Douglas K. Mertz' Experience in Native American Legal Issues Law Offices of Douglas Kemp Mertz Native American Legal Issues Alaska's Native peoples, like their counterparts in the rest of the United States, have a long and complex history of relationships with federal and state governments.
Indian law is far from a settled area, and in Alaska, it is particularly in flux.
Vital topics, such as the right of Alaskan Natives to tribal sovereignty over lands and persons, and Native rights to subsistence harvests of fish, game, and other resources, are now being litigated. Douglas Mertz is one of only a few attorneys in the state who have dealt with these issues intensively over the last fifteen years. In 1982, the Attorney General of Alaska assigned Mr. Mertz, then an assistant attorney general, to take on the role of the state's principal expert on Alaskan Native law. 1601 et seq. He did the initial legal work for the state in identifying the state's interests and legal positions on the growing demands of Native villages for tribal recognition and for sovereign rights similar to those of tribes in the rest of the United States, and represented the state in a number of sovereignty and Native rights cases in the federal and state courts.