Arctic Yearbook 2015 | Page 76

76 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