Education for rural Alaska Natives has come along a lengthy and tortuous path. Today the much criticized tripartite system remains in which the Federal, state and local governments deliver educational services. A new state law, S.B. 35, which attempts to decentralize control, raises some serious legal problems because of its inconsistency with Alaska's local government mandate. Municipal school districts remain a separate and parallel delivery system. The Bureau of Indian Affairs (BIA) schools, a third parallel system, independent of state authorities, continue to meet Alaska's long-standing commitment to provide education to all children. This paper reviews the laws which have shaped Alaska's education systems, discusses how those which now are in force operate in rural Alaska, and comments on the most important of the currently applicable laws. Topics are the evolution of Alaska's parallel education systems--pre-statehood, statehood and the Alaska Constitution, the state foundation program; Federal financial assistance programs--Impact Aid (P.L. 874), Impact Aid (Construction) - P.L. 815, Johnson-O'Malley Act, Elementary and Secondary Education Act, Indian Education Act of 1972, Indian Self-Determination and Education Assistance Act; localizing education and its control--opposition to boarding programs, the "Hootch" litigation, the North Slope Borough, legislative reform of state-operated schools, decentralization under S.B.35; community control and S.B. 35 as a Constitutional clash; and the uncertain role of the BIA. (NQ)