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Chapter 9. As Long as the Grass is Green
Themes
and Colors
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Inconvenient Indian, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
History and Mythology
Racism and Systemic Oppression
Land
Sovereignty
Summary
Analysis
King states his intentions to conclude with a happy ending, because North Americans love happy endings. To aid in this endeavor, he asked his Native friends for signs that point to improved Native-White relations. In their answers, King identifies two recurring topics: the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) and the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement. Before exploring these historical land-claim settlements, however, King takes a moment to address a third topic: the creation of the Gwaii Haanas National Park and Haida Heritage Site.
King comically concludes his account of Indian-White relations with a happy ending to reinforce the book’s theme of storytelling and history’s interconnected relationship. The previous two chapters focused on outlooks for Native land reclamations and the future of tribal sovereignty. This chapter has a more direct focus on what recent trends in land disputes and tribal sovereignty can tell us about the future of Native Nations in the U.S. and Canada.
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In the 1980s, timber companies began to pressure the British Columbia government to access forest land that had previously remained untouched by logging. In 1983, the government authorized MacMillan Bloedel to cut cedar on Meares Island, off the West coast of Vancouver Island. No sooner had the government granted this authorization than Natives and allies assembled on the island to protest the logging project, which began in 1984. Tla-o-qui-aht Chief Moses Martin told the loggers they would not be cutting any trees there. MacMillan Bloedel and the Tla-o-qui-aht fought their disagreement in court. Ultimately, the court ruled with the Tla-o-qui-aht.
The Tla-o-qui-aht people’s fight to defend Meares Island against deforestation presents another instance in which differing views on land and land usage creates conflict. As King has stated in previous chapters, non-Natives (generally speaking) primarily regard land as a commodity, whereas indigenous cultures have more sacred attachments to land.
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In 1985 on Haida Gwaii, logging companies zeroed in on Lyell Island, which was Haida territory. Like the Tla-o-qui-aht, the Haida protested the logging and formed a blockade on the island. The timber industry, in contrast, saw the protest as an assault on their livelihood. The occupation of Lyell Island was remarkably civil, with the Haida sharing their food with law enforcement and loggers. The RCMP reciprocated by acquiring satellite service so everyone could watch the Canadian football game. The occupation lasted 21 months, and in July 1987, the Canadian government and the Haida signed an agreement that crated Gwaii Haanas National Park Reserve and Haida Heritage Site.
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King returns to the settlements that are the main focus of this final chapter, starting with the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA). Native land-claims have been a pressing issue in Alaska since it became a state in 1959. In 1966, Alaska Natives formed the Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN) to aid in settling disputed land-claims. Stuart Udall, the Secretary of the Interior at the time, stated that he would not approve any Alaskan land selections until the state settled unresolved Native land-claims. In 1969, Udall reaffirmed his earlier promise by creating Public Land Order 4582. The law was unpopular with Alaska governor Walter J. Hickel and the state’s petroleum lobby, since the legislation stalled the construction of a massive pipeline that was intended to carry Arctic crude oil from the Beaufort Sea down to the Gulf of Alaska.
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The 1968 discovery of oil on Alaska’s North Slope incentivized the state to settle Native land-claims as quickly as possible. From the beginning, the disputes were contentious, with Natives and the state both claiming a majority of Alaska’s land. However, it took only three years for the U.S. Congress to pass the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA). King compares ANCSA to early treaties between tribes and the federal government, since the settlement involved Natives giving up claims to large parcels of land for smaller, guaranteed allotments. In total, the settlement awarded Alaska Natives 44 million acres and $963 million in cash—both land and money far surpassing any compensation awarded to tribes on the mainland.
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Before ANCSA, Native land in Alaska was trust land, and, therefore, controlled by the U.S. government. Through negotiations, state and federal authorities established that any land compensations Alaska Natives received would be fee-simple transfers. While this type of transfer was concerningly similar to the settlements granted through the 1887 Allotment Act, ANCSA did not relieve Natives of their land as these earlier acts had. This was because the land Alaska Natives were awarded through ANCSA was awarded not to individuals (as had been the case with the Allotment Act) but to twelve Native regional corporations. ANCSA also guaranteed Alaska Natives surface land rights (timber) and sub-surface land rights (oil), which gave them an economic advantage. In effect, ANCSA made tribal and village councils shareholders in the Sealaska Corporation, or the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, to name two corporations created through ANCSA.
