Donald Mitchell

Donald Craig Mitchell moved to Alaska in 1974 to work as an attorney for the Alaska Legal Services Corporation (ALSC) at its office in Bethel, the most populous of the fifty-six Native villages on the Yukon-Kuskokwim River Delta in western Alaska.

In 1976 ALSC transferred Mitchell to its headquarters office in Anchorage, where he coordinated litigation conducted by attorneys in ALSC’s field offices.

From 1978 through 1980 Mitchell served as Washington, D.C., counsel for the Alaska Federation of Natives (AFN), the organization that had been created in 1967 to represent Alaska Natives during Congress’s consideration of legislation whose enactment would settle Alaska Native land claims. Mitchell’s principal responsibility was to represent the AFN before Congress, the Department of the Interior, the State of Alaska, and national environmental organizations regarding H.R. 39, the bill Congress enacted in 1980 as the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act

From 1981 through 1983 Mitchell served as vice president and general counsel of the AFN.

Since 1984 Mitchell has been in private practice in Anchorage.

Between 1984 and 1986 Mitchell served as counsel to Alaska Governor Bill Sheffield's Task Force on Federal-State-Tribal Relations, and in that capacity researched and wrote the task force’s report on Alaska Native tribal status that in 1988 the Alaska Supreme Court characterized as a document of “impressive scholarship.”

In 1997 Mitchell represented Alaska United States Senator Ted Stevens before the U.S. Supreme Court as amicus curiae at the petition stage in Alaska v. Native Village of Venetie Tribal Government (U.S. Supreme Court 1998), a case in which the Court accepted Mitchell's view that Congress did not intend land in Alaska that the Secretary of the Interior conveyed to Alaska Native corporations pursuant to the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act to be “Indian country.”

From 2000 through 2006 the Legislative Council of the Alaska State Legislature retained Mitchell to advise the legislature regarding Alaska Native-related legal and policy issues and to represent the Legislative Council in judicial proceedings.

In 2009 the Subcommittee on Indian, Insular, and Alaska Native Affairs of the House Committee on Natural Resources invited Mitchell to appear as an expert witness regarding Carcieri v. Salazar, (U.S. Supreme Court 2009), a decision in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that Congress intended section 19 of the Indian Reorganization Act to limit the authority of the Secretary of the Interior to take the title to land into trust for “Indians” pursuant to section 5 of the Indian Reorganization Act to Indians who are members of a recognized Indian tribe that in 1934 was “under Federal jurisdiction.”

In 2015 the Subcommittee on Indian, Insular, and Alaska Native Affairs of the House Committee on Natural Resources invited Mitchell to appear as an expert witness regarding the Department of the Interior’s proposed amendments to regulations that establish an administrative process for designating groups composed of individuals of Native American descent as “federally recognized tribes.”

In 2017 the Subcommittee on Indian, Insular, and Alaska Native Affairs of the House Committee on Natural Resources invited Mitchell to appear as an expert witness regarding the Department of the Interior’s implementation of Section 5 of the Indian Reorganization Act.

Mitchell is the author of a two-volume history of the Alaska Native land claims movement from the Alaska purchase in 1867 to the enactment of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act in 1971.

In 1997 the University Press of New England published the first volume, Sold American: The Story of Alaska Natives and Their Land. 1867-1959, which former Secretary of the Interior Stewart Udall described as “the most important and comprehensive book about Alaska yet written and a major intellectual triumph.” In 2001 the University of Alaska Press published the second volume, Take My Land Take My Life: The Story of Congress's Historic Settlement of Alaska Native Land Claims. 1960-1971.

In 2006 the Alaska Historical Society named Sold American and Take My Land Take My Life two of the most important books that have been written about Alaska during the modern era.

In 2016 The Overlook Press published Wampum: How Indian Tribes, the Mafia, and an Inattentive Congress Invented Indian Gaming and Created a $28 Billion Gambling Empire, which former United States Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid described as “a fascinating look at the origins of Indian gaming in the U.S.A.”

In 2022 the Carolina Academic Press published Tribal Sovereignty in Alaska: How It Happened, What It Means, which former Alaska Governor Steve Cowper described as a “not-before-told story of which every Alaskan who is interested in Alaska legal and political history should be aware.”

Also in 2022 the Alaska Historical Society award Donald Craig Mitchell the Evangeline Atwood Award for Excellence “given to an individual for significant long-term contributions to Alaska history.” According to the Society, “Mitchell was recognized for his books contributing to our understanding of Alaska Native history, the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act and specifically his most recent book, Tribal Sovereignty in Alaska: How it Happened, What it Means.”