Stephen W. Haycox is an author and emeritus professor of history at the University of Alaska Anchorage. The second edition of his book Alaska: An American Colony was published in 2020.
Haycox says one third of Alaska’s economic base is federal spending. It comes in Native services, conservation unit management, military, and basic infrastructure such as new highway construction. The statehood act provides that 90 percent of federal mineral lease revenue collected in Alaska is given to the state, which Haycox says is unprecedented.
“My agenda, if I have had one in 50 years of teaching…is to increase people’s independence…You do that by educating…That’s what I’ve been trying to do is to help Alaskans not have to rely on the last persuasive presentation they heard from somebody, but to be independent of that…I mean, to really have freedom, rather than be manipulated—and be vulnerable—by the last politician who comes along and says the federal government is the source of all our problems. That’s been my agenda for 50 years. And I’m still doing it.”
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