The Nome Nugget

Rivers Favors Continuing Alaska Native Program

Ralph J. Rivers, heretofore U.S. Representative-elect, under the Alaska-Tennessee Plan, recently returned to Alaska from Washington, D.C. and arrived in Nome on Saturday. Accompanied by Mrs. Rivers, Mr. Rivers is visiting friends and campaigning in the Democratic primaries for the U.S. House of Representatives.

Mr. and Mrs. Rivers are leaving today for Kotzebue.

Born in 1903 at Seattle, Washington, Mr. Rivers came to Alaska with his pioneer parents at the age of 3, and attended school in Alaska. His higher education was at the University of Washington at Seattle where he became a law graduate in 1929. He married and raised 2 children in Alaska. He served 10 years as United States Attorney for the Fourth Division of Alaska with headquarters in Fairbanks, 4 years as Attorney General of Alaska with headquarters at Juneau, 2 years as Mayor of the City of Fairbanks, 2 years as Chairman of the Employment Security Commission, 1 session as Senator in the Alaska Legislature, and as a delegate to the Alaska Constitutional Convention.

Mr. Rivers states that he believes in sound development of all of Alaska's vast resources with incentives to bring in new capital, state control of fisheries as soon as the transfer can possibly be had from the federal government, curtailment of additional federal reservations, extension of Alaska's road system, and the other constructive steps necessary to make Alaska a great state.

As regards the federal government's Alaska Native Program, he said, "The policies and benefits now in effect will remain the same, if not improved, because as a sovereign state with voting representation in the Congress, Alaska will be better able to protect the interest of its Native people than under our present position as a territory."