Arctic Drilling Debate Splits Alaska Natives
Copyright © 2001 Reuters
April 21, 2001
By Yereth Rosen
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - From a tidy office in downtown Anchorage, Donna Carroll is trying to tell the world that President Bush (news - web sites)'s oil-drilling plans would spell doom for North America's northernmost Native people.
The Bush-backed plan to allow oil drilling in the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge would ruin that narrow stretch of tundra between the Brooks Range and the Arctic Ocean and run off the Porcupine caribou herd that use the area for birthing its young, Carroll said.
That would mean dire consequences for her people, the 8,000 Gwich'in Athabaskan Indians of northeastern Alaska and northwestern Canada, who live on the southern and eastern edges of the refuge and hunt caribou for food and hides to make clothing, shelter and even sleds.
``Gwich'in means Caribou People. If there are no caribou, there are no Caribou People,'' said Carroll, administrative director of the Gwich'in Steering Committee.
A few blocks away in another downtown office, staffers are busy spreading the message from other Alaska Natives who want the refuge open to drilling so they can earn money to improve life in their harsh Arctic homeland.
The walls and shelves at Arctic Power, an organization lobbying in favor of the controversial oil development, are decorated with posters, brochures and booklets celebrating Inupiat Eskimo culture and the wildlife of the Arctic plain.
The organization's Web site broadcasts text from a passionate speech in favor of ANWR oil development given by George Ahmaogak, mayor of the North Slope Borough, the vast Arctic Alaska district that is home to about 7,000 people, most of them Inupiat Eskimos.
``Why is it assumed that Native people cannot benefit from the development of their homeland and still remain Native?'' Ahmaogak asks in the speech. ``We are the stewards of that land, and if we support a development plan, you can be sure that we will have examined it and found it to be sound.''
The refuge coastal plain that the Gwich'in consider sacred ground is to the Inupiat a potential source of income for more improvements on the Arctic coastline, a place where even the most basic amenities can be prohibitively expensive.
The plan to open the area to oil drilling, one of the Bush administration's most controversial policy goals, is the subject of a dispute between the two Native groups that goes back several years.
The campaigns of both sides are now in high gear. They have mounted dueling lobbying and advertising efforts, aimed at Congress and the general public, to promote opposing visions of the Arctic refuge.
To the Gwich'in Steering Committee, the disputed refuge coastal plain is key to the tribe's heritage.
``If you protect the Arctic Refuge, you protect the calving area of the herd, you protect the people and the language. It's just like a big circle,'' Carroll said.
But the Inupiat say that, for the most part, oil has been useful to them.
Their ancestors knew that the oil seeping up through the tundra could be used to create heat. The 1970s Alaska oil boom helped lift their villages out of what could be considered Third World conditions.
Oil drilling has been good for the Inupiat, said Lon Sonsalla, the non-Native mayor of Kaktovik, the Arctic village of 250 that overlooks the coastal plain of the refuge.
He moved to the village in 1977, and remembers having to haul blocks of lake ice to melt for drinking water. Now there is indoor plumbing, a road system and other amenities, he said.
``Nobody here, at least in Kaktovik, has gotten personally wealthy because of oil. But there are benefits. A lot of that is in just catching up to what people in the Lower 48 (states) take for granted,'' Sonsalla said.
At the heart of the Native split are 92,160 potentially oil-rich, Inupiat-owned acres that adjoin the refuge's coastal plain.
That land wound up in the ownership of Inupiat corporations as a result of a trade that was overseen by former President Ronald Reagan (news - web sites)'s Interior Secretary James Watt.
In the 1983 deal, conservationists got additional land for Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve, south of the coastline in the Brooks Range.
The Inupiat-owned Arctic Slope Regional Corp., which has about 8,100 shareholders, got ownership of mineral rights to a pocket of land on the coastal plain long considered likely to be oil rich. With the trade completed, advocates of ANWR oil development got a staunch ally in the Inupiat.
The Arctic refuge battle also reflects a broader debate over the for-profit corporations, like Arctic Slope, set up by the 1971 Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act. Some believe their people have benefited from the modern for-profit corporations set up in lieu of Lower 48-style reservations; others consider the corporate system a sell-out of traditional values.
Native corporations from around the state would enjoy some financial benefits from ANWR oil development. Many are in the oil business themselves, operating subsidiaries that work on the North Slope and perform functions ranging from well drilling and analysis to workers' meal service and housekeeping.
The settlement act also provides for some royalty sharing among all Native corporations. And the North Slope Borough
would collect tax revenues from the development.
The Alaska Federation of Natives, the state's largest Native organization, several years ago endorsed ANWR drilling and still holds that position. The federation has concluded that Native people could gain important benefits from the development and the area's caribou could be protected, said John Tetpon, the group's spokesman.
But some Natives are skeptical about the corporate system, saying it has promoted money over spirituality.
The critics include many Gwich'in. Two of their villages -- settlements established along the migration route of the huge caribou herd named for the Porcupine River -- sat out the 1971 land-claims settlement.
``Money doesn't make our world go around, like it does for oil people,'' Carroll said.
With their ANWR stance, the Gwich'in are in the distinct minority in Alaska, a state where residents pay no state income or sales taxes and receive an annual dividend payment from a $25 billion state-owned fund created with oil wealth.
Most politicians here consider ANWR development an important economic goal for the state. The Alaska legislature last month approved a $1.85 million appropriation for pro-drilling campaign efforts. Of that total, $250,000 will go to Kaktovik to help city officials cope with a constant stream of visits by dignitaries and journalists.
Bringing decision makers to the area is an important part of the pro-development strategy, and campaigners have tried to schedule the trips during the long winter, when the coastal plain is blanketed with snow, temperatures are frigid and most wildlife is in hibernation or has migrated elsewhere for the season.
Among those recently dropping in on Kaktovik were Interior Secretary Gale Norton, three U.S. senators and reporters from Britain and Ireland.
Sonsalla said local residents are not always happy to be in the spotlight.
``They're just not interested in being the center of the universe right now,'' the mayor said.
The Gwich'in, meanwhile, have invited visitors to their villages to hear their side of the refuge story. The Gwich'in and their environmentalist supporters prefer that the visits occur in the summer, when the caribou and other animals are abundant, the days are longer and the scenery is more interesting.
What the Gwich'in lack in official state aid, they make up for in diverse allies. They include the major environmental groups, the Episcopal church and the Canadian government.
One high-profile supporter is former President Jimmy Carter, who was in office when the refuge boundaries were set and has long campaigned for protection of the coastal plain.
At a ceremony in Anchorage last August, several Gwich'in presented Carter with a hand-beaded ``baby belt,'' an item normally made by an expectant mother and her family. As a gift, it signifies trust that the recipient will care for future generations.
``It's the highest honor gift that the Gwich'in can give to a person,'' said Norma Kassi, a Gwich'in leader from the Yukon Territory.
There is support even from some dissident Inupiat, who liken the Gwich'in campaign to the longstanding Inupiat opposition to offshore oil development that could harm the whales and other marine mammals they hunt.
``They want to protect their culture as much as we want to protect ours,'' Carroll said.