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He was about to start speaking again when a prison guard walked by. The person announced: "Fifteen minutes, gentlemen."

Brian acknowledged receipt of the message by nodding his head toward the guard. He turned to me and said: "I'm going to have rush this last part, David, so, with out further ado...?" As he said this, his expression and body language were seeking permission from me to proceed.

With a wave of my hand, Brian was off and running. I was hoping, however, that I would get the opportunity to ask one last question.

He began again: "When one commits a logical error, and if the step of reasoning in which the error was committed continues to play a role in subsequent deliberations, then the original error taints, colors and undermines everything with which it becomes entangled.

"American jurisprudence is saturated with such errors when it comes to its dealings with Native peoples. Some of these problems are inherent in the assumptions underlying the structure and content of the Constitution. Other instances of these errors are contained in the precedents that have been established and which shape later decisions of, say, the Supreme Court. Still other examples of such errors are found in the interpretation of the legislation passed by federal, state and local governments.

"Then, of course, there are the three hundred and seventy-something treaties that have been broken and violated by various branches of the government of the United States. For motivations which are not hard to guess at, the courts rarely, if ever, reached the conclusion that the federal government really ought to be required to live up to its many promises to Native peoples.

"In 'The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act', there are a number of the kinds of error to which I'm referring. First of all, up until 1973, the year the Act was passed, there was general agreement among various levels of government, and also as expressed in a number of court decisions, that Native peoples in Alaska had legal title to almost the entire state. Through the Native Claims Settlement Act, the federal government unilaterally extinguished all Native entitlement concerning legal ownership of the land.

"There were no hearings in any of the more than 200 Native communities that would be affected by the proposed Act. No one from any of the Native communities was consulted about, or allowed to have any say in, the process. There were no referendums which were held to permit Native peoples to reject or ratify the provisions of the Act.

"The federal government apportioned nearly 200 million acres of Native lands to itself, distributed across a number of departments. The state government of Alaska was the beneficiary of almost 125 million acres of Native lands. Together, these lands constituted 90% of the available land.

"The remaining 10% was divided among a number of corporations that had been established to manage this property on behalf of the Native groups. At least half of these managers were non-Native bankers, economists, lawyers and so on who had been hired as consultants- usually, quite expensive ones.

"The purpose of these corporations is to turn a profit. This is the legal obligation which management has to the shareholders. Therefore, development of the land is the name of the game.

"If the corporation fails in its purpose, the shares of the corporation decrease in value. If this decrease should proceed far enough, Native shareholders will be confronted with the choice of either selling their shares in order to get something out of the whole thing, or risking having the shares lose all value if the decline should continue.

"Both of the foregoing possibilities lead to further loss of control of the land, in even the very indirect sense that has been imposed on Native peoples of Alaska through the Act of 1973. Moreover, since the value of many of the Native corporations has been declining since the promulgation of the Act as law, there has been a steady erosion of Native control over their lands, both direct and indirect, since 1973.

"To add insult to injury, one has to appreciate how Native peoples have been forced to actively participate in the destruction of their own spiritual foundations. Corporate values are all about development, growth, profit and the exploitation of land and resources which these activities entail.

"All of the goals of corporate life are in direct conflict with the principles, values and practices that are rooted in Native spiritual traditions. Consequently, in order to survive in the corporate world which has been foisted on to them by the federal government, Native peoples must work against their own spiritual interests.

"If Native peoples should be successful in their corporate duties, they will die spiritually because they must violate their spiritual traditions to be successful. If the Native peoples do not succeed in their corporate duties, they also will die because the land to which they are linked spiritually will be taken from them even more so than is now the case.

"David, this brings us back to your original question. You had inquired how one goes about reconciling Native beliefs concerning the issue of ownership of land with the many land disputes that are being contested by a variety of Native tribes and nations.

"Basically, there are three broad perspectives which are manifesting themselves in different Native groups concerning land dispute issues. First, there are those Native people who are totally caught up in the non-Native games involving the idea of individual or corporate ownership of land as a commodity to be developed or disposed of as assets or liabilities.

"Secondly, there is another group of Native people who recognize the spiritual responsibility that they have to Mother Earth. They do not accept the idea of individual or corporate ownership of land. However, these people believe that seizing legal control of the disputed lands gives them the best opportunity of fulfilling their spiritual responsibilities.

"Finally, there is a third group of Native people who realize that the lands and resources of Mother Earth belong to neither Natives nor to non-Natives. All human beings have, within certain limits, a right of access to, and use of, the lands of Mother Earth. At the same time, the people in this third group maintain that all human beings have responsibilities for protecting, preserving, and living in harmony with Mother Earth.

"For this group, the solution to the problem of fulfilling our caretaking responsibilities in relation to Mother Earth does not lie in the multiplicity of issues revolving around the vying for control, legal or otherwise, of land. The sought-for resolution lies with the spiritual transformation of human beings. Without this spiritual transformation, who controls the land becomes a moot point."

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