Episode 2: To Secure the Blessings of Liberty
Episode Length: 35:57
Focus
The people living in Kaktovik, Alaska may have more to lose, or gain, from drilling in the Refuge than any other community in the country
Location
Kaktovik, Alaska; Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Keywords
oil drilling, wildlife refuge, conservation, Alaska, Inupiaq, Alaska Native corporations
Episode Outline
These outlines are intended to help you locate ideas and topics more easily, but these are narrative episodes with many interlocking themes and ideas, so you may want to share segments that cross multiple points in the outline.
MINUTES: 00:00 - 03:17
Kaktovik is one of the best places in the world to see polar bears, but this proximity leads to some unexpected perspectives.
03:17 - 05:00
Inupiat on the coast are one of two groups, alongside the Gwich’in in the interior, who have deep ties to this area and will be directly affected by drilling in the Refuge:
Kaktovik is the town closest to the action
05:00 - 09:48
Kaktovik was relocated by the government three times in the 1950s and 60s:
Since 2000, taxes and royalties from oil and gas development have funded major infrastructure improvements in Kaktovik: sewage systems, electricity, schools, and other things that most Americans consider basic necessities but are lacking in many small villages in Alaska
09:48 - 12:51
The Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA) was a federal law passed in 1971 to give Alaska Natives back some of the land that had been taken without permission:
ANCSA created Native Corporations for 13 regions and 200 villages, dividing 44 million acres and close to $1 billion among them
Native Alaskans became shareholders in these new corporations, with the idea that profits could be shared from exploiting the natural resources on these lands
The effects of ANCSA are still unfolding today, including in Kaktovik, where many people are shareholders of the Kaktovik Inupiat Corporation and the Arctic Slope Regional Corporation
12:51 - 16:52
Some people in Kaktovik resent the way both conservation and drilling policy were carried out largely without input from Native Alaskans, even in the case of drilling that might take place on their own Native Corporation land within the Refuge.
BREAK
17:58 - 27:12
It’s up to the USGS to figure out just how much oil is actually beneath the Refuge, and to inform policymakers in Washington, D.C.:
The USGS number is 7.6 billion barrels of oil, about the volume of oil that the U.S. consumes in a year
This number is just an estimate, relying on seismic testing from the 1980s
Data from the only exploratory well drilled on the Refuge, in the 1980s, is a tightly kept secret
Even among neutral USGS, the consensus among geoscientists is that we need to stop burning so much oil to slow down climate change
27:12 - 35:57
In Kaktovik, signs of climate change are everywhere, but several people express optimism about what oil drilling could mean for the community:
The Arctic is warming much faster than the rest of the planet
Like the tourism economy around polar bears in Kaktovik, the influx of money and people can mean both good and bad things for the community