Sealaska Corporation

A Tlingit audience member at a Sealaska Heritage Institute lecture in Juneau on Tuesday said Sealaska, the regional Alaska Native corporation, now controls land that Tlingit clans once held. He asked that clan knowledge be recognized as "clan ownership intellectual property rights."

"Sealaska owns the land. Clans don't have any say on their land. Sealaska has the say," he said.

In Tlingit terms, he said, clans own the land and clans make the decisions. "We still haven't gotten over colonization," he said. He also said he was not trying to criticize the corporation and that it was doing a good job.

Sealaska was incorporated in 1972 under the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, or ANCSA. The law transferred about 44 million acres of traditional homelands to Alaska Native corporations statewide, according to Sealaska's corporate profile. Sealaska says it manages about 362,000 acres, mostly forest, for about 26,000 shareholders. It says that land is roughly 1.6% of the traditional homelands of its Tlingit, Haida and Tsimshian shareholders.