Urban Renaissance Institute

Alberta Economic Development

June 5 2003

The recoverable oil reserves in the Alberta oil sands is estimated at over 300 billion barrels – more than Saudi Arabia’s 265 billion barrels.

Region: Northern Alberta – Fort McMurray (430 km north of Edmonton)
Category: Energy

Alberta is Canada’s leading producer of oil and gas, responsible for 70 per cent of the country’s crude oil and 80 per cent of its natural gas.

The recoverable oil reserves in the Alberta oil sands is estimated at over 300 billion barrels – more than Saudi Arabia’s 265 billion barrels.

Tours of the Fort McMurray oil sands production facilities of Syncrude and Suncor are available:

Suncor Energy Inc. is the world’s leader in mining and extraction:
Tours and Information:
Darlene Crowell
Suncor Energy Inc
Phone: (403) 205-6792
email: dcrowell@suncor.com
Syncrude Canada is the world’s largest oil sands producer:
Tours and Information:
Cherry Holland
Syncrude Canada
(780) 790-6348

Contact:
Charlotte Moran
Director of Communications
Alberta Energy
Phone: (780) 422-3667

Websites:
http://www.syncrude.com
http://www.suncor.com/bins/index.asp
http://www.energy.gov.ab.ca/

 

Roy H. May Jr.

June 3, 2003

Joshua and the Promised Land

A historical look at how various societies have used the concept of “promised land” to justify the taking and keeping of land, and how moral authority is manipulated to exploit, oppress, and even wipe out populations. 

 

We can begin with the Crusades. During the Middle Ages, European Christians launched military campaigns to take the Holy Land from the Muslims. Early on the Crusaders took Jericho. Following the example of Joshua 6, they marched around the city led by clergy carrying sacred banners and pictures of Christian saints. When the walls did not fall down as expected, they attacked and overran the city. Then they massacred the inhabitants. Jews were locked in their synagogue and burned alive. Even some of the Crusaders were horrified by the slaughter. (10)

The Crusaders could have argued that the Bible was on their side. After all, Joshua commanded that “the city and all that is in it shall be devoted to the Lord for destruction” (6:17). The writer reports that they did just that — killing “by the edge of the sword all in the city, both men and women, young and old, oxen, sheep, and donkey” (6:21). “They burned down the city, and everything in it” (6:24). For the Crusaders, the Book of Joshua was a blueprint for their military campaigns.

The Crusades occurred a long time ago [read more about the crusades]. We can find stories closer to our own times: the colonial enterprise in the Americas, the establishment of apartheid in South Africa, and the creation of modern Israel.

America, the New Israel
“We shall be as a City upon a Hill, they eyes of all people are upon us…,” the Puritan John Winthrop wrote. The Puritans who disembarked in Massachusetts in 1620 believed they were establishing the New Israel. Indeed, the whole colonial enterprise was believed to have been guided by God. “God has opened this passage unto us,” Alexander Whitaker preached from Virginia in 1613, “and led us by the hand unto this work.”

Promised Land imagery figured prominently in shaping English colonial thought. The Pilgrims identified themselves with the ancient Hebrews. They viewed the New World and the New Canaan. They were God’s chosen people headed for the Promised Land. Other colonists believed they, too, had been divinely called. The settlers in Virginia were, John Rolf said, “a peculiar people, marked and chosen by the finger of God.”

This self-image of being God’s Chosen People called to establish the New Israel became an integral theme in America’s self-interpretation. During the revolutionary period, it emerged with new force. “We cannot but acknowledge that God hath graciously patronized our cause and taken us under his special care, as he did his ancient covenant people,” Samuel Langdon preached at Concord, New Hampshire in 1788. George Washington was the &American Joshua,” and “Never was the possession of arms used with more glory, or in a better cause, since the days of Joshua and the son of Nun,” Ezra Stiles urged in Connecticut in 1783. In 1776, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson wanted Promised Land images for the new nation’s Great Seal. Franklin proposed Moses dividing the Red (Reed) Sea with Pharaoh’s army being overwhelmed by the closing waters. Jefferson urged a representation of the Israelites being led in the wilderness by the pillar of fire by night and the cloud by day. Later, in his second inaugural address (1805), Jefferson again recalled the Promised Land. “I shall need…the favor of that Being in whose hands we are, who led our fathers, as Israel of old, from their native land and planted them in a country flowing with all the necessities and comforts of life.” (11)

The sense of divine election and the identification of the Americas with ancient Canaan were used to justify expelling America’s Indigenous Peoples from their land. The colonists saw themselves as confronting “satanic forces” in the Native Americans. They were Canaanites to be destroyed or thrown out.

Since the Europeans arrived in North America, Indigenous Peoples have lost millions of acres of land. Theft, murder and warfare, forced removal, deception, and official government land programs have deprived them of their territories. Land rights of Native Americans were never taken seriously. Rather, they were seen as obstacles to the colonists’ need for land. The Puritans did not respect the farms of Native Americans. They sought “legal” ways to get their land. If a Native American broke one of the rigid Puritan religious laws, the fine was paid by giving up land. In this manner, some Puritans were able to amass large landholdings through the Massachusetts courts. John Winthrop, for example, obtained some 1,260 acres along the Concord River. (12)

Native Americans had a very different idea about land. “Originally there were no lands owned by individual Indians. All land was held in tribal status, and its tribal governing body, the council, or headmen would allot pieces of land for each family to use,” two Native-American scholars explain. (13) The Pilgrim idea of land was based on individual, private holdings. How ironic for a people who modeled themselves on ancient Israel! As we saw in chapter 3, ancient Israel’s understanding of the land and its distribution was more like the Native-American idea of land than their own. That was overlooked by the Pilgrims!

Most land was taken violently. First of all, Europeans brought diseases that killed several million Native Americans within a few years. These great killings left land “vacant” and “available” to the colonists. Then there was war. When the 1600s ended, most Native Americans in New England had been killed or driven away.

