Rosemary Ahtuangaruak: Plan protects Alaska Native culture

Tuesday, January 22, 2013  

"The holiday season has come and gone. Just as many Americans gathered around the dining room table to reflect on the year and share their traditions and customs, my family continues our culture and enjoys our traditional foods that we have shared for thousands of years. Our subsistence lifestyle is a strong spiritual connectedness to the lands and waters. The Arctic Ocean provides traditional foods such as the walrus, the seal and the whale, and the lands of the National Petroleum Reserve-Alaska (Reserve) provide the caribou.

At the end of the year, Interior Secretary Ken Salazar announced the first-ever, areawide land management plan for the Reserve (alternative B-2), which is the largest swath of public land in our nation at 22 million acres. Lands that Secretary Salazar plans to protect will go a long way in protecting the life, health and safety of our people and the caribou that live off of these vast lands — the caribou that feed our families. In August, the Department of the Interior released its preferred plan and promised protections of “world-class caribou herds, migratory bird habitat, uplands, and sensitive coastal resources that are central to the culture and subsistence lifestyle of Alaska Natives and our nation’s conservation heritage.” More than 30 resolutions representing over 90 villages have been passed by tribal councils to call for the protections of the caribou herds’ lands and waters in the Reserve — the agency certainly has our support."

Get the Story:
Rosemary Ahtuangaruak : Looking in: Protect our connections with land, water (The Santa Fe New Mexican 1/22)