The Tribal Court Judge assigned to hear a case involving the removal of
historical artifacts from the village of Klukwan, Alaska has ruled, in a
70-page decision, that a village ordinance prohibiting removal of such
artifacts was a valid exercise of the tribe's police power because of the
village's interest in those artifacts as expressions of its cultural
heritage. Tribal Court Judge James Bowen ruled that the artifacts were in
fact owned by the Ganaxteidi clan as a whole, rather than the Whale House,
a subgroup of the clan, and the house members therefore had no right,
under tribal law, to sell the artifacts, even though they mistakenly
believed they had that right. The most important part of the ruling,
however, is that upholding the tribe's right to require the artifacts to
remain in the village no matter which group owns them. Alaska Legal
Services Corporation represented the village in support of the ordinance.
The artifacts have been held in a warehouse in Seattle for the past ten
years, where they had been intercepted on their way to an art dealer who
had ostensibly purchased them from members of the Whale House.