Endangered Species, Endangered Culture: Native Resistance to Industrializing the Arctic

In: Watson, Alan; Sproull, Janet, comps. 2003. Science and stewardship to protect and sustain wilderness values: Seventh World Wilderness Congress symposium;2001 November 2–8; Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Proc. RMRS-P-27. Ogden, UT: U.S. Department of Agriculture, Forest Service, Rocky Mountain Research Station. Abstract—This paper examines the responses of two indigenous groups to the potential opening of the coastal plain of Alaska’s Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) to oil and gas exploration. Gwich’in Indians, whose culture revolves both materially and spiritually around the caribou, oppose all such development for fear that it will jeopardize that species’ optimum calving grounds. Inupiat Eskimos, who stand to gain economically from petrodevelopment, favor oil and gas exploration on the coastal plain while opposing it offshore, where it might threaten the bowhead whale, the species at the center of their own culture. After reviewing the history of the conflict and weighing the respective claims of these two peoples, the paper concludes with a discussion of the threats posed to ANWR by international terrorism and by global warming.