IRA: A New Deal for Alaska Natives 

New Dealers in the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt rejected the idea of Native assimilation and supported tribal reorganization instead. In 1936, Congress passed the Indian Reorganization Act (IRA) for Alaska, spawned from the Indian Reorganization Act of 1934, which recognized the legitimacy of Indian self-determination by permitting Indian businesses to be incorporated, establishing Indian credit agencies, protecting some Indian land title, and granting limited power of self-government to Indian reservations. The Alaska Reorganization Act was intended to help reduce the loss of Native lands and create a new political status for Alaska Natives. The federal government urged Native villages to adopt constitutions for self-government under the IRA. 

The Alaska Reorganization Act provided Alaska Natives with needed financial assistance. But according to critics, the program was poorly administered and inadequately funded by Congress. In addition, the policy of setting aside reservations met opposition from Natives and non-Natives alike. The problem that confronted the New Dealers was that, unlike American Indians in the lower 48, the Federal Government had not made treaties with Alaska Natives and few reservations had been set aside for them. For the most part, Alaska Natives continued to live on the land as their ancestors had done. 

Nevertheless, New Deal officials at the Interior Department in Washington DC pushed ahead with plans to establish reserves. Interior Secretary Harold Ickes reasoned that, “First, they [reservations] would define Alaskan ‘tribes’ by identifying particular groups with the land they occupied; second, they would define geographic limits of jurisdiction so that Alaska Native communities could exercise power of local government; and third, they would enable the United States to segregate Native land and resources, thereby preserving the ‘economic rights’ of the Natives.”

Ickes reservation policy led to political conflict among Alaska Natives, as well resistance from politicians both in Alaska and Washington, D.C. Fueling the controversy was the proposal to make “off-limits” as much as one-third to one-half of Alaskan land to non-Native settlers and to economic development. As a result, many assimilated Alaska Natives, the fishing industry, Governor Ernest Gruening, and the territory's businesses all opposed reservations. Despite opposition, 80 villages submitted petitions to the Secretary requesting reservations of 100 million acres by 1950. Action, however, was never taken. The likely reason was that public opinion of the 1950’s seemed opposed to reservations, because they represented racial segregation and discrimination.

In the end, the well-intended IRA policy ultimately failed because New Deal reformers imposed their ideas of social justice on the Native peoples without acquiring Native input or grass roots support. It led to confusion within the Roosevelt administration, a premature dismissal of Haida and Tlingit land claims, and increased tensions between the territory’s Native and non-Native residents. 

Nevertheless, the legacy of the IRA movement is important. It became, along with traditional Native governments, one of two types of Native authority recognized by the federal government. From the 1930s to the 1950s, about 70 villages set up IRA constitutions, similar to state constitutions, under this law. The largest of six IRA reserves created in the 1940s was the Venetie Reserve in the northeast Interior, covering 1.4 million acres. Others included Arctic Village, Kachik, Christian Village, Unalakleet, Akutan, Diomede, Hydaburg, Karluk, and Wales.