The village where Lance Mackey once tiptoed by a sleeping competitor to stage a winning Iditarod finish stands by its own history of bold strategy and big gambles.

Stephen Nowers photos

An aerial view of Elim, Alaska, where Lance Mackey snuck past a sleeping Jeff King to win the 2008 Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race.

On Alaska's northwest coast, 460 miles away from Anchorage and nearly 3,700 miles from the United States Capitol in Washington, D.C., sits a small village with a claim to fame few communities in the Last Frontier can make.

Elim is the Iditarod checkpoint where, in 2008, Iditarod race champ Lance Mackey stole victory from a veteran champ, Jeff King. As King napped, Mackey snuck out of the village to gain an insurmountable lead over his closest race rival, clenching a victory that's still talked about.

But the Iditarod Trail Sled Dog Race isn't the only event in Elim's history involving strategic decisions of historic proportions. In 1971, the fight over land rights between tribes and the federal government became a race of its own. Time was running out to make way for the trans-Alaska oil pipeline. Aboriginal land claims against the government had stalled the project, which could not be permitted until issues of land ownership and compensation were resolved for all lands along the proposed route. In 1971, President Richard Nixon signed into law an agreement crafted by Congress -- the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act -- which conveyed $963 million and up to 44 million acres of land to Alaska Natives. In exchange, many tribes and villages gave up title to land and extinguished their pending claims against the government. But to this offer, Elim said "no."

Charles Saccheus Jr. holds his son Yowah, 1, as they watch musher Jeff King in the Elim checkpoint during the 2010 Iditarod on Monday, March 15.

That decision allowed Elim to keep rights to nearly 300,000 acres of land and any riches contained below. Whether it was the best move -- rejecting an immediate influx of cash in favor of full control of the land -- is difficult to measure, although some villagers still stand firmly behind it.

"That was the right decision," longtime Elim councilman Charles Saccheus said, reached by phone prior to the start of this year's Iditarod.

Saccheus works as a local airline agent, a job he's had for nearly 40 years, alongside his role on city council and a three-decade stint as the postmaster. Even before ANCSA, the village's forefathers had made a conscious decision to protect their way of life by protecting the community's ability to fish and hunt in their traditional lands, something infinitely more precious than cash, he said.

"If you have no money and a rifle you can go out in the country and get something to eat -- you don't have to buy it," Saccheus said. "It's not like the money. Our land will feed us if we got nothing. I think that's the whole idea."

Elevating villages out of poverty and giving them economic muscle was one of the goals of ANCSA's unique arrangement. The cash payments were distributed directly in initial lump sums to individuals, then, over time, through royalty payments. Regional and village corporations were established to manage lands and investments, providing dividends to their members and acting as stewards of the ANCSA legacy for the preservation of culture and advancement of their people. Yet there is great disparity in the success of this model among the existing corporations. Some have thrived, others have teetered on bankruptcy and still others are essentially defunct.