Lisa Murkowski

I appreciate you saying that.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman.

I very much appreciate your sense of urgency and understand that this is an important issue and that it does have to be addressed in a timely fashion.

We have expressed our concern about the cooperative agreement language on numerous occasions to Sealaska and to both Senators Murkowski and Begich.

I don't want this to be a situation where this legislation that would bring, equity to the Sealaska people would be held hostage to a process that is certainly important, but it's also one that is very complicated, takes a great deal of…

I think it was extremely helpful in just laying out why we are here.

I recognize your point, but I think we also understand that moving to this second growth transition, the proposal that Sealaska has advanced is one that, lays out how they accomplish that transition there.

Is it not also accurate that it's not just Sealaska, but through the 7 [i] distributions other Alaska Native corporations throughout the State would also be impacted through that loss of revenue source?

The question some have asked me is, well, if Sealaska has waited for 38 years to get their final conveyance and if in fact there is this process under way through the Tongass Futures Roundtable, what is another few years of waiting?

I have heard nothing but statements of goodwill about working towards final resolution and it is certainly my intention to push us all in that direction so that we do have a final, expeditious result and it is one that has a level of…

I have a whole series of questions, but I don't want Mr. Claus to feel like I'm not giving equal time.

What these bills at their heart attempt to resolve is issues with the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act that this Congress passed some 38 years ago.

If you're going to accelerate you need the funding. But you need to ask for it.

Almost everyone agrees that Sealaska should be able to gain the last 65,000 to 85,000 acres promised the corporation by ANCSA's terms.

NPCA is opposed to all language in this bill that directs the National Park Service to enter into a cooperative agreement with Sealaska Corporation, or any other Village or Urban Corporation.

To my knowledge, there's no opposition to the Bering Straits land conveyance bill.

I would suggest to you that 38 years for the Sealaska people to wait for their lands is not treating them fairly.

What we're trying to provide here is equity to the Sealaska shareholders.

I appreciate the administration's statement of support for S. 522.

It seems to me that the appropriate response here is to say that we've got to do more within the budget to allow for these conveyances to move forward.

The difficulty is in managing those expectations.

It is important that we understand where our resources are and as we are talking about public land set-asides, what we are doing.

We still would ask for the assistance that we gained in 2007 with that study.

I would just add another one to put on your radar screen.

It is incredibly important that within USGS they help to work with us to predict and minimize the risk to people in the State of Alaska.