Alaska is Russia (purchase, contractors, gated)

[green_mariner]

Originally Posted by DannyL

The USA didn't steal anything from anyone in Alaska.

Now as far as the lower 48 Native Americans, we just invented a new word..."emminent domain".

FWIW...the SE alaskan natives were GLAD we bought it from the russians...they have been compensated very nicely, thank you very much.....

Whatever.

[blueflames50]

Originally Posted by DannyL

The USA didn't steal anything from anyone in Alaska.

Now as far as the lower 48 Native Americans, we just invented a new word..."emminent domain".

FWIW...the SE alaskan natives were GLAD we bought it from the russians...they have been compensated very nicely, thank you very much.....

Eminent domain....legal term jargon for stealing....and most times the parties are not compensated fairly. Perhaps if you ever have the pleasure to have the state, government or other subsidiary take you home or land you would understand that it is stealing. Only when both parties agree to a sale is it fair and equitable.

[DannyL]

Originally Posted by blueflames50

Eminent domain....legal term jargon for stealing....and most times the parties are not compensated fairly. Perhaps if you ever have the pleasure to have the state, government or other subsidiary take you home or land you would understand that it is stealing. Only when both parties agree to a sale is it fair and equitable.

I trust you're talking about the lower 48 and not the Alaska Natives......

[Floyd_Davidson]

Originally Posted by DannyL

The USA didn't steal anything from anyone in Alaska.

Now as far as the lower 48 Native Americans, we just invented a new word..."emminent domain".

I don't recall "emminent domain" being applied to Lower-48 Natives any more than it was to Alaskans.

In both cases we simply stole the land and the resources from them.

There is a little bit of difference though. In the Lower-48 some land ownership is based on the legal principle called "Right of Discovery", and other ownership is based on military action, while other is based on treaty negotiations (to avoid military action, and hence it is essentially the same). None of those happened in Alaska. The US just took the land and then eventually said something in the nature of "Oh, here's a pittance to pay for it, which makes it legal."

[Floyd_Davidson]

Originally Posted by DannyL

FWIW...the SE alaskan natives were GLAD we bought it from the russians...they have been compensated very nicely, thank you very much.....

Not even close to accurate.

1) The Russians never owned the land, never claimed to own it, and most certainly did not sell it. (Indeed, one reason the left Alaska was because the US, with the Monroe Doctrine in the early 1800's, threatened Russia with military action if they tried to claim actual ownership of land in Alaska (e.g., by Right of Discovery). The Russians sold commercial and governing rights, not land.

2) How can you say the Native people were happy about it? In Bancroft's "History of Alaska", a contemporary history, there was no suggestion than Native people in Southeastern were at all happy about it. They repeatedly brought legal suit in Federal courts over it from the 1920's, and still are!

3) "Compensated very nicely" is an hilarious idea. They got peanuts compared to what it was worth. Look at the value of land and resources that exist today, or look at the value of the resources that have been extracted since 1867, and compare that to the portion that Alaska Native people have had access to! An example worth understanding well from a legal and moral point of view was that during the gold rush era if a White found a Native mining gold... it was legal and accepted as moral to pound a stake in the ground, claim ownership of the gold, and shoot dead the Native person as a claim jumper. That was literally true then, and has been the allegory by which all government approved interaction with Native people has been based since then.

[rppearso]

Do you notice that the natives dont claim anything until the technology or know how is applied to the land and then they want to claim the finished product or once a knolagable miner or geologist finds something then they want it, third world nations do the same thing with oil production facilities, if I were an oil company operating in venesula I would have riged the entire facility to blow as soon as the last plane left then they can build there own, oh but they are a third world nation so they would be up S**t creek without a paddle. Your going to have military or violent action when you behave in that manner as alot of natives do. Being somewhere first does not denote ownership, if you believe that your dilusional, all over asia and the middle east political boarders were drawn and redrawn. You dont just get to walk up on a claim and take a miners gold because your native, he probably does not care if your native he worked his butt of to find and extract that gold and you will get shot if you push it. The natives were compensated for the land that existed at that time, you cant sell a canvas and a bucket of paint for 1000$ but an artist who generates a final product can, the natives have a canvas and a bucket of paint and were compensated for it.

