Learning from Tribal Leadership and the Anchor Forest Concept for Implementing Cross-Boundary Forest Management

In response to the increasing scale of wildfire and forest health challenges in the West, the Intertribal Timber Council, a nonprofit consortium of American Indian Tribes and Alaska Native corporations, proposed creating “Anchor Forests,” where a Tribe would convene neighboring landowners to collectively manage the landscape across property boundaries. This concept has sparked conversation but has not been fully implemented. Amid shifts toward both collaborative decision making and Tribal partnerships on federal forestlands, we asked, “why did the Anchor Forest concept emerge, and what can the field of forest governance learn from its development?” Through qualitative analysis of documents and interviews, we show how Anchor Forests could expand spatial-temporal scales of forest management. We highlight how Tribal leadership could overcome past governance barriers through their sovereign authority and long-term forestry expertise and knowledge. We describe how this concept could function as a tool to enact change within rigid forest-management institutions. Study Implications Scholars and practitioners can learn from Anchor Forests as an example of a cross-boundary forest-governance framework that emphasizes long-term investment and relationships to land as exemplified by Tribal forest management. The Anchor Forest concept also provides a structure in which Tribes are leaders and conveners rather than stakeholders or participants. To achieve broad goals of landscape resilience and forest health, governance structures must be deliberately designed to mobilize Tribal knowledge and stewardship practices through uplifting, rather than undermining, Tribal sovereignty. The Anchor Forest concept offers key considerations to serve as a starting place for partnerships to emerge in their own contexts.

Alaska's Conflicting Objectives

The formal treaty-making period between the U.S. government and Native peoples ended in 1871, only four years after the United States purchased Alaska from Russia. As a result, Alaska Natives did not enter into treaties that recognized their political authority or land rights. Nor, following the end of the treaty-making period, were Alaska Natives granted the same land rights as federally recognized tribes in the lower forty-eight states. Rather, Congress created the Alaska Native Corporations as the management vehicle for conveyed lands in 1971. The unique legal status of these corporations has raised many questions about tribal land ownership and governance for future generations of Alaska Natives. Although Congress created the Native Corporations in its eagerness to settle land claims and assimilate Alaska Natives, Alaska Native cultures and governance structures persisted and evolved, and today many are reasserting the inherent authority of sovereign governments.

“Incorporating” American Colonialism: Accounting and the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act

ABSTRACT The history of Alaska is a colonial history (Pomeroy 1947; Haycox 2002). The purpose of this paper is to examine how the corporate form of organization and corporate accounting were used by the United States (U.S.) government to rationalize decisions, exercise control, and exploit Alaskan resources to benefit corporate America and the existing U.S. states. The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971 (ANCSA) established Alaska Native Corporations (ANCs), whose stock was distributed to qualifying Alaska Natives in exchange for their agreement to extinguish all aboriginal land claims. Guided by prior work in accounting and postmodern colonialism, our analysis uncovers ways in which ANCSA, though lauded by the U.S. government as an innovative and generous settlement, perpetuated a historical pattern of indigenous exploitation by western economic interests, and employed corporate accounting policies and techniques to further the interests of the U.S. government and large corporations at the expense of Native Alaskans.

The ANCSA Amendments of 1987 and land management in Alaska

The original Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, passed in 1971, gave Alaska Native corporations fee simple title to 18 million hectares of Alaskan land. Within a few years of its passage, however, Alaska Natives grew concerned that this land would be lost through mismanagement of the corporations or forced into development by property taxation. Because large numbers of Alaska Natives depend upon subsistence hunting and fishing, the loss of the land, or its use for activities incompatible with subsistence, could have been devastating. Amendments of 1987 (PL 100–241) protect Native corporation land by placing all undeveloped land in a land bank and allowing for the formation of ‘Settlement Trusts“. More importantly, Congress recognized that the Native subsistence economy and culture are significant factors in the management of Native lands.