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Evon Peter: The People and the Caribou Are One
Arctic Village, Alaska

There's a prophecy, it's called voice from the north, there's gonna come a time when a voice from north is gonna rise. When that voice from the north rises, it signifies a time for human kind to change their ways.

FAITH GEMMILL, GWICH'IN STEERING COMMITTEE

In the far Northeastern corner of Alaska lies the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. Next to this pristine wilderness is Arctic Village, one of the most remote settlements in Alaska. It's 75 miles north of the Arctic Circle and a hundred miles from the nearest road. This is where my tribe, the Gwich'in Athabascan Indians have lived and hunted for over ten thousand years. All the villages and tribes of the Gwich'in Nation are all lined up right along the route of the Porcupine Caribou Herd. Their survival is our survival.

My ancestors are the oldest inhabitants of the Americas. If the caribou go away, our whole tradition and our culture will change, and the next generation will be lost. The protection of this area became a fight that consumed not only my people but also my own life from the time I was very young.

My mother sent me to Arctic Village when I was a young boy to be raised traditionally. When I was about 10 years old, we woke up (to see) 15 - 20 caribou in the front. You had to push them out of the way to go to the bathroom. They were everywhere.

I remember when I was 13 years old, it was when I first started having strong dreams. And in my dreams I was always being shown that I could do a lot of things in the world, I could make a lot of positive changes happen. At the time, I didn't know what to think about it, and I thought that I was half crazy. How could anyone be capable of helping to promote such changes in the world? It just didn't make sense. Later on, I realized that they (the dreams) were in fact, real.

In 1960, the Republican Administration, under President Eisenhower, had the wisdom to set aside the Artic Range as a protected area. Only eight years later, just west of the Arctic Range at Prudhoe Bay, a major oil site was discovered. Only the richest oil companies stood a chance of getting a piece of Alaska.

Not surprisingly, in 1971 the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act was passed. It stripped Alaska native peoples of the vast majority of our traditional lands and resources, and set up native corporations. Without negotiation, a unilateral act of Congress simply decreed that most of our traditional lands were no longer our own. While other Alaskan natives were forced to become part of federally established corporations, we chose to resist in order to retain ownership of a portion of our traditional lands as a tribe.

When I was 17 years old, I began getting mentored by other chiefs and leaders of the native community. They began seeing me make speeches and being here and there, they took the time to train me into different types of both traditional knowledge and Western knowledge that I was going to need to know. Later, lot of the people started asking me if I thought I would be able to handle moving in as a chief. I was 23 years old. It's half the age of what, normally, a person would be moving into that kind of a position. I was elected and it was still kind of controversial and strange, because I was so young. So I talked with each of the elders. One by one, they gave me their blessings

Our leadership among our tribes have to deal with other peoples that are coming into our lands and territories and using really complex Western laws and strategies to get at our land and resources or to divide our peoples. I knew that kind of knowledge was needed and I thought, well if I'm healthy, I love my people, and I have that ability to understand those Western complexities, then maybe I'll be able to help my people in that role for a few years.

Expanding on the original land set aside by President Eisenhower, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was established in 1980 to protect this delicate wilderness area. The Arctic Refuge protected 5% of Alaska's coast, the other 95% was already open to drilling.

In 1987, our people discovered the oil companies wanted to drill in this protected area. The focal point of drilling would occur right in the middle of a small area where the Porcupine Caribou Herd migrates every year to give birth to its young. We call it the "sacred place where life begins." Even in times of famine long ago we would not go there and intrude upon the caribou when they're giving birth to their young.

We have an exceptionally difficult situation because we have a very narrow strip of coastal plain where the caribou rely on for their calving. And then if we introduce oil and gas development in the middle of that, there literally is no good place for these caribou to go to have their calves.

FRAN MAUER, CARIBOU BIOLOGIST

It's similar to the Plains Indian beliefs with the buffalo that they were one and the same, part of each other. We saw what happened when the buffalo were nearly wiped out, that's what's going to happen to the Gwich'in and we know that, that's why we're fighting so hard to protect that area.

FAITH GEMMILL, GWICH'IN STEERING COMMITTEE

In the evening of March 23, 1989 at the opposite end of Alaska, the oil tanker Exxon Valdez went aground in Prince William Sound leaking 11 million gallons of oil and destroying the ecology of well over a thousand miles of Alaska's coast.

Big oil laid low after the Exxon Valdez but then President George H.W. Bush made drilling rights in the Arctic Refuge a plank of his energy policy. Faced with the threat that drilling represented to the caribou, the Gwich'in turned to our elders for guidance.

The eldest Gwich'in woman, she was over 100 years old, she advised our leaders on how we're going to face this threat. She told our people that we need to hold a traditional gathering and discuss the issue in our own traditional way. We called together our nation. All of our villages in Canada, all of our villages here in Alaska and we brought them all in, we brought in our leaders, our elders, and our young people.

What was very powerful is we didn't just decide that we're going to stand up to the oil companies, stand up to the state of Alaska, stand up to this billion dollar industry, what happened was …when we're making an important decision we hold prayer, we have ceremony, and then we decide…our people decided that there's no way that we're going to allow the oil companies to go into the calving grounds. Then the elders went further. And they decided that we needed a political arm to represent our nation.

