I am Inupiaq; technically, I’m half Inupiaq, half French-German/English from the Northeastern corner of Alaska. My father’s side of the family comes from Utuqqoq, Utqiagvik, and Qaqtugvik, Alaska. They have been living in Kaktovik for the last 100 years, give or take a decade. Kaktovik is the only settlement within what is now known as the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, and in case you haven’t heard, ANWR is a huge story.

Most recently, ANWR has been in the headlines because the U.S. Senate voted 51-49 to approve the FY-06 budget bill, which includes language for provisions to open the refuge for oil drilling. This vote is one step in the direction of exploring and drilling for oil in the Arctic Refuge.

ANWR is a familiar history of Native America that is becoming a symbol of corporate dominance over indigenous lives.

To Drill, Or Not To Drill: Supporters of Opening ANWR on the North Slope

ANWR is 19.5 million acre refuge in the northeastern Alaska. Within those borders, there is a 1.5 million acre section called “1002.” (For more information see “History of Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.”) It is the lands within the 1002 area that would be opened for exploration and drilling.

Back in the late nineteenth century, Alaska was sold to the United States by Russia. Neither the Russian nor the U.S. government consulted with the aboriginal inhabitants of this land. Nearly one century later, President Nixon signed the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act, essentially extinguishing aboriginal title to lands in Alaska in exchange for $962.5 million in compensation and 44 million acres of land, which was divided between twelve geographic regions and created native-owned regional corporations.

The Native-owned Arctic Slope Regional Corporation owns 92,000 acres of subsurface land and the Kaktovik Inupiat Corporation, also Native-owned, owns 92,000 surface acres of land within the 1002 area.

It’s hard to judge exactly the numbers of Inupiaq who support drilling in ANWR. It is my feeling that the majority of Inupiaq people on the North Slope are for opening the 1002 area to drilling and exploration. Although there seems to be a growing number of individuals who oppose exploration and drilling in our backyards, the greater part of North Slope residents show their support in opening ANWR.

Leaders of ASRC, the regional corporation that serves the Inupiaq population of the North Slope of Alaska, support such action.

ASRC President Jacob Adams in a March 9 letter to Alaska Congressman Don Young, stated support for responsible development of the coastal plain. He asked Congress to consider the “significant impacts” that the decision to allow oil and gas development in the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge will have on the livelihood of over 10,000 Inupiat Eskimo shareholders of Arctic Slope Regional Corporation.

“The North Slope Borough, our home-rule government, was developed on the proceeds of oil and gas property taxes in Prudhoe Bay, which are in decline,” said Richard Glenn, vice-president for lands for ASRC. “Developing [ANWR] would lessen the steepness of that decline for services such as fire department, police, and schools.”

In his letter, Adams pointed out that before the discovery of oil in the North Slope region, local public schools, clinics, running water, flush toilets, heat in our homes, and essential public services were not available, and the people were dependent on the federal government for these services. “Responsible development” now allows for basic services that most people in the lower 48 states take for granted, he said.

Adams further explained that the 92,000 acres of ANWR land owned by ASRC and its Inupiaq shareholders is currently prohibited from development, and that it would take an act of congress to tap into the natural resources.

“It is fundamentally unfair, dishonest and potentially unlawful to deny us the right to see our land and the small area of the Coastal Plain opened to exploration and development. We are asked to suffer the burdens of locking up our lands forever as if we were in a zoo or on display for the rich tourists that can afford to travel to our remote part of Alaska. This is not acceptable.”

The Inupiat of the North Slope, who have lived and subsisted across the Arctic for thousands of years and developed a rich culture, Adams said, “don’t need outside ‘environmentalists’ telling us what to do with our homelands.” Their own borough government will watch out for the lands, he said.

Impacts on Kaktovik

It goes without saying that the oil industry will bring about major changes in Kaktovik. Most people don’t know that there has been exploration and people there since the late 1800’s, by commercial whalers, explorers, missionaries and U.S. military. The Inupiaq lifestyle has transitioned in the last three generations. My grandmother and grandfather were born in traditional sod houses and have lived through the age of television and the internet.

