Bill Sherwonit

When asked to talk about the nature of subsistence as practiced by Alaska’s Native peoples, Vernita Herdman becomes quiet. After some reflection, she begins sharing stories: about her parents, other Native elders, and Unalakleet, the Inupiaq Eskimo village in northwest Alaska where she grew up. She recalls her mother preparing a freshly caught trout along the banks of a cleanflowing river, and how sitting on the ground beside her mother, the river, and a campfire, “everything was perfect.” As Herdman talks in her soft voice, it becomes clear that there’s no easy way to package Native subsistence, except perhaps to say that it’s a respectful way of being in the world. It might also be said that subsistence is a way of living with the land, not off it.

Natives who practice subsistence get all, or much, of their food from Alaska’s wild lands and waters: berries, greens, fish, and all manner of birds and mammals. Unlike those of us who shop in grocery stores, subsistence harvesters must pay close attention to the seasons, the weather, the cycles of life. Their lives are inseparable from nature, so western notions like wilderness have little meaning. Like all humans, Natives are adaptive, so they’ve learned to use modern technology to make their lives easier. But they also faithfully follow traditions that are tied to respect, stewardship, sharing, and thanksgiving. The harvest is intimately tied to family and community activities. And though many Natives who practice subsistence may be cash-poor, says Herdman, “they are culturally rich,” with all that the term implies.

“Everyone makes choices,” Herdman says. “Some villagers live in what you might call more ‘traditional’ ways, in extended families that live wholly off the land. Others might send their children off to school, depend more on modern conveniences, and use subsistence to supplement wage income. But I don’t see any difference in their reliance on subsistence. It’s absolutely necessary, for them to remain who they are.”

Herdman smiles as a discussion about Native subsistence turns, almost inevitably, to politics. The topic is the Alaska National Interest Lands Conservation Act, and the years-long struggle that led to ANILCA, signed into law 24 years ago, in the final days of President Jimmy Carter’s administration. ANILCA is still widely acclaimed as one of the most significant land-protection laws ever enacted by our government. Few people recall it now, but Congress likely would not have passed that landmark legislation without the unprecedented partnership of conservationists and Alaska’s Native peoples. The partners had different motivations but a mutual desire: to protect Alaska’s still-wild ecosystems.

More important, fewer and fewer people seem to remember that ANILCA guarantees Alaska’s first peoples the protection of subsistence, a way of life that goes back uncounted generations. Unfortunately, some of those who do recall that guarantee—including a number of Alaska’s most powerful politicians—have attempted to weaken the protections outlined in the act’s Title VIII, which addresses subsistence.

Herdman remembers. And this Inupiat is determined that Native subsistence opportunities remain fully protected. Herdman has made it a point to learn ANILCA’s history, and she’s listened to many, many stories. One expression from those stories continues to amuse and inspire her. “An ‘unholy alliance.’ That’s what some of ANILCA’s opponents called our peoples’ partnership with conservationists,” Herdman says, her eyes twinkling. “I just love that phrase.”

Hired earlier this year by The Wilderness Society as tribal advocate, Herdman is joining others in Alaska’s environmental and Native communities to revive the alliance. In recent years it has lost strength as the two groups have focused on their own battles—and occasionally battled each other.

Residents of Anaktuvuk Pass were among the strongest supporters of ANILCA, though it meant that their Nunamiut community in the Central Brooks Range would be surrounded by Gates of the Arctic National Park and Preserve. While they could hardly be described as park boosters, the Nunamiut realized that wilderness parkland would protect their lifestyle. Though modernized, that lifestyle still depends heavily on the harvest of plants and animals, especially caribou, which are at the heart of the Nunamiuts’ culture. In discussing ANILCA’s importance to his people, Nunamiut Roosevelt Paneak once commented, “It was something that needed to happen. A winter road put through our valley [the notorious “Hickel Highway,” pushed through the Brooks Range to North Slope oilfields], plus the Haul Road to the east, made it clear that nothing was unreachable. The modern world was encroaching on our hunting lands. It wasn’t perfect, but ANILCA made it possible to protect our lands, our hunting, our traditions. It protected our way of life.”

Another wilderness battle, ignited in the late 1980s, has showed the importance of a Native-conservationist alliance: the fight to preserve the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge’s Coastal Plain. For the past 15 years, the Gwich’in Nation of northeast Alaska and northwest Canada has teamed with environmentalists to keep the Coastal Plain wild. The area targeted for oil and gas exploration is so important to the Gwich’in that they call it the place “Where Life Begins.”

Gwich’in elder Sarah James has been among the refuge’s most eloquent defenders. In the anthology Arctic Refuge: A Circle of Testimony, she explains, “[I]t’s my people who are threatened by this [proposed] development. We are the ones who have everything to lose. “We are the caribou people. Caribou are not just what we eat; they are who we are. They are in our stories and songs and the whole way we see the world. Caribou are our life. Without caribou, we wouldn’t exist....

