ANCSA Corporation Boundaries and Alaska Native Languages

Last week I received a request for a map of ANCSA (Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act) regional corporation boundaries. I guess this sort of thing isn't in print anymore, or maybe it is but in any case I don't have a copy. But the GIS data are readily available from the Department of Natural Resources web site, so I was able to easily produce a map. In the process I realized that these data could be easily overlaid with language boundaries using newly digitized data generated with help from folks at the Institute of Social and Economic Research (see the ANL Map Blog). For what it's worth, here's the map. There are some interesting mismatches between language and corporation, particularly in the Southwest, where Dena'ina is split between three corporations: Calista, BBNC, and CIRI. It is interesting that corporation boundaries were being drawn at just about the same time that Michael Krauss was drawing up language boundaries for the first edition of the Native Peoples and Languages of Alaska Map in 1974. It's not clear to me just what role language boundaries may have had in determining or influencing ANCSA boundaries.