By CIRI Historian AJ McClanahan

"We are citizens and we have our rights."

When Ebba Hamm was four years old in 1915 and growing up in the former mining community of Haycock in northwestern Alaska, the Territorial Legislature passed an Alaska Native Citizenship bill. Although it supposedly conferred the right to vote on Alaska Natives, what it really said was that Natives could vote only if they could prove they were "throwing off those habits and customs of the old communal life which were hostile to American citizenship." The law also required Natives interested in voting to learn to read and write English.
Ebba Hamm

By the time Hamm was 11 years old, Charley Jones, a Tlingit fisherman, attempted to vote in the November election at the urging of Native leader William Paul's mother, Tillie Paul Tamaree. Jones was indicted in Ketchikan for "illegal voting and perjury" and Mrs. Tamaree for "inducing an Indian not entitled to vote." Although William Paul, the first Alaska Native legislator, was successful in defending them in court, fear of being arrested could only have a chilling effect on Native participation in elections.

It wasn't until Hamm was 13 years old that Alaska Natives, along with Native Americans throughout the United States, were granted citizenship of the United States. This occurred with the Indian Citizenship Act of June 2, 1924.

Discrimination was not an everyday concern when Hamm was growing up in Haycock. But by the time she had married and moved to Anchorage in the early

40s, the issue took on a very real significance when a non-Native couple took Hamm and her non-Native husband out for an evening of dancing. Hamm was denied entry to the club solely because of her race.

"I never noticed the signs on the buildings before, but I began to notice, 'No Natives or Filipinos allowed in this café,'" she said.

Native American voting rights came after former male African American slaves were granted citizenship with the ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868 and women were granted full rights as citizens with the 19th Amendment in 1920.

Some Native Americans participated as citizens prior to the 1924 act. For example, citizenship had been granted in 1919 to Indians who had served in the armed forces during World War I. And some tribes had no interest in citizenship or voting. They opposed the acceptance of citizenship on the grounds that it would serve only to speed assimilation. Many Alaska Natives, however, fought for their rights as citizens of the state and nation.

In Alaska, the act of 1924 wasn't the end of the voting story. It was hardly even the beginning of voting rights for a people who lived with discrimination in every facet of their lives. Discrimination and voting rights are inextricably woven together because all efforts to disenfranchise people are discrimination, and any effort to put people down based on their race can only serve to discourage them from participating in the democratic process.
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that someone would do their best to try and find me." She and the shareholder relations staff have managed to locate 35 lost shareholders. Two years ago, Forbes hired a Juneau private investigator to help find the remaining 12 lost shareholders.

Most recently, CIRI found Judith Roldan Lopez living in Florida. Lopez, who is fluent in Spanish, didn't know she was adopted, believed she was of Puerto Rican heritage, and was taken aback to learn of her Alaska Native background. Yet, she said, "I wasn't exactly surprised, because I had this intuitive sense of something unique and mysterious in my background. At one point, I came across paperwork about me being adopted, but it wasn't something that was discussed in my family. Still, they loved me very much. But, I'm so happy I now know who I really am. I don't have to wonder about it anymore. I'm glad CIRI never gave up trying to find me. At this

point, I'm looking for more closure and hope to find my biological mother and learn more about my Alaska Native background. If my birth mother is also a CIRI shareholder and by some chance is reading this article, the following information may ring a bell for her: my birth date is April 16, 1965, and I was born at 8:05 a.m. at Providence Alaska Medical Center. Still, more than anything, I'd like to thank CIRI for finding me; it's like a wonderful, amazing miracle has happened to me."

The CIRI shareholder relations department continues to search for the one remaining lost shareholder: Hallie J. Miller, who was born Sept. 12, 1961 in Anchorage, and adopted to a

instrumental in motivating him to do well in school and in helping him realize his career goals.

After graduation, Flagan went to work for United Space Alliance, which is a contractor for NASA. He trains astronauts to operate the shuttle and use its equipment during space flights. He says training shuttle crew members for space travel "is both very challenging and rewarding because each shuttle mission has a new look and feel to it. Every time I train astronauts for a specific mission I have totally new issues and hardware to incorporate into my lessons."

These days, Flagan is busy training crew members on how to escape from the space shuttle during an emergency situation. Escape methods focus on different ways to exit the shuttle in as fast and safe a manner as possible. Most recently, Flagan was in Florida training

crew members for a Mode 8, in-flight bailout over open sea. This is an extreme emergency situation, which occurs when the shuttle crash-lands back to earth and crew members must parachute out before impact. Once in the ocean, they climb into a one-person life raft and perform water survival techniques until a helicopter search and rescue team finds them.

Flagan actively participated in this training exercise and noted it took search and rescue forces 2.5 hours to find him and hoist him up into the helicopter. The experience gave him a new understanding of how best to handle these kinds of emergency situations.

Currently the shuttle is mainly used for construction of an International Space Station (ISS) being built in outer space, near the earth's orbit. Of the new space stations, NASA says, "The ISS is an unmatched multinational endeavor in science, technology, and industrial

cooperation . . . work performed on board the ISS will benefit the citizens of the United States and our global partners by taking full advantage of the unique environment of space."

In addition, shuttle missions are also directly involved with important research about earth. Flagan says, "It's amazing the amount of information we are learning every day. For instance, I remember how unreliable weather prediction used to be. Now we can track tornadoes and give people ample warning ahead of time so they can get to safety. Learning more about earth via shuttle missions is truly exciting. This is why the new space station will be crucial in better understanding our own planet, our solar system and the rest of the universe as well. It's so important to have some kind of perspective of the big picture. Yet, it's also quite humbling and awe-inspiring to have a more sweeping sense of things because, inevitably, you