“But our fight is not just for the caribou. It’s for the whole ecosystem in Gwich’in country ...And our fight is a human rights struggle—a struggle for our rights to be Gwich’in, to be who we are, a part of this land.”

Luci Beach, executive director of the Gwich’in Steering Committee, emphasizes that her people’s struggle has been aided enormously by the conservation community: “We’re a small tribe. We don’t have much money or other resources. So the help we get is very important to us. It’s important our two communities walk together, yet separate.

We’ve been accused of being puppets of the environmentalists, but this is our fight too. It’s about saving ourselves, our way of life.”

Alaska Community Action on Toxics offers another example of this partnership. Headed by Pamela K. Miller, this group focuses on clean air and water, toxic-free foods, and contaminant-free landscapes. “What’s great about Pam and ACAT, is that from the start the philosophy has been one of listening and respect,” says Shawna Larson, an ACAT staff member who is part Athabascan, part Aleut. “We don’t impose ourselves on people and we don’t presume to have all the answers. It’s truly an approach of working together.”

A number of other successful Native conservationist partnerships have been formed to address specific environmental and subsistence threats or protect defined wilderness areas. The Alaska Rainforest Campaign, which has worked to protect wilderness areas and subsistence opportunities within the Tongass National Forest, is a good example. Yet, significantly, there has been no broader alliance to protect the state’s wilderness and Native subsistence lifestyle, even as attacks on them have increased.

Alaska’s Republican-dominated legislature and Governor Frank Murkowski, a former U.S. senator, have pushed Congress to amend Title VIII in a way that would weaken the subsistence priority given to Alaska’s 231 tribes and other rural residents.

At the same time, Alaska’s pro-industry congressional delegation, in combination with the Bush administration, has launched one attack after another on Alaska’s wilderness: the Arctic Refuge, Denali National Park, the Tongass and Chugach National Forests, to name the most prominent.

A number of factors have weakened what was once the “unholy alliance.” For one thing, Alaska’s Native peoples have struggled with their own internal politics since the passage of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA), in 1971. Though the act granted Natives 44 million acres and nearly $1 billion, it put both the land and money under the control of regional and local corporations. And corporations, by nature, have different priorities than tribes. Subsistence is not at, or near, the top.

“ANCSA basically imposed corporate structures on top of tribal governing bodies,” says Heather Kendall Miller, an attorney for the Native American Rights Fund and member of The Wilderness Society’s Governing Council. “Tribal governments were disenfranchised from the land through ANSCA, while corporations were encouraged to engage in economic development in the areas of timber harvesting and mining. Not only has that put the corporations at odds with environmentalists, it’s created conflicts of interest within our own community.” Conflicting priorities and values have inevitably led to distrust. “There’s suspicion on both sides,” says Miller, a Dena’ina Athabascan. “And that has been deepened by the actions of some
politicians who seek to divide the two [Native and conservation] communities by spreading disinformation.”

At the same time that Alaska’s indigenous community has been split by corporate-tribal divisions, environmental groups, too, have had their share of disagreements when it comes to working with Natives. And conservationists have sometimes projected a we-know-what’s best attitude, or appeared to have ulterior motives. Some tribal leaders say that all too often, local and national conservation groups have used Native issues to raise money for themselves, or they’ve co-opted Native interests for their own purposes.

The end result, says Herdman, is that the two groups have too often gone separate ways since ANILCA’s passage. She and a growing number of activists on both sides see the need to revitalize the alliance. “In Alaska, there’s been a historic partnership,” observes Wilderness Society President William H. Meadows, “but it has not been properly nurtured. What we have in common—the linkage between wilderness and the subsistence lifestyle—far outweighs any conflicts. To be effective in Alaska, we need the support of the Native community. By bringing in Vernita, I think we’ve shown that we’re committed to a renewed relationship. Vernita has worked effectively within both communities.”

The effort to rebuild the alliance got underway in 1999, when a “who’s who” of Alaska’s conservation and tribal leaders gathered in Anchorage. Representatives unanimously agreed to vigorously oppose any attempts to weaken ANILCA’s subsistence protections. They also found consensus on the need to work together to preserve wilderness and subsistence traditions.

Herdman will work to keep the dialogue going while seeking ways that the partners can meet their common desires and needs. “I think people are seeing that there’s a latent political power that hasn’t been tapped,” she says. “From my perspective as a Native, we need to revive and re-energize the ‘unholy alliance,’ if we have any hope of protecting our subsistence way of live. It’s as simple as that.”

Anchorage nature writer and activist Bill Sherwonit is the author of ten books about Alaska. More information about his work is at: www.billsherwonit.alaskawriters.com.