Congressman Nick Begich III introduced three crucial Alaska-focused bills in the U.S. House of Representatives on Friday, immediately after being sworn in.
“Alaska deserves quick, decisive action,” said Congressman Begich. “By introducing these bills on my first day, I want Alaskans to know that my team and I are hitting the ground running to advocate for our state’s future—starting right now.”
The bills are:
- Alaska Native Settlement Trust Eligibility Act (H.R. 2687 in the 118th)
- The bill excludes settlement trust benefits for certain Alaska Natives—those who are blind, disabled, or age 65 and older—from being considered income when determining eligibility for means-tested federal benefits such as SSI, SNAP, and housing assistance. This is a bill similar to one that was introduced but never passed by former Rep. Mary Peltola.
- It closes a longstanding gap in Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act provisions, so that elders and individuals with disabilities are not forced to choose between a settlement trust income and critical federal assistance.
- Unrecognized Southeast Alaska Native Communities Recognition and Compensation Act (H.R. 4748 in the 118th).
- Also known as the “Landless Bill, it amends ANCSA to allow Haines, Ketchikan, Petersburg, Tenakee, and Wrangell — historically excluded Native communities — to form urban corporations and select 23,040 acres each from the Tongass National Forest. The bill restores land entitlements for these unrecognized communities while preserving existing rights-of-way, ensuring meaningful economic and cultural opportunities for Alaskans.
- Alaska Native Village Municipal Lands Restoration Act (H.R. 6489 in the 118th)
- The bill eliminates the requirement under ANCSA Section 14(c)(3) that Alaska Native Village Corporations convey land to the State to be held in trust for future municipalities. Instead, it returns undeveloped land to the original village corporations and empowers Alaska Native communities to develop and use their lands for housing, community expansion, and other economic ventures, alleviating decades of land-title uncertainties and unlocking long-term development potential.
He believes in a hand up, not handouts. All good things for Alaska!
But it’s race-based! How can that be fair? Is a non-Native baby born in Anchorage today born with a debt to a Native baby just because of some perceived wrong done to the Native baby’s antecedent three generations ago? Even if that Native baby is 3/4 non-Native?
Politically, this is brilliant. Accomplish in the first year that his predecessor could not do in over 2 years. Garner the (I) voters and a possibility to potentially increase his voter base. Realistically his increasing Alaska jobs by providing to the machine that generates wealth in Alaska. If you complain about the federal funds, look to see what the Navajos receive in their reservations with a hand out method and casino monies. The ANCSA corporations were a method to prevent Alaska Reservations and influx of funding for Trust responsibility based on treaties with AI/AN peoples. These programs are meant for a hand up to help them. Politically brilliant by NBIII. Kudos!
Nice, but what about the rest of us? We deserve a break from government regulations, too.
I’m sure he’s just starting. Give him a week or two.
Give him a minute John. He will be on it shortly.
None of these bills would have any effect on me. I guess I am not an “Alaskan” when it comes to being a Congressman for “all Alaskans.” The other possibility is that some Alaskans are (much) more important than other Alaskans.
It’s not all about you.
I will agree with your observation but considerable history in Alaska indicates that unless one can check one or more special boxes, it is never about anyone like me or the other benighted souls. Some Alaskans are more important than other Alaskans. Always.
Wine(ers) deserve to be uncorked…..
Go Nick! Being pro-active and advocating for Alaskans.
He listens, and acts. Bravo!
THERE ARE NO LANDLESS NATIVES. This was a settlement agreed by US taxpayers and Alaska Natives. Anyone who claimed to be 1/4 or more Alaska Native (blood quantum tests not allowed) could and did choose to receive 100 shares in a village corporation and 100 shares in a regional corporation. 44 million acres and $1 billion. In 2025 dollars that was $232,312 per Alaska Native, tax-free, and it was also 733 acres. Native allotments and many other payments were and are additional and unrelated.
However they could also choose to be “at large” and only choose a regional corporation. Many did, and they have received a larger annual dividend ever since, and a more reliable one. For example, village corporations in southeast have all but completely clear-cut their entire 23,040 acres – over 20 years ago now in most cases. Some of those timber depleting villages made tax-free millionaires of many shareholders but now those dividends have largely disappeared (as there are no more logs to send to China, Japan and Korea. The shareholders that Begich would apparently call landless continue to receive their extra dividends as at large shareholders. This legislation gives these Natives a double bite of the apple to the detriment of all other Alaskans and of US taxpayers. If anyone has other numbers or countervailing facts please state them here.
God be with you Congressman Begich.
