and resources and we ask that, as we attain the capacity to contract under PL93-638, that we be given contracts to manage the land we have been using for thousands of years. Not only would this serve the best interests of everyone in protecting the land it would provide employment for our people in an area in which they have the deepest interest in maintaining. CATG TESTIMONY BEFORE THE SENATE SELECT COMMITTEE ON INDIAN AFFAIRS 5/27/89 Page 5 COUNCIL OF ATHABASCAN TRIBAL GOVERNMENTS (907) 662-2587 or (907) 662-2581 p.o. box 126 • fort yukon, alaska 99740 COUNCIL OF ATHABASCAN TRIBAL GOVERNMENTS 126 · fort yukon, alaska 99740 · (907) 662-2587 or (907) 662-2581 p.o. box ORGANIZATIONAL BACKGROUND SUMMARY The Council of Athabascan Tribal Governments (CATG) is a consortium of 10 tribal governments in the Yukon Flats, a 10,000 square mile region in the Northern Interior of Alaska partially above the Arctic Circle. We are about 1,250 people in number and live in nine small Gwichin Athabascan Indian villages scattered over the Flats and along the Yukon River. We make our living by hunting, fishing, and trapping. Seasonal jobs like fire fighting and construction supplement our subsistence activities but the per capita income falls at least a third below the poverty level in the United States. Unemployment is about 80% with a resulting dependence on welfare payments and, many of the state and federal programs that we had come to rely on have been cut with the resulting recurring cycle of economic recession. There is no stable locally controlled economy in the Yukon Flats. The communities are being developed from the outside. We are dependent on state and federal welfare or handout programs. Our subsistence economy is under constant threat because we have no control over its regulation nor the payment we receive for our natural resources. This threat is expressed in the following excerpts from seven Economic Development conferences, meetings, and workshops that have been held in the Yukon Flats since September 1985: "The control has been taken away from us and we need to regain it. We're a strong government because we're Natives and we're interested in our land. Like we always say, 'We're the boss of our land', and slowly it's being taken away from us and, if we continue allowing it, in the next five years, we won't have anything we won't have control at all." we've "...we have to have the land under protection so that we can continue in. "Like Simon here it's tighter and he was raised up there in the canyon up the Porcupine and he couldn't even go around the bend and build himself a |