Native Perspectives on Drilling in Alaska National Wildlife Refuge

The Chicago Tribune has a lengthy article on the impact of impending drilling in the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge on caribou hunting Gwitchin people. The article lays out the problems facing the Gwitchin and the caribou today and how they will be magified if drilling goes ahead. Writer Paul Salopek has done a nice job with this, weaving a lot of history and ethnographic observation into a detailed study of the problems facing northern hunting communities.

I appreciate his opening vignette. In it, he describes a Gwitchin elder hunting caribou. Besides noting that not all hunts are successful, Salopek conveys something of the challenges and ambiguities surrounding hunting for food. From the article:

Old Stephen Frost is preparing to kill a caribou.

The Gwitchin Indian elder stands in his skiff on this silver-skinned stream in Canada’s vast and wild Yukon Territory. He shoulders a heavy .30-.30 rifle. And he fires twice at eight of the deer-like animals swimming the sparkling currents — Whang! Whang!

The herd is only 20 feet away. But, inexplicably, the bullets go high. The caribou scramble ashore unscathed.

Peering back at Frost with the large, frank eyes of children, the animals vanish into a maze of willow branches dense as basketry.

“Lousy luck,” Frost rasps.

The 72-year-old woodsman, a weather-beaten crag of a man who likes to come across as hard-boiled, mutters excuses. He blames the rocking boat. He curses his aging, unsteady legs. But he is a bad actor.

Later, he will pass up more opportunities to kill caribou. And, forgetting his lousy luck altogether, he will shoot other game with heedless skill–plugging a beaver through the eye and blasting a duck out of the water at 40 yards.

“Them caribou ain’t got much of a future,” he finally admits, uneasily. “To be honest, I’m glad to see ‘em get out of rifle range.”

Frost is referring to the central catastrophe facing his obscure tribe of Arctic hunters: The once-mighty Porcupine caribou herd, which has been the main food source of his people since the last Ice Age, is dwindling, nobody knows exactly why. And now, controversially, the U.S. government wants to drill for oil in the caribous’ calving grounds in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or ANWR, just across the Alaskan border.

There’s lots more in the article and it is worth a read.

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