Natives granted Senate hearing on subsistence
Meeting will be first on the issue in nearly a decade
ANCHORAGE - The U.S. Senate Indian Affairs Committee will take up Alaska's subsistence dispute next month, when the panel is scheduled to hear from Native leaders.
An oversight hearing on subsistence has been set for Nov. 1.
The session will be the first congressional hearing on subsistence in almost a decade. It's been even longer since a hearing on the issue was held in Washington, D.C.
The Alaska Federation of Natives requested the hearing.
AFN spokesman John Tetpon said Native leaders hope Congress can find a way around the state Legislature's resistance to a statewide subsistence priority for rural residents. The hearing will come on the heels of AFN's annual convention, set for Oct. 25-27 in Anchorage.
"A host of people are going down to promote and support the idea of Congress allowing the people of Alaska to vote on the subsistence issue," Tetpon told the Anchorage Daily News.
AFN officials would not discuss their aims more specifically. In recent months, however, Native leaders have touted several ways that Congress could break up the logjam on subsistence laws.
One approach would be for Congress to "pre-empt" the state by extending a rural hunting and fishing priority to all state and private lands. A second approach would involve rewriting the federal priority to include all Alaska Natives, including those who live in urban settings.
Details of the hearing, including who will be asked to speak, haven't been worked out yet, said Chuck Kleeschulte, a spokesman for Sen. Frank Murkowski, an Alaska Republican.
A clash between federal and state laws has led to the drawn-out struggle over subsistence. Federal law says rural Alaska residents should have a subsistence priority. The state constitution forbids such a priority.
The Legislature has repeatedly refused to place a constitutional amendment before the voters to bring the two laws in line. Alaska's Republican congressional delegation has shown no interest in overhauling the federal law.
The result is a complex dual-management system for fishing and hunting. Rural residents have a subsistence priority on federally controlled lands and waters, while all residents have the priority on certain state and private lands.
The AFN's move toward Congress comes as a task force appointed by Gov. Tony Knowles makes yet another attempt to come up with a compromise. That group, led by Alaska Attorney General Bruce Botelho, will hold its next meeting Saturday in Anchorage.