In England,John Wesley, Methodism’s founder, was appalled by the atrocities Europeans committed against Native Americans. He poured out his moral outrage on European Christians, including the English colonists. In his sermon “A Caution Against Bigotry,” Wesley doesn’t gloss over anything:

Even in cruelty and bloodshed, how little have the Christians come behind them! And not the Spaniards or the Portuguese alone, butchering thousands in South America; not the Dutch only in the East Indies, or the French in North America, following the Spaniards step by step: our own countrymen, too, have wantoned in blood, and exterminated whole nations; plainly proving thereby what spirit it is that dwells and works in the children of disobedience.(14)

Tragically few listened to Wesley.

Warfare against Native Americans continued until the end of the nineteenth century as the United States moved westward. This expansion was inspired by the nation’s “manifest destiny.” Manifest destiny was the belief that the United States was destined or chosen to occupy all the geographical territory between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. This idea was very popular in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Native Americans were viewed as obstacles to “manifest destiny.”

The wars removed Native Americans from their homelands. For example, from the 1820s until the 1840s the Cherokees, Choctaws and other members of the Five Civilized Tribes were expelled from the Deep South to Oklahoma. These forced marches to Oklahoma are known as the “Trail of Tears” because of the disease, suffering, and massive number of deaths the tribes experienced, and the grief they felt in leaving their homes. Some years later (1864) in the far southwest, 8,500 citizens of the Navajo Nation were forced out of their homelands. Their removal to a confinement camp in New Mexico is remembered bitterly as “The Long Walk.” Throughout the nineteenth century there were countless military clashes between Native Americans and the United States Army supporting white settlers.

After 1854, the United States government adopted a general policy that undermined Native-American culture by replacing traditional forms of land ownership. Now land was allotted or given to individual Native Americans. Land not parceled out to Native Americans became government property. This land was then passed on to European Americans for railroads, homesteading, mining, and other purposes. The General Allotment Act passed in 1887 pushed this policy even harder. Native Americans were forced to conform to white culture. This Act was finally rescinded in 1934. The result was that through allotment, Native Americans lost millions of acres of their original territories. (15)

Access to land, water, minerals, and timber are still key issues. During the 1970s and 1980s, a bitter conflict over these rights exploded on the Hopi and Navajo Reservation at Four Corners, where Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico meet. This is the land the Navajo Nation received when released from the confinement camp following “The Long Walk.” Rich deposits of coal, uranium and other valuable minerals were located in the Black Mesa and Big Mountain area. These lands, however, are sacred to the Navajo people. They are integral to their religious traditions. Strip mining for coal had already been allowed by the United States government. Uranium mines were operating in nearby areas.

Beginning early in the twentieth century, non-Native Americans and mining and energy companies wanted access to this vast mineral wealth. The Navajo resisted. Pressure intensified by the 1970s. However, not only was the land sacred, but the area was also disputed between Hopi and Navajo Nations because the reservations assigned them included overlapping lands. There was also conflict between Navajo who wished to conserve their traditional religion and way of life, and others who wanted modern development to occur. Mineral developers and the United States government manipulated and exploited the conflict to their own benefit.

Congress, backing the private U.S. companies, passed the Hopi-Navajo Land Settlement Act in 1974. It divided 1.8 million jointly-owned acres between the Hopi and Navajo Nations. For nearly a hundred years the two people had shared the land. The Act also required the relocation of between 10-15,000 Navajo and about 100 Hopi.

The cost to the Hopi and Navajo peoples has been high. It has left divisions between the two nations, conflict over the meaning of the land, severe hardship for those forced to move, and serious environmental contamination. Above all, it has meant the loss of sacred sites that cannot be replaced. (16)

Even when mineral rights are not the issue, Whites have access to Native American lands. By 1985, for instance, over half of the Pine Ridge Sioux Reservation in South Dakota was being used by non-Native Americans. (17) As noted in chapter 2, disputes with Whites continue through lawsuits brought by Native Americans to recover or defend traditional lands. Today Native Americans are the most poverty-stricken of all United States citizens. (18). Land continues to be a critical issue.

While the English were building the New Israel in North America, Spain and Portugal were conquering Central and South America. The conquest of Canaan was the model for their invasion of America. Mexican biblical scholar Elsa Támez explains:

The story of the conquest of Canaan is the most often used biblical foundation for the conquest of this continent. Juan Ginés de Sepúlveda [a prominent and influential Spanish philosopher of the 16th century] used this biblical theme to legitimate the war against its inhabitants…He justified the conquest in order to punish blasphemy, but also because the continent was a special donation by God, as the promised land (The Pope as Christ’s vicar had the authority to give the lands). God chose the Spanish to carry out this divine judgment against the infidels, and to conquer their lands. From this Sepúlveda affirmed that such a war besides being licit, was necessary because of the gravity of the people’s concerns. (19)

There were voices to the contrary. The loudest belonged to Bartolomé de las Casas (1474-1566). For many years he bravely defended Indigenous Peoples against the conquistadores. Most Spaniards, however, believed in the righteousness of their cause. They also believed that Native Americans were “naturally wicked.” “God condemned the whole race of Indians to perish, for the horrible sins committed in their paganism,” a priest declared. A popular saying said it: “Just as Joshua was willed by God to destroy the people of Canaan because they were idolaters, thus God willed Spain to destroy the Indians.” (20)

No wonder some Native Americans reject Promised Land theology! As pointed out in the introduction, Robert Allen Warrior reads the Exodus and Promised Land stories “with Canaanite eyes.” A member of the Osage Nation, he says:

Thus, the narrative tells us that the Canaanites have status only as the people of Yahweh removes from the land in order to bring the chosen people in. They are not to be trusted, nor are they to be allowed to enter into social relationships with the people of Israel. They are wicked, and their religion is to be avoided at all costs. The laws put forth regarding strangers and sojourners may have stopped the people of Yahweh from wanton oppression, but presumably only after the land was safely in the hands of Israel. The covenant of Yahweh depends on this.” (21)

From this viewpoint, the biblical texts are hardly saving messages! Rather, they are excuses for conquest and genocide.

