FAQs on Alaska Native Allotments (Eklutna Litigation)
What lawsuit is the State involved in with Native Village of Eklutna?
The State filed suit in the D.C. District Court on February 4, 2025, challenging the Department of the Interior (Interior) and NIGC decisions related to tribal territorial jurisdiction over Alaska Native Allotments. This litigation is not about gaming.
This lawsuit is about land jurisdiction – in part, it seeks a final decision from the court recognizing the State’s primary jurisdiction over Alaska Native Allotments. The State seeks to require the federal officials to follow a previous federal court decision that resolved this issue.
Is the State involved in the 2024 Birchwood lawsuit against the Native Village of Eklutna?
No. In December 2024, certain Birchwood Community residents in Chugiak filed a lawsuit in federal district court opposing the National Indian Gaming Commission’s (NIGCs) approval and Native Village of Eklutna’s authority to establish a casino on an Eklutna tribal member’s native allotment. This case is ongoing. The State did not join this lawsuit and instead filed its own, separate lawsuit.
What are Alaska Native allotments and how are they different from tribal lands taken into trust in the Lower 48 and Indian reservations?
Federal laws granting Alaska Native allotments to individuals are separate from federal laws authorizing lands to be taken into trust for tribes for the purpose of expanding a tribe’s reservation lands. See FAQs on Lands Into Trust.
The Alaska Native Allotment Act of 1906 authorized Alaska Natives to apply for up to 160 acres of federal land. To be conveyed lands under the Act, an applicant must show five years of substantial, continuous personal use and occupancy of the lands they applied for.
Of importance, tribal membership had no bearing under the Alaska Native Allotment Act. Instead, the Act focused on the individual applicant and the lands that individual applicant had used.
In 1993, the Department of the Interior issued a Solicitor Opinion that stated Alaska tribes did not have jurisdiction over these individual Native allotments. Instead, these allotments were similar to general homesteads and therefore under state and federal jurisdiction. That was the federal government’s interpretation of Alaska Native allotments for 31 years.
Then, in February 2024, the Department of the Interior issued a new Solicitor Opinion that revoked its long-held interpretation and purported to create a new rule. The agency’s new position is that Alaska tribes have territorial jurisdiction over most Native allotments in Alaska.
The State disagrees with this February 2024 opinion, and challenges its interpretation in the February 4, 2025 complaint filed in D.C. District Court.
Does the Department of the Interior’s February 2024 Solicitor Opinion on Alaska Native allotments differ from federal court decisions? How?
Yes. In 2021, the D.C. District Court held the 1993 Interior Solicitor’s Opinion was the correct interpretation of the federal laws that have an impact on territorial jurisdiction in Alaska, and an Alaska tribe does not have territorial jurisdiction over an Alaska Native allotment.
In its February 2024 Solicitor Opinion, the Department of the Interior disagreed with the 1993 Solicitor’s Opinion as well as the 2021 District Court opinion. The February 2024 Solicitor’s Opinion revoked portions of the 1993 Solicitor’s Opinion and boldly stated that the federal District Court’s 2021 decision was wrongly decided and is no longer applicable. The State disputes that the Solicitor, as a member of the executive branch, has any authority to overrule a federal court’s decision, let alone the enacted laws of Congress.
What is the State’s position on gaming?
The State supports economic development efforts, including in the area of gaming. A complicated question that still needs to be resolved is whether tribal gaming may be accomplished here without changing what has been the accepted status quo regarding territorial jurisdiction within Alaska since the passage of ANCSA in 1971.