FAITH GEMMILL

Eight leaders were selected to be members of the Gwich'in Steering Committee.

The elders said "We want you to talk in a good way. Never lie about anything and never raise your voice against anybody. And that way you'll prevail."

JONATHAN SOLOMAN, GWICH'IN STEERING COMMITTEE

They began to go out into the world, to lobby and speak out against the drilling - to other native groups, the United Nations, and to Congress year after year. I have always been inspired by the legacy of resistance and strength from my tribe.

The caribou are vital to the social fabric of the Gwich'in nation. It is during the hunt when knowledge is passed down from our elders to the next generation. For thousands of years, our land had no borders. Now, we have to cross an imaginary line into what is called "Canada." When we come out with elders, no matter how old or young you are, we're all learning every time. I still have lots to learn about the best way to cut up Caribou.

The practice of coming out here and being on the land and hunting caribou is not only about feeding our families, because it is is all we have to survive from. We don't have Safeways and Wal-Marts and stuff like that in our tribes. But it's also about maintaining our culture and our spiritual relationship with these animals that we've had for time immemorial.

In Gwich'in creation stories, the Caribou has a piece of Man's heart in its heart, and Man has a piece of Caribou's heart in his, so that each will always know what the other is doing. It's that time of year where we have to go out and gather all the meat that's going to last us throughout the wintertime, until the springtime. It's a really important time of year. It's an exciting time of the year.

The fight for the refuge began to heat up when George W. Bush, like his father, featured drilling in the Refuge as a platform of his energy policy.

One thing that we learned right away was that if we're going to keep up with the struggles and the work we're doing, we have to be working almost at the same speed as those people who are working to try to create the opposite changes. Otherwise, they get ahead of us. It makes it tough for us, too, because it's a different lifestyle pace. For us, we're used to living life based on: when it gets cold, we dress warmer. When we're running out of meat, we go out and hunt for more. When we get tired, we go to sleep. When we're done being tired, we wake up. We live on a natural life way. And then all of a sudden we have to jump up and get involved in Western governments-type systems and setups and campaigns. It's a totally different pace and that's a challenge in and of itself for a lot of our people.

We could probably save as much oil as in the entire Arctic National Wildlife Refuge by just properly inflating the tires on our automobiles.

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Current Developments:

SENATE CAVES IN TO BIG OIL LOBBY TO OPEN ARCTIC REFUGE TO OIL DRILLING: SENATE IGNORES ALASKA NATIVE CONCERNS

March 16, 2005 - The U.S. Senate, by a vote of 49-51, narrowly defeated an amendment by Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash) that would have removed a provision of the Senate budget bill that authorizes the drilling of oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. The amendment would have rejected a sneak attack by oil development proponents of the Refuge.

"This decision by Senators defeating the Cantwell amendment is a slap in the face of the Gwich'in tribal nation and the concerned tribal members of the Inupiat Village of Katovik who have been opposed to the development of oil and gas in the 1002 area of the Arctic Refuge," says Tom Goldtooth, director of the Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), a national Native environmental justice group.

"We will not give up. Our people will continue to fight to defeat Arctic refuge drilling measures within the budget process. Although this is a set back, the Gwich'in will continue to fight for our inherent and fundamental human right to live our ancestral way of life by seeking permanent protection of the Artic Refuge with no compromise," says Faith Gemmill, a tribal member of the Arctic Village Gwich'in and member of REDOIL. REDOIL stands for Resisting Environmental Destruction On Indian Lands and is a newly formed Alaska Native grassroots organization in resistance to oil and gas development in their Alaska homelands.

"This is nothing but back door antics by the Bush administration to set legislative precedents to give powerful transnational oil corporations further access into America's protected and frontier lands," said Clayton Thomas-Muller, IEN campaigner on oil and gas issues in Indian country. "America has been built upon sneak attacks against our Native tribes and violating our human rights. If anything, this recent action by the Senate strengthens our power base to mobilize Americans and other Alaska villages and tribal nations who are overwhelmingly opposed to drilling in the Arctic Refuge."

Alaska Native villages in the North Slope region are expressing their concerns. The Native Village of Point Hope on February 22nd passed a resolution out of concern that any opening up of oil drilling in area 1002 of the Arctic Refuge would establish a precedent to allow resource exploration in other wilderness areas, marine sanctuaries, pristine offshore waters and refuges nationwide.

"America and its political leaders need to understand that the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge is a sacred altar to the Indigenous peoples of that region and must not be disturbed. If drilling were allowed to take place in the Arctic Refuge, every sound and vibration of drilling and pumping equipment will have a devastating impact to the sacredness and pristine quality of life it has to offer," Goldtooth said. "There is no doubt in my mind this will negatively affect the Porcupine Caribou herd whose calving grounds are in the 1002 area."

"This is an extreme form of environmental racism. No one has the right to deprive a people of their subsistence rights. The Gwich'in have protected the 'Sacred Land Where Life Begins,' which is the calving and nursery grounds of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge for over 1,000 generations, " said Jonathon Solomon, Chairman of the Gwich'in Steering Committee, the advocacy group of the Gwich'in nation.

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Press contact: Tom Goldtooth, (218) 751-4967, or Faith Gemmill, (530) 244-3430, or Clayton Thomas-Muller (604) 683-4702, or Luci Beach (907) 458-8264, Gwich'in Steering Committee