Congress Ignores the Pleas of the Inupiats

Insight on the News, June 11, 2001 by Diana Ray

Tara Sweeney and Brenda Itta-Lee cannot count the number of times they've made the 5,000-mile trip from their Alaskan homeland to the nation's capital. But these Inupiat Eskimos represent their people, natives to the Alaskan Coastal Plain, lobbying Congress to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for oil exploration.

The only area that would be opened to drilling is 1.5 million acres of flat tundra called the "1002 Area." No one knows for sure how much oil there is to be had, but the U.S. Geological Survey estimates between 3 billion and 10 billion barrels. This does not include oil believed to lie under the other 17.5 million acres of the ANWR.

During this two-week visit, Itta-Lee and Sweeney visited 45 senators' offices. "We get up each morning," says Sweeney, "get our packets ready, and we walk. Then I sit here until 11 at night writing my reports."

In 1971, Congress established regional corporations in Alaska to serve as economic bases, with boundaries set according to "cultural heritages that go back several centuries," the 57-year-old Itta-Lee tells Insight. Itta-Lee and Sweeney, age 27, represent the Arctic Slope Regional Corp. (ASRC), which is the cultural and tribal base of the majority of the inhabitants of ANWR. It includes all of the 1002 Area.

Wearing a wide walrusivory bracelet from her home village of Barrow, Itta-Lee describes the homemade animal parkas ("Eddie Bauer jackets just don't cut it") she and her people must wear when the temperature drops to 40 below zero. That's excluding the chill factor. Unlike the photos distributed in Sierra Club ads, their homeland is flat and brown when not covered with snow, the women say, but it's still beautiful to them.

"We are the original environmentalists," says Itta-Lee. "We were taught by our ancestors that if we don't take care of the land, the animals and the environment, we will die." But it is a hard and unforgiving land, she says, and there is little opposition to oil exploration. "We feel we have struck a balance between the environment and the industry."

Itta-Lee explains that Alaska had no economy before the oil discoveries and land claims created in 1971, citing a 1969 study that found Alaskan natives had been the most poverty-stricken people in the nation. In 1950, she attended high school more than 800 miles from home because Eskimo villages had no such schools. But revenues from oil development have permitted the corporations to build schools, she says, and to provide education funds such as the one Sweeney used to attend and graduate from Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y.

In addition to regional corporations, there now are village corporations. Within the 1002 Area, there is one Eskimo village, Kaktovic. It has no running water and no flushing toilets, according to Sweeney. Its population of 250 is represented by the village's Kaktovic-Inupiat Corporation, and its residents overwhelmingly support opening the ANWR. In fact, the Kaktovic-Inupiat Corporation allowed an exploratory well to be drilled on its land more than a decade ago. But only BP Amoco PLC and Chevron Corp., who did the drilling, know the results. And no oil can be pumped or exported until the ANWR is opened, Sweeney says. The Kaktovic-Inupiat Corporation owns the land, but ASRC, the larger population which Itta-Lee and Sweeney represent, own subsurface rights.

During this visit to Washington, Sweeney says about half of the congressional members the Eskimo women visited were informed on the ANWR issue, but most were uninformed on the point of view of the native people and their grave needs. "This is our homeland and [yet members of Congress] are deciding this. [They've] already signed on to the Wilderness Bill to designate our homelands off-limits for any opportunity -- based on postcards sent in by the Sierra Club saying the indigenous people support it."

Sweeney was equally dismayed by lack of response to her efforts to correct the kind of misinformation being spread about the area where she and her people live. "I went onto Senator Patrick Leahy's [D-Vt.] Website, and I was so shocked. There were so many inaccuracies and half-truths. It invoked rage. I tried calling him four times to leave a message. We wanted to discuss the contents of the Website because it is inaccurate, misleading. We never received even a phone call back."

This Cornell graduate who had come to Washington to tell the story of her people says that during a visit to the office of Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., a staffer told her, "We understand your position. And we would like development in our state, so we understand where you are coming from. But we are not going to vote for it. End of story."

During a previous Washington visit, Sweeney tells Insight, Sen. Frank Murkowski, R-Alaska, sent out an invitation to all sponsors of the Wilderness Bill offered by Sen. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., "inviting them to at least hear our side." Not one senator showed, she says, and only a single staffer.