We in Rural Alaska need your help from Health Corporations like South Central Foundation, Yukon Kuskokwim Health Corporation and our own State HHS Committees in Juneau who are still pushing vacs like the deadly, biological weapon type coovid shot.
A Native in Rural Alaska said “ Since the shots first hit the village, many villagers are dying, yet no one says a word about it ! “ Where’s the justice for us and all Alaskans who’s health have been drastically effected and the many who are dead and dying from this fake vac ? Their blood calls out for justice from the ground.
Our Alaskan government officials, all the way to the top need to held accountable !
Now with the new crop of Lawmakers in Committees it’s even worse, in it not for the health and safety of Alaskan citizens but in it for power, prestige and control of Alaskans ‘ very lives.
God help us all, we cannot withstand much more of their evil shenanigans, we are being seemingly thinned out and replaced by the Globalist hordes of humanity from all over the world, especially from countries that hate America and are using Political elite as tools to literally invade and destroy Western civilization by the weaponization of all State and Federal agencies that they control against us.
So what he’s done is provide large giveaways. This seems very Liberal Democrat to me. What will be the revenue stream for all these new acquisitions and construction?
If you can’t join em’, then beat them by showing that you can actually join them. NB3 is destined for a great future. Better than Don.
Jumping in w/both feet. Good to see.
So all these rural communities in Southeast would get to form urban regional corporations?
As a lifelong Alaskan, I’m really getting sick of politician pandering to get special status for Alaska Natives. They mostly didn’t vote for Begich, but I did.
The Biden gang recently changed the ranks of the Federal Subsistence Board to include 3 new seats for Native corporations. The FSB has been systematically working to exclude Alaskans like me from sharing in Alaska’s wildlife resources on federal lands and this move will make it worse.
It is Carter’s ANILCA that requires a rural priority for fish and wildlife on federal lands in Alaska. If we are going to amend ANSCA for the benefit of “landless Natives”, we should amend ANILCA for all Alaskans.
We need to get rid of the Federal Subsistence Board and return management of all Alaska’s fish and wildlife to the State, so that everyone can equally share in the bounty.
Some Alaskans are more important than other Alaskans. There isn’t much more that can be added or explained away and it cannot be denied.
You made a mistake, Vote for Mary next time.
It may be that the end result will be about the same. Let the pandering and give-away orgy continue.
The “rural” preference on federal lands is used in conjunction with a specific federal management priority for ungulate scarcity. Both to minimize the viability of living, for both Native and immigrant populations a virtually extinct, traditional life and to maintain tensions amongst residents based on racial grounds.
The modern autocratic federal governance model requires dividing the public, so that people hate and are jealous of others perceived to receive special benefits from the government.
Without consistent predator control over all lands ungulate populations are not consistently sustainable for the current high population densities.
Fish were the vital and primary resource which sustained human life throught Alaska’s regions, but these resources have been decimated by outside interests through corrupt and poor managers they have purchased.
As the entire Alaska population is primarily urban, omnipotent socialist style government dependent and accustomed to a pretend state without sovereignty, colonial style federal rule is what we end up with.
Interesting that these three bills are focused on issues of direct critical benefit to actual, common Alaskan people. These are not focused for the benefit of outside special interest donors, unions or corporations. Good job on this Mr. Begich.
Assuming the incoming administration is truly revolutionary and serious to dismantle the federal administrative state, which is the root cause of our poor, unresponsive and totalitarian governance, Begich will have the opportunity to prove he is the real deal by gauging his support of such efforts.
Yes! Exactly what we need: more race-based handouts!
Not acceptable.
Why no land for Asians, African-Americans, Samoans?
Racism front and center.
Because Alaska natives have assumed a grievance position, because the Catholics came and put their children in boarding schools – to break the cycle of invest, rape, and slavery that existed at a level – unlike anything in the “West”.
We can tell the truth now, right?
Trump was elected.
I think you meant Jesuits rather than Catholics, right? Jesuits were the early rapists. Catholics were the subsequent rapists. I get it… they’re closely related and they appear to have the same interests but yeah, they’re not exactly the same.
To suggests that Catholics / Jesuits were the real rapists in Alaska is a damnable lie.
Incest and rape were accepted in native society long before the evil white man came.
One of the main reasons the boarding schools were setup was to break the vicious cycle of incest and rape within the young generation of native children.
To this day Alaska is the rape and incest capital of America – and we all know who is doing it in the state.
Trump won the election – we can dare to speak the truth.
Donewithit,
There are several very distinct cultures you lump into “Alaska natives”, which displays a common ignorance that is insulting from the outside people who showed up here and continue with the unfounded basis for an attitude of feigned educational and cultural superiority.
