ABSTRACT
Alaska is a large peninsula on the Northwest comer of North America at approximately the same latitudes as Scandinavia but one third again as large. Alaska is bounded on the north by the Arctic Ocean, on the west by Russia and the Chukchi and Bering Seas and the North Pacific Ocean and on the east by the Yukon Territory and on the south and Southeast by British Columbia. Alaska’s 1.5 million square kilometres of territory makes it seventeen percent of the United States. The seas around Alaska constitute one of greatest fisheries in the world, while the land supports wildlife including especially moose and caribou hunted for thousands of years by native peoples. Alaska became a state in 1959 with, however, most of its lands under the control of the Federal Government. Forty years and many laws later, the dominant landowner in Alaska remains the federal government which directly administers sixty percent of Alaska (see Figure 1). Alaska’s population of about 625,000 people is concentrated in the greater Anchorage area, Fairbanks and Juneau, but approximately seven teen percent of its people are considered ‘native’ or indigenous, and they are the dominant people living on most of Alaska’s land. However, in creasingly native Alaskans are living in urban areas. Considerable fear has been expressed over the past two decades by native leaders that the urban white population may take over hunting and fishing on state and federal lands, depriving those who depend on wildlife resources of their liveli hood, their subsistence.
