d the land in Alaska. Alaska soon began to loosen up on preserving the land when they required cultivation. Cultivation was hard for homesteaders to complete when the removal of trees had to be done before cultivation could begin.
Now I am hoping you understand why I was curious to learn more about homesteading in Alaska. Learning more about the way land was acquired for ownership give more meaning to owning land today. Having restriction on the land you own would be difficult for any homesteader but many Alaska Natives managed to succeed and expand their homesteading option in Alaska.
Alaska Department of Natural Resources. (2008a). Alaska Division of Economic Development. Retrieved from http://www.dced.state.ak.us/ded/dev/student_info/learn/homesteading.htm
Alaska Department of Natural Resources. (2008b). Fact sheet, land for Alaskans. Retrieved from http://dnr.alaska.gov/mlw/factsht/land_for_ak.pdf
Alaska Department of Natural Resources. (2011). Alaska land offerings. Retrieved from http://dnr.alaska.gov/mlw/landsale/
Dexter, B., Dexter, C., Hausmann, B., & IIten, J. (1997, May –June). “Homesteading challenges.”Countryside & Small Stock Journal, (81)3. Gardening, Landscape and Horticulture. Retrieved from Gale Cengage Learning.
Harrington, E. & Merken, H. (1995, November-December). “Life on America’s last frontier: Alaska.” Countryside & Small Stock Journal, (74)6. Gardening, Landscape and Horticulture. Retrieved from Gale Cengage Learning.
Loring, P.A., & Geriach, S. (2010). Outpost gardening in interior Alaska: Food system innovation and the Alaska native gardens of the 1930s through the 1970s. Ethnohistory, 57(2), 183-199.
Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
Friday, August 12, 2011
The last blog I posted hopefully brought some clarity to the issue relating to the untrue(ish) statement that African Americans were not allowed to homestead. Another claim that is made when speaking of the Homestead Act, is that immigrants were allowed to come to the United States and claim 160 acres of land as long as they declared their intention to become citizens. Is this true? It has to be right? It is written in the Homestead Act. Again I use the same quote from my last blog article, it reads:
“That any person who is the head of a family, or who has arrived at the age of twenty-one years, and is a citizen of the United States, or who shall have filed his declaration of intention to become such, as required by the naturalization laws of the United States, and who has never borne arms against the United States Government or given aid and comfort to its enemies, shall… be entitled to enter one quarter-section or a less quantity of unappropriated public lands.”
It is interesting to read this as it does say ANY person who shall have filed his declaration of intention to become a citizen. But, what many people skim over is what follows that seemingly sweeping statement, when it says “as required by the naturalization laws of the United States”. Yes, immigrants could come into the country and claim land under the Homestead Act of 1862, but we have to understand the naturalization laws of the United States examine what period of time in history we are referring to in order to understand who could and who could not become citizens, thus making them eligible to homestead.
First, could Asians homestead? What about people from India? Could all WHITE Europeans homestead? In order to find these answers one must not look at just the history of homesteading, instead a broader scope of American history must be examined. These answers can be found in the complicated history of immigration. The early years of homesteading were, as we know was exclusive to white men and women, because they were the only people that could be considered for citizenship, a necessary criteria to homestead. But the Civil Rights act of 1866 and the ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868 was designed to prevent excluding people from citizenship based on race or color. But, if the United States could prevent people from entering the country then this would not be an issue. So, in 