New argument in polar bear debate

What's more important for Alaska Native people, fighting development or promoting it? There's no one answer, but perspectives on the topic yield competing images of Native identity in the early 21st century.

As the federal government considers designating a vast swath of the Alaska Arctic critical habitat for polar bears, some people who have inhabited the region for more than 10,000 years say their modern way of life -- dependant now on resource extraction and other economic development -- deserves preservation, too.

"Our culture is not something preserved under a bell jar, nor is it simply a matter of continuing subsistence hunting and crafts," according to Edward Itta, mayor of the North Slope Borough, and Roberta Quintavell, president of the Arctic Slope Regional Corp. "Our culture is now in the 21st century, built on traditional activities united with contemporary economic enterprises."

Itta and Quintavell made the remarks in a letter submitted recently opposing the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service's proposed designation of more than 200,000 square miles of sea ice, water and barrier islands as critical habitat for polar bears, a poster child of climate change that is listed threatened under the Endangered Species Act. The region also comprises a promising new frontier for oil exploration, commercial shipping and tourism - one that is competing with other nations' Arctic holdings.

Fighting to preserve the financial benefits of Arctic development isn't new. Everybody from Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell to oil industry supporters to construction groups in Florida argue that potential economic impacts stemming from the polar bear's habitat designation must be weighed alongside protection for the animal. At stake, they collectively argue, is not only Alaska's economic future but national security, citing the threat new federal regulation might pose to domestic energy exploration and production.

The latest push by ASRC and the North Slope Borough is rooted in protecting Native culture as much as the congressionally mandated aboriginal land claims settled between Alaska tribes and the federal government in the early 1970s. Threaten the ability to make money and develop resources, the argument goes, and you threaten the Alaska Native way of life as it exists today.

But Alaska Native people are far from in agreement on how much they must protect their cultural identity versus the role oil and gas development should play in their future. Where ASRC and the North Slope Borough argue economic development through resource extraction is a crucial aspect of modern Native identity, the Native Village of Point Hope, the Inupiat community of the Arctic Slope, and tribal-environmental groups like Resisting Environmental Destruction on Indigenous Lands(REDOIL) continue to fight offshore development, arguing the risks to marine life and the environment are too great.

"Your way of life, culture, values and subsistence are all part of our identity, and nothing -- no amount of financial resources -- can replace that," said Faith Gemmill, a member of REDOIL, in an interview.

In contrast, the North Slope Borough and ASRC say the critical habitat designation places the future of Inupiat culture and villages at stake by impeding the very things Congress established to promote prosperity for Alaska Natives - development of natural resources and access to land.

For the borough, this argument represents a departure from the legal battles it waged in recent years against federal regulators that had approved exploration plans for oil companies hoping to tap vast oil reserves beneath the Arctic seabed. In 2007, it was among the groups that fought offshore oil and gas exploration. The borough feared that noise from the planned activities would disrupt the migratory paths of another protected marine species important to Native culture: the bowhead whale. Back then, Mayor Itta was acutely aware of the competing interests of national energy security and the needs of North Slope villages. "It's a way of life against an opposing value. This way of life has value; nobody can put it in dollars and cents," he told The New York Times in an interview two years ago.