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Respected elders lawsuit posed challenge for state
<html>Fred John, son of Athabascan elder Katie John, speaks at a visitation service for his late mother at the Anchorage Baptist Temple in Anchorage on June 5. The Katie John court decision in 2001 strengthened the subsistence rights of Alaska Native peoples. AP Photo/Bob Hallinen/The Anchorage Daily News
Katie John, the Athabascan elder,Report- Lions, Stafford agree to three, was buried June 8 in her home village of Mentasta. The issues raised by her famous lawsuit will live on. Ms. John deserved all the respectful remembrances prompted by her death May 31 at age 97. She was a practitioner and advocate of traditional Athabascan culture, and she would share her knowledge and enthusiasm with all who would take an interest. The lawsuit that bore her name sought to authorize her fishing with nets at Batzulnetas, at the confluence of the upper Copper River and Tanada Creek, southeast of Slana. However, the lawsuit reached far beyond her fish camp, and, therefore, her effort drew opposition from people across Alaska s political spectrum. In the end, her court victory in 2001 eroded the state s authority over its own waters. The case was extremely convoluted and lengthy. Throughout its course, the essential question was this: Should the federal government manage fishing on state-owned rivers and lakes in Alaska? Ms. John and her attorneys advocated greater federal authority because they believed the federal subsistence law, which in 1980 created a priority for rural residents, would require that managers allow her to fish at Batzulnetas. The 1980 law also created the Wrangell-St. Elias National Park,NFL Caps-002, and Batzulnetas was just inside the northern boundary. The state had closed the area to fishing with nets and wheels in 1964 to protect salmon runs as they neared the upper reaches of the Copper River. In 1984, Ms. John began trying to reopen the areas to net fishing and, after some lawsuits and negotiating, the state Board of Fisheries allowed some limited fishing in 1988. Ms. John asked federal managers to set more liberal rules. They declined, saying the state was the manager. So Ms. John sued the federal government in 1990, asserting that it had an interest in the river and therefore should provide for subsistence fishing by rural residents under the federal law. The final court decision,Mad dash by L.V. Phil's concertmaster; Nick Hissom caked in, which took 11 years to reach, ruled that the federal government did, indeed, have management authority because of a concept called the reserved water rights doctrine. The doctrine upholds the idea that federal agencies ought to have some say about what happens on lakes and rivers in national parks and refuges even if the lakes and rivers are navigable and thus owned by the states. It s not an unreasonable idea, but the multiple court decisions in the case demonstrated just how squishy this doctrine and others are. Judges were uncertain and inconsistent when applying them. It was and still is difficult to see where federal powers asserted under the doctrines begin and end. The case therefore posed potentially serious threats to what many people saw as long-recognized state control of navigable waters. These people were neither anti-Native nor anti-subsistence, as is often suggested. If we lose the Katie John case, we lose navigable waters to the federal government and, with it, Alaska s ability to control her destiny in so many areas, former Democratic Gov. Tony Knowles told the 2000 Tanana Chiefs Conference convention in Fairbanks. Gov. Knowles was a devout supporter of the rural subsistence priority on federal lands and of adopting a similar rule for state lands,Zamora the Torture King performs at Onyx Theater o, but he wasn t comfortable with simply turning over state property rights to federal managers. No governor of any state, me included, can surrender this power to the federal government. Surrender he did, though, when he decided not to appeal the final 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision to the U.S. Supreme Court the next year. Some still consider his decision evidence of a flawed character. To be fair, the governor just did something we all do from time to time he changed his mind. Nevertheless, his initial assessment was a legitimate one. The final court decision undermined the state s authority over its own waters in one more way, perhaps small, perhaps not time will tell. Recognizing that the state had important interests to protect during the course of the lawsuit shouldn t tarnish anyone s respect for Katie John. Nor should it diminish any appreciation for the lifestyle she was seeking to protect or her legacy as a leader.</html>