Alaska Natives and the New Harpoon: Economic Performance of the ANCSA Regional Corporations

The following excerpt is from an article by Stephen Colt, an economist at the University of Alaska Anchorage and an expert on Alaska Native corporations. You can read it at this link, which will take you to the Journal of Land, Resources, and Environmental Law; you can find this specific article in the Table of Contents on the left side of the page. Click on the title of the article to read, download, and print a copy of the text. These readings are provided by the Shapiro Library. This reading is required. You will have to log into Shapiro Library with your SNHU credentials.

An Iñupiat leader, Charlie Edwardsen, called the [Native regional] corporations the "new harpoon"-a reference to his people's historic reliance on whaling.

...For at least the first twenty years of operation-from 1973 to 1993-the economic performance of the regional corporations was surprisingly poor. Through 1993, these corporations as a group lost about $380 million, or more than eighty percent of their original cash endowment, in direct business operations. Only the one-time sale of old-growth timber and other natural assets and a one-time tax windfall allowed them to report positive accounting income.

Behind the poor average performance, however, is a surprising amount of variation that includes some real success stories. Cumulative per capita dividends from 1974 through 1999 varied from $50 to more than $34,000. The average annual return (including income from resource sales and tax windfalls) for the corporations was about five percent of book equity-but this return varied among corporations from minus fifty percent to plus twenty-seven percent. And beyond financial returns, several corporations provided hundreds of high-wage jobs for their Native shareholders, while others provided none.

...Through their first twenty years, Alaska Native regional corporations could not parlay control of land, natural resources, and capital into sustained profits-and in fact sustained large losses in the attempt....Limited analysis of more recent data shows that the corporations dramatically improved their financial performance during the 1990s. Using a measure of adjusted net income that excluded tax windfalls and one-time sales of natural resource assets, they lost $250 million between 1974 and 1991. But in 1992 this measure of adjusted net income switched from being generally negative to generally positive and growing. Between 1992 and 1998 they earned $710 million....

...[T]he corporations have learned from some early mistakes during these start-up years....Their recent success suggests that the challenge of economic development in a remote region can be met, at least in part, by participating in the larger national and global economy.

Based on your reading in the webtext, select one of the following thesis statements. Your response should be two to three paragraphs long.

ANCSA and the Native corporation system have been good for Alaska Natives.

OR

ANCSA and the Native corporation system have been bad for Alaska Natives.

Next, revise the statement you have chosen to reflect the complexity of the historical events surrounding this issue. Provide specific examples of how ANCSA and the Native corporation system have had a positive or negative impact-or perhaps both-on Alaska Natives. Further illustrate the complexity of this issue by showing how the passage of ANCSA was contingent on at least three historical events or forces.