It had been days since the large electric freezer had arrived at Lucy Adams's doorstep.  Everyone in the village had gotten one - a delivery courtesy of local CARES Act spending.  Across Kivalina, husbands and sons all over the island could be seen hauling these heavy chests up rickety stairs and into houses that sit on stilts. But for Lucy, she let that box sit in the calm elements of October, a convenient space to dry her caribou skins. 

At 89, Lucy carried a sensibility of time that comes from living a lifetime in the North Arctic. Winter was on its way, and with it, routine preparation for hibernation.   The skins would help pass time - maybe by making a pair of new mukluks or tending to those in need repairs.  It would be no different than the year before, she thought, as she rattled off plans for when she'd eventually bring the skins in. "One more week, maybe," she said, tugging at the pelts this way and that. 

It had been a few years since I had seen Lucy when I returned to Kivalina in August.  And I knew right where I'd find her, sitting in the first pew of the Kivalina Episcopal Church.  The congregation is led by her only son, Enoch Adams, Jr.  So when the church bell rang out across the slender sand spit, I showed up to reunite with Aaka Lucy. 

People across Kivalina call Lucy Aaka or "grandma" even if they aren't related.  Maybe it's for her tough love methods of scolding anyone of any age.  Or perhaps it's for her morning messages broadcast across the village VHF radio.  In some of these dispatches she'll recite Bible scripture.  In others she'll sing a song.  The treasured moment in every address is when she speaks in long, knowing sentences in Iñupiaq. 

"I can understand her 99 percent of the time," said Becky Norton, another village matriarch, though about twenty years Lucy's junior.

Becky's attention is emblematic to the village-wide respect that Lucy has earned by other elders, parents, children - and even those living in nearby villages.  A grandmother and widow to a revered local hunter, she's also the sister to an aging whale captain.  Together they share memories of living in sod igloos, and traversing the Arctic by dog sleigh.  It's why no one was particularly surprised when Alaska's senior senator, Lisa Murkowski, leaned on Aaka Lucy for political support several years ago. 

After losing the 2010 primary for re-election, Sen. Murkowski did what no one thought she could: wage an ambitious write-in campaign, and win.  Her victory largely relied on ballots cast by thousands of Alaska Natives like Lucy Adams.  It was also carried by something else: hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations from Alaska Native Corporations or ANCs, the economic platforms for more than 200 federally-recognized tribes statewide.

Murkowski hasn't forgotten this support. Last month, she and fellow U.S. Senator Dan Sullivan, also of Alaska, introduced a bill that would restore some 23-thousand acres to five Native communities that were overlooked upon passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act of 1971. 

Known as the ANCSA, the landmark legislation represents the largest land claims settlement in U.S. history.  It effectively extinguished aboriginal title to roughly 365 million acres of Alaska Native territory.  In exchange, more than 200 villages statewide agreed to a Native-owned corporate structure to manage 44 million acres divided among them, with roughly $1 billion in compensation to begin. 

“Unfortunately, five communities were not afforded the same benefits under ANCSA," said Murkowski in a press release statement.  "It is past time the federal government make good on its promises." 

Murkowski's message helps mark this week's 50th anniversary since ANCSAs passage which comes loaded with opinions. Some call it an 'experiment.' Others like Lucy say it's an act of 'assimilation.' A growing few call it something else: 'termination.'  But all would agreed that the  legislation is incredibly complicated.  

Less than seven months from when FitzGerald's assessment began,  a massive book had been compiled revealing data and information that made the case for ANCSA,  an extractive economy that today plays out on Alaska Native lands, fifty years on.

Lucy was in her late-30s when Iñupiat men from across the North Arctic, including from Kivalina, crammed into an old elementary school in Barrow (today Utqiagvik) to protest the colonization.

"No Native of the Arctic Slope will take money compensation for his lands," they argued, according to early press reports.

Fast-forward to today, and the North Slope didn't just take money for territory, but the Iñupiat were required by ANCSA to become shareholders of for-profit companies in the process.  Today, their Native-owned Arctic Slope Regional Corporation is Alaska's wealthiest business with roughly $3.4 billion in annual revenues, mostly from oil wealth.  The company also steadily advocates for more - specifically in targeting drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge.

Today, there are eleven other for-profit companies like the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation that drew from the ANCSA and that are functioning as intended - churning extractive economies on Alaska Native homelands that planners like Mr. FitzGerald salivated over.

"Those lands are not really ours," said Lucy the day she shared her ANCSA memories with me. "We belong to the land; we are here to take care of it, not argue over it." 

When a zinc mine called Red Dog was being developed a few miles down the coast from Kivalina in the late 1980s, the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation tried to muscle ownership of it even though interests belonged to Kivalina and ten other area villages.  Lucy said that's when everything changed.  The division it sowed was only the beginning. 

"The dog teams started disappearing completely," she said.  She blamed it on the jobs that hunters had traded at the mine.  Eventually language and culture started to wane, too.

"That's why I always think that if I tell stories, some might listen and learn."  

The last VHF broadcast I heard of Lucy was just before Thanksgiving, around the same time I shared what would be my last meal with her - a delicious spread of ugjuk ribs (bearded seal) and local greens.

Lucy passed away this weekend peacefully in her home among so many family and friends.

On Monday, the Alaska Federation of Native will mark the 50th anniversary of the ANCSA at its two-day conference which I'll be covering for The Nome Nugget.  I will be tuning in while channeling Lucy, and you can too, right here. 

Stay at good pace and hug an elder,

"Thank you for the educational, grounding & nourishing newsletter!" 

Lily, the Internet