Community Conversations

 

Human Rights and Natural Resources

A paper prepared by Deland S. Anderson for the Pratt Museum in conjunction with a Community Conversation on 16 March 2007

A small but vocal group assembled to discuss human rights and natural resources. Much of the conversation revolved around the dynamic of universal human rights (especially subsistence and traditional use of lands) and resource extraction. The focus was Bristol Bay in southwest Alaska, but extended to other regions in Alaska, and to Canada, Siberia, the South Pacific, and Southeast Asia as well.

The industrial extraction of resources from the land is not a traditional use. Indigenous cultures in Alaska did not practice mining, pursue mineral extraction, or develop a timber industry prior to white contact. Since the advent of the Russian fur trade in Alaska, each of these routes to economic gain have been established and promoted by European visitors or settlers. Often this would have been impossible without the removal of native cultures from their traditional lands. So one of the costs of doing business in Alaska for Outside consortiums was to depopulate the land. Sometimes this was done through murder and warfare; sometimes enslavement and terrorism; sometimes missionary and or educational indoctrination. Other times less direct means did the job—such as the flu pandemic of 1918. In any case, a direct corollary is to be noted between resource extraction and depopulation of native cultures. This is of course not unique to Alaska. It has worldwide application. And it is not limited to the distant past. Nor even to the recent past. It continues in the present, and will reach into the future unless changes are made in the way colonial powers do business in their frontier regions. Consider, for example, how the cost of diesel fuel in the Alaskan bush is unraveling the fabric of ANILCA, especially its clauses having to do with traditional use of traditional lands. No one will remain in contact with traditional lands if they have to abandon them due to exorbitantly high fuel costs. It is perhaps not too farfetched to imagine that the multinational corporations that control the cost of fuel are intentionally depopulating the bush in order to pursue yet another round of resource extraction on a new terra nullius.

On this score, one person noted how economic forces were driving native peoples in from the bush. Relocated to the Mat-Su valley and Anchorage, these people have been catapulted into the frontlines of social challenges. Without the support of the traditional culture of the village, all too often these individuals succumb to social ills. For, like any displaced person, they are vulnerable to the negative influences of society, such as poverty, substance abuse, domestic violence, under-employment, and ill health. In a traditional culture, everyone has a role, and that role has meaning. In an urban environment only those with gainful employment are fully valued. But, with the deleterious effects of social dysfunction, such employment is extremely difficult to realize. Consequently the move from village life to urban life is frequently tinged with a sense of meaninglessness.

Such a sense of meaninglessness has been a factor in life for native peoples since white contact in Alaska. This is because the pursuit of raw wealth through resource extraction has been coextensive with the devaluation of traditional lifestyles. Many incremental steps are involved in this process of acculturation. They vary somewhat depending upon the extraction industry involved. But some of the steps are universal and cover the gamut from whaling and sealing, to gold mining and oil drilling, to salmon and timber harvest. Paramount is the restriction of movement within traditional lands and a consequent denial of access to traditional resources. Economic, ideological, and civic forces are put into play in order to effect this change. A cash economy (usually debt-ridden) replaces barter and subsistence economies. Nationalism and Christianity are substituted for clan or tribal governments and their respective sacred belief systems. Compulsory public education, taxation, and military service supplant traditional wisdom practices. Those indigenous persons who thrive in the context of such pervasive social change become assimilated into the general population. Those who do not, remain as remnants of an uprooted culture or they just die.

But it’s not really as clear cut as European descendants versus indigenous peoples. That’s because in today’s world indigenous cultures themselves practice resource extraction on their traditional lands. And through the structure of corporate culture, native peoples even practice resource extraction in far-flung lands, on frontiers they have never visited. This is something they have been taught by the dominant culture. But when such practices appear to undermine the lifestyle or infringe on the rights of the dominant culture, social unrest results.

