Alaska Native Village Municipal Lands Restoration Act of 2025

Floor Speech

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Mr. BEGICH. Madam Speaker, I rise in support of H.R. 43, the Alaska Native Village Municipal Lands Restoration Act. This bill corrects a decades-old oversight in the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act to ensure Alaska Native communities can fully use their own land.

In 1971, ANCSA granted fee simple land ownership to Alaska Natives, resolving historic land claims and enabling statehood land entitlements. However, section 14(c)(3) required Native Village Corporations to transfer land to the State of Alaska to be held in trust for future municipalities. More than 50 years later, only 8 of 101 affected villages have incorporated, leaving 11,500 acres in 83 villages frozen in bureaucratic limbo.

H.R. 43 eliminates this outdated requirement and returns these lands to Village Corporations, allowing for housing, economic development, and community expansion. This bill restores self-determination, ensuring Alaska Natives, not government bureaucracy, decide how to use their own land.

This legislation has broad support, as was mentioned, including from the Alaska Governor and State Legislature, and was unanimously passed by the Senate in the last Congress. I urge my colleagues to support this commonsense fix and allow these lands to be used by their owners to support their own communities.

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