Afrikaners and the “Great Trek”
When Nelson Mandela was elected President of South Africa in 1994, nearly fifty years of official rigid racial segregation called apartheid ended. Apartheid became official policy following the 1948 electoral victory by the National Party. That party’s ideological roots were in the historical experience of the Dutch-origin “Afrikaners.” Especially important was their sense of divine election. They too understood themselves as God’s Chosen People. South Africa was their Promised Land. Indeed, through the years the Chaplain’s Services of the South African Defense Forces appealed to Holy War to justify military enforcement of the country’s rigid racial segregation. (22)

The Dutch arrived on the tip of Africa in 1652 when the Dutch East India Company set up an outpost. Soon after, the company began bringing settlers from Holland. They became known as the “Boers” or “farmers.” However in 1814, the Netherlands ceded its south African territory to the British. Six years later the first English colonists arrived. From then on, the two European groups were in constant conflict over land, minerals, culture and language, and government power.

The Afrikaners believed the British persecuted Dutch settlers. Finally in 1836, the Afrikaners abandoned the Cape area. They set out for the Transvaal region in the north to establish their own republic. This movement north became known as the “Great Trek.” Is their minds it “forms the national epic — formal proof of God’s election of the Afrikaner people and His special destiny for them.” (23) As they set out in covered wagons, according to their viewpoint:

They were followed by the British army, like that of Pharaoh, and everywhere were beset by the unbelieving black “Canaanites.” Yet because God’s people acted according His will, He delivered them out of the hands of their enemies and gave them their freedom in the promised land. (24)

Many Afrikaners died during the trek. Others were killed in battles with Africans. The decisive battle was at Blood River on December 16, 1838. Some 10,000 Zulu warriors attacked the trekkers. Over 3,000 Zulus were killed. No Afrikaners died. The Afrikaners attributed their victory to God’s intervention. They said it was a covenant God made with them. They established their own republic, but continued to be in conflict with the British over land and minerals. The Afrikaners defeated the British in 1880-1881 in the first Anglo-Boer War. The second Anglo-Boer War ended with the Afrikaners’ decisive defeat in 1902.

This bitter historical experience was perceived as the “sacred saga of Afrikanerdom.” (25) Old Testament stories, especially from the Exodus and Promised Land traditions, were prominent. They were guiding images for their self-understanding. An Afrikaner poet put it this way:

But see! the world becomes wilder;
the fierce vermin worsen,
stark naked black hordes,
following tyrants.
How the handful of trekkers suffer,
the freedom seekers, creators of a People.
Just like another Israel,
by enemies surrounded, lost in the veld,
but for another Canaan elected,
led forward by God’s plan. (26)

The Afrikaners were the Covenant People. Land was central to this self-image. An historian explains, “The very spine of Afrikaner history (no less than the historical sense of the Hebrew scriptures upon which it is based) involves the winning of the ‘the Land’ from alien, and indeed evil forces.” (27) The land had to be redeemed. These alien and evil forces included the British, but especially the indigenous Africans. They were viewed as inferior. They were Canaanites destined to be the servants of the Afrikaners. (28) Over the years black Africans were thrown off their farms and grazing land so that extremely few continued to live in the rural areas as landholders.

This saga, viewed as sacred by the Afrikaners, crystallized their cultural identity. It found its political expression and program in the National Party. This program was based on racial separateness and the belief that Afrikaners were set apart for a special mission in God’s designs for political organization. Apartheid and Promised Land went hand in hand.

It’s not surprising that some black South African Christians reject the biblical texts on Exodus and Promised Land. Itumeleng J. Mosala argues that, since these texts have been used to justify oppression of black Africans, they have lost their moral authority.

 

Protestations to the effect that white people are misusing the Bible have neither empowered black people to deliver themselves from this white slavery nor successfully explained to anybody, except the beneficiaries of apartheid, why such a tradition of conquest exists in the Bible in the first place. My contention is that the only adequate and honest explanation is that not all the Bible is on the side of human rights or of oppressed and exploited people.

 

From his perspective, the stories are “codes” to justify domination. (29)

Israel in Palestine
Today’s Jews are quickly associated with the Promised Land of Joshua’s time. However, the establishment of the State of Israel by the United Nations in 1948 raises many questions about that relationship. Palestine already was populated by over a half million people. Most were poor Arab farmers and artisans living in villages. Jewish settlers had been arriving for many years. They had purchased large sections of the land (usually from the few, big Palestinian landowners). By 1948, Palestine was a patchwork of Jews and Palestinians, most of whom were Arabs. That changed dramatically after Israel became a nation state.

War broke out immediately between the new country and surrounding Arab nations. Over 725,000 Palestinians sought refuge in nearby lands, mainly in Lebanon. Following the war, the Israeli government began forcibly removing Palestinians from their lands. It also severely restricted Palestinian civil liberties and participation in the national economy. Between 1948 and 1967, nearly 400 Palestinian villages were completely razed. Almost all farmland owned by Palestinians was confiscated. Palestinian farmers were left with only small parcels of poor land. By the 1970s, more than half of it was in the Negeb desert region. (30)

Religious beliefs about the Promised Land were not the bases of the Zionist movements that called for Israel’s creation. What moved early Zionists were concerns for the political and cultural security of Jews. Most of the leading voices and founders of Israel, such as David Ben-Gurion, were secular Jews. Still, an historian points out that most Jewish settlers undoubtedly believed “that they had in some way been chosen to ‘redeem the Land’ and to displace the modern equivalent of the Philistines and Canaanites.” (31) For that reason, secular political leaders drew on Promised Land imagery to justify their politics.