One participant at the conversation brought up a case in point. Native tribes on the Kenai Peninsula have recently won the right to return to traditional use practices on the Kenai and Kasilof rivers. This enables them to use set gill nets in the rivers. Non-natives do not share this right. Furthermore, these streams are world-class destinations for anglers, and the sport fishing they support is a mainstay of local economies. Add to that the competition of commercial fishers and personal use fishers for this limited resource, and the result is troubled waters indeed. Another common source of social unrest between natives and non-natives is preference being given to native groups and individuals for economic support or incentive. A native tribe, for example, might be eligible for a federal block grant that enables it to corner the market on a local service or industry. Non-natives often simmer with resentment over such situations. Locally people are heard to cry foul over what they say is the unfair advantage gained recently by native-backed tourist ventures or health care services. Others fear what would happen to their water taxi businesses if Seldovia implements its plans for a cross-bay ferry system.

These and other like conflicts arise because two seemingly contradictory social principles are at work. On one hand, the native peoples of Alaska are citizens with the same rights and responsibilities as anyone else living in the United States. So everything’s equal. On the other hand, these are peoples who have been and continue to be displaced and socially disadvantaged by an invading colonial people. So everything is not equal. Consequently special services are implemented in order to counterbalance some of this social disadvantage. Additionally, cases continue to be won in court that recognize native rights of lands and resources—in some instances long after such lands or resources have been alienated by the dominant culture. The “level playing field” so valued by laissez-faire capitalists then appears to be a shifting landscape. This leads to a conflicted population and deeply confused individuals. For example, one guy told a story of how he once cut down a massive Sitka spruce tree in Southeast for firewood. He and his cohorts stole it from their neighbor. But since that neighbor happened to be a native Alaskan tribe, they considered the tree fair game and thought nothing of the theft.

The United Nations, however, says that indigenous peoples around the world have a right to preserve their traditional lifestyles without undue pressure from non-indigenous peoples. This includes such things as a clean environment, first right on water, the right to education in their mother language, the right to traditional food, material, and ritual resources, and the right to perform traditional festivals and ceremonies undisturbed in recognized sacred sites. In Alaska , for example, native leaders have appealed to the United Nations to pressure the host countries of multinational resource extraction corporations to respect the rights of the people living in contact with traditional lands. A conspicuous case involves the Canadian-owned multinational mining consortium Northern Dynasty and Bristol Bay natives in southwest Alaska. Northern Dynasty has designs on developing a major open pit mine in the headwaters of Bristol Bay, amidst streams that support the world’s largest run of wild salmon. Concerned that local, state, and federal agencies will not be willing or able to protect the pristine habitat of the region against the effects of mine development, Bristol Bay natives have gone to the United Nations. They recognize that their native culture depends upon the quality of the environment in the region. This has been true since time immemorial. So degradation of that environment constitutes a direct threat to their way of life. The United Nations has the power and authority to pressure the federal government of Canada to assure that Northern Dynasty and its sub-contractors will not damage the ecosystem of the region. Conceivably such mitigating measures could include a complete prohibition of mining in the region. Similar concerns have been voiced recently over plans by the federal government and private concerns to develop offshore oil resources in Bristol Bay.

Another case of the same sort comes from Alaska’s North Slope. In the face of extensive onshore and offshore oil and gas development in the region, and wearied by insistent corporate and government pressure to develop even greater deposits in the area (most notably prospects in Alaska National Wildlife Refuge), native elders have made the following argument before international bodies, including the United Nations: We pursue a traditional lifestyle rooted in thousands of years of indigenous wisdom. That way of life is dependent upon a cold climate. Ice, frost, snow, and wind are essential to survival in this tradition. But the extraction and use of fossil fuels has led to extreme and rapid warming in the arctic. Since the 1970s, elders have warned of the effects they have witnessed in a changing climate. Snows disappear earlier. Ice freezes later. Permafrost melts. And, due to a phenomenon known as extreme solar refraction, the sun returns to the high arctic earlier each year, stays longer, and burns significantly hotter. All this results from burning fossil fuels. And all this makes traditional life miserable. Soon it may become impossible. If it goes, a venerable wisdom tradition will expire with it. And yet the oil companies want to drill more. But we have a right to the cold!

