Some Alaska Native Vietnam veterans are owed 160 acres of Alaska land; Sullivan is making sure they get it

By SUZANNE DOWNING

Every few months, I get the same question: Why should Alaska Native Vietnam veterans get land allotments in the first place? Isn’t that unfair to other Vietnam veterans?

It’s complicated. The history is almost forgotten by most Alaskans, so let’s start with the present and work back.

Senators Dan Sullivan and Lisa Murkowski and Congressman Nick Begich are doing a victory lap for legislation they passed to extend the Alaska Native Vietnam Veteran Land Allotment Program for five more years, just days before the application window is set to expire on Dec. 31. The bill made it through both chambers and now heads to the president’s desk.

Sullivan deserves the credit for keeping this program alive after years of Biden Administration bureaucratic bungling.

“Just days before the application period for this program was set to expire, my colleagues and I came together this evening to pass a five-year extension that grants these incredible veterans a renewed opportunity to apply for their congressionally mandated land allotments that many missed due to their service to our country overseas,” Sullivan said.

He also pointed directly to the problem: Four years of delays and red tape under the foot-dragging Biden Administration that resulted in only about 40 allotments being finalized out of several thousand eligible veterans.

The Biden Administration’s failure to perform is measurable.

To understand why this program exists at all, however, you have to go back more than a century. Back to 1906.

That year, Congress passed a law allowing Alaska Native individuals to acquire 160-acre parcels of land. Remember, that was six years before Alaska was even a territory — it was still a district at that point. This happened just 39 years after Alaska was transferred from Russia to the United States of America.

Then came more history.

By 1971, a time when many Alaska Native men were in the jungles of Vietnam fighting the communists, Congress passed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. That bill passed on Dec. 18, 1971, and President Richard Nixon signed it into law on the same day, resolving land claims and establishing Native corporations for land and financial compensation. This was all done in order to allow the Trans Alaska Pipeline to be built, and resolve land issues with Alaska Natives.

ANCSA repealed the 1906 Alaska Native Allotment Act, ending the ability to file new allotment applications after Dec. 18, 1971.

But ANCSA also included a savings provision that preserved and allowed processing of all applications pending as of that date.

Back in 1971, thousands of young Alaska Native men who were overseas fighting in Vietnam simply lost their chance to apply — and it was because they were serving their country when the law changed.

Alaska Native service in the Vietnam War was disproportionately high. During that era, an estimated 42,000 American Indians and Alaska Natives served in the US armed forces, with more than 90% of those volunteering, not being drafted.

An estimated 2,800 Alaska Natives served during the Vietnam era, many of whom were deployed overseas. Imagine going from Emmonak to the steamy jungles of South Vietnam — what a culture shock that must have been, from one form of isolation to another.

In 1998, Congress attempted a partial fix. But restrictions meant only about 500 veterans out of more than 3,000 eligible were able to apply.

Then in 2019, Sen. Sullivan — still in his first term in office — amazingly secured a provision in the Dingell Act, establishing the Alaska Native Vietnam Veteran Land Allotment Program. The late Congressman Don Young shepherded it through the House, and President Donald Trump signed it into law.

The goal was straightforward: give Vietnam-era Alaska Native veterans or their heirs the chance for land they were denied decades earlier due to military service.

Then the Biden Administration stepped in — or rather, stepped in it.

Although  Interior Secretary Deb Haaland said she would move quickly, the Department of the Interior and Bureau of Land Management slowed the program at every turn by postponing land order revocations, demanding new environmental reviews, and reopening questions that had already been settled. As a result, only about 6% of applications have even been certified. Time was running out.

That is why the extension was necessary. Hundreds of eligible veterans never even had a meaningful chance to apply. The application process is complex and for many of them, just too much. Many of them are simply aging out.

This extension ensures there is no lapse in the ability of eligible veterans or their heirs to get the land they were promised in 1906. It keeps faith with people who upheld their end of the bargain.

So enough with the kvetching about racial preference, because history is really on the side of the Alaska Native combat veterans.

If you believe military service matters, then this should matter. If you believe the government should keep its word, then this checks the box.

Sen, Sullivan put it this way: This is Christmas gift for some great American heroes.

Well, yes and no, Sen. Sullivan: It’s giving them a chance to get what was promised in 1906. They don’t have to act on the opportunity, but I hope they or their heirs do.

To Alaska Native Vietnam veterans, thank you for your service. Now, get busy and get your land. Let’s close out this chapter cleanly.

Suzanne Downing is editor of The Alaska Story.