Ketchikan, Petersburg, 

 Tenakee and Wrangell had been denied eligibility to form village or urban corporations 

 under the Alaska Native Qalms Settlement Act of 1971 (ANSCA). This synopsis 

 wrongly claims that the report concluded these communities met the eligibility 

 requirements for villages eligible to form Native corporations. It also claims that the 

 ISER Report found no justification for omitting these five communities from those 

 communities eligible to form urban or village corporations under ANSCA. However, a 

 December 7, 1993 letter from ISER Diredor Lee Ciorsuch (Attachment 3, emphasis 

 added) corrected these falsehoods in a news story on the drafi report: 



"The study villages were not ... denied all benefits under ANSCA. Qualified 

 residents of those villages received cash payments, and they are at-large members of 

 Sealaska regional corporation. 



We did not ... make a finding that Congress had inadvertently omitted the study 

 villages from land benefits, nor did we recommend that Congress should now award 

 them land . We did not ... say that the study villages were entitled to the same 

 economic benefits as Southeast communities with village or urban corporations have 

 received. ...' 



In a May 29, 1996 letter from ISER to SEACC (Attachment 4), ISER confirmed thai 

 *[t]he report content did not change substantively between the draft and the fmal 



This bill has less to do with Native claims than it does with guaraoteeing that vast areas 

 of the Tongass presently off limits to large scale logging will be taken from public 

 ownership and clearcut without public scrutiny. We must note that lands threaten by 

 the Land Grants to Native Corporations provision Id H.R. 2413, and the New 

 Native Corporation Amendment in the Presidio Bill, will surely Include areas 

 permanently set aside from logging by Congress in the Tongass Timber Reform 

 Act 



Your bill would reopen fundamental decisions regarding land entitlements made by 

 Congress when it approved ANSCA. It will almost certainly open a Pandora's box of 

 additional land claims in Alaska, a never-ending flood of potential public land and timber 

 grabs. 



None of the lands selected by these five NEW Native corporations will be subject to the 

 sustained yield and multiple use requirements applicable to Tongass National Forest 

 Lands. Most of the Southeast Alaska village corporations created by ANSCA have . 

 already clearcut hundreds of thousands of acres of their merchantable timber since 1983. 

 The effects of this unsustainable logging rale can be seen by the 53 percent drop in 

 cutting levels on Native corporation lands between 1991 and 1994 .' 



'Sourct; Forest Service's draft Section 706(«) Report for Fiscal Year 1994, 22-24. 



