June 03, 2013
Monday

I was born in Juneau, although I have no memory of ever living there. My family moved to Seattle when I was only two. My Caucasian father never explained why, except to say there were too many "rednecks" in Juneau who didn't approve of his marriage to a Tlingit woman.

So to me Alaska was a mysterious, distant, and almost mythic land we rarely talked about, a secret place where old memories from our previous life were stored. It hung in the background of my youth like a sleeping bear I was afraid of.

My mom used to drag me to ANS meetings when I was a little boy. I would play with the other Tlingit kids while my mom and her friends gave official-sounding reports to each other and discussed important-sounding things. Then they would serve Indian food such as dry fish, herring eggs, and salmonberries. I loved Indian food, although I never told my white friends because I knew they'd make fun.

As I got older I noticed greater excitement at those ANS meetings. My mom and her friends talked about the "Alaska Land Claims" and how we were going to be getting money from the government for being Indian. I didn't understand it, but I could tell it was important.

I was in high school when the first checks came from Sealaska. I looked at my check, with my name on it, and written for over a thousand dollars. The sleeping bear had woken up and instead of eating me, it had given me money.

I never thought about where the money came from. More checks came every year after that, money just for having been born a Tlingit. I never even wondered about it. As long as the checks kept coming I didn't care.

Then along came the Internet. One day I did a Google search on Sealaska and turned up material about how they had clear cut much of the old-growth rain forests we were given. Over a hundred thousand acres of forests were ripped out of the earth and sold to markets in the Orient.

Indian corporations aren't bound by the same conservation laws as white timber companies. It was legal for us to destroy this resource. Much of the money, over 50 million dollars in recent years, has been paid to board members in the form of bonuses while the average shareholder receives a few hundred dollars a year in dividends.

Now Sealaska wants more land to clear cut. Most of the prime old-growth forests we were given have been slaughtered and the board members want more money. They want to choose the oldest and most precious forests to destroy now. They want to cherry-pick the spots that will make them the most short-term profits.

As a shareholder I accept some of the responsibility for this destruction. I own 132 shares in this corporate machine that is systematically castrating the land. I let the board do whatever it wanted because I had faith that they were good people who cared about our tribe and its' wealth.

But I didn't buy my shares of Sealaska stock on Wall Street. They came to me through my mother, through her efforts and her faith in her tribe. They came to me through the very gift of life she gave me. I am more than just a shareholder who acquired some stock. I am a son and heir to the wealth of my mother's homeland. And as such I can only say this, shame on you Sealaska. Shame.

My mother died in 1984 without ever knowing how Sealaska had sold our birthright to China and Japan and gave most of the money to its own executives. All her excitement and efforts to help her family and tribe have only resulted in the destruction of a tribal resource that can never be replaced. I'm glad she never found out.

Frank Hopper
Seattle WA

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