“We are the addicts, the oil producers are the pushers.” —Thomas Friedman
I was born in Olympia, Washington, the literal end of the Oregon Trail and the western edge of the great Wild West. One of the first American history lessons I remember learning was about Crazy Horse and his Lakota warriors who defeated the US Cavalry in multiple battles, the most famous being the battle of Little Big Horn. That’s where Custer and his mercenaries got their karmic return for their role in the massacres of thousands of Native peoples. To this day, indigenous warriors still stand up to the big oil bullies in places like the Dakota Access Pipeline and the Alaskan Arctic, but the problem remains the same—indifference from a government that turns a blind eye to indigenous people and allows land grabs from oil companies that pollute our air, land, and water. It appears they even enjoy making us sicker with their gleeful deregulation of important laws that are designed to protect the health of the American people. Fortunately our original warriors are standing up to them, and so should the rest of us. This battle is for the survival of the entire planet.
I’ve always felt a deep connection with the landscapes of the northern territories, perhaps because I was born in the Pacific Northwest where we take a particular pride in our environment. Alaska, which is only separated from the continental US by the Canadian province of British Columbia, looks much like a bigger version of my own Washington State. Both of my grandfathers and my father have been drawn to Alaska for work and fishing trips, and I have visited to learn about the environment and the indigenous people who live there. I also see many parallels between Alaska and some of the more fragile ecosystems I have visited around the world.
I wanted to learn more about indigenous Alaskans, climate change, and environmental degradation, so in 2016 I accepted an invitation from the Gwich’in people and I made my way north to the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. When I finally saw the Refuge, it became immediately clear that climate change and the heavy use of fossil fuels have radically damaged the Arctic landscape.
I have been to Alaska 5 times now—once in 2006 when I went to see the powerful drum and dance performances at the Alaska Federation Of Nations, and 4 other times in 2015, 2016, 2018, and 2019 when I was a guest lecturer at the University of Alaska. Getting to the Alaskan Arctic however, is an entirely different matter. I had to fly from Seattle to Fairbanks, and then take a small bush plane that made multiple puddle jumps as we flew 200 miles north of the Arctic Circle, to a tiny village that the Gwich’in call Vashraii K’oo, also known as Arctic Village. It’s the last spec of human civilization before you reach the shores of the Arctic Ocean, and everything in between is one of the wildest and most beautiful places on Earth.
From the air, the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge looks remarkably like the Amazon Rainforest, with its winding rivers, thousands of lakes, and vivid green forests. But if the world is unable to stop Brazil from destroying the Amazon Rainforest (and that government appears hell- bent on doing so), how will the rest of us prevent the destruction of our own North American wilderness from oil drilling, mining, and other extractive industries? Our personal actions and voting decisions right now will affect every generation of human beings to come, so we must weigh our options seriously, and we must act decisively.
I arrived with about 7 other environmentalists as our bush plane touched down on the gravel runway of Arctic Village. There we were met by a fleet of 4-wheelers driven by Gwich’in women. It’s ironic that 4-wheelers are the norm up here and not trucks—vehicles cannot even get this far north except on a river barge, as there are no roads to Arctic Village. Gas is approaching $10 a gallon, and 4-wheelers are a much more efficient mode of transportation. But how is it that gas in this northernmost part of Alaska is so expensive, when the oil companies are extracting millions of dollars of crude oil every day right out of the Gwich’in backyard? I began to see immediately how the oil companies steal from the people, and then sell the stolen goods right back to them, like an addict who is dependent on a dealer who offers no other alternative but the one drug he sells.
As I sat in my tent on the soft tundra near the cabin of the famed Gwich’in activist Sarah James, I started writing out some initial questions: Why would we, as conscious Americans, let a handful of oil and gas companies destroy one of the last pristine corners of our country? It is estimated by the oil experts themselves that there is only about a year’s worth of American petroleum needs in the Alaskan Arctic, so why would they risk destroying this incredible corner of the Earth for just one year of oil? The answer, of course, is in corporate greed and the whitewashing of the facts.
I say “whitewashing” because politicians and oil lobbyists would have you believe that the Arctic Refuge is a snow and ice-covered wasteland devoid of all life, and therefore a legitimate place for exploitation. This is absolutely false, and in fact, it is exactly the opposite. True, for about 5 months in the middle of winter the Refuge is covered with snow, but so are Montana, Colorado, and much of the Midwestern and New England states. The other 7 months of the year, from about April through October, the Refuge is one of the greenest and most beautiful places you will ever see on Earth. There is an abundance of water, enormous fish and bird populations, and a boreal forest, which supports caribou herds that number in the tens of thousands. It’s also one of the main habitats for grizzly and polar bears, wolves, and a massive bird migration system that is unrivaled on the planet.