Following the “Six Day War” in 1967, religious arguments for Israel’s occupation of the land were central. Israel’s quick, military victory stimulated a series of highly visible and influential religious movements aimed at “redeeming the land.” (32) For Israel, the question of land was a matter neither of economics nor of national security. The reason for taking and keeping the “occupied territories” was religious obligation. These territories rightfully belonged to the Jews and should not be returned, as one leader said, “because wars of conquest were mandatory in Jewish tradition in order to redeem the Holy Land.” (33) An historian explains what happened when religion and politics were joined:

By going back to the earliest scriptural texts, the parts of the Bible that defined the Promised Land and told the people to conquer it, the religious purpose of the Israeli people was declared to be the same as the purpose of the state, so long as it kept and colonized the “occupied territories.” Thus, twentieth-century Israeli nationalism and some of the most ancient parts of the original Hebrew covenant were joined. (34)

The old stories of Exodus and Promised Land became justifications for expelling thousands of Palestinians who had lived in the land for generations. As might be expected, many Palestinian Christians find little value in these biblical accounts. Naim S. Ateek, an Anglican priest in Jerusalem, explains:

The God of the Bible, hitherto the God who saves and liberates, has come to be viewed by Palestinians as partial and discriminating. Before the creation of the State [of Israel], the Old Testament was considered to be an essential part of Christian Scripture, pointing and witnessing to Jesus. Since the creation of the State, some Jewish and Christian interpreters have read the Old Testament largely as a Zionist text to such an extent that it has become almost repugnant to Palestinian Christians… The fundamental question of many Christians, whether uttered or not, is: How can the Old Testament be the Word of God in light of the Palestinian Christians’ experience with its use to support Zionism? (35)

---

Footnotes:

10.. Robert C. Boling, Joshua: A New Translation with Notes and Commentary, The Anchor Bible (Garden City: Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1982), p. 211. (return to text)

11. Conrad Cherry (ed.), God’s New Israel: Religious Interpretations of American Destiny (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice Hall, Inc., 1971). The quotations are from this book: Winthrop p. 43; Whitaker p. 33; Rolf p. 26; Landon p. 99; Stiles p. 88; and Jefferson p. 65. The information about the Great Seal is found on p. 65. Se also, Joseph Gaer and Ben Siegal, The Puritan Heritage: American Roots in the Bible (New York: A Mentor Book/The New American Library; 1964). (return to text)

12. Hans Koning, The Conquest of America: How the Indian Nations Lost Their Continent (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1993), p. 14. (return to text)

13. Kirke Kickingbird and Karen Ducheneaux, One Hundred Million Acres (New York: Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc., 1973), pg. 14. (return to text)

14. John Wesley, Sermon XXXIII, “A Caution Against Bigotry.” Sermons on Several Occasions by John Wesley (1746) (London: The Epworth Press, 1944), p. 432. There are various editions of Wesley’s sermons. Abingdon Press has published the complete works of Wesley, including his sermons. (return to text)

15. Kirke Kickingbird and Karen Ducheneaux, One Hundred Million Acres, pp. 14-31. (return to text)

16. This information is based on Peter Metthiessen, “Forced Relocation at Big Mountain,” and Deborah Lacerenza, “An Historical Overview of the Navajo Relocation,” in Cultural Survival Quarterly 3 (1988), pp. 2-6. (return to text)

17. Koning, The Conquest of America, p. 107. (return to text)

18. M. Annette Jaimes with Theresa Halsey, “American Indian Women, At the Center of Indigenous Resistance in Contemporary North America,” in Annette Jaimes, The State of Native America: Genocide, Colonization, and Resistance (Boston: South End Press, 1992), p. 324. (return to text)

19. Elsa Támez, “Biblia y 500 años,” in Revista de interpretación biblica latinoamericana 16 (1993), p. 12. Used by permission of Editorial DEI. (return to text)

20. Koning, The Conquest of America, pp. 53, 27. (return to text)

21. Robert Allen Warrior, “A Native American Perspective: Canaanites, Cowboys, and Indians,” in R.S. Sugitharajah, ed., Voices from the Margin: Interpreting the Bible in the Third World (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1991), pp. 289, 291-92. (return to text)

22. Gordon Mitchell, Together in the Land: A Reading of the Book of Joshua, Journal for the Study of the Old Testament, Supplement Series 134 (Sheffield: Shefield Academic Press, 1993), Preface. (return to text)

23. T. Dunbar Moodie, The Rise of Afrikanerdom: Power, Apartheid, and the Afrikaner Civil Religion (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), p. 3. (return to text)

24. Ibid., p. 5. (return to text)

25. Ibid., p. 1. (return to text)

26. By the Reverend J.D. du Toit and quoted in Donald Harman Akenson, God’s People: Covenant and Land in South Africa, Israel, and Ulster (Ithica: Cornell University Press, 1992), p. 74. (return to text)

27. Ibid., p. 74. (return to text)

28. Ibid., p. 75, 95. (return to text)

29. Itumeleng J. Mosala, Biblical Hermeneutics and Black Theology in South Africa (Grand Rapids” Eerdmans, 1989), pp. 29-30, 10. (return to text)

30. Akenson, God’s People, pg. 236. (return to text)

31. Ibid., p. 243 (return to text)

32. Ibid., p. 319 (return to text)

33. Ibid., p. 321 (return to text)

34. Ibid., p. 322 (return to text)

35. Naim Stifan Ateek, Justice, and Only Justice: A Palestinian Theology of Liberation (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1989), pp. 77-78. Used by permission of Orbis Books. (return to text)

 

Eric Gislason

June 3, 2003

American Studies at the University of Virginia

This brief history of Alaska statehood considers the region in the political and imaginative contexts of (contiguous) United States history and emphasizes certain themes revealed in this effort.

