The Casualty in Alaska’s Culture War

  By Elstun Lauesen There is a culture war going on. And the epicenter of that culture war is right here in Alaska. It is outrageous in its brazenness and tragic in its effect. It is political in its tactic and economic in its objective. It is a classic tale of western frontier conquest. I am speaking, of course, of the war on the Native subsistence culture of Alaska. The passage of the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act (ANILCA) in 1980 linked federal land policy in Alaska to a subsistence use priority. Congress, in Title VIII of ANILCA, made…