In regards to Iñupiats our grandparents were put in boarding schools to force the end of speaking in their language through physical punishment, because ending language is key to cultural annihilation. Subjugation of people’s who occupy lands which hold resources that others covet was the colonial expansion alternative to outright genocide, which had been the previous American foreign policy preference in creating an empire.
Eskimo children were regarded as ignorant savages who were fair game to be raped by pedophile priests and BIA “educators”, while being told they were inferior to the outside culture, whose only advantage was technological superiority. Morally and spiritually these men placed in authority over children were sick and depraved.
Young people married at very young ages because everyone had to contribute for the benefit and immediate challenge of survival in extended family units. Which is an alien concept for the American culture based on selfishness and shirking responsibility for the care of elders.
Most marriages were arranged and young women often birthed a child to show that they would be an asset for a grooms family, enhancing the dowry her parents would receive in turn.
Birthing children was essential, babies were valued and loved, not purposefully killed and discarded as they are in the “superior” outside culture (that you refer to as the west) imposing its’ “values” on mere ignorant “natives”.
The cycle of child molestation and incest rampant in rural Alaska that you refer to is directly attributed to the forcible placing of children in boarding schools operated by perverts.
The Iñupiat culture thrived for over 10,000 years, while the “superior” modern American culture is already failed and dying off in less than 250.
Brian, you are either lying or willfully ignorant.
Look up Sah Quah – an Alaskan slave that walked into a Sitka courthouse in 1886 – more than twenty years after slavery ended in the Lower 48 in 1865 – and demanded his freedom.
The Haida were called the “Vikings” of Alaska, particularly known for their brutal oppression of other tribes.
It is estimated that 1 out of 3 people in SE Alaska was a slave.
Do your research – Google Sah Quah – read the Supreme Court decision stating that tribal sovereignty did not allow or justify Slavery by native Alaskans – decades AFTER slavery was abolished in the lower 48 – decades.
Donewithit,
I’m well aware the Haida and Tlingit Indians were tough warriors, loved to fight and owned slaves. They also hold the honor of actually fighting against both the Russians and Americans who sought to dominate their people.
Their culture had to be destroyed and lands taken as everyone else.
Iñupiats did not own slaves. Completely different culture and language.
I simply pointed out that of all the techniques used by the American colonialists to destroy the cultures of the inhabitants of Alaska, the systematic mass rape of both boys and girls by the priests and BIA teachers in the boarding schools was the sickest and worst.
The colonial (territorial) authorities were well aware of this, as using rape of children to destroy family cohesion for generations remained acceptable, the previous policy of outright genocide to clear lands for immigrants had become considered too crude.
The long term horrific effects of this despicable assimilation system is a legacy that was brought up here to us from the states. By a decaying culture that then claimed to be superior.
Alaska Natives have been given enough. They aren’t special. They aren’t more deserving. They made their deal with the rest of us decades ago and benefited greatly. No more.
Total democrat, to the left of Mary. Endless handouts to natives, nothing for everyone else.
All three sound reasonable. Race is really not an issue but our first Alaskans were just that – here first. It sounds like what Begich did was clarify better provisions already in place.
Some here are missing the point. Each of these bills helps reduce Alaska Native dependency on the federal government. By continuing to build Alaskan communities we move more Alaskans toward self-determination, we move more land out of our worthless federal land management programs and we develop new businesses that will employ Alaskans. We have to use the tools available to us and this is one of them.
There will be more to come for Alaska. This was just the first day.
These bills also have an interesting federal budget impact: zero.
Begich is “playing” Alaska UniParty politics like Murkowski.
Talk a good game for elections me – big real conservative (like John McCain did) – then govern from the middle – for pork and votes.
Look at Sullivan – voted for all of Bidens cabinet picks – especially the Interior Secretary Deb Haaland and he voted for the Biden Infrastructure Bill – yet people want to act like she’s a conservative.
NEVER forget, Begich comes from the most strident liberal, progressive Alaska family – the Begich’s….
I think I’ve heard that before, somewhere… Like maybe I said it would happen. And was barraged by the Nick!! Groupies on here
I remember that Chuck.
I believe, at best, Begich will be a RINO UniParty type.
I voted for Nick. I am very disappointed in his sponsorship of the landless bill. These are areas that were considered under ANCSA. Reopening the law will be the catalyst for countless other ‘landless claims’ throughout the state.
Here we go. First bills are ethnic..so low hanging fruit? Can’t find other wider sweeping injustice within Alaska? I can, how about the blind eye the Native Corps turn towards the village and family dysfunction rampant in the Native community. Oh, that’s not politically correct and fixable with Federal dollars.