Alaska Group Seeks New Vote on Independence or Statehood

Even before statehood in 1959, Alaskans viewed the federal government as a heavy-handed interloper, but Joe Vogler carries the suspicion to the extreme when he sets down his cup of coffee and says matter-of-factly: “I want America out of here.”

Out of here? Yes, he says, pushing his visored cap back. Just write the statehood vote off as a tragic error. Alaska’s future is as an independent nation, not as a state 3,000 miles and four time zones removed from the federal capital.

“America’s gutting this country,” he says, “and when the oil’s gone, the copper’s gone, the gold’s gone, what are they going to leave us except an empty pipeline? What have they done for us--build the Dalton Highway? Well, that’s a disgrace to civilization and it’ll tear hell out of your truck.”

Advocates Plebiscite

Vogler, 74, who heads the Alaskans for Independence Party, garnered 10,000 votes (5.5% of those cast) for governor in last November’s election and advocates holding a plebiscite in which Alaskans have three choices: continued statehood, commonwealth status or independence. The latter, with the United States guaranteeing Alaska’s military defense, is the only way Alaskans can regain control of their mineral resources, their land, their future, he contends.

Most Alaskans tend to dismiss the independence movement, although perhaps not the rebelliousness of Vogler’s spirit. “There may be some die-hards left, but I don’t think anyone talks seriously about independence anymore,” Gov. Steve Cowper said. “It was never a viable option.”

Much of Vogler’s support around the state comes from the nature of the man himself and his good old-fashioned values that seem embedded in Alaska’s rugged sense of individualism. “There’s only three things that matter,” he says. “Real estate, gold and good equipment.”

Two Kinds of People

Vogler’s father, born in a sod dugout in Marshall County, Kan., used to tell his children there were two kinds of people in this world: “Poor people and very poor people. We’re the latter.”

Young Vogler got a law degree at the University of Kansas in 1934, built a stake in Alaska as a homesteader, miner, logger, merchant and developer, and quotes Greek philosophers as aptly as he does the journals of the Continental Congress. He views himself as a separatist, not a secessionist.

Although the benefits of statehood have been great in terms of development and social services, ending isolation and helping to stimulate a 454% population boom between 1940 and 1980, Alaskans share Vogler’s concerns over federal encroachment to such an extent that in 1980 they voted to set up a commission to probe Alaska’s relationship with the United States and consider, among other options, independence.

It was the first time since the Civil War that citizens of a state questioned by their vote the wisdom of the federal union. The Alaska Statehood Commission said in its final report, issued in 1983, that it had studied the benefits and liabilities of commonwealth, free association, territory-hood, partition, independence and found “none preferable to statehood.”

A More Activist Role

The report, though, did advocate a more activist role for Alaska in federal-state affairs, said the state should refuse federal grants carrying burdensome requirements and suggested amending the Constitution to clarify the philosophy and the powers of states in the federal union.

“The biggest challenge facing Alaska is the attitude of the federal Establishment that you should put a fence around Alaska and not touch it,” former Gov. Walter J. Hickel, now an Anchorage businessman, said recently in a swipe at those who believe environmental conservation and development are incompatible. “How can you develop that way?

“Certainly our political ties are with America, but our economic ties aren’t. They’re basically with Asia. America sort of discovered us in World War II when we were needed for defense. After OPEC, they needed us again. But you can’t create an economically viable society out of a warehouse mentality--just lock it up. If the government owns something, ownership requires an obligation, and in my opinion, the government has never faced up to that obligation.”

Swapping Masters

Many Alaskans agree, believing that statehood resulted in merely swapping masters--the canned salmon industry for the federal government. Forty percent of all the land the federal government owns is in Alaska. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service administers 19 million acres of Alaskan wildlife refuges and ranges, and the U.S. Bureau of Land Management holds 25 million more acres for water development. Some federal laws, such as limiting the ownership of reindeer to natives, are discriminatory, Vogler believes.

According to the Statehood Commission, Washington collects $3 in taxes for every $1 it spends in Alaska and its decision not to let Alaska export Prudhoe Bay oil costs the state upward of $800 million a year. Nearly 98% of this state, which is more than four times the size of California, is owned by the federal government and by native corporations created by Washington to settle land claims of the aboriginal Eskimos, Indians and Aleuts.

Despite the wealth of its land and waters--Alaska has one-eighth of the nation’s gold production, one-fifth of its oil production and two-fifths of its harvested fish--the state remains “capital poor” with no significant accumulation of private capital. In 1982, the Alaskan banking system had only $3 billion in deposits; by comparison, New York’s Citibank alone had $100 billion.

Vote for Statehood

When Alaskans voted in August, 1958, whether to accept statehood, 40,445 said yes, 8,010 said no. As part of statehood, the federal government promised to transfer to Alaska 103 million acres of land by 1984. The government later moved the deadline to 1994 and Alaska sued to win from the Interior Department in a 1981 out-of-court settlement the promise to transfer 13 million acres each year until the total was satisfied.

“The lesson of the past is clear,” the Statehood Commission said in 1983. “The federal government will not honor the land and revenue-sharing pacts of the Statehood Act without Alaska’s constant vigilance.”

The federal government still owns a larger percentage of Alaska than any state except Nevada, where 86% is under Washington’s administration, and the Sagebrush Rebels--who have expressed dissatisfaction with federal ownership and management of public lands in the West--have found sympathetic counterparts here in the Tundra Rebels. To people like Vogler, the relationship with Washington is nothing less than colonial.

Most Alaskans, however, do not share Vogler’s dream of independence, although they agree with the need to diminish the federal government’s role here. They point out that the Statehood Commission was created during the oil boom and now that times are tougher, it is comforting to know there is a rich uncle in the family, even if he is 3,000 miles away.