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Arctic Yearbook 2015
covered regions populated by Alaska’s Inuit (Iñupiat) population (with high regional population
homogeneity). Thus, even though the regions created through the ANCSA corporations were not
distinctly “Iñupiat” institutions, strong cultural cohesion through common identity removed an
important barrier to regional institutional layering. Second, the virtual lack of any other governance
organizations in the two regions meant that there was no real competition over policy. Though tribal
government existed to some degree, there was little (if any) real state- or federal-level involvement in
the far north.
Building borough government
Though the finalization of ANCSA meant that the resultant NRCs could trade on their land resources
and could collect resource revenues on private land development, the lack of a strong system of local
governance threatened to undermine the efforts by loca