In this episode of the podcast, I speak with Wanda Culp, a Tlingit elder living in the Tongass Rainforest in Southeast Alaska, about how clearcut logging and other extraction have impacted Southeast Alaska communities and subsistence resources. She argues the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, which created for-profit Native corporations, concentrates power and profits while many shareholders remain poor and landless. Our conversation focuses on Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s Alaska Native Landless Equity Act, which would amend the Settlement Act, and transfer about 115,000 acres from the Tongass National Forest (80,000 acres are ancient old growth forests and Roadless) to five Native corporations for clearcut logging and mining, Wanda calls the bill a misuse of “equity” language that advances privatization and extraction. She urges tribes and corporations to reunite decision-making with the people and calls for louder public opposition amid the climate crisis.

02:56 Meet Wanda Culp: background, climate whiplash, and path to activism

06:10 Clearcut shock: how ANCSA corporation logging hit village hunting & fishing grounds

09:12 Tlingit history & why the Tongass is sacred

10:47 Subsistence lifeways and a personal connection to Glacier Bay

12:35 Vanishing herring and salmon

13:24 From logging to mining: the next extraction wave in Southeast Alaska

14:22 What ANCSA created: for-profit corporations and poverty

18:42 Reform vision: return authority to tribes and grassroots voices

20:30 Murkowski’s S.2504 explained: ‘Landless Equity’ and Tongass land transfers

23:24 Conservation groups back the bill? Wanda’s reaction and call to oppose it

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