By Vijay Jayaraj
The allure of the Arctic continues to captivate imaginations with its beautiful, if sometimes forbidding, wilderness. Equally captivating to some, beneath these vast landscapes of permafrost and ice, is the economic lure of oil and gas promising economic prosperity and development. However, for the Inuit communities in Canada, Alaska and Greenland, who call this region home, securing the benefits of these resources has not been straightforward.
It has long been a popular assumption that the Inuit universally oppose oil and gas projects. However, this an inaccurate perception fed by a media that oversimplifies complex subjects and portrays dissenting voices as widely accepted viewpoints. Although preferences vary, many Inuit communities have long favored development of the region’s hydrocarbons.
Importance of Oil and Gas for Alaskan Inuit
In 2018, in the town of Utqiagvik, Alaska, the head of one of reportedly the world’s richest indigenous organization, explained the importance of oil and gas development to the region: “You see, our region is dependent upon the economy that oil and gas development brings, said Rex Rock, CEO of Arctic Slope Regional Corp.
Not only are houses in Utqiagvik powered by natural gas, the oil economy funds the city’s municipal expenses and provides the livelihoods of citizens.
This is why the Inupiat people of the North Slope, located at the northern boundary of Alaska, consistently back the region’s oil projects and, given Washington, D.C.’s hostility toward fossil fuels, have been calling for an amplified role in decision-making.
Writing in support of the North Slope’s long-delayed Willow project in a WSJ article, Inuit political leaders said, “We still live in homes that aren’t connected to running water and basic sewage systems. We have no roads connecting our communities because the federal government won’t allow us to build them. … We are tired of outside groups trying to turn this project and every other oil and gas project in our region into the poster child for a global movement away from fossil fuels.”
The Willow project is now underway, thanks to a November 2023 court ruling. The first oil is expected in 2024. The project is estimated to generate between $8 billion and $17 billion in new revenue for federal, state and local governments, including Utqiaġvik’s.
Inuits Struggle Against Canadian Government’s Arctic Moratorium
The situation is even more challenging in the Canadian Arctic. In 2016, the Canadian federal government issued a moratorium on oil and gas activities in the region. Broadcaster CBC News says political leaders in Canada’s northern provinces, including leaders of indigenous communities, “have been pushing for those restrictions to be lifted, arguing that the North needs the economic development that would come with offshore exploration and licensing.”
In August 2023, considering the requests of Inuits and Northern Provinces, the Canadian government signed a historic deal called the “Western Arctic – Tariuq Accord” with the Inuit government. Dubbed as a “first of its kind,” the deal is believed to have opened doors to increased participation of local Inuit communities in the decision-making process for oil and gas projects, paving way for the drilling to resume in this region.
According to reports of the Canadian government, the Inuit, including Métis and First Nations people, “have experienced significant disparities in the job market” and have “lower educational attainment, insufficient training, … limited access to postsecondary education, lack of affordable housing, lack of childcare.”
Is it any wonder that indigenous Canadian leaders want oil and gas projects? Apart from direct revenue sharing, likely benefits would include improved access to healthcare, education and emergency services and construction of roads, ports, and telecommunications networks. These in turn will create employment opportunities, eventually reducing socio-economic disadvantages of the Inuit.
Without a doubt, some Inuit have reservations about these projects, and their concerns will play a significant role in the collaborative decision-making process. Ultimately, the goal should be to achieve a mutually beneficial scenario, where Inuit communities desiring these economic initiatives can pursue them. Sweeping prohibitions on Arctic drilling lacks economic logic for communities favoring it.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. He holds a master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, U.K.
This commentary was first published at Real Clear Energy on March 18, 2024.
Vijay Jayaraj is a Research Associate at the CO2 Coalition, Arlington, Virginia. He holds a master’s degree in environmental sciences from the University of East Anglia, U.K.
It is not in the political interest of the ‘elitista’ and bureaucracy to have the Inuit in a position to improve the lot of their nation. Australia has the same issues with its Aboriginal industry, too many white leftista hangers-on and academics would be out of job quick-smart.
what? we give them roads schools homes health care and generous benefits the white poor dont get. the lack of improvement tends to happen when they choose to trash homes and rape n kill nurses , travel into towns n steal and fight. hell look at the inter tribe warfare just trashed an entire town and had the elders running for the bush in NT for the last few months. homes IN NT robbed regularly ditto Biz, and try n sell your home there? ha.
Just spoke with my stepson yesterday. He is 50% Sioux, of the Standing Rock Reservation in south central N Dakota and N Central S Dakota.
He was adopted and had to later establish his native rights by obtaining his original birth certificate.
When he did all that he met his father’s family and obtained lease rights over several tracts of land through inheritance from his father. What was done with that land for the 30 years between his father’s death and establishment of his “rights” no one knows, LOL.
He has no interest in having anything to do with the Res. Anyone who stays in a Res house, etc. and does outside employment must pay the tribe for the house. Just like welfare where income costs you more than it is worth, so all extra income is via a “side hustle” off the books.
My SS got a cousin from the res a job with the asphalt and road company. Good paying regular job, etc. The cousin said that the company “worked him like a Nword” and did not pay enough. My SS had to “let him go”. More trouble than he was worth.
The cousin’s “side hustle” was apparently selling drugs, so at least he did something, LOL. I am pretty sure the side hustle of many of the tribe is for cash to PAY FOR DRUGS.
