An Alaska Native speaks out on Palin, Oil, and Alaska

By Evon Peter

evonpeter@mac.com

9/8/2008

My name is Evon Peter; I am a former Chief of the Neetsaii Gwich’in tribe from Arctic

Village, Alaska and the current Executive Director of Native Movement. My

organization provides culturally based leadership development through offices in Alaska

and Arizona. My wife, who is Navajo, and I have been based out of Flagstaff, Arizona for

the past few years, although I travel home to Alaska in support of our initiatives there as

well. It is interesting to me that my wife and I find ourselves as Indigenous people from

the two states where McCain and Palin originate in their leadership.

I am writing this letter to raise awareness about the ongoing colonization and violation of

human rights being carried out against Alaska Native peoples in the name of

unsustainable progress, with a particular emphasis on the role of Sarah Palin and the

Republican leadership. My hope is that it helps to elevate truth about the nature of

Alaskan politics in relation to Alaska Native peoples and that it lays a framework for our

path to justice.

Ever since the Russian claim to Alaska and the subsequent sale to the United States

through the Treaty of Cession in 1867, the attitude and treatment towards Alaska Native

peoples has been fairly consistent. We were initially referred to as less than human

“uncivilized tribes”, so we were excluded from any dialogues and decisions regarding our

lands, lives, and status. The dominating attitude within the Unites States at the time was

called Manifest Destiny; that God had given Americans this great land to take from the

Indians because they were non-Christian and incapable of self-government. Over the

years since that time, this framework for relating to Alaska Native peoples has become

entrenched in the United States legislative and legal systems in an ongoing direct

violation of our human rights.

What does this mean? Allow me to share an analogy. If a group of people were to arrive

in your city and tell you their people had made laws, among which were:

1. What were once your home and land now belong to them (although you could live

in the garage or backyard)

2. Forced you to send your children to boarding schools to learn their language and

be acculturated into their ways with leaders who touted “Kill the American, save

the man” (based on the original statement made by US Captain Richard H. Pratt

in regards to Native American education “Kill the Indian, save the man.”)

3. Supported missionaries and government agents to forcefully (for example, with

poisons placed on the tongues of your children and withheld vaccines) convince

you that your Jesus, Buddha, Torah, or Mohammed was actually an agent of evil

and that salvation in the afterlife could only be found through believing otherwise

4. Made it illegal for you to continue to do your job to support your family, except

under strict oversight and through extensive regulation

5. Made it illegal for you to own any land or run a business as an individual and did

not allow you to participate in any form of their government, which controlled

your life (voting or otherwise)

How would this make you feel? What if you also knew that if you were to retaliate, that

you would be swiftly killed or incarcerated? How long do you think it would take for you

to forget or would you be sure to share this history with your children with the hope that

justice could one day prevail for your descendents? And most importantly to our

conversation, how American does this sound to you?

To put this into perspective, my grandfather who helped to raise me in Arctic Village was

born in 1904, just thirty-seven years after the United States laid claim to Alaska. If my

grandfather had unjustly stolen your grandfathers home and I was still living in the house

and watching you live outdoors, would you feel a change was in order? Congress

unilaterally passed most of the major US legislation that affect our people in my

grandfathers’ lifetime. There has never been a Treaty between Alaska Native Peoples and

the United States over these injustices. Each time that Alaska Native people stand up for

our rights, the US responds with token shifts in its laws and policies to appease the

building discontent, yet avoiding the underlying injustice that I believe can be resolved if

leadership in the United States would be willing to acknowledge the underlying injustice

of its control over Alaska Native peoples, our lands, and our ways of life.

United States legal history in relation to Alaska Natives has been based on one major

platform - minimize the potential for Alaska Native people to regain control of their lives,

lands, and resources and maximize benefit to the Unites States government and its

corporations. While the rest of the world, following World War II, was seeking to return

African and European Nations to their rightful owners, the United States pushed in the

opposite direction by pulling the then Territory of Alaska out of the United Nations

dialogues and pushing for Statehood into the Union. Why is it that Alaska Native Nations

are still perceived as being incapable of governing our own lands, lives, and resources

differently than African, Asian, and European nations?

Let me get specific about what is at stake and how this relates to Palin and the

Republican leadership in Alaska and across this country. To this day, Alaska Native

peoples are among the only Indigenous peoples in all of North America whose

Indigenous Hunting and Fishing Rights have been extinguished by federal legislation and

yet we are the most dependent people on this way of life. Most of our villages have no

roads that connect them to cities; many live with poverty level incomes, and all rely to

varying degrees on traditional hunting, fishing, and harvesting for survival. This has

become known as the debate on Alaska Native Subsistence.

As Alaska Governor, Palin has continued the path of her predecessor Frank Murkowski

in challenging attempts by Alaska Native people to regain their human right to their

traditional way of life through subsistence.

The same piece of unilateral federal legislation, known as the Alaska Native Claims

Settlement Act (ANCSA) of 1971, that extinguished our hunting and fishing rights, also

extinguished all federal Alaska Native land claims and my Tribe’s reservation status. In

the continental United States, this sort of legislation is referred to as ‘termination

legislation’ because it takes the rights of self-government away from Tribes. It is based in

the same age-old idea that we are not capable of governing our people, lands, and

resources. To justify these terminations, ANCSA also created Alaska Native led forprofit

corporations (which were provided the remaining lands not taken by the

government and a one time payment the equivalent of about 1/20th of the annual profits

made by corporations in Alaska each year) with a mission of exploiting the land in

partnership with the US government and outside corporations. It was a brilliant piece of

legislation for the legal termination and cultural assimilation of Alaska Natives under the

guise of progress.

