Alaska conflicted over mining push, indigenous customs
Fish camps still show the shores of the Broad Kuskokwim River in southwest of Alaska.
Wooden huts and tar shelters stand next to the drying shelves covered with bright red salmon strips.
Alaska native families gathered fish for generations and protected them for the next bitter winters.
However, once abundant salmon populations have fallen so sharply in recent years that the authorities have seriously restricted fishing in the second longest river of Alaska.
They brought even more strict restrictions to the Yukon River in the north.
Various factors are accused of salmon collapse from climate change to commercial fishing applications.
Open, the effect is not only the food, but also the long-standing rituals-ages connect to a sacred connection to the younger generations and stories of fish camps.
Imiz Our families are together to make us survive, Y Yup’ik Gloria Simeon said, Bet Bethel said.
“This Fish College Camp.”
Therefore, when Alaska Natives discuss the suggestions to drill the landscape of the country’s largest state, to make mine, or to develop it in another way, it contains more than an environmental or economic question.
At the same time a spiritual and cultural one.
Simeon, who stands out of his backyard smoke house, where he used birch-parking and cotton tree stumps to maintain this year’s salmon capture, said, ız We have a special spiritual, religious relationship with our river and land. ”
“Our people have been officials of this land for thousands of years, and we took this relationship seriously.”
Put a needle to almost every part of the Alaska map and you are likely to hit an area with a proposed mine, a new wild road, a log area, a oil well, or a natural gas pipeline.
Such discussions concentrated in the second period of US President Donald Trump.
The administration and allies forced them aggressively for drilling, mining and development in Alaska’s public lands.
Domestic leaders and activists are divided into projects.
While supporters say that they are pushing the environment and traditions, they say that they bring business and pay for infrastructure.
Trump has chosen Alaska as a priority for subtracting projects with an executive order that signed on his first day.
Open the lock of this natural reserve award, helps to increase the economic and national security of our country while increasing the welfare of our citizens, ”he said.
Increasingly, words are moving.
In July, the Congress passed Trump’s budget bill, while the Arctic national natural life shelter allowed four new oil and gas renting in the coastal plain and still in other places.
Trump cabinet officials made a high-profile visit to the Gulf of Prudhoe in the distant north of Alaska in June-an aging oil field, one of the largest in North America.
They introduced their objectives to double the oil and build a large natural gas pipeline as a “great, beautiful twin” by passing through Alaska’s existing pipeline system.
It takes years for the proposed subtraction projects to emerge.
The scope of oil reserves in the North Pole Shelter remains uncertain.
There is no proposal for a large oil company for the sale of only two rent in the Arctic shelter.
However, the measures pushed by the new administration and the congress are based on the latest pendulum emissions among the republican and democratic presidents among the policies that prioritize environmental protections.
The budget invoice calls for additional rental sales in the National Oil Reserve-Alaska in the west of the North Pole Shelter, and opens more space than the authorized in the latest democratic administrations.
The political leaders of Alaska generally applauded more subtraction pressure, including the Republican Congress delegation and the governor who called the state of the “America’s natural resource warehouse ..
There are some local leaders who say that their communities continue to benefit from jobs and revenues.
They say that such projects are critical for the economic expectations and self -determination of their own fate, that they provide employment and that their communities help to pay for schools, streets and snow lifting.
Pj Simon, the first chef of the Council of the Council of the Council, said, ız We need jobs. Our people need education. To stand on our own feet. Our children need the future. ”
However, domestic opponents of such projects say that short -term economic gains are at risk of long -term environmental impacts to be echoed.
“We are seen as the last limit, like our unlimited resources, Soph, Sophie Swope, General Manager of the Environmental Defense Group Anne Kuskokwim Tribal Coalition.
He said that the most renewable resources of Alaska, such as salmon, deer and other migratory wildlife, are threatened by both extreme aggressive ocean fisheries and extractional industries.
“There is a lack of respect for our traditional livelihood lifestyles,” he said.
Oil drilling opponents in the North Pole Shelter are afraid that Karibu, which the indigenous people hunted for a thousand years, will permanently disrupt the long -range migration.
A large herd of Karibu goes to the coastal plain of the shelter in the spring to calm in the spring before a fan of Alaska and Canada, providing an important food source for domestic hunters in Alaska and Canada.
If the migration of the herd is disrupted, competitors are afraid of a salmon collapse – not only food, but also the focus of culture and spirituality.
Simeon said that the deterioration of social hunting and fishing activities leads to a spiritual rootlessness that he believes to contribute to anxious addiction and suicide rates among Alaska indigenous people.
“What do you do to your heart and soul when you need to look at a empty smoke house after years, and you can’t make your family?” Simeon said.
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