Alaska Natives
The Gwich’in: People Of The Caribou
Caribou from the Porcupine Herd, for which the Coastal Plain of the Arctic Refuge is critically-important habitat, is the key subsistence food resource for the Gwich’in Nation. There are about nine thousand Gwich’in people who live in fifteen small villages along the migration route of the Porcupine Caribou Herd in Northern Alaska and Canada. According to the oral history of their people, the Gwich’in have occupied this area for tens of thousands of years — since time immemorial.
The Porcupine caribou herd is central to the Gwich’in’s very existence, providing food, clothing and the central link to their traditional ways. In fact, Gwich’in means “people of the caribou,” an apt name for indigenous peoples who so heavily rely on this majestic animal. Each spring they watch first the pregnant cows, and later the bulls and yearlings, leave their country for their northern migration to the Coastal Plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the caribou birthing place and nursing grounds. The birthplace of the Porcupine River Caribou Herd is considered Sacred. The Gwich’in call it “Iizhik Gwats’an Gwandaii Goodlit” (The Sacred Place Where Life Begins).
Since the beginnings of the political battle over the biological heart of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the Gwich’in people have spoke in a unified voice in opposition to drilling on the Coastal Plain. Because the Gwich’in’s culture is at stake in whether to protect or drill the Refuge, the choice is not just a defining environmental issue, but one of fundamental human rights as well.
The Inupiaq Eskimos
The Inupiaq Eskimos of Northern Alaska live in an area that stretches from the most Northwest region of the state, across the North Slope to the northern Canadian border and beyond. Their territory also includes most of the Brooks Range. The Inupiaq village of Kaktovik is located within the borders of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.
Today, as in the past, the food for the Inupiaq people is determined by the region and season of the year. Their diet is based largely on active subsistence hunting and traditional use of foods such as berries, salmon, moose, caribou, whale, walrus, seal, duck, and other marine mammals to provide substantial portions of the traditional diet. Subsistence whaling, a traditional activity dating back thousands of years, provides for a large part of the Inpuiaq diet and is an activity upon which much of the Inupiaq culture is based.
Impacts from the changing climate of the Arctic, expounded by increased oil and gas activity both on and off-shore, have caused many Alaska Natives who have traditionally been supportive of oil and gas development to band together in support of protecting critical areas like the Arctic Refuge and the Arctic Ocean from further development.
