The Clash of Economic Decisions in Alaska: the Influence of Land Rights on Resource Uses Among the Gwich'in and the Iñupiat

In 1971, the American State of Alaska introduced a new body of land rights in a way it has not been done before. For the first time in history, indigenous people were organized in industrial stakeholder corporations with the aim of generating profits off their traditional lands, redistributing them through shares. The Natives´call for a final land rights solution was joined by the industry and answered by the State Government after the discovery of commerciable amounts of oil in the 1960s on the North Slope of Alaska. Most of the native groups, by then partly integrated into mainstream American society, entered into a fundamentally new kind of land rights. This book outlines the development of land rights, characterized by depletion and assimilation of the native people throughout the course of history. The objective of this work is to study the extend to which Alaska Natives are economically and socially integrated into the capitalistic society of the U. S. A. and to explore the impact of the new category of land rights on the indigenous economic sphere. Has the experimental land rights legislation a positive outcome for all people?