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Article: Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act
- Article from:
- Dictionary of American History
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ALASKA NATIVE CLAIMS SETTLEMENT ACT
ALASKA NATIVE CLAIMS SETTLEMENT ACT
(1971). President Richard Nixon signed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) into law on 18 December 1971, granting title to 44 million of Alaska's 375 million acres to various groups of Alaska Native people. At the time, most of Alaska's land was undistributed.
In 1958 Congress passed the Alaska Statehood Act, authorizing the new state to select 104 million acres of unappropriated and unoccupied land in the state. But the statehood act also included a disclaimer of title or right by Alaska to lands that might be held by Alaska Natives. As the state began to make selections of the lands it desired, ...