The Daily Alaska empire., 1950-04-25

ously attacked Delegate Bartlett $ original Alaska statehood bill, HR. 206, introduced in Congress three years ago.
 What that bill proposed to do was to turn virtually all of the public lands and resources of Alaska over to the proposed new state. to be ad- ministered as the people of the state saw fit. This would. of course. have sent a good many Federal officials back to where they came from, and the Interior Department in particu- lar took a very dim view of the proposal.
 The Interior Department has established something like aborig- inal rights to most of the lands ana resources of Alaska and it has done so largely on the grounds that it did the same thing in most of our western states and got away with it there.
 The fact that the people of those western states are not entirely happy with the arrangement appears to matter little to the Interior Depart ment. The Federal government still owns the major portion of the land in most of the western states and administers these lands through the Interior Department and other agencies. All of the Senators and Congressn1en that these states have sent to Washington in all of the years they have been states have not been able to change this situ- ation or to pry loose the Interior Department from it's grasp upon their lands and resources.
 Congressman William A. Dawso.l of Utah stated the case for the western states during the statehood hearings at Wrangell on Septem- Der II, 1947, when he said: "The Federal Government still owns 72 percent of our state. Bob Bartlett will tell you that he has asked me the question if I wouldn't be in favor of the government turning over all these lands in the State oi Utah. I can tell you that am very much in favor of it."
 
 Must Get Lands Now
 From the plight of these western states it is apparent that Alaska if it does not get it's lands and resources in the statehood enabling act, will have little chance of getting them afterward.
 Delegate Bartlett must fully have realized this when he drew H.R. 206 and introduced it in Congress three years ago. It was, as has been men, tioned, an extremely liberal bill and it is to be noted that few Alaskans, even though they may have doubted the wisdom of assum- ing statehood at that time, found fault with the provisions of H.R 206.
 The United States Department oi the Interior was on the job to de- fend it's claims to the resources oi Alaska and it is not insignificant that Julius A. Krug. then Secretary of the Interior, was the first wit ness to appear before the House Subcommittee on Territories and Insular Possessions when hearings on statehood for Alaska were opened at Washington. DC, on April 16 1947.
 / Secretary Krug made a lengthy statement in favor of statehood for Alaska, mentioning the inherent rights of the people, the vast re- sources of Alaska and it's future po- tentialities.
 Rabbit Punch
 Then, right at the end of his statement, he slipped in the rabbit punch. We propose" said Secre- tary Krug, certain amendments to the bill proposed by Delegate Bart lett"
 These proposed amendments were largely concerned with what was, after all, the heart of the enabling act, the portion which spells out what the new state is to receive in the way of lands and resources. And, not unexpectedly, the Interior De- partment's amendments slashe1 that portion of Delegate Bartlett's bill to ribbons.
 Instead of the new state taking over the bulk of the lands and re- sources, as the Bartlett bill provided, the Interior Department proposed this wording:
 That said State and it's people do agree and declare that they for ever disclaim all right and title to any lands or other property, the title to which is retained in or ceded to the United States by the provi- sions of this Act and to all lands lying within it's boundaries owned or held by any Indians. Aleuts, or Eskimos hereinafter called iSatives, the right or title to which shall have been acquired through or from the United States or any prior sover- eighty, and that until the title Of