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King describes meeting a Tlingit friend in Juneau. The friend remarked how, since ANCSA, the younger Tlingit generations now know the name of their “corporation” rather than their “clan.” King expands on this point, positing that Corporations “[are] [t]he new reservations.” One issue was the unpreparedness of Alaska Natives who experienced culture shock from having to adapt to their new roles as corporate stockholders. While ANCSA protected the awarded assets for the first 20 years, after that, there loomed the threat that Native land would, once more, be subject to seizure by the state.
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However, Native leaders worked to create House Resolution 278 (HR 278) in 1991, which amended the original settlement to extend more authority over corporate stock settlements, which had originally only been granted to Alaska Natives born before 1971. The resolution also guaranteed protection of undeveloped Native land against taxation, bankruptcy, and civil judgements. At present, King is skeptical that state and federal authorities will push Native corporations to enter the marketplace, which would open the door for them to be taken over by non-Native interests. He also sees corporations as an updated form of assimilation. Still, the land protection and economic opportunities the historic settlement afforded Alaska Natives opens the possibility of a fortuitous future.
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The second land claims settlement King addresses is the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement, which he frames as the end of a land claim the Inuit initiated in 1976 to lobby for a new territory. That resultant territory, Nunavut (“Our Land” in Inuktitut) encompasses 2 million square kilometers in the eastern side of Canada’s Northwest Territories. The Inuit were awarded 350,000 square kilometers of land and over one billion dollars. The biggest difference between this settlement and ANCSA is that while only 10 percent of the total land allotted to the Inuit is fee-simple land, the entirety of the land Alaska Natives received is fee-simple. Of course, it’s hardly logical to compare the situations of Alaska Natives and the Inuit; whereas Alaska Natives make up just 14 percent of Alaska’s population, the Inuit make up 85 percent of Nunavut’s population, for example.
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In the Bathurst Mandate that the Nunavut government released in 2000, the Inuit voiced ambitious goals for their new territory, such as the hope that it would be functionally bilingual in Inuktitut and English by 2020. Yet, King isn’t optimistic that they can reach this goal. For starters, the high school graduation rate for Inuit students is just 25 percent, and the percentage who go on to attend college is even lower. Furthermore, the amount of financial support the federal government provides the territory for French language instruction is roughly four times as great as that it allots for instruction in Inuktitut.
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King believes that the history of Manitoba can provide a valuable lesson to Nunavut. When the province entered the Canadian federation in 1870, its population consisted mostly of French-speaking Métis. While the Manitoba Act established French and English as dual official languages and guaranteed a Métis land base, westward expansion had so altered the province’s demographics that the Métis became a minority in just over a decade, which jeopardized many of the privileges they were afforded in earlier legislation.
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King reaffirms the fact that ANCSA and the Nunavut Land Claims Agreement are flawed documents. He also laments the persistent anti-Indian attitudes he continues to encounter around the world, the tired refrain that it’s time to “get over it” and stop living in the past. King understands the appeal of such a stance: the ease of forgiving the sins of the past by virtue of our descendants’ ignorance. And yet, King counters, “ignorance has never been the problem.” Instead, he blames western civilization’s “unexamined confidence” and “unwarranted certainty in Christianity” for unresolved tensions in Indian-White relations. In this light, King believes that a closer examination of the past can be an educational, humbling experience.
Regardless of how one chooses to interpret Native history, King argues, it is impossible to ignore how much they have lost. And yet, Native culture has not remained in the past: it has adapted and changed and continues to bring meaning and satisfaction to its people. King concludes his book with a nod to the future, declaring that he regrets that he won’t be alive to hear stories about what the next millennia will bring for North America’s Native people.
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