Introduction: The one hundred years between “Seward’s Folly” (1867) and statehood (1959) comprise an intriguing though often ignored narrative about the importance of the “great land” to United States history. The following brief history of Alaska statehood considers the region in the political and imaginative contexts of (contiguous) United States history and emphasizes certain themes revealed in this effort. First, throughout the late-19th and early 20th century, Alaska serves as an advertisement for American colonialism. A colonial economy developed in which much of the territory’s natural wealth (minerals, furs, salmon, timber) was extracted from the region and used elsewhere for the profit of absentee business interests. Second, Alaska served as an extension of the American frontier, a “great northern and western citadel,” in the words of one observer. This notion received a new resonance in the Cold War Years when Alaska represented the edge of American interests menaced by the Soviet Union.
A third theme, which may be surprising to some readers, is Alaska’s centrality in numerous national political disputes. The Ballinger-Pinchot affair of 1910 — covered in more detail below — fractured the Republican party and had far-reaching consequences for the political course of the U.S. Discriminatory national legislation such as the Jones and White Acts demonstrated the extent of U.S. imperial control over the region. And the machinations of the conservative coalition of Taft Republicans and “Dixiecrats” during the Eisenhower years delayed Alaska statehood in the interest of maintaining a tenuous Republican majority in Congress.
Finally, the issue of self-determination is at the heart of the issue of statehood: The early federal denial of self-rule and the practice of taxation without representation in Congress should be familiar echoes of the injustice suffered by colonists’ of the prior century. The eventual response to these policies is a stirring chapter in the history of concerted democratic effort: the populist vigor of the Constitutional Convention and the adoption of the aggressive “Tennessee Plan” for statehood combine with national efforts from individuals like Bob Bartlett and Ernest Gruening to achieve statehood for Alaska.

Beginnings: “Seward’s Folly” and the First Organic Act of 1884: On March 30, 1867, Secretary of State William H. Seward signed an agreement with Baron Edouard Stoeckl, the Russian Minister to the United States. The agreement, widely referred to as “Seward’s Folly” (and “Seward’s Icebox”) ceded possession of the vast territory of Alaska to the United States for the sum of $7.2 million. Few citizens of the U.S. could fathom what possible use or interest the 586,000 square miles of land would have for their country. In a speech given at Sitka on August 12, 1868, however, Secretary Seward claimed he did not doubt “that the political society to be constituted here, first as a Territory, and ultimately as a state or many States, will prove a worthy constituency of the Republic.”1 President Andrew Johnson sent General Jefferson C. Davis to command a military force of about 500 men to maintain peace and order, and expected that Congress would establish the civil organization of the territory.
The 40th Congress (1867-1869) passed a law which made Alaska a customs district of the U. S. but made no other efforts to establish the civil infrastructure that President Johnson had hinted at. The relations between settlers and natives of Alaska were tense and the Navy forces of Commander L.A. Beardslee were called upon to maintain order. From 1879-1884, the Navy governed Alaska, as most of its inhabitants were located in the coastal southeastern “panhandle” of the state. The passage of the First Organic Act (1884) made Alaska a civil and judicial district and provided the territory with judges, clerks, and marshals. Curiously enough, the general legal code of the state of Oregon was adopted. A total of thirteen officials were made responsible for a population of 32,000 people, of which only 430 were white settlers.
Many settlers came to Alaska with the expectation that the territory would follow the path of the Western states to official state status. The First Organic Act did not provide for eventual representative government, however, and Alaska was consigned to a territorial status much like that of the Newfoundland fisheries of the 17th-century British Empire. The U.S. government asserted imperial administrative control over the noncontiguous territory, but due to the overriding late-19th century concerns of Reconstruction and rapid incorporation of the contiguous states demonstrated little interest in Alaska. Although some reports had been circulated about the wealth of furs, seals, fish, and minerals to be found in Alaska, the conventional wisdom about the territory was summed up in the New York Herald by James Gordon Bennett, who suggested that any impoverished European monarchs who wanted to sell worthless territory should apply to “W.H. Seward, State Department, Washington, D.C.” Alaska was just too remote to inspire much interest.

The Klondike Gold Rush and the Second Organic Act: The Klondike Gold Rush of 1897-98 was the first event to garner significant exposure for the great, white North. During the decade of 1890-1900, more than 30, 000 people surged into the Yukon Territory and Alaska when gold was discovered in places like Dawson, Fairbanks, and Ester. Mining, fishing, trapping, and mineral production flourished and a true “colonial economy” developed, in which outside interests exploited the material resources of Alaska and took the profits elsewhere. In an article for the Atlantic Monthly called “Colonial Lessons of Alaska,” journalist David S. Jordan declared that the disarray in Alaska could be attributed to four sources: “lack of centralization of power and authority, lack of scientific knowledge, lack of personal and public interest, and the use of offices as political patronage.”3 Could the U.S. in good conscience hoist its flag over a colony if it was not prepared to care for it? Surveying the situation, President McKinley acknowledged the urgent need for further civil organization in Alaska and called for legislative relief which would address Alaska’s bulky backlog of civil and criminal cases. In 1900 Congress passed an official code of civil and criminal procedure, appointed more judges, and put in place a system of taxation. Furthermore, the duty-free exchange of goods with Canada was established and construction was approved for a railroad between the port city of Seward and the city of Fairbanks, in the Interior, to aid in the distribution of goods.
Efforts toward self-government were complicated by the influence in Washingon of the “Alaska Syndicate,” formed in 1906 by the fortunes of J.P. Morgan and Guggenheim. The Syndicate had purchased the large Kennicott-Bonanza copper mine and controlled much of Alaskan steamship and rail transportation, as well as a major part of the salmon canning industry. The Syndicate lobby in Washingon had successfully opposed any further extension of Alaskan home rule. James Wickersham, who had been appointed to an Alaskan judgeship in 1900 by President McKinley, became alarmed by the potential influence of incorporated interests in the territory and took up the struggle for Alaskan self-government. Wickersham argued that Alaska’s resources should be used for the good of the entire country rather than exploited a select group of large, absentee-controlled interests — home rule, he claimed, would assure more just utilization of the territory’s natural wealth. The 1910 Ballinger-Pinchot affair, which involved the illegal distribution of thirty-three federal government Alaskan coal land claims to the Guggenheim interests, culminated in a Congressional investigation and brought Alaska directly into the national headlines. Wickersham, surveying the fallout of the affair, determined that it destroyed the friendship between Theodore Roosevelt and President Taft; split the Republican party into two great factions; defeated President Taft for re-election in 1912; elected Woodrow Wilson President of the United States; and changed the course of history of our country.
A chastened President Taft, in a special message to Congress on February 2, 1912, urged the enactment of legislation which would help Alaska develop its resources along the lines that Wickersham had urged.
The Second Organic Act, passed by the U.S. Congress in April 1912, conferred official territory status upon Alaska and provided for an elected legislature of eight senators and sixteen house members. Congress refused to give significant power to this legislature, however, or make the position of governor of the Territory a popularly elected one. Everything the local legislature did was subject to the (dis)approval of Congress. The federal government retained the power to regulate the territory’s fish, game, and fur resources, a function no organized territory had thus far been denied. These restrictions would chafe Alaskans and eventually lead to efforts to amend and change the Second Organic Act. Nonetheless, this official act of incorporation by Congress did bind the region more firmly to the United States.
The Northwest Ordinance of 1787 had provided the framework for the territorial system and had, for over a century, served well the purposes of expansion. The last two contiguous U.S. territories, New Mexico and Arizona, had become states in 1912. But Alaska (like Hawaii and Puerto Rico) was non-contiguous and sparsely populated. These two factors, as well as Congress’ uncertainty about Alaska’s indigenous non-white population of Aleuts, Indians, and Eskimos complicated Alaska statehood. To be sure, political considerations had often been part of statehood questions: the 1864 elevation of Nevada from territory to state (though it only had a population of 20,000 at the time) gave Abraham Lincoln needed votes for re-election and also helped ratify the 13th Amendment.