The natives has what 1000 years and never found the gold or the oil, why are they entitled to it, they did not care about it then why do they all of a sudden care about it now, oh I know because gold represents dollars and dollars represents infrastructure which would not be here without the white man. Im not saying that corporations and states are not corrupt but the natives do not have the moral high ground, I look at natives and native corps the same way I do any other corp as greedy and manipulative, the native corps card is the "we were here first" card even though they did nothing to develop the resources before the white man.

The key word is "exists today"

[Marty Van Diest]

Originally Posted by rppearso

The natives were compensated for the land that existed at that time

I wrote a nice long post explaining this issue but lost it when I was interrupted to do something productive...so I'm not going to retype it.

I will say though that the natives were NOT compensated at all until they forced the issue when the feds wanted to put a pipeline through the state. They claimed the whole state except for what was sold by Russia to the US and the courts agreed that they had a good case. Because of that we have the native corporations and the settlement with $$$ and land. So, the natives were not compensated at all until the 1970s.

Now that they actually own land, we have to deal with them as owners of 44 million acres of land and the subsurface rights.

[rppearso]

Originally Posted by Marty Van Diest

I wrote a nice long post explaining this issue but lost it when I was interrupted to do something productive...so I'm not going to retype it.

I will say though that the natives were NOT compensated at all until they forced the issue when the feds wanted to put a pipeline through the state. They claimed the whole state except for what was sold by Russia to the US and the courts agreed that they had a good case. Because of that we have the native corporations and the settlement with $$$ and land. So, the natives were not compensated at all until the 1970s.

Now that they actually own land, we have to deal with them as owners of 44 million acres of land and the subsurface rights.

Notice how they did not raise a stink until there was money to be made, thats because before natural resource development this land was virtually worthless. That is why the native corps do not have the moral high ground. Most would play the "im native card" becasue all of a sudden tons of $$$ worth of oil was discovered and they dont have to do squat other than make claims that they were there first. They should feel fortunate that the russians did not come in and massacre them, they are actually lucky to even exist. I do agree with subsistance fishing and hunting for natives because thats what they did before we got here but if they want a cut in the resource development (oil and mining) they should have to pull there own weight, not just say "oh were native so send us a check or give us no bid contracts" what a joke. I say the natives got a pretty sweet deal, they get to exist and on top of that ride around on 4 wheelers and use rifles and collect a pay check or get jobs with native corps on no bid contracts, plus go out on there 4 wheelers and shoot a carabou with a rifle out of season or use fish wheels.

[arctichomesteader]

Originally Posted by rppearso

Notice how they did not raise a stink until there was money to be made, thats because before natural resource development this land was virtually worthless. That is why the native corps do not have the moral high ground. Most would play the "im native card" becasue all of a sudden tons of $$$ worth of oil was discovered and they dont have to do squat other than make claims that they were there first. They should feel fortunate that the russians did not come in and massacre them, they are actually lucky to even exist. I do agree with subsistance fishing and hunting for natives because thats what they did before we got here but if they want a cut in the resource development (oil and mining) they should have to pull there own weight, not just say "oh were native so send us a check or give us no bid contracts" what a joke. I say the natives got a pretty sweet deal, they get to exist and on top of that ride around on 4 wheelers and use rifles and collect a pay check or get jobs with native corps on no bid contracts, plus go out on there 4 wheelers and shoot a carabou with a rifle out of season or use fish wheels.

The land wasn't worthless. It sustained people for thousands of years. Even before heavy development after the gold rush and later the oil, non-Natives found Alaska to be a good place worth living in. You can't measure what something is worth simply from a monetary and profit perspective.

[Marty Van Diest]

The point is that there was no agreement to buy the land and the land was not taken by force. People just moved in. You could say that the land occupied by non-natives was taken with "squatters rights", (prescriptive easement). Still, non-natives did not "squat" on all the land in Alaska so the natives finally asserted their ownership of what was left. They had legal right to it so the Feds and the State had to deal with it.

All the way back to the original poster...Russia didn't have much in way of a claim, they didn't sell much, and they wouldn't get much back if they tried.