A group of Alaska Natives fighting oil and gas drilling off Alaska’s coasts journeyed this week to the Gulf of Mexico. There they witnessed first-hand evidence of the oil spill from last month’s rig explosion.
We spend hours at the table splitting our salmon. Both young and old hold the ulu as we cut hundreds of wild salmon that feed us during the long, cold winter months. Everyone has a job and everyone contributes, even the tiniest ones. Aiden, my 4-year-old great-nephew, is charged with washing our fish and taking care of his younger brother, younger cousin and, this summer, a younger sister.
One of Alaska's most eroded villages is appealing a federal judge's dismissal of a lawsuit that claims greenhouse gases emitted by oil, power and coal companies contribute to climate change endangering the tiny community's survival.
Oil giants Exxon Mobil Corp. and BP PLC are among two dozen defendants named in the lawsuit originally filed in 2008 by the city of Kivalina and a federally recognized tribe, the Alaska Native village of Kivalina.
A North Slope village united Wednesday with some of the heaviest hitters in the environmental community to challenge a plan by Shell Oil to drill off Northwest Alaska this summer.
The legal challenge to Shell's approved drilling plan for the Chukchi Sea was filed in the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. Groups recently filed a similar challenge to Shell's plan for exploratory drilling for oil and gas in the Beaufort Sea off Alaska's northeast coastline.
Native Alaskan groups who depend on whaling and a coalition of environmental groups sued the federal government Tuesday, seeking to block a Shell Oil subsidiary from drilling next year in the Beaufort Sea.
The Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission and the Inupiat Community of the Arctic Slope, a federally recognized tribal government representing Alaska North Slope communities, asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn a drilling plan the Minerals Management Service approved in October.
In a preliminary decision Thursday, the service picked the "no action" alternative from a range of options in environmental studies.
…The FWS decision was welcomed by many in communities near the refuge who feared it would open a pristine area to oil and gas development.
"I'm very happy, on behalf of the tribe," said First Chief Michael Peters of the Gwichyaa Zhee Gwich'in Tribe at Fort Yukon. "This means a lot to us. I commend Fish and Wildlife."
Sarah James from Arctic Village shared impacts she’s seen from climate change in Northeast Alaska. James is the chairwoman of the Gwich’in steering committee and she has lived in Arctic Village her entire life. She said that people there are still solely dependent on caribou, 75 percent to their food is still wild meat — caribou, moose, fish and other small animals and birds and duck.
The message was a call for permanent protection of the Arctic Refuge and urgent action to address climate change. Gathering in their homeland, in what is arguably one of the most central and charismatic landscapes in the climate change debate, the Gwich’in and their allies challenged leaders to follow science and not politics, and to push for strong carbon emissions targets.