Absentee Interests and Colonial Exploitation: Alaska had a population of about 58,000 in 1916 when Wickersham, now Delegate to Congress, introduced Alaska’s first statehood bill. It failed due to lack of interest on the part of Alaskans; not even President Harding’s 1923 visit to the Territory could create sustained widespread interest in statehood. Efforts to amend the Second Organic Act, which had not quite extricated Alaska’s fishing industry from the influences of the “Fish Trust,” took up much time yet proved fruitless. In fact, some Congressional legislation was overtly discriminatory to the Territory. The U.S. Maritime Act of 1920 — commonly referred to as the Jones Act, after its sponsor, Senator Wesley Jones of Seattle — stipulated that all commercial ships travelling between American ports had to be American-owned and American-built. Thus, all merchandise entering or leaving Alaska had to be transported by American carriers, which meant that all shipping had to go through Seattle. The Supreme Court ruled that, because Alaska was not officially a state, the Constitution’s provision that one state should not hold sway over the commerce of another did not protect Alaska. Routing ships through the Canadian ports of Vancouver and Prince Rupert would have been much cheaper for Alaskans; nevertheless, under the Court’s ruling, the Jones Act allowed Seattle business interests to charge much higher than average prices for shipping. This in turn raised the cost of living in Alaska and funnelled Alaskan dollars out of the territory and into the pockets of Washington businessmen. Another piece of discriminatory legislation, the White Act of 1924, was referred to as the “Magna Carta of fishery conservation” by both federal officials and industry spokesmen. In fact, the White Act favored the big companies’ fish traps and worked against the development of small operators in Alaska.
National discrimination was compounded by regional conflicts among the territory’s judicial divisions and these squabbles further blurred the focus on statehood. Under the conditions of the Second Organic Act, Alaska had been divided into the four divisions, each with a capitol city: the First Judicial division (southeastern Alaska) at Juneau; the Second Division (northwestern Alaska) at Nome; the Third Division (southcentral Alaska) at Valdez, and later at Anchorage; and the Fourth Division (the interior) at Fairbanks. The Southeastern division, or “Panhandle” region, had by far the largest population and began to wonder if perhaps it could become a state separate from the other three less-populated divisions. Government control over Alaska was the primary concern, as over 52 federal agencies had a hand in the daily workings of Alaska! Exasperated, Wickersham declared “there actually exists today a congressional government in Alaska more offensively bureaucratic in its basic principles and practices than that which existed here during the seventy years of Russian rule under the Czar.” 8 Federal attempts in the 1920s to streamline administration had little success changing either the bureaucratic control over Alaska’s development or the unfair Congressional legislation, and the exploitative resource industries of the contiguous states still had the power to completely withdraw the sources of many Alaskans’ livelihood.
The Depression hit Alaska hard as prices paid for fish and copper, the territory’s two chief commodities, declined. Between 1929 and 1932, the work force decreased by more than half, and wages dropped. Help came from New Deal programs such as the National Reforestation Act of 1933 and various Public Works Administration construction efforts. Most famous among government efforts in Alaska during the Depression is the 1935 Matanuska Valley colonization scheme. President Franklin D. Roosevelt imagined that Americans from depressed agricultural areas could be transplanted to Alaska’s Matanuska-Susitna region and given a fresh chance at agricultural self-sustainment. Around 1,000 colonists were selected from some 15,000 applicants, largely from Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota — on the assumption that the similar climate of these areas to Alaska would best suit settlers for life in the North. A related but completely ill-fated idea was Dr. Joe Thomas’ “Alaska Colonization Branch of the United Congo Improvement Association,” which proclaimed that “Alaska offers the American Negro full political rights.” The UCIA asked that President Roosevelt settle some 400 Negro farmers in Alaska, but existing racial prejudices and prevailing beliefs that only people from northern lands were suited for life in Alaska doomed the proposal.

