Behind their fiercely independent stance, Alaskans, in the 1960s, were a people completely dependent on Washington, D.C. Their major industry, after fishing, was the U.S. military; their third major industry was the rest of the U.S. government. Alaskans spoke of their state as a “colony,” but as colonies go they had themselves a pretty good thing, and they exhibited all the character traits of colonial people—which is to say that they wanted to exploit “their” resources for themselves, but expected the federal government to pay the cost.
