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When the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act was negotiated in 1971, the people who had lived on the land for centuries had a take-it-or-leave-it offer on the table: $1 billion in oil money plus 40 million acres to be named later.

My essay today is about Howard Rock, an Inupiat who saved his village from. being nuked, then helped bring the Alaska Natives together. He watched regretfully as wilderness was doled out to oil companies.