A collaborative group of Indigenous people, conservationists, scientists and sportsmen have launched an advertising campaign directed at oil companies who may be considering participating in wildlife refuge lease sale in Alaska to tell them “we’re watching.”
The message from the Arctic Refuge Defense Campaign, led by the Gwich’in Nation of Alaska and Canada states “We’re watching. Americans overwhelmingly oppose drilling in the Arctic Refuge. Attempts to drill will be challenged in court. We stand ready to challenge any company foolish enough to invite this opposition, uncertainty, and reputational risk. We are ready. We will prevail.”
“We want them to know we are holding them accountable,” said Bernadette Demientieff, executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee. “They cannot continue to dismiss indigenous voices.
“We can’t stop climate change, but we can stop actively causing more,” Demientieff said, in response to questions about the six-figure ad buy campaign launched on Oct. 16.
“With all the oil development and desecration of sacred lands, we need to start looking at renewable energy,” she said.
The campaign began with a half-page ad in the print edition of the Wall Street Journal, signed by 30 organizations, and will include digital and social media assets across other outlets over the next few weeks, according to campaign coordinators. The signers range from several Alaska-based conservation organizations to the League of Conservation Voters, Sierra Club and The Wilderness Society.
Some 9,000 indigenous peoples of the Gwich’in Nation live along the migratory route of the Porcupine caribou herd, the coastal plain known to the Gwich’in as “the sacred place where life begins.” Protecting these lands and the Porcupine caribou is a matter of human rights, the Gwich’in maintain.
ANWR, in northeastern Alaska, is, at 19,286,722 acres, the nation’s largest national wildlife refuge. Wildlife there ranges from a large variety of species of plants and migratory birds to polar bears, wolves, eagles and caribou critical to the subsistence lifestyle of the Gwich’in. The refuge abuts two Canadian national parks, Ivvavik and Vuntut, on the other side of the border.
The Gwich’in are concerned about efforts of the Trump administration to open the refuge to exploration for oil. In the wake of the first stand-alone bill in the U.S. House of Representatives to protect the refuge, the Bureau of Land Management released its final environmental impact statement (FEIS) for oil and gas drilling in September.
The FEIS, the Gwich’in contend, prioritizes a leasing option to offer the entire coastal plain for exploration, with no meaningful protections for Alaska Native cultural values and ways of life. The legislation ignores extensive testimony and traditional knowledge of the Gwich’in, which demonstrated that oil and gas development of the coastal plain “would have significant impacts on the calving and nursery rounds of the Porcupine caribou herd, and diminishes the deep physical, social, cultural, and spiritual connection of the Gwich’in to the caribou, which they rely on for food and their culture,” according to the campaign statement.
The legislation also fails to disclose and underestimates impacts of oil and gas activity on iconic species like polar bears, caribou and millions of migratory birds, as well as tundra and permafrost that support the Arctic ecosystem,” the statement said.
