Any proposition to mine Katahdin would likely start quite a stir. The idea strikes at the heart of what Mainers consider central to our wonderful quality of life – our access to the resources and incredible beauty provided by Maine’s natural environment. Mining Katahdin is a near-perfect analogy to the proposal to drill the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). The Gwit’chen people actually rely on the coastal plain of this refuge more than Mainer’s need Katahdin. Until I heard Norma Kassi speak, I didn’t generally think of my actions as threatening the wellbeing of another culture. I can’t drop this thought now that I’ve met Norma Kassi, a member of the Gwit’chen nation. Norma spoke recently as part of the USM Convocation on Environmental Sustainability. Her mission is to preserve the Gwit’chen community. Their ancient way of life is at risk if America drills for oil in ANWR. President Bush once again proposes to drill the refuge – this time as an easy-to-overlook line item in his budget plan.
I have never been a fan of drilling in ANWR. Drilling would provide jobs. Drilling would make us momentarily less dependent on foreign oil. Drilling might even make it less likely that America would pursue dubious foreign policies in our quest for oil. On the other hand, the U.S. Geological Service estimates that ANWR oil would only fuel total U.S. consumption for 200 days. Why threaten another human community and a rare ecosystem for just over six months of oil? Let’s focus instead on energy conservation and renewable energy. Existing technology could be applied that would increase automobile fuel economy and save much more oil than ANWR offers.
I once thought that ANWR was just another example of the proverbial debate about jobs versus the environment. In that debate, people of good will can reach opposite conclusions. Norma Kassi changed my mind. It’s not simply a trade-off of oil for some abstract concept of wilderness. It’s about the survival of the Gwit’chen people.
The Gwit’chen people have lived in North America for 30,000 years with caribou at the center of their diet and culture. Not just any caribou, but the Porcupine River caribou herd, which uses the 20-mile wide coastal plain in ANWR as a calving ground. This nursery provides a unique combination of food and protection crucial for the survival of the calves. The Gwit’chen refer to this sacred place as “the land where life begins.” This revered, fragile land is where the drilling would occur. It isn’t as if ANWR is the only untapped oil in the Artic. Other areas, albeit less remunerative ones, exist outside the ANWR and the calving grounds.
Can the Porcupine caribou herd coexist with drilling in the calving grounds? If there are no Valdez-like oil spills, perhaps. But the size of the herd has already been reduced by development and other pressures. The problem hasn’t been the Gwit’chen – this community’s population has dropped from 100,000 to 7,000. Even without ANWR drilling, another threat to the caribou herd has arisen. In two of the last three winters, perhaps as the result of global warming, unusually warm weather softened the snow pack and prevented the caribou from reaching the calving grounds in time – over 20,000 calves died.
I wouldn’t want my limited food supply threatened by habitat destruction in order to provide a wealthy nation with cheap oil (the same nation that provides a disproportionate amount of global warming gasses). Americans wouldn’t accept this risk to our food supply, so how can we ethically force it on the Gwit’chen? Given the number of indigenous cultures crushed in the creation of this nation, don’t we have a special obligation to leave the remaining ones in peace?
Can’t we drive a course that will not threaten the Gwit’chen’s Katahdin?
Editor’s note: The effect of our industrial society on the Penobscot will be the focus of the keynote address at the free Convocation Conference on Mar. 12 on the Portland campus. Information on convocation events can be found at www.usm.maine.edu/prov/convocation.
Nancy Artz can be contacted at [email protected]