Drilling in Alaska: Over Dead Gwich'in Bodies

A typical air journey to Arctic Village, Alaska, from Washington D.C. transfers in Chicago and Anchorage, and arrives in Fairbanks 10-12 hours later. At Fairbanks travelers hire a cab for a five-minute, $13 lift to the opposite side of the airport, where a tiny commuter plane offers one scheduled flight per day to the settlement on the edge of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

The two-hour coaster ride in an eight-seat Cessna Caravan tracks a 10-degree course over a tangle of suburban neighborhoods cut fresh from the thick forests of the Tanana Valley. It then climbs out over the trackless White Mountains and traverses the seemingly infinite wetlands of the Yukon Flats Wildlife Refuge, to the snowy foothills of the Brooks Range, where each year over 100,000 Porcupine Caribou wonder on their annual migration.

As the blinding tundra rises to dominate the Cessna's oval windows, the plane banks sharply into the lush, spruce covered valley of the ice-jammed East Chandalar River. Following the riverbanks, the plane reaches an impressive gravel airstrip and a small collection of log homes perched above a sharp bend.

After landing, the final transfer into the cargo bay of a beat-up pickup for the mile drive to town costs $5 ($2 for locals), and brings the total price of the 6000 mile journey to upwards of $2000.

This remote settlement of 150 Gwich'in Indians, a community which relies on subsistence hunting and fishing, would seem an unlikely place for an argument between federal government officials and the head of a major non-profit organization, whose D.C. offices are only minutes apart.

Strange Bedfellows

When National Wildlife Federation president Mark Van Putten entered the log-hewn Arctic Village community hall on the afternoon of June 1, he happened upon an unhappy looking group of young Alaska Natives facing-off with members of the US Arctic Research Commission across a long table.

In town for the night awaiting a tour of the refuge, the meeting was purely coincidental but fortuitous. Van Putten's organization has been accused by some environmentalists of doing too little too late in the battle to save the refuge. While the organization has opposed drilling for years, it wasn't until six months ago that the middle-of-the-road conservation group voted to seek a wilderness designation for the coastal plain, giving it further protection from development. Van Putten was eager to make up for lost time.

"[Alaska's] Senator Murkowski's always asking his opponents if they've ever been to the refuge," Van Putten said, "I want to be able to say I have."

The long faced commissioners, most elderly white men, were receiving a stern lashing from a boy-faced Gwich'in man who, in no uncertain terms, made sure they understood whose country they were in.

"When your people first came here we treated you well. But the history of the way you've treated us hasn't been so good. Your commission was created in 1984, but this is the first time you've been here to talk to us. There's been a long history of commissions disrespecting us and overlooking us," scolded the charismatic young man.

Taped to the walls beyond the uncomfortably shifting commissioners were messages the village's children had scrawled with colorful markers:

"We always live with the caribou, we are Gwich'in; Time of joy when the caribou return happy; There is no price tag for Birth Place; Gwich'in way of life need to be protected."

The articulate young man, Arctic Village's 25-year-old chief Evon Peter, unleashed on the dumbfounded commissioners with precocious confidence.

"Any future decisions need to be made in consultation with us. We not only request to have a say, we demand it."

Finally, Peter asked that the commission, which was touring northeastern Alaska to learn about the effects of climate change on the Arctic, recommend to the president he drop plans to allow oil drilling in the Arctic Refuge.