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Home > Our Lands > The Vision of Our Lands > Log Donations > Testimony on H.R. 2099 Seeks to Finalize Land EntitlementSealaska Director Byron Mallott and Sealaska Vice President and General Counsel Jaeleen Araujo testified in support of H.R. 2099 before the House Natural Resources Committee on Wednesday, March 17, 2010. Congressman Nick J. Rahall (D-WV) chairs the committee. Excerpts of Byron Mallott TestimonyThis legislation concerns the right of Sealaska to finalize its Native land entitlement under laws of the United States that were enacted to support the cultural, social and economic needs of the Alaska Native community. As discussed below, this legislation permits Sealaska to select its final entitlement lands from within a larger pool of lands in Southeast Alaska. Some in the environmental community have attacked Sealaska’s effort to receive its lands as “a corporate takeover of the Tongass National Forest.” They have resorted to misstatements and outright fabrications about our land management and stewardship practices and overzealous statements about the impact on the proposal on ecology of the Tongass. This handful of conservation groups consistently tells us that we should have our land, but that they get to decide where that land will be. They tell us that if we want to select land outside of our boxes – boxes that were established by those whose interests were fundamentally about keeping Natives in their corner of the Tongass – that they will tell us where to go. We have been asked to place 1-2 million acres of conservation on the back of our legislation as the price for selecting lands that make cultural and economic sense to our people. Native people have always been asked to go second, and we are being asked again to go second by some in the conservation community. Not this time. H.R. 2099 is necessary for the well-being of the Native people of Southeast Alaska; special interests have rights, but those rights to public land should be tempered by the federal government’s obligation to fulfill the promise of ANCSA. View full testimony Sealaska Director Byron Mallott testimony Alaska Federation of Natives President Julie Kitka testimony View video from the hearing below: Click here to go to the House Natural Resources Committee
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