Editing Venetie, Alaska (section)

==History==
Gwich'in tribal leader [[John Fredson]] achieved federal recognition of the larger area of the Venetie Indian Reserve as [[Alaska Native]] territory in 1941, before Alaska was admitted to the union as a state. It was the largest [[Indian reservation|reservation]] in Alaska, with approximately {{convert|1.4|e6acre|km2}} when established.

Under the 1971 [[Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act]], most reservations in Alaska were dissolved and the federal government made payments to tribes for considerable territory, designating areas as tribal lands. The Gwich'in tribal lands were reduced.

The people continued to adapt.{{citation needed|date=October 2017}} In the early 1980s a "unified Venetie/Arctic village tribal government formally codified traditional principles of [[caribou]] management into tribal law," an example of Alaska Native [[subsistence]] practices. Anthropologist [[Steve J. Langdon]] lauded this action as a way of combining traditional spirituality with secular law demonstrating "the resiliency of the traditional cosmology and behavior and its ability to be flexibly incorporated into contemporary institutions and practice." A majority of the residents approved limits on the harvest of the [[Porcupine caribou|Porcupine caribou herd]].<ref>{{citation|url=http://arcticcircle.uconn.edu/ANWR/anwrgwichin1.html|title=Gwich'in Traditional Management Practices|work=Arctic Circle|institution=[[University of Connecticut]]|access-date=September 16, 2011|date=n.d.|archive-date=September 28, 2011|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110928163231/http://arcticcircle.uconn.edu/ANWR/anwrgwichin1.html|url-status=dead}}</ref>

In 1987 the Gwich'in tribal council tried to tax a non-native contractor building a school here, saying the council had the right as the government of tribal land. The case went to the [[United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit]], in San Francisco, which ruled in 1996 "that the natives had the right to tax businesses on their land, about the size of [[Delaware]], because it qualified as [[Indian Country]], much like the [[Indian reservations|reservations]] in the lower 48 states."<ref name="goldberg"/>

The state of Alaska appealed that decision, concerned that up to 44 million acres of tribal lands in Alaska might be classified as Indian Country and thus subject to local tribal taxation. (In the [[Lower 48]], by comparison, about 56 million acres are designated as federally recognized, sovereign Indian reservation lands.)<ref name="goldberg"/>

In 1998, the case was heard by the [[United States Supreme Court]], which ruled in ''[[Alaska v. Native Village of Venetie Tribal Government]].'' It determined that the tribal council did not have taxing authority on its land, as the terms of the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act had done away with almost all reservations in the state. Under that act, the federal government had made payment to the tribes for land claims and designated tribal lands for them. But, under the terms of the act, the tribal lands do not have the same [[sovereignty|sovereign]] status as federally recognized Indian reservations in the [[Lower 48]].