Blood quantum and ANCSA

When the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) was passed into law in 1971, it contained an eligibility standard of one-quarter Alaska Native blood quantum. Today, 10 of the 12 Alaska Native regional corporations maintain the requirement of one-quarter or more Native blood quantum for enrollment, including Sealaska. (Shareholders of Arctic Slope Regional Corporation and Calista Corporation eliminated the blood quantum requirement for enrollment in their corporations.) ANCSA was amended in 1991 to allow shareholders of the corporations to determine for themselves what standards should be used to determine eligibility.

Many tribes, like Central Council of the Tlingit and Haida Indian Tribes of Alaska, rely on documented lineal / biological relationships (“lineal descent”) to established tribal membership rather than blood quantum.

What does Sealaska require?
In 2007, Sealaska shareholders voted to open enrollment to descendants of original shareholders (those born after 1971) and “left outs”—people who were eligible but for a variety of reasons “left out” of the original enrollment process in 1971. However, the one-quarter blood quantum requirement remained, and is still the requirement today.

Sealaska estimates that there are approximately 15,000 lineal descendants of original shareholders that are currently not qualified to enroll in Sealaska as descendants.