Alaska: Saga of a Bold Land

by Walter R. Borneman

That same year, the newly created Alaska territorial legislature took the then extraordinary step of passing a law that established a process whereby Natives could become U.S. citizens. Whether or not the territory actually had the legal right to grant U.S. citizenship is highly questionable, but the passage of the law showed the newfound political power of the Alaska Native Brotherhood. Formed in Sitka in 1912 by nine Tlingit and one Tsimshian, this group was the first organization of Alaska Natives to mobilize and attempt to affect change within the American legal system. The Alaska Native Brotherhood quickly recognized that the first step in any land claims process was citizenship. Without citizenship, Alaska Natives had no legal standing, and thus any other guarantees that they might receive were unenforceable. Only a few Natives became citizens under the territorial act, and it was never challenged constitutionally, in large measure because Congress soon erased all citizenship questions by passing the Citizenship Act of 1924.