TAZLINA — Catholic missionaries first started venturing into Alaskan territory in the late 19th century, not long after Russia sold the land to the United States for two cents per acre.

The Catholic Church built missions and churches and, in the 1950s, bought land in the Copper River Valley from the U.S. government at $1.25 an acre for a mission school largely serving Native students.

Now, 50 years after the once-thriving school was shuttered, the Archdiocese of Anchorage-Juneau wants to sell the 462-acre property back to its Indigenous inhabitants for more than $4,000 an acre — or put...