The Last Hunters

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The Inupiat Eskimo face a major fiscal crisis: Prudhoe Bay will inevitably run out of oil. They would profit tremendously from the refuge oil sales, taxes, and jobs, and therefore see the refuge as the answer to a troubling economic forecast. Previous estimates predicted that the Prudhoe wells would go dry by the year 2000. Recent advances in oil extraction techniques, however, such as pumping natural gas into wells to force out additional petroleum, have delivered millions more barrels. Current estimates predict Prudhoe Bay will deliver well into the 2030s. The Inupiat remain strongly in favor of drilling in the refuge despite the extension.

Is this a clash of tribes? Not really, maintains Bob Childers, senior adviser to the Gwich'in Steering Committee. "We're neutral with respect to what the Inupiat do with their own lands," says Childers. The Gwich'in do not oppose the Inupiat's leasing of lands to oil developers, nor do they oppose oil prospecting in general.

The Inupiat, on the other hand, are not united in the campaign to open up 1002. "There are traditional Inupiat that are concerned for our situation and [the Gwich'in's] traditional native ways," says Sarah James. Yet, James asserts, the oil corporation ends up being the political voice of the Inupiat people.

Childers believes oil companies and the Alaska congressional delegation have used the Inupiat's Arctic Slope Regional Corporation for its own agenda. "This is an example of white oil corporations coming in and making a people dependent on their services for money and jobs, and then persuading them to act in ways they normally wouldn't." His statement may come off as an inflammatory conspiracy theory, but in fact the Alaska congressional delegation has prevented the Inupiat from developing oil reserves on their own land by linking Inupiat drilling rights to the opening of the refuge. By doing so, Childers asserts, the oil interests have pitted the Inupiat against the Gwich'in, dividing and weakening native power in Alaska.

The Inupiat feel they are acting on their own behalf. "Prudhoe Bay has transformed an area that was in third world conditions to an area that is like the rest of America," says Alma Upicksoun, a spokeswoman for Arctic Slope Regional Corporation. The Inupiat people are proud of their achievement, having transformed one of the harshest environments in the world into a modern habitat. Critics feel the Inupiat community has overextended itself and is now desperate to generate new oil income to maintain an increasingly fragile infrastructure.

Ironically, the Inupiat oppose offshore oil exploration in the Beaufort Sea. They fear an oil spill could significantly reduce the population of the bowhead whale, the traditional game of the Inupiat Eskimo. But, as Childers points out, the Inupiat's fear of drilling in the Beaufort Sea stems from the risk of accident, while drilling in the refuge could be devastating "even if they do everything right."

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