Episode 3: Listen to the People, Pt. 2
Length: 29:46
Focus
Different opinions on drilling within the Inupiat community, observations of climate change, impacts of drilling on polar bears
Location
Kaktovik, Alaska
Keywords
Inupiat, oil development, climate change, polar bears, Alaska Native corporations, seismic testing
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 - 03:58
Both pro-drilling and conservation factions have been guilty of highlighting only the Indigenous voices that support their position—dismissing the Gwich’in on the one hand and the Inupiat on the other.
The antidote: hearing from Indigenous Alaskans themselves.
03:58 - 09:51
Kaktovik resident Carla SimsKayotuk is against drilling in the Refuge:
She is worried about the birds, whales, and caribou that carry deep meaning for her
She hears hypocrisy when pro-oil officials oppose projects in their own backyard
She worries that the 2,000 acres of development allowed on the coastal plain is bigger than it seems, and infrastructure could sprawl over a much larger area
09:51 - 16:22
Calls for unity can sometimes also silence dissent and Carla feels like her views are misrepresented by groups that cast all Inupiat as pro-drilling:
How do we differentiate between a healthy unity and a coercive one?
For Carla, the day of the 2017 Tax Bill that allowed drilling was a sad one, and she predicts significant impacts within a mile of her house
Carla’s top priority, even more than opposing oil development, is sovereignty: Inupiaq land in Inupiaq hands
BREAK
17:47 - 23:04
How seismic testing for oil threatens polar bears and their cubs:
To prevent damage to the tundra, seismic testing is now limited to when the ground is frozen
This coincides with the period when polar bears are denning under the snow with their cubs, and risk being disrupted or even crushed by ‘thumper trucks’
This threat, alongside climate change, is why polar bear guide Robert Thompson opposes drilling here even though he stands to benefit from it financially
23:04 - 29:46
People in the same community, whether Kaktovik or Arctic Village, can hold very different opinions about drilling while expressing strong common values:
Everybody knows everybody, and they disagree about big stuff while still making it work as a community
Both the Inupiat and the Gwich’in have deep ties to the Porcupine caribou herd
We hear that these communities are being ‘divided,’ but no one we met here sees this issue in binary terms