The window for Alaska Native veterans to apply for their Native allotments will stay open for another five years.
Congress passed a bill this week to extend the deadline. Over this past year, Sen. Dan Sullivan, R-Alaska, made several attempts in the Senate to win support from Democrats for the extension. On Tuesday, Sullivan’s bill finally passed by unanimous consent, less than two weeks before the deadline was set to expire.
“It wasn’t easy, but we got this done at the buzzer. It’s going be signed into law. It’s going to go over to the White House The president is going to sign this.” Sullivan said in a speech on the Senate floor. “We’re going get to work and get these heroes the land allotments that they deserved.”
Benno Cleveland, president of the Alaska Native Veterans Council, has waited for this for a long time.
“I felt very happy, content within the heart,” Cleveland said. “We’ve been battling with the Alaska Native Vietnam veterans land allotment for over 30 years.”
The bill now gives Alaska Native veterans until 2030 to claim 160 acres of federal land, which was made available to them under a law Congress passed more than a 100 years ago. But when the federal program ended in 1971, Vietnam vets missed out, because many were overseas fighting the war.
An estimated 2,000 veterans are eligible for the program, but as of mid-month, only about 25 percent had filed. So far, only a fraction of the applications had been approved. Native vets said they had difficulty meeting the deadline, due to a complicated process and limited land availability.
Cleveland hopes the extension will also allow more time to convince Congress to make more federal land available for veterans, closer to their homelands. He says they deserve it.
“We’ve all gone through hell,” Cleveland said. “but we went when our country called, and we did our duty to the nation and to our people. We lost a lot of them, but we’re still here.”
Democrats had blocked previous efforts to extend the deadline over fears that the bill would open a backdoor to more development, because it would put more land in private hands. Sullivan says he ultimately won the extension by attaching his bill to three others that had bi-partisan support. The measure that passed also did not seek any new land selections for veterans.
“I put on my Christmas tie today thinking, 'Hey, maybe we can work this out,'” Sullivan told senators. “I think it's a really important day, really good day, and again, I commit to work with all my Senate colleagues on the other commitments.”
The legislation that passed along with the extension includes measures that allow the sale of federal land for an Arizona solar project, a water pipeline for Southeast Colorado and a directive to the Forest Service and Interior Department, to publish information on public access to federal waterways for recreation.
Senator Lisa Murkowski was a co-sponsor of the Native veteran’s bill. Congressman Nick Begich’s House version of the legislation passed this summer. Leaders of seven Alaska Native Organizations, including the Alaska Federation of Natives and the Alaska Native Veterans Council, had written to Sen. President John Thune urging passage of the extension. The bill was transmitted to President Donald Trump on Thursday. He has ten days, excluding Sundays, to sign it into law.