So Fort Yates, the Sioux County ND County seat, and also the Standing Rock tribal headquarters has less than 200 residents. The WHOLE county is Res property so essentially nothing positive comes from all that land. Not even enough to create the excess employment of a typical county government. Scarry.
He is a hunter and he can get numerous tags through the tribe and hunt most of western South Dakota, land swindled from the Great Sioux Reservation over the years. Yes, the reservation land was stolen, especially the Black Hills, for the gold there. Wounded Knee put an end to the tribes attempting to keep the stolen land.
So I have no use for useless people. Back to Reagan’s “A rising tide lifts all boats”, which only means when MORE people are productive, the whole of society benefits. That is why I often ask Stokes why he hates poor people. His support of totally useless unreliable electrical generation hurts the poor the most.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Sioux_Reservation
Metis and First Nations, ie American Indian, people are not included among the Inuit. Even other Eskimos aren’t Inuit, who live in eastern Canada. Greenlanders speak a language largely mutually intelligible with the Inuit’s, but don’t call themselves Inuit.
The Inupiat of northern Alask speak a language related to Inuit, but not mutually intelligble with it. The Yupik of western Alaska speak a language in the Eskimo-Aleut family, but far removed from Inuit.
If Inuit and Inupiat are like Spanish and Romanian, then Yupik would at best be German or Russian.
It’s pure Canadian chauvinism to refer to all Eskimos as Inuit. Most aren’t. In the US, none are.
Actually, almost all of them are bilingual and speak at least some English and maybe a few words of their native language. So what?
Yupik don’t like being called Inuit any more than a Russian would appreciate being called an Andorran.
Their cultures differ as well as their languages.
Few Greenlanders or Siberian Yupiks speak English.
Obfuscating the issue with a lecture on arctic language diversity misses the point, which is that the residents of the far north have valid interests in the land that supports them that are unrelated to the wishes of people living thousands of miles away.
Doyon, the regional corporation owned by many of the Athabascans, discovered the largest and finest deposit of asbestos on earth shortly before it was considered as a poison worse than arsenic and contractors made a living tearing it off the pipes in schools all over America, as they continue to do today. An Eskimo living on the sandspit of Shishmaref has zero in common with a resident of Miami Beach but they’re held to the same regulatory processes. They’ve also been treated as animals by the federal government.
But it must have seemed quite normal to Seward to send a payment of $7 million to the Tsar of all the Russias for a piece of property that neither of them had ever seen.
I obfuscated nothing. I clarified the relarionships among indigenous North American and Far Eastern Siberian Arctic groups.
Nothing I said suggests they shouldn’t enjoiy the blessings of fossil fuels, especially as some of their lands are rich therein.
You clarified no relationships. You pointed out that various arctic populations are named by outsiders differently than they name themselves and that they speak different languages. The significance of this? Both the descendents of US slaves and recent immigrants from Africa are called “blacks” but they are much different populations. Almost every North American native tribe is known to the population and the US government by a name different than the one they use themselves. By the way, why are you ignoring the Sami?
Because the Sami aren’t Eskimos.
You miss the point. The Inuit are one group of Eskimos. Calling other Eskimos by that name is not like calling African Americans or Subsaharan Africans “black”. It would be like calling Mandinka people Vai, or worse in the Yupik case.
Get the government out of the energy production and transmission business. It must not have the authority to pick winners and losers in the market. Wind, solar, fossil fuel and nuclear should compete head to head without government interference. Do this simple thing and we will know what works and what doesn’t without out any fancy studies or committees and it will cost a lot less money. Government is incapable of doing this kind of work.
Our betters in academia would prefer that these people live a stone age existence instead of a modern one like they enjoy in their temperature controlled towers. For vanity.
Much the same as it seems we are all doomed to enjoy.
In Canada Crown lands are just those lands the government declared for itself and the same appears to apply to Federal lands in the USA. So why shouldn’t the indigenous peoples of North America share in the bounty of oil and gas?
I am not suggesting that the indigenous peoples hinder development deemed to be in the benefit of the people, provided that, what is to be developed doesn’t deface cultural sites or needlessly endanger wildlife, but that they have a say in how and where that development proceeds, and can also benefit culturally and economically.
After all, isn’t the object of a free and democratic country to benefit all of the people, so all of the people can support themselves without having to fall onto the state for support?
development deemed to be in the benefit of the people
In the US that benefit is deemed by the political party and president of the winners in the latest media orchestrated elections. In the case of Alaska, the passage of the Alaska Native Land Claims Act establishing regional and local native corporations was only done to get the oil on the North Slope into a pipeline to tidewater. There was little concern for the natives themselves or their rights on their own land. Halting legal challenges to the construction of the Alaska pipeline was the object of the legislation, not a square deal for the natives.
A few years back NYT hack Nicholas Kristof took a canoe trip in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge where he described the area as his son’s “birthright”. That’s 24 karat pretension. He probably doesn’t feel that the upper west side of Manhattan is his son’s “birthright” or the Florida Keys or the Kona Coast. But that’s the way it is with a “federation” or “union”, collective ownership, similar to more despised regimes.
There’s an alternative: these natives can trade keeping their oil in the ground for monetary compensation. The US government alone has trillions of dollars to waste on bird killers (windmills and solar farms) which contribute more problems to the grid than solutions. It would be a better use of the money, and help solve politicians’ lust for throwing away other people’s money. And I’d bet the natives would be glad to vote for the party that dumped those trainloads of cash on them.