OPINION: Federal lawmakers must engage with North Slope communities

The North Slope Iñupiat have sustained ourselves for over 10,000 years in America’s harshest, most unforgiving climate thanks to our strong sense of unity. Our commitment to this value — atauchimuŋniq, in our Iñupiaq language — is evident in the widespread support for responsible development projects in our region that have delivered lasting positive outcomes for our communities, all while being designed and approved with community checks and balances.

That’s why it is so troubling to see the federal government propose unwanted regulations that subvert our collective support for these vital economic opportunities and the benefits they provide. Our will, not that of outside groups with no connection to our lands, communities, or culture, must be the top consideration when crafting policies affecting our homelands.

The federal government’s disregard for North Slope Iñupiat voices is exemplified by its recent decision to severely curtail our right to decide the future of our ancestral homelands in the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska (NPR-A). This action, announced to “protect Alaska Native subsistence” was crafted without meaningful engagement with or buy-in from our communities to understand its impact on our economy and culture and would place 56% of NPR-A into special protected status. This would effectively close the door on any future deviation from current uses, including the preclusion of maintaining modern essentials like flush toilets, or future improvements such as utility corridors or roads connecting the remote communities in America’s most northern region.

These regulations were proposed by an administration that claims to listen to Indigenous communities and elected leaders like those across the North Slope’s eight communities that my organization represents. The White House National Strategy for the Arctic plainly states that the U.S. federal government aspires to “ensure Alaska Native communities are partners in decisions affecting them.” Yet the federal government treated the North Slope Iñupiat as anything but partners in this process, blindsiding us with regulations that do not reflect the will of our people or region.

Had the administration adequately engaged with us during this process, they would have understood that North Slope communities overwhelmingly support resource development projects in our homelands. These projects support valuable community infrastructure projects like schools, water and sanitation, police and fire departments, and community centers. They also fund important administrative bodies like the North Slope Borough Department of Wildlife Management, which researches and provides critical data for the caribou, bowhead whales, and other wildlife resources that our culture depends on.

These basic services are ubiquitous in the Lower 48 but have only arrived on the North Slope within the last generation. Unlike our Elders, children born today need not melt ice for drinking water, scour beaches for driftwood to heat their homes, or be sent away to attend high school. The impact of modern services on our communities has been tremendous. Today, our people can expect to live to an average of 77 years, more than double our average life expectancy in 1969.

This increase — the most dramatic in the United States — is directly linked to our determination to participate freely in economic development on the North Slope. We have struck a balance and now coexist with responsible resource development that supports and reinforces our culture and way of life.

This broad-based support was on full display in the buildup to the reauthorization of the Willow Project. The North Slope Iñupiat vigorously participated in the more than 25 public meetings held throughout the process to ensure the administration understood Willow’s value to our communities. President Joe Biden’s reauthorization of Willow suggested that our community’s voice was actually heard.

The federal government’s most recent actions now indicate a stark reversal. The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) inappropriately scheduled meetings to discuss the NPR-A rule in the midst of our busy fall subsistence season, despite urgent requests by North Slope Iñupiat community leaders to reschedule. These leaders also requested an 80-day public comment period extension for more robust community participation and were granted only a paltry 30-day stay by BLM. Even Department of the Interior Secretary Deb Haaland herself refused — on at least eight occasions — to meet with leaders from the North Slope on this issue.

A statement from the 2023 Arctic Peoples’ Conference puts our region’s position in perspective — “climate change cannot be used as an excuse to infringe on the rights of Indigenous peoples.” These most recent actions are an infringement on our right to self-determination and threaten our Iñupiaq communities and traditions.

Instead of pushing through poorly conceived regulations that clearly do not reflect our region’s wishes, we urge policymakers in Washington, D.C., to conduct a more thorough review of the North Slope Iñupiat’s support for responsible, community-approved development in our region. To do otherwise would be to ignore our will and create disastrous consequences for our people.

Nagruk Harcharek is president of Voice of the Arctic Iñupiat, a nonprofit organization established to create a unified voice for most of the North Slope’s communities and engage in policy decisions affecting the region.

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