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Knowles Fumbles Katie John Case

On August 27 Governor Knowles announced that he will not be appealing the Katie John case to the U.S. Supreme Court. This, I believe, was a big mistake-and amounts to a surrender of Alaska's rights to the federal government.

I have great respect for Katie John, the Athabaskan matriarch who operates a fish wheel on the upper stretches of the Copper River drainage, and support her right to subsistence harvest. I have met her at her family's home. I too have Alaska Native heritage, mine mixed with Asian and European ancestry during the last 200 years in Alaska. I was raised in a family dependent on fishing and am teaching my children the importance of respecting our natural resources.

However, this case really has very little to do with Katie John. It also has little to do with subsistence. It does, however, have a lot to do with federal control of Alaska. This is a complex case that deals primarily with the authority of the federal government over navigable waters in our state. We don't want our resource history to be our future. Many Alaskans fought hard for State control of our lands and accompanying resources because of the track record under federal management.

The State of Alaska has been litigating this case for nearly a decade. Many of us are tired of the battle. But, to resolve matters of such importance, we must continue to march, though weary, through the process. The final step available was the appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, the proper venue for disputes between states and the federal government. Even Bruce Botelho, the Attorney General for Alaska, acknowledges that the State's case was strong and we were likely to prevail. Then why did Governor Knowles decide to drop the appeal, after previously publicly stating his support for pursuing this case? The clear answer is politics. Although he says he wants to unite Alaskans, his actions do just the opposite-they cause people to be further divided. Depriving people their day in court does not make the problem go away.

I have long said that the solution to the subsistence priority debate is going to take leadership-and a willingness to bring people together. Leaders lead, not divide. If I were Governor, I would be encouraging the people on the extremes of this issue to come together. The ultimate solution is going to take a constitutional amendment to allow a State subsistence priority on the basis of residence. However, it will take more than that. It will also take clarifying changes to ANILCA to define "rural", "customary and traditional" and "times of shortage" and limit when and how the federal courts will have oversight of State management decisions. Finally, it will take a workable State statute to implement a new management system with imbedded subsistence user priorities.

During our second special session in 1999 we were very close to success. The proposal with the broadest support incorporated the ideas proposed by Governor Wally Hickel's Subsistence Summit in 1991. I am continuing to work with former Governor Jay Hammond, our congressional delegation and others to forge a compromise that most Alaskans can accept-and that 14 members of the Senate and 27 members of the House will support. I invite representatives from the Alaskan Federation of Natives and the Alaska Outdoor Council to join us in this effort. We all should recognize that in the long term, federal management will not be good for Alaska. We in the Alaska family are the best arbiters of resource management challenges.

Everybody will have to give up a little to make this possible-but in the end, I believe we will have a solution that will protect subsistence harvesters, restore control of fish and game management for subsistence to our State-and bring us together.

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