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Thanks everyone for coming tonight. My name is Fran Ulmer and I'm the chanceloor here at UAA and it is
my pleasure to welcome you to this very special occasion in which we are going to hear from remarkable
women who played an important role in the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act and in the lives of Alaska
native people in many many different ways. I want to acknowledge that we have a number of sponsors who
have helped to make it possible tonight for us to do this program. CIRI, the Alaska Humanities Forum,
Chugach Alaska Corporation, Koanik Broadcasting, Sitna Suak Native Cooporation, The Bethel Native Cooporation,
and several UAA organizations including Native Studies, Native Student Services the college of buisness
and public policy and the diversity action council. So to all of them thank you for helping to make this
possible. I perticularly want to acknowledge someone who has been working hard all year to help us celebrate the
40th anniversary of ANCSA. Irene Roan has been spear heading the effort called ANCSA at 40 organization.
Thank you, Thank you Irene for your leadership on this. There are a number of exciting programs that
are going to be hosted all year long and Willie Templeton here at UAA has been serveing on that commitee
and also very helpful tonight in organizing this event. Thank you very much Willie. So in addition to
this being a celebration of the 40th anniversary of ANCSA it is also a celebration of Womens history month.
So these things have come together very nicely for this event which is pretty unique. I tried to think
of another time when there was a spotlight shown on the role of women in the formation of ANCSA. And
maybe someone tonight on the panel will be able to remember such an occasion and talk about it, but
I couldn't remember such an occasion so I think this is pretty special. And I might note that we are
recording this. This will be podcast and available on the UAA webpage. So for those of you who have friends
or relatives that arn't here tonight but you want to recommend to them that they listen to this that
will be another option. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about our panelists and then I'm going
to turn this over. Nelly Moore is our moderator this evening. As you know she is an award winning journalist
and I just love listening to her on the radio. Thank you for doing this Nelly. So I'm going to introduce
our panel starting at the far end of the pannel table tonight. Frances Ann Degman was born in Unalakleet.
She has always followed the footsteps of her parents, Frank and Ada Degman and like her, like them she loves her
homeland and has worked in many different ways with the Alaska Native Federation, the Alaska Federation
of Natives and the Alaska Native Claims Act. She continues to serve on a number of boards that affect
her village and her region. She recieved her Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of Alaska, Fairbanks
and she is self employed.
She loves to smoke fish, knit musk ox wool and she loves to be out in the country on the land.
Marlene Johnson, I'm going to attempt her tligtit name. Slajaklk Lakute. And she can correct that.
Marlene has worked in her community, in this state and at the federal level for many years in many
ways.
She participated in the fight for the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act
and was one of 5 original incorporators of Sea Alaska. She was chairman of the board for Sea Alaska
corporation for its first decade.
She served on the Huna School Board for 25 years, on the board of trustees of the Huna heritage foundation
and the Sea Alaska Heritage institute. She's also served on lots of other boards includeing the board
of regents, the RuralCap board of directors, The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and on and on and on.
She has also recieved lots of awards, including AFN's citizen of the year award.
Brenda Ita Lee was born in Barrow, she currently lives in Anchorage.
She and her 10 brothers and sisters were raised in a traditional environment and spoke only the inupiat
language until she went to school.
She is proud of her inupiat heritage and feels fortunate to be a bilingual and bicultural person.
She worked for US Senator Ernest Greuning and in 1967 she traveled by airplane, snowmachine and dog teams
to 67 villages on behalf of Senator Greuning. She served in Alaska State Legislature, which is when I
first met brenda.
She was chair of the North Slope Burrow planning and zoning commision.
She served on the North Slope Burrow Assembly
and the board of directors of the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation, where she is still a consultant
for ASRC.
Finally Agnes Brown was born and raised in Tyonek.
Agnes recalls with fond memories the role that her family played in the development of Tyonek.
And in a lawsuit that was brought by Tyonek village over the oil and
gass drilling that would be taking place near their lands.
She is very proundof the fact that the tyonek village council helped other Alaska native communities
and helped fund the first statewide meeting of Alaska Native People
which resulted in the federation of AFN.
She is the president and chair of Khloa and Company, which is a family owned fishing buisness
She has been a member of the Ciri Board since 1974,
and she also serves as a director of the Cook Inlet Tribal Council.
Ladies and Gentleman, Please show these women how proud we are
of all they have accomplished.
Thank you Fran.
I have to thank Fran for reminding me about my cell phone because --
and if everybody could turn their cellphones off that'd be great.
'cause mines obnoxious.
Anyway I, um, I did want to say thank you also to Irene for organizing this
Not to long ago we decided at our house to go wireless with telephones and
about two weeks go I think I started having to recharge my phone about
three times a day.
But it's been a real busy time and Iren has done alot of work on this
So thank you Irene
I wanted to get first to I had the great honor of spending most of yesterday with these ladies
and it was such a great time.
I learned alot, we laughed alot and there was some really good reminising that I had forgotten about.
I wanted to start first tonight with Brenda and talk a little bit about
the core values, the reasons that the whole figth over ANCSA got started.
Thank you, and I really would like to take this oppurtunity to thank everyone whos come to this get together
one of the questions that each of us had been posed before coming here was
the issue about the significance of subsistance and the use of land to the alaska natives
and how significant was land? How significant was subsistance?
During the land claims fight I can say very confidently I hear the voices of many men and women
in the arctic slope region as a result of numerous meetings and gatherings we had
Our veiw point as inupiaq eskimos and I'm sure all the other Alaska natives has always been
that we viewed ourselves as the land owners
and this veiwpoint of our people was passed on to us.
Generation after generation after generation. We were the landowners, that was our veiwpoint.
and along with being land owners, we were also, we knew from our ancestors
that by word of mouth, that we were also the caretakers of the land.
That was our role our responsibility. And we were taught that since the very beginning of time
and we clearly also understood where our boundries were. Our ancient ancient boundries,
of our people region by region by region in the whole state of Alaska.
And these ancient bounrdies are still the same boundries that established each of the twelve regional corporations
in the state of Alaska. This knowledge of our ancient boundries had been passed down
from generation to generation to generation by word of mouth and so
I also along with the, our boundries, we were also told to take care of the land
not only the land but the vast resources that came with our land.
And that included having dominion ove rthe fish of the sea, the birds of the air
and every living creature that lived within our boundries.
That was our veiwpoint, we were always the land owners.
So before the land claims one of our very eloquent speakers was Joe Opekson
He passed away a few years ago. And his voice, I still can hear the echo of his voice
when he said, "We are the landowners."
well this the veiwpoint that our people had many other Alaska natives before the land claims.
So as far as subsistance is concerned
We always understood that the food that we ate that came from our land, our ocean, the atmosphere
the birds that fly
were for our benefit for our survival and we were to talke care of it.
So those two were very, it was the core of our life, those were our core values
our deep deep belief system since the very beginning.
We knew that these lands, and these resources were given to us by our creator.
and we viewed it as our devine right. Our devine right, that's how we veiwed it.
So when you head the voices of all the Alaska Native People as you got to know them
we had that in common, our land and our resources. We had basically the same veiwpoint.
So I'm sure the other ladies in the panel might want to add to that.
But that was our core belief system, that was our value.
This is why we fought so hard, because we had been taught that we are the land owners
we are responsible to care for the land and we did.