The Land is Ours
The Tlingit and Haida people of Alaska were confused by the idea of America “buying” the land they lived on from the Russians. They would be among the first native people to make a successful claim on their homeland and rights.
In 1867, the Russian Tsar sold Alaska to the United States. The region’s inhabitants, the Tlingits and the Haidas, marveled that the Americans — whom they respected as shrewd traders — would so foolishly buy something. The Land is Ours is a portrait of the Tlingit and Haida peoples, and native son William Paul, Jr., from their aboriginal past, through missionary contact, their right to vote, school integration (30 years before the civil rights movement), and a successful lawsuit against the U.S. government that paved the way for Congressional passage of the Alaska Native Land Claims Settlement Act.