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The Landless Natives of Ketchikan, Alaska Inc., was formed under the state of Alaska as a nonprofit entity to represent the Ketchikan Native community's 1,862 original at-large members of the Regional Sealaska Corp., that were left out of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971.

Similarly, Wrangell, Petersburg, Tenakee Springs and Haines also have formed groups. Together we have formed the Southeast Alaska Landless Corporation to support our ANCSA recognition efforts and work with the Alaska U.S. Delegation.

This Year, Sen. Lisa Murkowski introduced SB 784 that includes the land claims of the five Southeast Alaska Native Communities that were left out of the ANCSA. Additionally, Congressman Don Young introduced HR 2018 that similarly addresses the land claims issues.

Our efforts have been opposed by hunting and fishing interest groups, like the Alaska Outdoors Council, the Alaska Professional Hunters Association, the Alaska Wilderness League, Southeast Alaska Conservation Council, among others, that have expressed concern over amending ANCSA since the beginning. Their rhetoric hasn't changed over the years. They argue that the legislation would:

• Threaten public hunting and fishing opportunities for residents and visitors of Alaska.

• Reopen settled Alaska land claims.

• Give unjustified compensation to groups who failed to meet the basic corporate criteria of the 1971 ANCSA.

• Threaten to wreck the hard work and compromise that the original authors of ANCSA so carefully crafted.

We are here to tell everyone that we are the original protectors of hunting and fishing in Alaska, and we didn't do it to serve out-of-state clients that come to Alaska to pay big bucks for trophy fishing and hunting expeditions. We did it because it is a natural food resource we use in our daily lives. We have lived off the land's fish and game resources for thousands of years and will protect our resources as best we can for thousands more.

As for the ANCSA bill itself, the five native landless communities include native members who worked closely with the original authors of ANCSA. These Native members helped craft the legislation so that all native communities met the basic ANCSA criteria, including the five landless communities. The compromise these special interest groups speak about were the "concessions" that some legislators imposed during the 12th hour to get ANCSA passed. Some felt the provisions were necessary to limit the amount of land and timber resources given to Southeast Alaska natives (to protect the interests of the two Pulp Mills in Sitka and Ketchikan and their 50-year timber contracts with the U.S. Forest Service).

Alaska natives have watched much of their land be swept up and placed under federal protection. For example, the Misty Fjords National Wilderness extracted 2.3 million acres from traditional Southeast Alaska native lands for the American public. But these are ancestral lands that once contained the villages of many different native tribes and clans, and still has the bones of all of our Alaska Native ancestors buried on them.

Today, we are respectfully requesting that our five Southeast Alaska native community claims be validated and we be allowed to claim a "small piece" of our historical homelands to call our own, for our children and our grandchildren for generations to come. We will cherish this land, develop it to support our people, use it to teach our young people about the ways of their ancestors, and we will continue to be good neighbors in the communities surrounding us, as we always have been.

Gunalcheesh! Hawa'aa! Way Dankoo! Ndoyk.shn! Thank You!

• Joseph Reeves is president of the Landless Natives of Ketchikan, Alaska Inc.