The War Years: A Decade of Growth: While the New Deal aided Alaska, it took an event of much greater scale and purpose to truly bring the Territory onto the national stage. As early as 1933, Delegate Anthony J. Dimond had recognized Japan as a threat to America’s security and asked Congress for military airfields and planes, a highway to link the territory with the United States, and army garrisons. Telling his colleagues in the House of Representatives that Japanese fishermen off Alaska’s coast were actually disguised military personnel scouting out information on Alaska’s harbors, Dimond pleaded that Alaska was as much a key to the Pacific as Hawaii and must be defended. In 1940, Congress appropriated money for military installations, but it took the bombing of Pearl Harbor and the 1942 occupation by Japan of Attu and Kiska islands on the Aleutian Chain for military mobilization to begin in earnest. Billions of dollars in defense spending came into the state in the construction of the Alaska Highway, the capture and eventual fortification of the Aleutian islands, and the construction of military bases throughout the state.
In 1940, about 1,000 of Alaska’s 75,000 residents were military. By 1943, 152,000 out of 233,000 belonged to the armed forces stationed in Alaska. And even though there was a post-war drop in population to about 99,000 in 1946, Cold War military expenditures pushed it back up to around 138,000 by 1950. The war years irrevocably changed Alaska.
Attention in the national press increasingly raised awareness about Alaska’s situation, described by Richard L. Neuberger in Newsweek as a “feudal barony” where the absentee-owned mining and fishing corporations took out millions in natural resources and left next to nothing behind in the form of social and economic benefits — a “looted land.” 10 It became increasingly obvious that keeping territorial government and tax structures to a minimum benefitted Seattle-area interests such as the Alaska Steamship Company and the Northland Transportation Company, who enjoyed an effective monopoly on steamship travel and shipping and charged unusually high rates. Alaskan businessmen such as Austin E. “Cap” Lathrop — Alaska’s premier “capitalist” — were able to benefit greatly from the minimal taxes and argued against statehood for fear that its’ stricter tax laws might diminish their position. The anti-statehood faction had a powerful hold in the Territory, and might have quelled the issue were it not for two especially vigorous pro-statehood advocates, Ernest Gruening and E. L. “Bob” Bartlett.
Ernest Gruening, an Easterner with a history of progressive politics, had served as publicity director for Senator Robert M. LaFollette’s presidential candidacy in 1924 when LaFollette polled five million votes but lost the race. Gruening traveled and worked in Mexico and Europe before serving as editor of the Nation until he was appointed by F. D. Roosevelt in 1934 to run the fledgling Division of Territories and Island Possessions. In 1939, FDR appointed Gruening to the governorship of Alaska. Edward Lewis “Bob” Bartlett, with whom Gruening was to work closely for the next quarter-century, had served as secretary to Congressional delegate Anthony J. Dimond, remaining in Washington until 1934. Bartlett operated a placer gold mine for a while before President Roosevelt appointed him secretary of Alaska in January 1939. In 1944, Bartlett ran for and won the position which Wickersham and Dimond had held — Territorial Delegate to Congress. Beginning in 1945, Delegate Bartlett acted as Alaska’s only representative in the halls of Congress.

