Defending Caribou Culture

In one of the most unforgettable scenes in Dances With Wolves, tens of thousands of buffalo thunder across the vast plains of the 19th-century American Midwest. The image was quite a feat for the film's cinematographers, because those thundering herds, of course, no longer exist--victims, along with the people dependent on them for survival, of one of the greatest animal slaughters in history.

Magnificent herds of that scale still thunder across the prairie in this country, but they're not in the midwestern plains--and they're not buffalo. Hundreds of thousands of caribou--"reindeer"--still roam the expansive tundra of Alaska's North Slope. And native people still depend on these wild animals for their food, their spirituality, their very survival.

These Indians--the Gwich'in tribe of northeastern Alaska and northwestern Canada, the northernmost Indian nation on the continent--have for 10,000 years coexisted with the caribou.

"We are caribou people," Sarah James, a Gwich'in spokesperson from Arctic Village, Alaska, said. "We still do caribou dance, sing caribou song, wear the hide, use bone for tools, and tell the story. Caribou is how we get from one year to another."

Lately the Gwich'in have become key players in a high-stakes drama. An unfortunate coincidence has propelled this group of 7,000 aboriginal people to center stage: American oil companies want to drill for black gold in the coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, where the Porcupine (River) caribou go each year to give birth. The oil companies are hoping for a windfall from the Arctic Refuge, where profits could be as much as $20 billion if they "hit it big"--although the chances are only one in five of finding oil in an amount equal to what the country consumes in a mere 200 days.

An invasion by the oil prospectors--with the attendant roads and airstrips, toxic wastes and air pollution--could do irreparable damage to the fragile tundra ecosystem, and could decimate the caribou herd that is the Gwich'in's primary means of survival.

The oil-drilling complex at Prudhoe Bay, 60 miles away, stands as a warning of what may happen if the Arctic Refuge is opened for drilling. The Central Arctic caribou herd, which calves near Prudhoe Bay, has suffered three straight years of high death rates among its newborns, while other herds in the area continue to have normal rates. The Gwich'in fear that similar oil development in the coastal plain could destroy their culture and way of life.

"It is the belief of our people that the future of the Gwich'in and the future of the caribou are the same," said Jonathan Solomon, a Gwich'in elder. "We cannot stand by and let them sell our children's heritage to the oil companies."

FACED WITH THAT THREAT, the Gwich'in have not stood by. Beginning in the late 1980s, the tribe began to organize to protect themselves by educating the world about their situation. In 1988, Gwich'in people from the United States and Canada gathered in Arctic Village and created the Gwich'in Steering Committee to "protect our people, caribou, land, and water."

Few listened--until the 1989 wreck of the Exxon Valdez, at the other end of the Alaska pipeline from Prudhoe Bay (one of more than 200 spills since 1980 involving tankers in the North Slope crude trade). The oil spill in Prince William Sound temporarily stopped talk of new drilling in the Arctic Refuge.

But the pause didn't last. In 1991 the oil companies renewed their attempt to open the coastal plain for development, with support from Alaska state officials and the Bush administration. Environmentalists scored an important victory in November when Senate legislation to develop the refuge was tabled without a floor vote, and sponsors indicated that they wouldn't try again for at least a year.

The Arctic Refuge legislation was part of a so-called national energy strategy, which actually served to spotlight the Bush administration's utter lack of vision in the area of energy policy. While the 1991 bill had some constructive elements, on the whole it was profoundly flawed, even apart from the oil drilling aspect. The Bush administration and Republican leadership still strongly support existing, entrenched, highly centralized energy sources--fossil fuels and nuclear power--at the expense of developing clean, renewable sources such as solar, geothermal, wind, biomass, and small hydroelectric.

The Bush policy ignores the greatest untapped domestic energy source of all: the conversion of the country's huge inventory of inefficient cars, buildings, and industrial plants. For example, simply by increasing fuel economy standards for cars to 40 miles per gallon, in the next 30 years we would save more than 20 billion barrels of oil--six times the unproven resources that may lie within the Arctic Refuge, according to the Natural Resources Defense Council.

The coalition that forestalled drilling in the refuge focused primarily on the harm that would be done to the fragile Arctic environment. It was not seen, even by most of those who sought to stop the oil development, as a human rights issue. Not surprising, the Gwich'in viewed the struggle all along in more personal terms.

"This is not just an environmental issue," Sarah James said. "It is about the survival of an ancient culture that depends on the caribou. It is about our basic tribal and human right to continue our way of life."

SOON AFTER THE VICTORY in the Senate, the Gwich'in Indians were accused of being "hypocritical" for opposing oil activity in the coastal plain while having previously allowed oil exploration on their own lands in the mid-'80s.

The Gwich'in lands, however, are hundreds of miles away from the caribou breeding grounds. The caribou travel across thousands of miles each year to return for calving to one specific area on the coastal plain, for which there is no substitute. What's more, the Gwich'in who had allowed oil exploration before 1985 have blocked it since then, fearing the explosions used in the search for oil might harm the ground squirrels, muskrats, fish, and other animals in the area.

The Gwich'in Indians are determined to continue the struggle until the Arctic Refuge is designated a wilderness area, protecting it from development. For them, what is at stake is not only preserving nature, but keeping alive a centuries-old way of life. What needs to be respected is not only the Arctic ecosystem, but an ages-old and still vital human culture as well. During this year in which the country marks the 500th anniversary of Columbus' arrival, what could be more fitting than that?

Jim Rice is editor of Sojourners.