The Refuge is where the vast majority of our planet’s migrating birds converge before they make their journeys around the world. They come here to gorge on the insect populations that thrive in the rivers and lakes, to breed and raise their young, and then they depart on lengthy transoceanic flights. This includes flying across the Pacific Ocean to Australia, New Zealand, Japan, Asia, as well as South America, and even all the way to the Antarctic, as the Arctic Tern does every year. It is, to make a commercial aviation comparison, the Heathrow Airport of the bird kingdom. Over the course of the ten days I spent in Arctic Village, Sarah James explained to me the tenuous situation of the Refuge and the plight of the Gwich’in people. Sarah, who was born and raised here, has almost single-handedly raised the Refuge to a global conversation. She learned how to survive as a child by learning the qualities of love and respect, both for the land and her people, and this has become her greatest power—a quality she exudes. Visiting her modest cabin, I see pictures of Sarah with world leaders, American presidents, and environmental awards from almost every institution that matters. She is the real thing, a literal force of nature, and she wins over everyone with her charm and gregarious approach. She also has the facts on her side.
On my first day in the village, Sarah gave me a copy of the excellent book, “Arctic Voices,” which is a series of essays written by notable scholars, travelers, and environmentalists on the Arctic situation. Every evening in my tent on the tundra, I read these essays in the waning light of the midnight sun, which briefly dipped below the horizon for about 3 hours every evening.
The following day I go for a walk with the renowned Gwich’in hunter and outdoorsman, Charlie Swaney, and everything is revealed. Tall, handsome, and about 60 years of age, Mr. Swaney has been interviewed by almost every hunting and sporting magazine in the world—he’s actually quite a celebrity in that arena. Quiet and easy going like a cowboy, he and his men have just returned with the last of 8 caribou they’ve hunted to feed the gathering of Gwich’in who have arrived in the village for the biennial meeting over the next 4 days.
Charlie speaks in a soft, measured voice as he tells me about life in the Refuge, where he has seen a number of alarming problems related to global warming. For example, the layer of permafrost under the tundra, which dates back to the last Ice Age, is melting fast and this is causing the tree roots to loosen, which in turn causes the trees to fall over in all directions. This “falling forest” as they call it, is a disturbing sight to see because you can tell something is very wrong with the landscape. Charlie hands me his binoculars and I see an entire forest of formerly healthy trees leaning and tipping over in very unnatural ways. It’s a terrible thing to behold—a forest falling down.
Charlie also describes huge upheavals in the topsoil, where ancient methane gas bubbles are released by the melting permafrost, which then rise through the soil to create huge earthen mounds. This is causing riverbanks to crumble, which in turn are making the rivers far shallower, a serious danger for the spawning salmon that swim in the innumerable waterways of the Refuge. Charlie remarks about it being over 80 degrees in Barrow a few days earlier, up on the northern coast of the Arctic Ocean. I am stunned by his statement, but I look it up when I return to Seattle and indeed, it was literally 80 degrees in Barrow, Alaska. The Arctic is warming 3 times faster than any other part of the planet, and this is because the more fragile an ecosystem is, the more rapidly it will reflect the climate change.
Charlie shows me some fast-growing underbrush, which is mostly scrub willow. It used to grow short and close to the ground, but because of the warming temperatures, it is now growing much taller. This highly unusual growth spurt is now disrupting the natural migration routes of the enormous Caribou herds, the one animal Charlie has hunted, studied, and revered his entire life. This is because the Caribou need open, clear tundra to see where they are going, but the fast-growing underbrush is blocking their vision and causing them to lose their way. The situation is extremely dire for the preservation of these Caribou herds, which are the main source of food for both the Gwich’in and other Inuit and Inupiat peoples who live on or near the Arctic coast.
All of the things Charlie describes I see from an even larger perspective at his hunting camp high up in the Brooks Range. A grizzly has come through recently and shredded one of his large canvas army tents as if it were made of paper, which makes Charlie chuckle and my eyes grow wide. From this vantage point, I can see the falling forest all around us, the giant methane mounds (they are everywhere), and the high-growing scrub willow. The Refuge is still extraordinarily beautiful, but something looks wrong, and you can feel it in your gut.
