ENVIRONMENT: Native North Americans Divided Over Oil Drilling Plan for Arctic Refuge

By Paul Weinberg Reprint | | Print |

Paul Weinberg

TORONTO, Jan 4 2001 (IPS) - Aboriginal peoples in the far north of North America are expressing strong differences over the proposed drilling for oil and gas in the 7.6-million hectare Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in the US state of Alaska.

On the opposing side are the 7,000 Gwich’in Indians half of who live in Canada’s western Arctic while the rest reside on the Alaska side. More supportive of the development are Alaska’s Inupiaq Eskimos.

US president-elect George Bush, formerly an oil industry businessman himself, is expected to approve the proposed development in what has been described as a rich natural territory of polar bears, grizzly bears, musk oxen, a large herd of caribou and hundreds of species of birds.

Bush and Republicans in Washington are seeking to protect the United States buffeted by higher oil and natural gas prices from excessive dependence on non-US sources of energy.

Petroleum industry estimates have put the amount of recoverable oil in the ground in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge as high as 16 billion barrels ¡ apparently enough to replace US imports of oil from Saudi Arabia for more than 30 years.

Efforts by environmentalists and the Gwich’in to lobby newly elected members of the US Congress to scuttle the Alaska project are up against the financial and political clout of the oil industry lobby, which appears to be winning the day in Washington, says Wilbert Firth, vice president of the Gwich’in tribal council based in Canada’s Yukon Territory.

Firth told Inter Press Service that if the Alaska project gets the go-ahead, the next stage would consist of acts of civil disobedience, where opponents will physically attempt to block the oil and drilling activity in the wildlife refuge. “I hear that Greenpeace [a major environmental organisation lobbying against the Alaska project] is already making plans.”

The Gwich’ins and their supporters fear that the resource extraction in the Alaska wildlife refuge will wipe out the calving grounds for close to 150,000 Porcupine caribou. Currently, the herd of animals migrate from their wintering grounds in Canada to the coastal plain in northeast Alaska on the Beaufort Sea where the wildlife refuge is located.

The concern of the opponents is that the female caribou will abandon their young too soon if they are frightened off by the drilling. Also, the caribou could be driven into the mountains where they are liable to be attacked by wolves and other predators.

A hunting people, the Gwich’in have lived in the region for close to 30,000 years and rely on the caribou for their food and culture, says Norma Kassi, a Gwich’in woman and former member of the legislature in the Canada’s Yukon Territory. “We want to guarantee a way of life.”

Kassi adds that the matter of preserving the Porcupine caribou is also “a human rights issue”.

But a local Alaskan mayor and native Inupiaq Eskimo George Ahmaogak says that critics like Kassi and her allies in the environmental movement across North America are perpetuating a Hollywood movie stereotype of the “noble savage”.

As someone who voted for George Bush, Ahamaogak welcomes the jobs and economic activity that will be generated by the development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. A local Anchorage, Alaska-based lobby for the oil and gas project, Arctic Power estimates that hundreds of thousands of jobs could be created.

Ahamaogak states further that Alaska natives have benefited from “responsible” oil and gas activity in the Prudhoe Bay region in his state.

Ahamaogak is confident that new drilling and extraction technologies make it possible for a more “respectful” approach to local wildlife, including the sensitive Porcupine caribou herd.

Another Gwich’in activist in Canada, Bobbi Jean Greenland suggests that the differences between the two aboriginal groups lie in their respective cultures. Alaska Eskimos rely on offshore fishing for their food and livelihood; while the Gwich’in are a land based people, focused on the caribou, she states.

Greenland adds that the jobs in a new oil and gas project “would only be temporary” and she and her people have never witnessed resource development in the north that did not have a “negative impact” on the region.

Not sufficiently discussed is the impact of another huge oil and gas drilling project on the planet’s environment, says Elizabeth May, executive director of the Sierra Club of Canada. “With global climate change the biggest threat we face, we don’t need more oil exploration.”

Canada’s Environment Minister David Anderson has reiterated Canada’s strong opposition to oil drilling in the Alaska wildlife refuge.

May says the country may be accused by some US Republican politicians of attempting to protect the competitive position of its own oil and gas exports to the United States if it opposes the Alaska project.

But, she adds, that Canada might have a good case if it sues the US government on the grounds that Washington is violating “its good neighbour” provisions by approving a project prone to oil spillage in a sensitive border environment.

May cites a well-known legal case in 1908 where the United States successfully sued Canada internationally for permitting a polluting smelter in Trail British Columbia, close to the US/Canadian border.