Alaska has led the nation in the struggle to recognize the rights of indigenous peoples. Here are a few conspicuous examples. In the late 50s, the Inupiat of Point Hope took on the Atomic Energy Commission and Edward Teller’s mad plan of detonating gigantic nuclear bombs to sculpt out a harbor on the shores of the Chukchi Sea. In the 1970s, the elders of Barrow staged a “duck protest”, where hunters defied the Federal Migratory Bird Treaty Act and its determination that ducks could only be hunted once they had already flown south for the winter. In the 1990s, Athabaskan elder Katie Johns fought successfully for the right to traditional use of salmon in the Copper River drainage. Throughout its history, Alaska has served as a beacon of hope for all of America’s native peoples. It has also acted as a counterbalance to the overreaching interests of national and international resource extraction concerns. ANILCA and ANCSA stand as monuments in that ongoing battle. Perhaps most important of all for the future, the ecological activism of Alaska Natives has played a crucial role in the development of environmentalism in the non-native population. In a very real sense, then, the native peoples of Alaska do not belong to the past, but are the hope for the future.

But if Alaska is a leader in recognizing the rights of traditional cultures, the nation it joined in the Statehood Act of 1959 is another matter altogether. The United States is far out-shadowed by other nations around the globe in terms of recognizing traditional cultures and their right to self-determination. The present administration is so extreme in this regard that it has managed to sow dissension in the cultures of native peoples. Patriotic natives find themselves alienated from traditional values and those who support them. Even with fuel at a staggering cost of $10.00/gallon, some natives have publicly spoken out against Venezuelan subsidy programs in the bush, because they believe accepting subsidized fuel would show disrespect for the President of the United States. Add to that the fact that the current administration’s power stems ultimately from oil wealth, and one begins to see the double-bind of being native in Alaska today—be true at once to one’s traditional values of living on the land and to the call to patriotism.

One of the participants at the conversation noted that the development of energy independence is critical to traditional life styles. It is hard to imagine that many would want to revert to a life fueled only by a seal oil lamp. That may well have great symbolic effect, enough perhaps to usher in a renaissance of traditional values, but it would be only in the most extreme circumstances that it could once again become the norm. So, alternative energy emerges as a possibility. Alaska is made up of many regions, and the resources vary from place to place. But each place seems to have great alternative energy potential. Geothermal is a real possibility along the Aleutian chain and up the Alaska Peninsula. Also along the upper Yukon valley hot springs indicate a significant potential for geothermal power production. Finally, the stratospheric volcanoes of the Wrangell Mountains present geothermal possibilities. In south central Alaska, tidal energy exists in abundance. Southeastern Alaska has countless possible sites for more traditional hydropower generation, whether in the form of dams or underground spillways. Wind and solar in combination could well fuel the needs of the people from the North Slope all the way along the coast to southwest Alaska. And this is, of course, only to mention the mainstream candidates for alternative energy production.

A conflict of worldviews looms on Alaska’s horizon. This conflict is emblematic of the designs nominated for the Alaska quarter to be issued by the US Treasury in 2008. Given the options, either Alaska is the last best place to continue the extraction of raw wealth from free land, or Alaska will lead the nation and perhaps the world in the challenge to balance our footprint on the land with the health of the environment. Choose either the sourdough panning for gold or the polar bear looking for ice.

A lesson for Alaskans can be drawn from across the Pacific Ocean. The indigenous Yolngu people of far northern Australia have sent a message to the rest of us. Faced with intense pressure from Rio Tinto and other multinational mining firms to relinquish traditional lands to uranium and bauxite extraction, and a changing ecosystem due to radical and rapid climate shift, Yolgnu elders have issued a warning. It is at once dire and wholesome—unless you act to preserve our way of life, we will all be rubbed out. You have denied us our traditional way of life. And we have suffered greatly. Unless you let us be, you will go the way of those of us who have been denied life. You too will suffer greatly. Know that the village is the future of the world. Act to change your world so that the villages you have disturbed once again become healthy places. Then you will live in a happy nation.