Take My Land, Take My Life: The Story of Congress’s Historic Settlement of Alaska Native Land Claims, 1960-1971

In Take My Land, Take My Life, Mitchell concludes the story of the 134-year history of the U.S. government’s relations with Alaska’s Native people begun in Sold American: The Story of Alaska Natives and Their Land, 1867-1959. The culmination of that tale occurred in 1971 when Congress enacted the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. ANCSA authorized Alaska Natives to be paid ＄962.5 million and to be conveyed title to 44 million acres of land. Though highly controversial, ANCSA remains the most generous settlement of aboriginal land claims in the nation’s history. Mitchell’s insightful, exhaustively researched work also describes the political history during the first decade of Alaska statehood, from the rise of Native organizations such as the Alaska Federation of Natives to the battles for power in the subcommittees of Congress.

Insightful and drawn from years of painstaking research of primary source materials, Sold American and Take My Land, Take My Life are an indispensable resource for readers who are interested in the history of the nation’s largest state and of the federal government’s involvement with Alaska’s indigenous peoples.

Donald Craig Mitchell is a former vice president and general counsel of the Alaska Federation of Natives, organized by Alaska Natives in 1967 to fight for their historic land claims settlement. In private practice since 1984, he has been intimately involved, both before Congress and in the courts, in the development and implementation of federal Native policy. In 1997, he represented Senator Ted Stevens before the United States Supreme Court as amicus curiae in Alaska v Native Village of Venetie, which upheld Mitchell’s view that Congress did not intend land conveyed to Alaska Native corporations to be ＂Indian Country.＂ He is author of two books and numerous articles on Alaska Native law.