Because of the worsening situation in the Refuge, the biennial meeting is really about sounding the alarm to the greater world’s attention. Elders and environmental experts from all over the US, Canada, and even South America have come here to share their stories on the changes in the Arctic, where indigenous people have lived continuously for over 20,000 years. This awareness and activism came to a head 30 years ago, in 1988, when the first Gwich’in leaders met to discuss the impact of the oil companies in the Refuge. It was just one year later, in 1989, when the oil tanker Exxon Valdez ran into an Alaskan reef, and spilled 38 million gallons of crude oil into Prince William Sound. That spill destroyed almost all the sea life in the sound, including the livelihoods of the people who lived around that magnificent corner of the Earth. Prince William Sound has never fully recovered, and that was just the first of many oil spills to come: in the Nigerian Delta, the Deepwater Horizon in the Gulf of Mexico, the Dakota Access Pipeline (still leaking as of this story), and other places around the world where ongoing oil spills and full-blown disasters have contaminated and destroyed entire ecosystems.
Every afternoon there are talks and teachings by experts, and the young people speak too. It is inspiring to hear the next generation talk about preserving the Gwich’in language, their music, traditions, and practices that are linked to honoring and protecting the Refuge. Ask any American hunter and they’ll say the same thing: hunting wild animals also means being a protector of the land, water, and the habitats in which those animals reside, because everything is connected and inseparable. This is the difference between the ecological hunter who reveres the land, taking only what he needs, versus the extractive corporation that takes everything for corporate profit, the environment be damned.
On the third afternoon of the conference, a very powerful woman from the Sarayaku people in the Ecuadorian Amazon gives a testimonial of how her tribe successfully fought off an illegal invasion by a foreign oil company. The women went first in the attack, the men following closely behind, as the women disarmed the guards, took all of their clothing, and then marched them out of their territory in their underwear, all without a shot being fired. The Ecuadorian government was forced to admit their own illegal collusion with the oil company, but these are the kinds of shady, illegal deals that happen all over Latin America, where the politicians are bought and sold like potatoes in a market, very much like American politicians today.
Another indigenous woman from the Cordillera people in the Philippine highlands tells her story, this time about a mining company that is currently destroying her people’s land, paying no royalties or reparations for the minerals they have extracted, or the damage they have caused to the land. Again, it’s the same pattern we hear over and over in developing countries, where extractive corporations destroy the land and the people, and then move on to the next place without regard to the damage and death they have inflicted.
All of this legitimate frustration and anger is muted slightly in the evenings when the music starts up and the people begin to dance. At night in the large communal building where we’ve been meeting, the local musicians tune up their guitars and fiddles, people clear away the plastic picnic tables that have served as conference tables, and a dance floor emerges in the middle of the chaos. The music starts up and it’s roughly the equivalent of a Texas two-step, as people leap out of their seats to dance ferocious jigs. It’s a total Arctic hoedown and everyone is laughing and singing.
As the conference winds down in the waning days of August, the village starts to thin out as people hop on the single, daily flight back to Fairbanks. My plane leaves in a couple of days but I want to get out on the land and see a little more of the Refuge before I go—it’s just so magical up here. I meet another gentleman, the Italian skier Ario Sciolaria who, back in the winter of 2005-2006, skied the entire length of Alaska from Valdez Sound all the way to the Inuit village of Kaktovic, about 4,000 kilometers north on the Arctic coast. He did this completely by himself, pulling a sled of camping supplies, often snowshoeing when he couldn’t ski. It was a slow journey that took him 5 months to complete, but Mr. Sciolaria did it to raise awareness about the Refuge.
We spoke for a few hours as we walked around the land, Ario speaking with eyes of wonder about the magical qualities of the Refuge, where the Aurora Borealis illuminates the snow brighter than any flashlight you can carry. He encountered a pack of wolves that followed him at a safe distance, because as Ario believes, they were protecting him from a huge grizzly bear that had been stalking his trail. When he finally reached the north slope of the Refuge, he encountered the legendary caribou herds that explorers have written about for two centuries.
The Refuge is a sacred place, full of life, death, and rebirth, but it is also where the oil companies want to drill, which will certainly disrupt the herds, pollute the air, land, and water, and create an imbalance in the bird and animal populations that have existed here for thousands of years.
Is this what 240 years of American democracy has brought to us, where we can’t even protect our own sacred lands from the oil drill? We are the citizens of this nation, all of us together, and that means we have a responsibility to keep our country safe from the ravages of these corporations and their toxic products. The most recent UN report on climate change and global warming has raised the alarm bells to the highest level—we are almost out of time before our warming planet goes past the tipping point of no return.
From time to time, a line in the sand must be drawn, and this time that line is in the Arctic snow.