Since the passage of ANCSA, political leaders in Alaska, with a few exceptions, have

maintained that, as stated by indicted Senator Ted Stevens, “Tribes have never existed in

Alaska.” They maintain this position out of fear that the real injustice being carried out

upon Alaska Natives may break into mainstream awareness and lead to a re-opening of

due treaty dialogues between Alaska Native leaders and the federal government. At the

same time the federal government chose to list Alaska Native tribes in the list of federally

recognized tribes in 1993. Governor Palin maintains that tribes were federally recognized

but that they do not have the same rights as the tribes in the continental United States to

sovereignty and self-governance, even to the extent of legally challenging our Tribes

rights pursuant to the Indian Child Welfare Act. What good are governments that can’t

make decisions concerning their own land and people?

The colonial mentality in and towards Alaska is to exploit the land and resources for

profits and power, at the expense of Alaska Native people. Governor Palin reflects this

attitude and perspective in her words and leadership. She comes from an area within

Alaska that was settled by relocated agricultural families from the continental United

States in the second half of the last century. It is striking that a leader from that particular

area feels she has a right, considering all of the injustices to Alaska Native people, to

offer Alaskan oil and resources in an attempt to solve the national energy crisis at the

Republican Convention. Palin also chose not to mention the connection between oil

development and global warming, which is wreaking havoc on Alaska Native villages,

forcing some to begin the process of relocation at a cost sure to reach into the hundreds of

millions.

Our tribes depend on healthy and abundant land and animals for our survival. For

example, my people depend on the Porcupine Caribou herd, which migrates into the

coastal plain of the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge each spring to birth their young. Any

disruption and contamination will directly impact the health and capacity for my people

to continue to live in a homeland we have been blessed to live in for over 10,000 years.

This is the sacrifice Palin offered to the nation. The worst part of it is that there are viable

alternatives to addressing the energy crisis in the United States, yet Palin chooses options

that very well may result in the extinguishment of some of the last remaining intact

ecosystems and original cultures in all of North America. Palin is also promoting off

shore oil drilling and increased mining in sensitive areas of Alaska, all of which would

have a lifespan of far fewer years than my grandfather walked on this earth and which

would not even make a smidgen of an impact on national consumption rates or longer

term sustainability. McCain was once a champion of protecting the Arctic National

Wildlife Refuge and it is sad to see, that with Palin on board, he is no longer vocal and

perhaps even giving up on what he believes in to satisfy Palin’s position.

While I have much more to say, this is my current offering to elevate the conversation

about what is at stake in Alaska and for Alaska Native peoples. Please share this offering

with others and help us to make this an election that brings out honest dialogue. We have

an opportunity to bring lasting change, but only if we can be open to hearing the truth

about our situations and facing the challenges that arise.

Many thanks to all those who are taking stands for a just and sustainable future for all of

our future generations,

*This essay is a personal reflection and should not be attributed to my tribe or organization

Letter to the Editor from Peace and Justice Center member Barbara Sogn-Frank:

 

South Dakotans should demand that our local media provide more coverage on the impact of large-scale animal confinement units on air, water and land quality and their potential and proven health effects on lives around them. 

 

Longview Farms LLP, a business from Sioux County , Hull , Iowa , continues construction of a 7600 head confined hog unit in Charles Mix County , South Dakota .   Legal action is being taken by several, separate groups including: The Concerned Parents of the Head Start Program (recently lost case), citizens of Marty and surrounding communities, the Yankton Sioux Tribe, and the Tribal Employment Rights Office to try to stop construction of a business that threatens the land, air and water in the area that they live in, as well as the surrounding environment.   Let’s find out about the veracity of reports that this company has a record of court orders against them in other states for repeatedly disregarding environmental safeguards. 

 

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, “CAFOs are not the inevitable result of market forces.  Instead, these unhealthy operations are largely the result of misguided public policy that can and should be changed.”  A recent report by the Pew Commission on Industrial Farm Animal Production found:  “runoff (from CAFOs) also carries antibiotics and hormones, pesticides, and heavy metals.”

 

This story is not getting substantive coverage by our local news.  When it’s been mentioned, the story has been portrayed mostly as an isolated conflict limited to disagreements between the Yankton Sioux Tribe and Longview Farms.  In doing so, the media minimizes the scope of the issue and this slant plays upon malicious prejudice and serves no one.

 

Also sobering is that there was little investigation by the media of an incident in April.  Supporters of the confinement unit used “good-ol’-boy” connections to elicit excessive use of force (44 state patrol cars and what looked like sniper riflemen taking aim) to intimidate a modest number of families with children present, students, and people from the religious communities who, well within their rights, were peacefully demonstrating in opposition to this action by Longview Farms. 

 

Let’s not trade the integrity of our land, water and the health and well-being of current and future generations and let’s not trade the integrity of our legal and law enforcement system for the creation of a few low-wage local jobs, with profits flowing to a few and pouring out-of-state. 

 

Sincerely,

Barbara Sogn-Frank