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The United States government is the trustee of all matters pertaining to American Indians and Alaska Natives. This includes our very being, our tribal rights, our land and resources as well as our health, education and welfare. Furthermore, the government has an obligation to protect these rights for generations to come. This obligation is a trust responsibility.
The U.S. has many laws to protect the environment and agencies to enforce these laws. The fact is, these laws have not slowed environmental degradation and oppression, and decisions are made to favor industry. These agencies have sole discretion to issue permits. We have found that they are not always neutral in granting their permissions.
The state of Alaska, as we know, is controlled by pro-extraction industry interests. Development and industry are prioritized over the best interests of the 229 Tribes and their Native citizens. Decisions are made impacting us and our ability to survive in our own homelands. Laws and regulations are passed, threatening our access to resources we have relied on since time immemorial, threatening not only our survival, but the survival of our future generations.
Regionally, our own regional, sub-regional and village corporations also threaten our survival. When Tribal interests and survival are in conflict with the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act corporations and resource development, corporations win. At what cost? What do we truly lose when we lose our land, water and the food that sustains us? We belong to this land. It has sustained us for millennia. We have nowhere else to go. Subsistence is not a “way of life;” it is our life.
The looming threats to our survival and ability to access our resources are:
• Climate change
• Deep-sea trawling and bycatch allocations
• The proposed Donlin mine
These are a threat to our ability to subsist on our traditional and customary foods — most importantly, salmon. We are still discovering far-reaching ripple effects of climate change. The skin of our tundra has become very thin and unstable, our river banks are eroding at an alarming rate, and increasingly hot summers have left our land vulnerable to lightning strikes and fire.
Mitigation can be achieved with trawling and extraction based development that threatens the first people of this land.
Deep-sea trawl bycatch can be controlled by regulation, and development of the proposed Donlin mine can be stopped. This is not the time or the place to develop the world’s largest open-pit gold mine on the backs of the Tribal nations of this region.
These nations have already spoken. In 2019, 35 Tribal nations of the Association of Village Council Presidents region, opposed the proposed Donlin open-pit mine. Let their voices be heard. Failure to do so is a death blow to my river, my people and our survival. We are being threatened with extinction.
Gloria Simeon is a member of the Orutsararmiut Traditional Native Council, a woman of the Kuskokwim River and an ultimate end-user of salmon, upon whom the burden of conservation has been placed. This commentary has been adapted from her testimony to the U.S. Senate Committee on Indian Affairs in Bethel on Nov. 10.
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