The first significant meeting to discuss Native land issues was held in Fairbanks in July 1915 at the invitation of Alaska’s territorial delegate, James Wickersham. Fourteen Athabascan representatives, including six Tanana chiefs, asked Wickersham how they could protect their lands throughout the interior from increasing encroachment by whites. One of two ways, Wickersham told the gathering: File for homesteads under the 1906 act or ask the government to create reservations. Neither course was palatable to the assembled chiefs.12
