Today Willie spoke with attendees of the 3rd Annual Alaska Native Corporation Director Training Course, presenting a picture of how we got to where we are today. Alaska’s history, and the story of Alaska Native people is part of the greater historical tale, and is worth seeing in that context. How earlier European nations interacted with indigenous populations, and how the United States dealt with Native people since its inception, created the conditions, perceptions and legal precedents that guided practices and events.

As Linda S. Parker stated in her book, Native American Estate: The Struggle of Indian and Hawaiian Lands (published by University of Hawaii Press, 1996):
“Sir Thomas More provided justification for expansion in Utopia (1516). If the Utopians moved to an area with vacant lands and the native people refused to obey the new laws, then they must be driven from their lands. Continued resistance provided a just cause for war. The English philosopher presented an argument derived from what he called the law of nature dealing with the right to put land to its most efficient use. “When people holdeth a piece of ground void and vacant to no good or profitable use: Keeping others from the use and possession of it, which notwithstanding, by the law of nature, ought thereof to be nourished and relieved.’ The evolving idea of just war later became a part of the American justification for expropriating Indian land.”

“Another European tenet known as the doctrine of discovery legalized appropriation of aboriginal lands. Under this concept, which was based on the law of nations, a Christian sovereign acquired exclusive jurisdiction over new territories discovered by his representative or subject. The moral or ethical right to hold title to these lands rested on preconceptions of the native inhabitants. Such expansion became legitimate when the Indians existed in a supposed state of barbarism and heathenism.”(p. 3)