My father, Fenton Rexford, told me, “When I was growing up, I woke up to a cold, frozen house, with no lights, no phones, no television. We had to gather wood and water, and we had a bad sewage problem. Our village only had classes through the 8th grade. I went outside Alaska for high school. I was only 16 years old and some other children were even younger than that.”

Today Kaktovik has K-12 schools, and a two-year college in Barrow. In the last 25 years, a host of services, such as warmer homes, phone services, running water, snow removal, fire hydrants, and most recently in September, flush toilets, my father said.

“So the tax revenues from oil companies helped us in many ways. It helped set up a basic infrastructure, but things are still so expensive and oil production has been declining in the last few years so our services have been cut back a lot. The main positive impacts [if ANWR were to be opened] will be an increase in jobs for the people here, and it will also help the North Slope Borough with tax revenue from oil companies,” which would go toward health, welfare, and educational needs.

According to the NSB website, “The North Slope Borough encompasses 89,000 square miles of Arctic territory at the top of Alaska. Our land is home to traditions born of a culture ages old. It is also home to resources like oil and gas, which have enabled our people, the Iñupiat, to enter the cash economy of the modern world with self determination and an enduring respect for the survival skills taught to us by our ancestors.” They provide basic services to eight villages in Arctic Alaska.

The Flipside of ANWR: Supporters of Protecting Land and Wildlife

Vashraii K’oo, also known as Arctic Village, is home to about 140 Neetsaii Gwich’in near the southern border of ANWR. The Neetsaii Gwich’in tribal population overall is about 900 people, including both Arctic Village and Venetie. The Neetsaii Gwich’in depend largely upon the porcupine caribou herd for survival. This herd of approximately 123,000 migrates yearly across ANWR, and their calving grounds lie within the boundaries of the 1002 area.

Evon Peter, former chief of Arctic Village, explained the complexities of the issue from his perspective.

“When we talk about land within our culture, the word in our language is Nanh and it means ‘the land that supports us and we walk on it.’ It also means ‘our backbone,’ which is the center of our life. As a human being, without our backbone we couldn’t exist. It also means ‘you.’

“So when we use that word in our language, the whole experience of what we’re trying to say, and the connotations of it when we talk about land or mother earth is really different than this Western concept. When you say land to them, they think of this square acre that can be bought or sold and owned by a human being. And we don’t think of it that way. Our relationship with the land is much different.”

Corporate Alaska: A Tool of Division and Assimilation

Arctic Village was one tribe that did not participate in the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. “We were already an established reservation, having almost two million acres of land that we owned through the federal system,” Peter said. “We had a recognized tribal government, we were self-governed, and ran our own programs. When ANCSA was going on, we immediately recognized that …the U.S. government was acknowledging that the treaty with Russia was an illegitimate document.

“They truly didn’t buy land and resources from Russia, because [they] didn’t have real claim. They had to create this legislation that nullified and voided out any Alaska Native Indigenous People’s claims. They had no right to be there exploiting our land, resources, and people.

“The tool of ANCSA was to unilaterally take away all these rights of Indigenous Peoples and to try to make it look like a good thing…They used social engineering from a federal level to figure out how they could take away the rights or minimize the rights of the Indigenous People through their own system of law. They stripped us of all these rights and capacities to have self-determination and self-governance , and control of our own lands and resources to give the corporations access to the remaining resources that are in Alaska, mainly oil at the time, but also the gold, timber and salmon.”

Peter commented on the Western model of leadership and power that strongly influenced Alaska Native Peoples in Alaska, saying, “The creation of the corporate structure that came out of the ANCSA was a tool of division among Indigenous people. It was also a tool of assimilation to try to force us into a Western way of believing that success in life and what you need to strive for, is more money, more material things.