The Drive Toward Statehood: Legislative and Populist Efforts: Historian Claus Naske divides the statehood movement in Alaska into two phases.11 First, between 1943 and 1953, Alaska’s governor (Gruening), the delegate to Congress (Bartlett), and a cross-section of the territory’s established business and professional men and women engineered numerous legislative efforts to achieve statehood for Alaska. Gruening was frustrated by the fact that after three decades under the American flag, Alaska was still without adequate roads, airfields, tuberculosis hospitals, and dependable shipping at reasonable cost. What was more, the aboriginal rights issue had not yet been settled, and homesteaders were not yet legally able to acquire land from the federal government. He felt that the only tools by which Alaskans could amend their plight were two United States senators and a Representative in the House, each with a vote.
The 3:2 passage of a 1946 referendum in favor of statehood led to the formation of the Alaska Statehood Association — an ad hoc group of concerned citizens — later that year. Meanwhile, Gruening lobbied hard in Washington with the members of the influential Senate Public Lands Committee, especially Senator Hugh Butler of Nebraska. Delegate Bartlett introduced a statehood bill in April, 1948 which was corralled in the Rules Committee by Senator Butler. It never came up for debate, but many Alaskans had testified to their desire for statehood and the interest of numerous others was aroused as the possibility of statehood became more plausible. Furthermore, Alaskan voters decided that year to reform the territory’s tax structure to loosen the hold of the special interests.
The Alaska Statehood Committee was formed in 1949 to intensify efforts toward statehood, calling on national and labor organizations, newspaper editors, and state governors to support and publicize Alaska’s situation. Gruening himself compiled a “committee of one-hundred” prominent Americans who supported Alaska’s aspirations, including Eleanor Roosevelt, actor James Cagney, Pearl S. Buck, John Gunther, Reinhold Niebuhr, and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. 1949 was a watershed year for the statehood movement, as it received growing attention both in Alaska and in the nation at large. A bill for statehood passed the House by a vote of 186-146 early in 1950, but was killed in the Senate by a coalition of conservative Republicans and southern Democrats, backed tacitly by President Eisenhower. This coalition wanted to preserve the tenuous Republican majority in Congress, and opposed Alaska’s entry into the Union for fear that its congressional voice would be Democratic. The Korean War, which began in June of 1950 and lasted into 1952, effectively put concerns about Alaska statehood on the back burner.
The second, or “populist” phase in Naske’s analysis, involved the efforts of thousands of regular Alaskans to foment popular interest in the statehood drive. The New York Journal-American put the situation dramatically: “Alaska wants statehood with the fervor men and women give to a transcendent cause. An overwhelming number of men and women voters in the United States want statehood for Alaska. This Nation needs Alaskan statehood to advance her defense, sustain her security, and discharge her deep moral obligation.”
Such enthusiasm served as a counterweight to the typical arguments made against Alaska statehood: noncontiguity with the rest of the country, lack of population, inadequate political maturity, and meager financial resources. Senator Butler and five members of the Senate Interior and Insular Affairs Committee decided to hold hearings in Alaska on a statehood bill; they wanted to hear the “reaction of the “little people” of Alaska. The Butler committee heard testimony in Anchorage, Fairbanks, Juneau and Ketchikan. The visit of Butler’s committee brought together many Alaskans sympathetic to the statehood cause, and popular publicity movements such as “Operation Statehood” put increased pressure on Congress for Alaska statehood. Women in the committee, for example, made artificial bouquets out of the Forget-me-Not, Alaska’s official flower, and mailed them to members of Congress prior to the consideration of statehood legislation. The citizens of Alaska sent Christmas cards to friends in the contiguous U.S. which urged: “Make [Alaskans] future bright/Ask your Senator for statehood/And start the New Year right.” Members of Congress could no longer invoke “lack of public interest” as an argument against Alaska Statehood.
President Eisenhower, in his 1954 State of the Union address, requested the immediate admission of Hawaii into the Union but did not mention Alaska. The editor of the Washington Post wrote of a “murky cloud of politics” surrounding such a position, as it was becoming evident that the Republican administration thought Hawaii would come into the Union as a Republican state, while Alaska would come in favoring the Democrats. Eventually the Senate put together a combination statehood bill, which provided for the admission first of Hawaii and then of Alaska. This bill immediately became the centerpiece of Congressional partisan wrangling. Operation Statehood swamped the White House with telegrams asking for “statehood now.” A delegation of Operation Statehood’s members flew to Washington, D.C. to meet with President Eisenhower, and they made a dramatic impression. John Butrovich, a Fairbanks insurance agent and senior Republican in the territorial legislature, told Eisenhower: “We feel that you are a great American. But we are shocked to come down here and find that a bill which concerns the rights of American citizens is bottled up in a committee when you have the power to bring it out on the House floor.”
Eisenhower reddened as Butrovich banged his fists on the Chief Executive’s desk to emphasize his dissatisfaction. The President denied that any partisanship played a role in the Alaska statehood issue and assured the members that Alaska statehood posed many problems which needed attention. He was most likely concerned, however, with preserving the narrow Republican margin in Congress.
The next effort to derail the statehood cause came in the form of a Senate proposal to make Alaska and Hawaii “commonwealths” of the U.S., with elective governorships. National columnists such as Walter Lippmann and Richard Strout favored this step, but the interest of the people of Alaska was not swayed from statehood. No one savored the prospect of paying federal taxes yet remaining, in effect, a stranger to the Union. Another series of Congressional hearings about Alaska’s situation instilled in many Alaskans an interest in more aggressive action. Such enthusiasm ultimately brought about the 1955 Constitutional Convention, held in the newly appointed “Constitution Hall” on the grounds of the University of Alaska-Fairbanks. It was here that Senator Ernest Gruening delivered his galvanizing “Let Us End American Colonialism” address. The convention received phenomenal national exposure and was praised by numerous journalists for its idealistic attention to “the good of Alaska” rather than partisan politics. The convention was an intensely emotional event for all involved, as passions about the future of Alaska ran strong and deep among convention members. In 1956, the resulting Constitution — which the National Municipal League called “one of the best, if not the best, state constitutions ever written” — was overwhelmingly accepted by Alaskans.
Another crucial maneuver toward statehood was the adoption of the Tennessee Plan, proposed by George H. Lehleitner, an ex-Navy commander. The plan, which had been used successfully by Tennessee, Michigan, California, Oregon, Kansas, and Iowa, involved electing a Congressional delegation without waiting for an enabling act from Congress. In the spring of 1956, Alaskans elected Ernest Gruening and William Egan as Senators-elect and Ralph J. Rivers as House Representative-elect. With support for statehood firmly established in Alaska, the stage was now set for reinvigorated efforts in the nation’s Congress. Egan, Gruening, and Rivers were received with much fanfare, but were not officially seated or recognized by Congress.
Working together with Delegate Bob Bartlett, the Tennessee Plan delegation lobbied hard in the Senate and the House. Influential House Speaker Sam Rayburn of Texas, until the summer of 1957 a foe of statehood, changed his mind and promised to give the territory a chance to be heard. Rayburn, when asked about his change in view, answered “I can tell you in two words, ‘Bob Bartlett’.”

Statehood Achieved: With sectional conflicts breaking down and the power of the “Dixiecrats” diminishing, Congress reconvened in January 1958 to the sounds of President Eisenhower fully endorsing Alaska statehood for the first time. Senator Lyndon B. Johnson assured Bartlett that the southern Senators would not filibuster the Alaska bill. Johnson’s was an important commitment, yet Representative Howard W. Smith of Virginia, Chairman of the powerful Rules Committee, stepped in to obstruct the statehood bill. Life magazine tartly characterized Smith as a “Virginia gentleman whose impeccable manners include little real respect for either free enterprise or democracy.” Additionally, Representative Thomas Pelly of Washington state demanded the right for his constituents to fish Alaskan waters on the same basis as residents. An amendment was subsequently drafted seeking retention of federal jurisdiction over Alaska’s fish and game resources until the secretary of the interior certified to Congress that the state met provisions for their conservation and nonresident access. The Fairbanks Daily News-Miner responded to Pelly’s petulance by printing excerpts from Edna Ferber’s impassioned novel Ice Palace. The passages featured the character of Thor Storm, the grizzled Nordic pioneer, informing his granddaughter, Christine, about the legacy of Seattle and San Francisco cannery operators’ unmerciful exploitation of Alaska’s fisheries. Ferber’s book had sold well and widely. Ice Palace had such an educative effect on the nation’s populace that one critic was moved to refer to it as “the Uncle Tom’s Cabin of Alaska Statehood.”

To visit the Web site on “A Brief History of Alaska Statehood”:
http://xroads.virginia.edu/~CAP/BARTLETT/49state.html