Arctic Oil

Someone sent this to me along with this comment:

"This Arctic diatribe is one big piece of crap. I'd also assume that it was written by someone working for an oil company."

The wisdom of Arctic oil - The luxury of running water

By Tara Sweeney

If you listened only to the news media and environmentalists, you'd think the debate over oil development in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge was about caribou and ecology. It's not. ANWR is about land. It is about Alaskan Natives' rights of self-determination - our right to decide how our own lands and resources will be used. About whether the United States will honor its agreements with Natives who ceded their claim to vast ancestral lands and resources, in exchange for the right to determine our destiny on the lands we retained - or so we were told.It's about whether senators, congressmen, pressure groups and other people who live hundreds or even thousands of miles from our lands will have the right to dictate our future.Anyone who professes to respect Native rights, civil rights, human rights and property rights has only one choice in this matter. They must support what Native Americans who live in ANWR overwhelmingly want: drilling in accord with guidelines that we will negotiate ourselves.Anything less is cultural and environmental imperialism. It is stealing our Native lands, resources and futures. It will keep our people on the edge of poverty forever. It is wrong.Right now, it's 30 below zero in Kaktovik, the only village within the entire 19.6 million acres of the federally recognized boundaries of ANWR. It is total 24-hour darkness, and the wind is howling. Beyond the little houses, there is flat frozen ocean and tundra for as far as the eye can see. Stretching 1,000 miles from the Barents Sea near Siberia in the west, to the Canadian border in the east, the Arctic Coastal Plain is one of the harshest climates in the world. Only the strongest people survive.The pure luxury of running water, flush toilets, local schools, local health care clinics, police and fire stations, were unavailable prior to the discovery of oil at Prudhoe Bay, America's largest oil field, 90 miles to the west. Kaktovik was the last community on Alaska's North Slope to get these wondrous things, courtesy of tax revenue from oil operations at Prudhoe Bay.What would Americans in the Lower 48 States do if they were denied these basic necessities? They'd scream bloody murder!Yet these are the basic amenities that radical environmentalists of the Sierra Club and Wilderness Society say the Inupiat Eskimo people should be denied. Some Gwich'in Indians in Alaska's interior agree. They can afford to. They are funded quite lavishly by green groups for opposing oil development on Inuit lands - even as they leased and drilled for oil on their own tribal lands, in the middle of caribou migration areas. But for opposing oil development on Inuit lands, the Gwich'in have become the poster children for the anti-drilling movement.Even worse, many members of Congress also want to deny the Inupiat people of ANWR one of the most basic principles of our society: the right to own, control and use our private property.My Inupiat Eskimo people are freezing in the dark, and with one breath members of Congress are preventing them from developing oil and gas on our own private lands in ANWR. With the next breath, they are pleading for gas and heating oil subsidies for their constituents. These actions are appalling and offensive to my people."The Inupiat Eskimo people are subsistence hunters," says Jacob Adams, president of the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation. "Based on close personal experience, we know we can have carefully regulated oil exploration and development in the Coastal Plain study area. We can preserve the environment and wildlife resources of ANWR - and still provide economic and energy security benefits to our people and the Nation."Congress created and set aside the Coastal Plain specifically for oil and gas exploration - to compensate the Inuit for having given up rights to their other ancestral lands, and as a compromise for designating other Alaskan lands as wilderness. The 1.5-million-acre is larger than Delaware, in a refuge the size of South Carolina. But Kaktovik's 92,000 acres of private land have been trapped, locked up and made untouchable by crass political forces, because it lies with the borders of ANWR.Any oil or land development here can take place only with Congressional approval. The people of Kaktovik overwhelmingly support drilling. We know the tax revenues from oil exploration on our land will fund our basic utilities, educate our children, and preserve our culture and heritage.But our rights and wishes are being trampled under foot - for no good reason.In 1970, when oil development was first proposed at Prudhoe Bay, my people in the Arctic Native community were understandably concerned and hesitant about our future and the effect of development our homelands. Would the whales and caribou be chased away forever? Would our culture be destroyed? To meet these concerns and challenges, and ensure the preservation of Native lands and heritage, Inupiat leaders, the Alaskan government, oil industry and federal government have managed a symbiotic, rational and successful relationship. Indeed, the operations here are easily the most community involved, environmentally strict and technologically advanced anywhere in the world.The results are equally clear. During three decades of oil development, 3,000 caribou have turned into 32,000. Not a single species of animal, fish, bird or insect has declined even a fraction. Whales are harvested every year, as always. Neighboring Native communities have thrived, and cultures have been preserved and promoted. And many Native Alaskans have professional jobs in the oil industry.Even the hypocritical Gwich'in - who want to stop all development in ANWR - operate Gwich'in Ensign Oilfield Services, Mackenzie Aboriginal Corporation, Mackenzie Valley Construction, Camp MGK, Gwich'in Helicopters and Inuvik Commercial Properties. Every one is directly involved in oil field services and contracts. They enable Gwich'in men and women to return to nice homes with decent paychecks and the satisfaction that comes from being involved in managing their own land for the benefit of their families and people.That is why Kaktovik vice mayor the late Herman Aishanna said: "The strange people who want to call our country wilderness, to deny that we even exist - these people insult us. We know and understand the oil people, and we can handle them, as we have done for some years now." Former North Slope Borough mayor George Ahmaogak and the vast majority of all our people echo these sentiments.Kaktovik wants its rights and wishes honored. This shameful, unconscionable treatment of Alaska's Native People - in the name of protecting lands that are in no danger - must end.We urge all decent Americans to call their senators and congressmen, and tell them to vote for drilling in ANWR. The Natives who actually live there want this. Our nation needs it. It will be good for the environment. And it will provide jobs, revenues and energy for Natives and non-Natives alike.

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Tara Sweeney is an Inupiaq from Barrow, Alaska. She has worked on the ANWR issue for a decade.