Resources 

Elements of the Institute’s “curriculum for the commons” include work in the disciplines of geography, land ownership and land use, circumpolar infrastructure, key U.S. federal laws that influence the commons, political science, economics and strategy to help the owners of common resources better realize their potential.

Alaska, America’s 49th State, is the largest state in the Union.  Its vast real estate is owned, respectively, by the federal government, the State Government and municipalities, and regional and village native corporations.    From the time that Alaska territory was acquired from Russia in 1867, five key pieces of legislation have divided Alaska’s real estate and offshore territory, and established management regimes for those areas.   
 
The Institute of the North has conducted research into the legislative history and application of these five key laws.    On this website, we present some of that research in a form helpful to those who want to learn about the regimes we’ve created.

Crisis in the Commons:  the Alaska Solution

The seminal work written by the Institute’s founder Walter J. Hickel, Crisis in the Commons: the Alaska Solution, articulates how those who live on and from the commons can claim the benefits of their birthright, breaking the colonial syndrome that produces victims, rather than beneficiaries, of the global economy.   Order form for Crisis in the Commons: the Alaska Solution