“In the meantime, the economic situation on the North Slope is the reality of oil being a finite resource and it running out one way or another. They have created a huge debt and a huge infrastructure that’s based entirely on oil. The next generation of Inupiaqs are the ones I worry about the most, because they’re going to be handed down huge amounts of debt, and land that has major environmental devastation.”

ANWR: A Symbol of the Struggle

Peter explains a bigger picture beyond Alaska: “The Arctic Refuge symbolizes a lot of the struggle of Indigenous Peoples—the struggle to have our way of life, the right to not participate in a system that’s destroying the environment, and the capacity of human beings to live a good life. ANWR symbolizes further corporate and government control over Indigenous peoples, over the destruction of resources, and a violent way of living that’s not sustainable. The hope is that through the protection of the Arctic Refuge, it will become an acknowledgment that we really just need to change the way that we’re living.

“For the Gwich’in people, we understand that we have a relationship with the caribou, or ‘Vadzaih’, that we’ve had for thousands of years. In our traditional stories, one of our people became Vadzaih in the past and then returned to being human. We share a heart with the caribou herd and the caribou takes care of us. But because the caribou can’t speak for themselves in this kind of realm, we have a responsibility as Gwich’in to speak out to protect them, just like they’ve allowed us to survive.

“So for us, the relationship with the caribou, our relationship with the land, and our understanding of how sacred that place is, we see that the 1002 area, or ‘Izhik Gwatsan Gwandaii Goodlit’ (“The sacred place where life begins.”) in particular, is important.

“It’s so powerful, spiritually, with the nutrients in the land, with the wind; it allows for over 180 different species of the Creators beings to come there every year from Asia, Africa, South America, all over North America and also off the Gwich’in territory. They go there because of how rich and powerful that area is, and for the protection from predators, for everything that exists there. To go to that area, that’s special.

“I know elders from the Neetsaii Gwich’in area [who] have told me, ‘Don’t ever let those people tell you that we’re a poor people.’ Because that’s what they do, they try to say that ‘Oh you’re poor. You need oil development, you need all this stuff, you need to have more money, and material things...

‘We’re among the richest people in the world because we know who we are, we know our relationship with the land, we’re a healthy people, and we can walk in balance as much as we can in these times on the earth.’

“For us, I think certainly there is a need for economic development and relationship with this larger community, but if not rooted in the wisdom and knowledge of our people, then it’s going to continue what it’s already been doing in Alaska. It’s going to create an elite class of Alaska Native people that think they know more than the people who live on the land traditionally. [That elite class] have really close ties to government and corporations, and those governments and corporations are the ones who really have the power and they’re just utilizing the Indigenous People who want to try and participate in that corporate system.”

In the end…

As a direct descendant of an Alaska Native enrollee who is listed on the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act roll, I am a shareholder of ASRC, and the majority of my college education has been paid by ASRC scholarships. If the House and Senate both agree upon language in the conferencing committee within the budget bill to open ANWR for development, my family and I will be directly affected.

Kaktovik, where we live, is a village that is fairly isolated in the sense that there are no roads leading in or out. The only way to travel to this village of nearly 300 people is by airplane or boat. if ANWR is opened, changes would impact the wildlife, the subsistence activities, the local economy, and the infrastructure expansion within the village.

This has been a difficult article to write objectively, because it is quite literally, close to home. Virtually everyone I interviewed was either a friend or family member. I do have a deep respect for those on both sides of the issue. The people who are in leadership positions are acting in the best interest of their people, and are placed in a very challenging time period in our history.

Time will tell how our lands and livelihoods will survive whether ANWR is opened or not. Regardless, oil companies will leave, and oil monies will dwindle. As a resident of the North Slope, I believe it is time to investigate renewable resources to lessen our dependence on non-renewable resources, and think about a sustainable future.

I urge readers to contact your legislators and let them know your position concerning ANWR.

Related Topics:
History of Alaska Native Wilderness Refuge

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