Political Quotes

“more than 30 years have passed since Congress enacted the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act which settled the aboriginal land claims of the first inhabitants of Alaska by making each eligible Alaska Native a shareholder in 1 of 13 regional corporations and many of these people shareholders in a village corporation as well. Each of the corporations was capitalized with land and money. The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act was a bold experiment, and its implementation was not without controversy. As originally enacted, the law provided that a shareholder of an Alaska Native Corporation could sell his or her stock on or after December 18, 1991, without any intervening action by the corporation. This provision could have resulted in massive sales of stock by Native shareholders in the ensuing years and caused the wholesale transfer of Native assets to non-Native interests. Thanks to the leadership of the Senator from Alaska, Mr. Stevens, this catastrophe was averted through a series of amendments to the Act, signed into law in 1987, which forbade the sale of corporate stock without the consent of the corporation's shareholders.”