Here in northern Alaska, you don't have to travel too far to see the damage oil drilling does. In Prudhoe Bay, where oil drilling has been happening for several decades, we've seen the accumulated impact both on the environment and on people. The oil industry touts its operations in our region as among the most "environmentally advanced" in the world. However, in the center of oil-drilling activity on Alaska's north coast, soot and smog levels there are so high that the air quality is worse than Washington, D.C.; carbon monoxide pollution is at about the level of a big city. Asthma rates have increased, and cancer has become all too common in our community.

An even greater threat comes from the impact oil exploration and drilling could have on offshore areas, both directly and because drilling proponents have said as recently as Feb. 22 that the network of industrial base camps in the Arctic refuge will provide the jumping-off point to develop a ring of oil rigs just north of the refuge offshore in the Beaufort Sea.

As members of the Inupiaq tribe, we rely on the natural bounty of the Beaufort Sea to the north of the refuge for our food supply and our way of life — particularly on the bowhead whale that provides our food supply. Our whalers know that oil exploration and drilling are incompatible with both a livable environment for the whales and prospects for a hunt.

I've seen firsthand that pipelines that the oil companies say are "environmentally safe" actually have shutoff valves that don't work. Our neighbors to the west are still cleaning up the Exxon Valdez spill from 1989. I don't want my children in Kaktovik to be dealing with oil spills for years to come.

Even before drilling starts, however, oil exploration alone can have an extremely damaging impact. Repeated studies have confirmed what our hunters have observed firsthand — bowhead whales won't get within 12 miles of seismic exploration, meaning that they're pushed farther offshore; when we hunt the whales the way we've been doing for hundreds of years, our whalers are forced farther into the icy ocean — where this already risky venture becomes even more dangerous. When, as they inevitably do, accidents happen, the icy sea and stormy weather far offshore makes rescues nearly impossible; as a result, several whalers have died in recent years. Bowhead whales have to migrate farther to avoid oil-exploration activities, making it harder for them to survive in what can be a harsh Arctic environment.

But it's not just the air, water and animals that have suffered; our native culture and our survival as a people have been threatened as well. Development has brought problems to our villages that we've never had to contend with before. Our traditional food sources — many now in decline due to oil drilling — have been displaced by processed foods that include lard and processed sugar; as a result, diabetes and obesity have skyrocketed. Without our traditional subsistence activities, our adults are too often turning to alcohol and crime.

Turning my home into a sacrifice zone for the oil industry will do nothing to alleviate America's reliance on foreign oil. The amount of oil that could theoretically be extracted from the refuge would provide America with only six months worth of oil that would last 10 years. I don't know why drilling proponents would destroy my home and damage our culture for such a tiny amount of oil, especially when such good alternatives exist — like using existing technology to increase fuel efficiency for cars and trucks. Raising fuel-efficiency standards would save as much oil as America gets from the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and would get from the Persian Gulf combined.

I visited Hawai'i in January to talk with Sens. Akaka and

Inouye about the Arctic refuge. While there, I learned about their work to defend our Native Hawaiian brothers and sisters. I am sure they would not allow another Prudhoe Bay to happen in Hawai'i, and I hope they won't allow one to happen to us either.