Posted on: Thursday, January 3, 2002

Island Voices
No refuge for Daniel Akaka

By Masako Cordray

On Nov. 18, Sen. Dan Akaka issued a declaration of support for oil industrialization of our finest public lands, the 1.5 million-acre coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. This narrow plain between the mountains and the sea is the birthplace of the migratory Porcupine River caribou herd.

To the Gwich'in, who are the caribou people, this is the sacred place where life begins. To scientists, it is the biological heart of the refuge. To the Bush administration, Big Oil and Hawai'i's Sens. Akaka and Inouye, it is another oil field.

Akaka's public statement does not acknowledge the Gwich'in, the only people linked through tradition, custom and history to the Porcupine River caribou herd. This great herd has sustained the Gwich'in people for countless generations in the land south of the Brooks Range. Instead, Akaka supports the Inupiat, the native people of Alaska's north coast. He says, "The Inupiat seek the benefits that economic development and revenues from energy development will bring ... "

Akaka does not reveal that the Inupiat are ocean people. The bowhead whale is at the center of their culture, and they oppose offshore oil development, fearing it will destroy their source of life. The Inupiat live in the North Slope Borough, one of the wealthiest counties in the U.S., and are beneficiaries of the Arctic Slope Regional Corp., one of America's most successful corporations with revenues last year of over a billion dollars.

Akaka has withheld the fact that the corporation has 4.5 million acres of land outside the refuge, 3.3 million acres already leased for oil exploration. Furthermore, the Inupiat were granted 92,160 acres within the refuge for subsistence use only and have never had oil development rights there. Our senator wants to bestow this right on the Inupiat, who will receive revenues from this land only if the entire coastal plain of the refuge is opened to oil development, sacrificing our public lands to benefit a wealthy corporation.

Akaka then makes this hollow promise, "The use of state-of-art technology and strict regulatory oversight will safeguard the Porcupine caribou herd." He should tell the whole story. The oil industry has left a legacy of destruction on the North Slope: 55 contaminated waste sites; 300 oil wells abandoned, and 400 oil spills each year.

London-based British Petroleum, which operates the Prudhoe Bay industrial complex, is under criminal probation for dumping toxic waste. Ironically, Big Oil on the North Slope is exempt from established environmental laws, including the Clean Air Act and the Community Right to Know Act, and is seeking exemptions the National Environmental Policy Act.

Contrary to Akaka's assurances, biologists agree the Porcupine River caribou herd is unique and oil development in its birthplace will be devastating. The Central Arctic caribou herd has already been forced by oil development to abandon its traditional calving ground at Prudhoe Bay and Kuparuk and move elsewhere on the broad plain. But in the refuge, where the coastal plain is narrow, the Porcupine River herd, which is five times larger than the Central Arctic herd, has nowhere else to go.

People in Hawai'i have called for the protection of the coastal plain of the Arctic Refuge — the birthplace of caribou, polar bear, grizzly bear, wolf, fox, muskox and many kinds of migratory birds and the source of life for the Gwich'in people. If Akaka and Inouye continue to support the industrialization of this world treasure, they will be remembered for their part in the destruction of a place and the death of a people.

Masako Cordray's video "Voice from the North, The Gwich'in People and the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge" received the Houseman Image Award from the Alaska Conservation Foundation. She lives on Maui.