OPINION: Applauding the biggest land decision of our generation

In the past six months, an unprecedented wave of solidarity across Alaska culminated with the resounding and clear message that our Alaska homelands should be protected. That’s why the Bering Sea-Interior Tribal Commission, representing 38 Yup’ik, Dene (Athabascan) and Iñupiaq sovereign Tribes, is celebrating the Biden administration’s recent big step toward protecting 28 million acres of our traditional homelands, also referred to as D-1 lands. At least 140 sovereign Alaska Tribes, 145 million Americans and 120 businesses urged these D1 protections be retained.

This land was withdrawn from development under Section 17(d)(1) of the Alaska Native Claims Settlement Act (ANCSA), over 50 years ago. In 2021, there was an attempt to strip the ANCSA “D-1 protections” away and open these lands up to industrial development and extraction. This attempt failed to consider how lifting the D-1 protections, and allowing extractive resource development, could negatively affect our livelihood, our way of life, or the impact of the loss of subsistence of hunting and fishing on our Alaska Native communities.

These D-1 lands are located along the Yukon and Kuskokwim Rivers and their tributaries; the fragile tundra above the Arctic Circle, the salmon-rich area of Bristol Bay and the temperate rainforest of Southeast Alaska. They provide significant migratory pathways and connectivity for our animals, including three of North America’s largest caribou herds; the largest gathering of bald eagles in North America; and the largest sockeye salmon run on the planet. These lands and waters, and all they sustain, are essential to us as Alaska Native people and immensely valued across Alaska.

Fortunately, the Biden administration paused the lifting of the D-1 protections and set out to determine, through consultation with Alaska’s Tribes and communities, the true impact of opening Alaska’s D-1 lands. The answer was resounding. During 19 public meetings, community support, across Alaska and online, for D-1 protections was nearly unanimous. Tribes spoke to D-1 lands’ critical connection to the health and well-being of our communities and how they protect cultural resources, provide a home for our fish and wildlife and support subsistence opportunities. These lands and waters provide for us as they have for countless generations.

In Alaska, we are also experiencing profound change and loss with a rapidly warming climate. We are witnessing bird and marine mammal die-offs, a crash in our fish populations and major changes in the migration of many of our key species. We are living with daily and seasonally compounding impacts from increased extreme weather and abrupt disruptions. In September 2022 we experienced our first typhoon, Typhoon Merbok in Western Alaska; we lost freezers full of wild meat in our villages that were hard hit with flooding, extreme winds, and loss of power. To allow industrial development at a time of such incredible stress would magnify and lead to further loss of our fish, birds, wildlife and their habitats. The Biden administration’s steps toward retaining D-1 protections is critical in supporting the health of our traditional lands and the life they sustain.

We, as the Bering Sea-Interior Tribal Commission, deeply thank the Biden Administration for listening to Alaska Native peoples and retaining D-1 protections. Now, we urge Secretary of the Interior Deborah Haaland to finalize these protections this summer.

This decision is not only in the public interest but intrinsic to our survival as Indigenous People of Alaska. We can eat a lot of salmon — but we sure can’t swallow a chunk of gold. Once our lands are scarred and our waters spoiled, they will never be the same. Once D-1 protections are stripped, they are gone for good.

Eugene Paul is the chairman of the Bering Sea-Interior Tribal Commission, which represents 38 Tribes across three regions of Alaska and former chief of the Native Village of Holy Cross.

Frank Katchatag is the vice-chairman of the Bering Sea-Interior Tribal Commission, president of the Native Village of Unalakleet and chairman of the Board of Kawerak, Inc.

Michael Stickman is an executive board member of the Bering Sea-Interior Tribal Commission, the former chief of the Nulato Tribal Council and served as the international chairperson to the Arctic Athabaskan Council.

Malinda Chase is an Anvik tribal member, an advisor to the Bering Sea- Interior Tribal Commission and a board member of Deloy Ges, the ANCSA Village Corporation in Anvik.

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